In Aegyptum

And it came to pass that Wolff, once a knight, made his way to the land of Egypt. He had not been there long when he found to his dismay that stepping into another river may yet bring one strangely almost home. For denial is not just the source of annual floods and wet fertility, and and good pharaohs are hard to find.

While he ponders these truths about rivers and gypsies, he is interrupted by a fellow with a pointy hairdo.

Ho! What are you doing here in the land of the God Of The Burning Gaze, He Who Gives And Takes Away, He Who Has The Divine Spark In His Colon Which Must Be Cleaned By A Special Slave Each Day, Upon Whom The Sun Rises And Sets For He Is The Son And Avatar Of The Sun?

Wolff found all this rather hard to digest. He was about to frame a reply, when the impatient functionary cracked a whip at him and said, Make haste to answer, else the Slayer Of Set will wreak a terrible havoc upon you! Do you wish this to happen?

Nasser! But I am sad at this invasion of my privacy. I am a quiet man, a warrior by training but a teacher by choice.

A warrior! Ha! I will beat and berate and bastinado you, you son of a slave! I will take all bonus, benefit and benevolence from you and leave your tortured corpse for the vultures!

Wolff, now a man of peace, resigned himself to a beating. As the first blows fell, he put his pain into a far place and surrendered to the will of the Highest. And so it was, for a distantly painful while. Then, surprisingly, the blows stopped and there was blood everywhere.

Hello, stranger! I cannot stand for a son of the serpent to be beating fellow Israelites. Unfortunately, I have killed him. I hope you are able to walk?

He was looking at a slim, well-built and slightly choleric fellow. He felt an immediate kinship.

My name is Moses.