Night Fire: Oddessy of Bataou Part Two

The Kemetic educational spirituality opens our consciousness to the importance of one fact: the existence of evil. The human being is spiritually nothing but a battlefield between the principles of evil and good. The human being then should be rightfully constantly obsessed with that reality. The evil does not take a break, and it carries with itself the essence of immortality and indestructibility. It also carries a tendency to expand and always conquer new territories. Against this principle of evil, good only has its ability to resurrect. If the human being identifies himself with the God-child, he is then this virgin territory that is envied by Seth. He is then fragile and easily destructible by evil. If the existence can be considered as a battlefield, while the force of evil arrives with all its arsenal capable of destroying the human being and being protected by its own immortality, the human being is only armed with his will to survive the evil and his ability to resurrect.

Bataou believed in the possibility of a life that is calm and simple. He, who has spent most of his time herding cows and taking them to the grazelands or helping his brother to build his family, he who has preferred sleeping in a barn among the cows; he, the most humble of the family; he, the poorest...; he, Bataou, who understands more the language of the animals than the language of the humans, could not imagine that the wife of his own big brother will ask to spend moments in bed with him. While he was plowing, his thoughts from time to time were wandering through time; what would he have done or said in the past to encourage the wife of his brother in wanting to involve him in this abominable idea? He, Bataou, has always respected the wills of the Gods and the ancestors; he has always followed the seventy-seven commandments! He has always practiced purification of his body and his mind! He has always made his offerings to his ancestors. It has been a long time since he has been preparing himself for the world of the dead, and the world after death…

The sun was setting on the horizon. Inipu washed his hands and did a quick purification before walking towards the house. As usual, Batou gathered some dead wood for the wife of his brother, gathered the cows and counted them, and also started walking towards the village.

The priests of the initiation centers have always said that every time the evil gets on the horse, it will ride it and will only get off when the horse falls and dies. Every momentum of evil only stops after a catastrophe. And the evil backs off only to look at new directions to advance.

The wife of Inipu spent the whole day in anguish with no equal. A very small moment of temptation that she did not resist is now placing her in an uncertainty that is difficult to experience. She knows that Bataou has promised not to talk about this incident to his brother if she does not try again, but how could the promise of Bataou be different than the one she herself has made to her husband? It is so true that every liar believes that everyone is a liar. It is so true that our perception of the world reflects what we are. Can she trust Batou and let all her life and her future depend on his determination to keep secret the incident of this moment? Fear and uncertainty are favorite territories for excuses we find in the evil that we commit.  For the wife of Inipu, she must do everything to protect her interests; and in this case, Bataou is no longer the small brother of her husband. Bataou is no longer the one who has spent his life serving them, farming for them, taking care of their cattle, bringing wood for her kitchen, cleaning her house, cleaning her courtyard, etc. Bataou is now an enemy she must defeat. She must then quickly find a way to separate the two brothers and turn them against each other.

Inipu's wife also knows that it is not easy to split two brothers by using reason. It is usually said that the wildest beast is locked in a cage, and that cage can be found in the human heart; one only needs to find the key that will open the cage and one will be surprised by the ferocity and the barbarism that the human being is capable of. Inipu's wife covered herself with ashes and tangled her hair. She tore her clothes before she went to lie down by the door. When she sensed her husband approaching, she started moaning. At the sound of the moaning, the husband ran towards her:

"What happened?" he asked in a sort of panic. "Who aggressed you?" He placed the head of his wife between his arms and tried to clean the dust from her face. "Oh...! I do not know how to tell you the hell I've been through...in the hands of your own brother..."

"What!?" cut in Inipu. "My brother?" The woman kept silent for a moment, took her time, and emitted a long moan before she continued. "Oh...yes, your own brother. When he came in to pick up the grains, he found me fixing my hair...he looked at me and he asked me to come spend a moment with him in bed..." While she was talking, she could see the eyes of her husband widening with anger. One could read on the face of Inipu the feelings of anger, deception, and jealousy. His own brother? No...this is not possible. The woman continued: "...I refused. I reminded him that I was like a mother to him and you were like a father to him...oh....but you can see that he is younger than you and a lot stronger. He beat me up and did to me as he wanted..." Inipu could not control his anger. His entire body was trembling. His eyes became pink. "I will make him regret his acts...I will make him regret his birth!" he said with a voice almost inhuman. The wife continued her story: "Oh, no... he made me swear not to tell you anything. He has vowed that he will kill me if I say a word about what he did to me..."

"Oh yeah?!" the husband cut in. "Oh, yes...now that I told you, he will kill me if you don't kill him first... "This is just what I was going to do... I will kill this son of a dog, this traitor!" He leaped over his wife and entered his room, picked up a dagger and a spear, and started to sharpen them. He went into the barn and hid behind the door after he helped his wife get in bed.

While he was waiting, he did not stop repeating to himself "Bataou is no longer my brother. He is nothing but a son of a dog, a bastard. He is nothing but the enemy of Gods."

