Authors: Joan Hess
Alexander grinned at Inez. “I see you’re well prepared for all contingencies.”
“I have extra sunscreen if you need some,” she said, flustered.
Caron carefully put down her fork. “I’m going to the ladies’ room. Inez, are you coming?”
The two fled like gawky fillies, their knees wobbling so wildly I was afraid they were going to crash into a waiter—or into Mrs. McHaver, who was poised in the doorway. Miriam hovered behind her, peering over her aunt’s broad shoulder.
“God save us all,” Alexander murmured as he lit a cigarette. “I suppose in this case I should be imploring Allah, but
my Arabic is shaky before noon. I say, shall we have a round of Bloody Marys before we go?”
Peter and I declined. Mrs. McHaver acknowledged us with a slight nod as she swept by and sat down at a table in the corner. Miriam paused at our table.
“Good morning,” she said. Her tentative smile was aimed at all of us, but it was obvious that she was speaking to Alexander. Her eyelids quivered spasmodically as she attempted to give him a sultry gaze. “Are you off on an outing? I was so hoping you might come to Lady Emerson’s this afternoon. I don’t play bridge, and the others are always so engrossed that I feel as if I’m not there. I usually end up out in the garden, sketching. It’s dreadfully dull. You could help me with irregular verbs. They’re such a bother, but my aunt insists that I become fluent in Arabic, as well as French and German.”
“So sorry, old girl, but I have a previous engagement,” Alexander said, sending a cloud of smoke at her. “Luckily, you’ll be there to make sure Mrs. McHaver’s martinis have the proper number of olives. Essential to the digestive process, I understand. One simply cannot rely on the local servants to attend to such matters of magnitude.”
Miriam’s eyes narrowed. “If there’s no persuading you, I do hope you enjoy your outing. Good day.”
Alexander ground out his cigarette in a saucer. “Pitiful creature, isn’t she? It would never occur to her to simply refuse to trail after her great-aunt like some sort of lapdog.”
“She looks almost ashen in the sunlight,” Peter said. “Is she ill?”
“I believe she’s recovering from a prolonged bout of a mysterious fever.” Alexander beckoned to a waiter and ordered more coffee. “I wasn’t really paying much attention when her case was discussed. Last spring she was obliged to take a medical leave from her teaching position. Mrs. McHaver brought her to Luxor because the weather in Cumbria can be brutal in the autumn and winter. The girl didn’t have the spirit to refuse, although she’s not at all interested
in archeology. She’d much prefer to be in her flat watching the telly and drinking watery tea.”
“Her first trip out here?” I asked.
“She’s come in the past, but just for holiday between terms. Miriam’s parents died when she was quite young. Mrs. McHaver took her in and saw to her upbringing. I do feel sympathy for the girl, growing up in a remote house on the moors. No money of her own, forced to accept her great-aunt’s charity. Given grudgingly, one would suppose. Mrs. McHaver doesn’t pinch pences—she squeezes them until they scream for mercy.”
I was sorry Caron wasn’t at the table, since her concept of deprivation was defined by her lack of cell phone and credit cards.
“This is hardly a modest bed-and-breakfast,” Peter pointed out.
“She does have to keep up appearances, doesn’t she?” Alexander lit another cigarette. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s not paying the same room rate that her father used to pay fifty years ago. You’ll notice that she herself does not entertain, but never declines an invitation. Don’t let her fool you, though. She may seem like a stereotypic Scot, but there’s more to her than you may suspect.”
“And Miriam?” I asked.
“That I doubt, but who knows? One night she may snap and plunge a fish fork into her great-aunt’s neck. Would you mind if I take a look at your newspaper?”
After a few minutes, we finished our coffee and met the girls in the lobby. Bakr was waiting for us in a small van at the curb. His shirt was already wrinkled and damp beneath his armpits, and his wisp of a mustache twitched like a convulsed caterpillar. He looked so alarmed by our approach that I wanted to clasp his arm and assure him that we harbored no cannibalistic notions. Alexander insisted that Inez sit in the front seat where she would have the best view, then took Caron’s hand and coerced her into the back row with him. Peter and I took the middle seats. Bakr slid the
door closed, then hoisted himself into the driver’s seat and looked back at us.
