by Antonio Napoli

Experience unfailingly cultivates the ears of every memory we possess; and memory, which gathers them one by one to bind them into an innumerable sheaf, thus composes the image of what we know about ourselves.
But memory is not everything. Ordinary memories do not return to us, nor make us relive, the essence of who we once were; they only point out, with uncertain steps, the path of our becoming — a path which, in the foreign lands of the future, remains even more uncertain, knowable in advance only to the Gods, some of whom, lovingly, choose to speak to us through dreams.

Timeo and I informed the others of the journey undertaken by Giscone and Jabir. Relief, hope, and fear mingled on the faces of those who heard our account: the grandfather and grandson had indeed escaped another likely Numidian attack, but their fate still seemed to us suspended on the edge of some vague peril.

The decision to depart was immediate; Timeo too wished to join us, driven by the need for a change of air. By midday we were already at the port, teeming with goods and people, and we luckily found a small ship about to set sail for Tyre. Strong men were loading gold, ivory, tin, linen, and slaves.
We were all on board, just about to leave the mainland, when a Jew — making a great fuss and waving his arms — managed to overcome his delay and the captain’s impatience, who let him board, enticed by the valuable item the last of the few passengers brought with him: a scroll containing the works of Philip of Medma, the disciple of Plato who diligently studied the stars.

The weather was fair, the wind favorable.
I will say nothing of the long conversations with Timeo, which by then seemed to interest only me and no longer Speusippus. Always lost in thought, Speusippus seemed caught in a dream: the idea of a pure love must have bloomed in his heart, awakening memories of innocence. He was in love with Ishara, and to the eyes of a lover everything appears more beautiful than it truly is.

The Carthaginian woman would stare at the sea for long stretches — that sea which, in its perils, is the twin of the desert — and remained silent, deaf to the questions of the other passengers.
I admit that, at a certain point, I no longer knew what to think of her silence.
I had observed her in the depths of her bewilderment: fragile, unaware of herself, as we all are when we lose something — or someone — so dear that it distorts reality, until all that remains in the storm is the vision of what is absent, and the rest of the world flows past us like shadow or noise.
But now I saw her differently, cloaked in a bronzed image of pride and confidence, as if she had found again the person whose identity she had lost.
And yet, they were only impressions, suppositions. The truth, like the keel of the ship, lay hidden beneath the water.

During the days at sea, while birds swooped down from the clear sky onto the ship’s deck to peck at crumbs or scraps of food, I would chat with the sailors, and sometimes even with the captain, Himilco. He told me a little of his story.
Raised by a father who taught him never to flinch before danger, neither on the waves nor among the stones of the land, he carried one motto in his heart: “Sailing is necessary.”
One day — he told me — the sun darkened and sudden darkness fell over the sea. Himilco, to reassure his crew, gripped by superstitious terror, lit a torch: the light revealed a cat, calmly continuing to eat. The pale faces of the crew revived with a smile, and each returned to his post.

It happened that Himilco exchanged a few sharp words with Timeo and, on one occasion, said:
“You Greeks, at the sight of the Persians, ran to your ships and became sailors out of fear. We Phoenicians, on the other hand, became sailors to seek new worlds in which to prove ourselves even bolder.”
And this time Timeo didn’t know how to reply; even he knew when it was best not to have the last word.

I spent time with a merchant who was taking his son on his first voyage. I did not speak, however, with the Jew who kept to himself: I had only recently learned his name — Yedidyah. He was so silent that he seemed to guard it like a secret, just as he did the reason for his journey.
Yet once, when he bent down to the little boy who had buried his tearful face between his knees, frightened by the naked vastness of the sea, I heard him speak with such skill that I was astonished:

“Come now, don’t cry. I’ll tell you how two great men met and recognized one another — men who had every reason to weep, but who were patient and strong.
One was called ‘the Pharaoh,’ who had molded an army out of mud; the other was called ‘the Prophet,’ who had raised a people from barren soil.
They walked in the desert. The Pharaoh, encrusted with salt, called his half-brother by name: he recognized him by the staff he still held with pride. They sat on the sand and looked up to the sky,
which was turning red. They said nothing, perhaps out of the awkwardness that bound them.
The cry of a wandering beast shattered the evening’s silence. Then the Prophet noticed, in the Pharaoh’s battered headdress,
a large fish. They lit a fire and roasted it. When the Pharaoh brought that simple food to his mouth, before chewing, he said to the Prophet:
‘I have forgiven you the plagues. I have forgiven you the death of the firstborn. Now it is time for both of us to return home — to our home.’
‘Never,’ replied the Prophet, tossing a handful of sand over his shoulder,
as if to erase the shadow of the past.
‘Return, and for you there shall be a palace and a solemn tomb,’ said the Pharaoh, his eyes sparkling, ‘a tomb that all will see from afar.’
‘No one will know my tomb,’ replied the Prophet with melancholic calm,
as he extinguished the fire with his foot and walked away.
The stars followed him.”

What was supposed to be the last day of the voyage saw the sea grow rough and threatening.
The ship, weighed down almost beyond reason, was assaulted by waves from every side. The captain, with a grave expression, ordered the heaviest cargo to be thrown overboard, regardless of its value, just to lighten the hull.
We saw the crates floating, drifting one by one toward the horizon, as though they too were seeking escape. But the situation aboard did not improve.

As the ship threatened to break apart, the sailors, gripped by terror, began to invoke each their own god. The captain, however, stood firm. When one of the crew went to shake the Jew — who sat silently, withdrawn — so that he too would call on his God, Yedidyah spoke:

“The God I worship, the Lord who made the sea and the land, is angry with me. I should have crossed the desert and entered the darkest heart of Africa to find a tribe that had separated from my people, and bring them back the Torah. But I was afraid of the many dangers, and I turned back.”

At that admission a sailor cried out:
“Throw him overboard! Then his God will be appeased, the sea will calm, and we shall not perish because of his cowardice!”
They seized him and lowered him into the sea with a rope. But the commander thundered:
“No one will be expelled from my ship unless the sea itself, in its fury, casts him away!”

And something inexplicable happened: when the rope with the Jew descended, the waves calmed; when they pulled him back up, the sea raged again.
Then the captain himself hauled him back on board, freed him, and threatened his men, swearing he would not tolerate mutiny.

Back at their posts, the sailors — soaked to the bone — were all at the limit of their strength; we passengers clung to whatever swayed less dangerously; Ishara held the merchant’s son to her belly as if he were her own child; the Jew kept blaming himself for the disaster, when suddenly a large Roman ship, which had recovered the crates abandoned at sea, came alongside us.
It lowered a drawbridge ending in a large hook and latched onto us.
It was our salvation.
The sea remained turbulent, but towed by that mighty vessel, we finally reached a port. And that was when we saw it: the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
Majestic, it welcomed us with its prodigious height, but at the same time it seemed to draw us away from our destination — or so we believed.
Divinity — as Plato taught — can never be irrational and can never commit injustice.