Bataou, as usual, was walking behind the cattle and heading home at their pace, even though carrying vegetables and dry wood as usual. He could not stop thinking about the incident. For the first time, he had the impression that the sacred bond between him and his brother had been damaged by the wife of his brother. He had promised to keep secret the actions of his brother's wife because he wanted to protect their family. But the reality of this situation was nothing but a nightmare. If the wife of his brother wanted to sleep with him, driven by her desires, she wanted to betray his brother, and if the fact that he, the brother of the same mother and the same father, the brother of blood, was not even excluded on her field of, temptation, he had no choice but to resign himself on the idea that his world had changed. The world in which he was living, the world that for him was perfect, had just succumbed to the evil that inhabits the world. Should he keep secret the dishonesty of this woman to protect his brother? And then wouldn't that be maintaining his brother in a sort of painful illusion? Doesn't this turn him into a partner in crime, isn't it a sin? But must he destroy the world of his brother, however illusioned it is, just to maintain the peace within himself? Which peace will he have with the idea that he has destroyed the family of his brother? Despite all these questions, he decided to keep it secret and spend the rest of his life praying to the Gods to protect his brother and his family.

When he finally arrived home, Bataou led the cattle towards the barn. But as soon as the first bulls entered the barn, they saw Inipu behind the door waiting with his dagger in his hand. The cow then turned toward the others and said, "This is odd...the brother of Bataou is hiding behind the door with a dagger and a spear in his hands. He wants to kill him! Tell him to run!" Bataou did not believe his ears and senses. He approached the door cautiously. He saw the feet of his brother below the door. He then dropped his load and started running. His brother then came out of his hiding place and started pursuing him. While they were running, Bataou could hear the voice of his brother covering him with all sorts of insults and curses. "I will kill you like a dog! You traitor! You son of the devil!" He then turned himself and saw that his brother was catching up with him and had the dagger raised in the air. He was full of anger. He then decided to invoke the God Ra-Heru-Emkhuti. He said, "Oh Ra-Heru-Emkhuti, my fair God, it is you  that judges and separates good from evil." Ra accepted his invocation. At these words, a river appeared between the two brothers. They became separated by a river of water full of crocodiles. Bataou then stopped and saw that on the other side of the river, his brother was still insulting him. Bataou then shouted to his brother, "Let's wait for the rise of the sun, and since for you, I'm nothing but a worthless traitor, and my word does not deserve any of your attention, I will offer myself to the judgment of the God Iten. Since it is Iten who punishes those who do evil, Iten is the one who sets the crooked straight. For the moment, I will stay away from you. Never again I will find myself in the same place you are. I will go to the Valley of the Cedars."

In the first hours of the following day, Ra-Emkhuti, Iten, and other Gods were observing from diverse points of the horizon. The two brothers were also looking at each other. Bataou then talked to his brother. "Why did you decide to pursue me with the goal of killing me without even trying to listen to what my mouth will have to say? I am your baby brother. You have always been like a father to me. And your wife has always been like a mother to me..." He then told his version of the incident of the day and continued. "...it is she who turned the story into something else, and I'm taking all the Gods as a witness." After he has vowed on Ra-Emkhuti, he continued again. "Verily, the fact that you were waiting behind the door with a dagger in the hand was really an abominable act." He then pulled out a knife from his pocket and said, "It is without a doubt the fact that I have a penis that led you into believing what you wanted to believe to the point of wanting to kill me. I will get rid of my own penis..." Before finishing his sentence, he grabbed his penis and testicles and with the knife cut them off. Bataou then showed his genital organs that he just cut off to his brother and before he threw them in the river, he said, "You have kept in the memory one bad act that I supposedly have committed, and you did not want to remember all the good acts or even one good act I've done for you. You did not need to kill me; you do not need to dirty your hands with my blood. Now return to your house. Return and fetch dry wood for your wife. Return and lead your own cattle to the field..."  

The body of Bataou is starting to fade. His brother started to cry. He wanted to go save his brother, but the river was between them and was full of crocodiles: "I will never be with you...I'm going to the Valley of the Dead. I'm going to the Valley of the Cedars..." Bataou sighed. He started walking slowly towards the Valley of the Cedars. His brother, in a moment of desperation, shouted to him, "Hey! Wait! Do not go...when will you come back? ... To this, Batou turned and answered, "No! I will never come back to your place. But as to what you will do to my spirit, me, I would reinforce my spirit. I will go and place my heart inside the flower of the cedar; if that cedar is cut, my heart will fall on the ground. I will beg for you to come and look for it. Whatever time it will take if you find it and you place it in a pot of cold water, that will keep it strong and I will live to respond to those who will attack me. If you ever place a pot of millet beer in your hand and it starts foaming with no reason to the point of getting on the ground, do not wait, this will be a sign that what I just told you happened." 

Inipu returned home with his hands crossed on his head and in a fit of anger with no precedence, when he reached the house, he killed his wife, cut her into pieces, and gave the pieces to dogs. He spent the rest of his time in mourning for his brother.