The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus. David Price Williams
be very willing to tell you about our whole way of existence. There’s probably no better place for it. And it’s so cosmopolitan you can really appreciate how its universal message embraces the whole world.”
The ship sailed on through the afternoon and I sat in the stern watching the wake bubble up below the transom. My mind was racing at the thought of seeing the magnificent city towards which we were sailing, all its fine buildings and its huge population and especially its Christian community. Polios had given me a small book to read about the life of Jesus. It was called ‘The Euangelion of Luke,’ what Polios had described as the gospel, the good news I suppose you’d translate it. It was an account of what happened over two hundred and fifty years ago. It was in Greek, not the best Greek I’d ever read, but its descriptions were vivid and the teachings very appealing. Jesus had preached his gospel, his good news, to everyone, not just the wealthy or to any specific class of the population, but to everyone, rich and poor, old and young, whole and infirmed.
He had gathered twelve followers around him to be his disciples, the ones who would carry his message to the world. They were not from any didactic group, nor were they philosophers used to the cut and thrust of debate. They were ordinary men - fishermen, country people, even a tax collector named Matthew. To them he gave the good news of hope and
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good will, of a life that would transcend destruction and death. That was the crux of the Christian message. However uncertain life may be, however bitter and unfair, however hounded people felt by political upheaval, ill health or any of the other human catastrophes which surround us daily, God was there to care for us. He loved us and would see us through. It was an extraordinary claim, especially in such a troubled world as ours. That I quickly realised was what drew people to believe and to flock to the cause in such numbers and with such faith. That was the “good news.”
I read parts of the Gospel of Luke several times that night by the light of an oil lamp. I was fascinated by it! I couldn’t wait to meet more of the faith in the great city of Alexandria and to hear more of their way of life that they had all chosen. I wanted to be part of it, to absorb it, to participate in this message of expectation.
“Light ahead!” came the cry of a seaman at the prow of the ship just before dawn. “See, the beam of the great lighthouse.”
We all peered through the darkness and sure enough, low on the horizon was an orange flame, appearing and disappearing in the gloom of the night. It got brighter and steadier as we continued and it seemed to climb out of the sea as more of the building came into view. This was where we were heading – Alexandria. We looked fixedly on the growing flame from the top of what was eventually going to be the tallest tower I
THE JOURNEY
had ever seen. As we got closer I could see it must be over two hundred and fifty cubits high.
“They keep a furnace burning on the top of the tower twenty-four hours a day,” said Polios. “In the old days there was a temple there to Hephaestos, god of the underworld, who was the protector of the flame. It used to be counted as one of the seven wonders of the world of Alexander the Great. No surprise there eh? We’ll be docked in the Great Harbour before mid-day!”
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CHAPTER FIVE
INTO THE LIGHT
As Polios had predicted, we came under the shadow of the massive lighthouse of Alexandria and into the Great Harbour about the middle of the morning. The harbour was absolutely vast, with forests of masts clustering around the quaysides. At some point back in Alexander’s time they had connected the mainland to the Pharos Island where the lighthouse now stood by means of a huge mole and this had the effect of dividing the intervening channel into two. Eunostis Harbour was on the other side of this man-made isthmus and was used by naval ships – Roman galleys and transport vessels. The wide bay we found ourselves in on this side was divided yet again by a harbour wall which gave extra protection to an inner basin they called Kibotos and this was where we were now heading. A harbour official was shouting instructions to our ship, waving his hands and pointing further inside to a space where we would be able to draw alongside other ships already moored there. After a tricky set of manoeuvres, Polios managed to set the ship beam-on some three ships out from the quay wall and with the help of the crew from the other vessels we made fast to the gunwale of the outermost. We had arrived.
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I was anxious to disembark immediately to visit this magnificent city. I could already see the tall obelisks and statues of exotic Egyptian gods set up in the grand squares that surrounded the harbour. But Polios said there were many things that had to be done first. There was much documentation to be completed with the harbour-master, for the ship, for its cargo, which happened to be baulks of timber from the Taurus Mountains behind Patara, and also for the crew, including me. I hadn’t thought of that. It wouldn’t be until the afternoon that we would be free to go ashore. There were many small jobs to be done on board too, coiling ropes, cleaning the decks, furling the sails and other tasks associated with a sea-going vessel; actually these took up most of the rest of the day. By the time we’d opened the hatches to the hold so that the sawn wooden beams could be examined by the timber merchant who was going to buy them, the sun was already starting its journey to the horizon.
As evening drew on, Polios suggested we walked along the quayside to find a tavern where we could get something to eat and drink. It was then I realised just how tired I was after two or three days at sea with little sleep. We climbed over the other ships and set off around the harbour. It was at once an amazing experience for me. The dockside was thronged with many different nationalities, speaking many languages and dressed in all kinds of clothing – Syrians from the north, from
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Bostra and even from as far as the Euphrates valley; local Egyptians from Alexandria and others clearly from further up the Nile; men from the deserts of Arabia, tanned leathery faces and dark-set eyes shaded with head scarves and black-skinned Africans from across the Sahara. It was like nowhere I’d ever seen before. I could hear all manner of languages too, from Arabic, Nabatean and South Arabian to various African tongues and Greek. Everyone seemed to know some Greek, enough to make themselves understood in the bargaining we saw going on all around us. Latin might be the language of the Roman government, but there was no question that Greek was the lingua franca here.
Finding a small wine shop we ordered what turned out to be a goat stew flavoured with turmeric and ginger, spices that had come all the way from India. There were several different varieties of olives and newly-baked flat bread which was delicious. We drank beakers of a local palm wine and finished with some cakes sweetened with honey and topped with almonds. My eyelids felt heavy with the palm wine and I found myself eager to get back to the ship for a good night’s rest. On reaching the little vessel I fell into a dreamless sleep until the sun was already quite high in the sky and I was woken by the cries of the street vendors selling fresh bread rings. After sluicing my face in a bucket on the deck, Polios and I set out to explore the city.
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The centre of Alexandria had been built on Alexander’s orders. It was laid out with broad boulevards in a criss-crossed grid-iron plan, the principal direction being parallel to the Pharos Island and the sea. We walked south away from the harbour along Sema Street, a wide colonnaded road leading into the middle of the city. It was already busy with shopkeepers bringing their produce out onto the shaded verandas