“Mr. Rosen and Mrs. Malloy,” he said, “Chief Inspector Mahmoud el-Habachi sends his regards and wishes all of you a pleasant day. There are bottles of water in the seat pockets, so you must please to help yourselves. Behind the last row is a box with fruit, potato chips, and—”
“Let’s go,” Alexander said cheerfully.
As we drove south, the corniche gave way to a typical city street of stores, hotels, and restaurants. Some of the men on the sidewalks wore long robes, others Western attire. The women had scarves on their heads and drab, ankle-length skirts, but some had cell phones plastered to their ears. Groups of girls giggled as they window-shopped. Horse-drawn carriages impeded traffic, eliciting shouts and blaring horns. In a vacant lot, a donkey pulled a cart piled to a precarious height with some sort of fresh produce, while men squatted in the shade, smoking brown cigarettes. There was a sense of modest prosperity; poverty was well concealed from the tourists.
Eventually we left the congested traffic and drove past fields, unadorned buildings, and houses ringed by palm trees and dusty yards. I relaxed and sat back, aware for the first time that Caron and Alexander were having a quiet conversation. Before I could turn around, Peter opened a bottle of water and gave it to me.
“First impression?” he asked.
I thought for a moment. “It’s unlike anything I’ve experienced, yet not overwhelming. Trucks and cars whizzing past donkey carts that must have been using this route for thousands of years. Satellite dishes on the roofs of houses built out of mud bricks. The greenery here, with the contrast of the barren mountains just beyond—two diametrically different ecosystems.” I leaned forward and tapped Inez’s shoulder. “Seen any camels?”
“Two so far. I’m going to keep a tally. Do you think a baby camel should get a full mark or just a half?”
Bakr glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “The young
miss will see a few camels, but they are not so useful for farming. To the west is the sand and the oases, where there are many camels. Mrs. Malloy is comfortable? Should I turn up the air conditioner? Would you like to listen to music? Something to eat?”
“I think not,” Peter said. “Mrs. Malloy is much tougher than she looks, Bakr. She can be as formidable as a falcon, as sly as a jackal, as dangerous as a cobra. In an earlier life, she was the wife of a powerful pharaoh, but on his death she seized the throne and ruled the land with an iron fist.”
“Why, thank you,” I said. “Did I decorate my tomb with taste and charm?”
“It was featured on the cover of
Better Homes and Burial Chambers.”
I ignored the snickers from behind me. We drove across the bridge spanning the Nile, and then alongside flat green fields. White egrets circled above, looking for promising picnic spots. Children stood at the edge of the road or rode on donkeys. Laundry flapped on lines around houses without doors or windows, while goats and chickens wandered nearby. Bakr managed to navigate the rough streets through a small town, where men sat in front of cafés, their eyes tracking our progress. The garages had piles of discarded tires, and rusty metal signs written in Arabic that probably advertised soft drinks. It had the same ambiance as rural towns back home.
When we’d reached the far edge of town, Bakr pulled over. “We stop now at the
taftish
to purchase tickets. Will you be wanting to visit the Ramesseum and Medinet Habu?”
“The Ramesseum was built by Ramses II,” Inez announced. “He was nineteenth dynasty, and lived to be ninety-six years old. He had over two hundred wives and concubines, including Nefertari. One colossus of Ramses bears a cartouche of his royal name, which was translated as Ozymandias and inspired the poem by Shelley. Nearby are the Osiris pillars and a hypostyle—”
“Next,” Caron said from behind us.
“Medinet Habu was built by Ramses III. It’s a mortuary
temple linked to the Theban necropolis. Ramses III was considered the last great pharaoh. He was murdered by his wives.”
“Does it have a hypostyle hall, too?” demanded Caron. “I spent hours and hours looking at pillars yesterday. Frankly, when you’ve seen one pillar, you’ve seen them all. I thought we were going to—”
Peter held up his hand. “Enough. Thank you for the very informative synopsis, Inez. We’ll save those sites for another day. Let’s go on to the Valley of the Kings, Bakr.”
“Yes, very good, sir.” Bakr swung the van back into the trickle of traffic.
Inez was staring straight ahead, rigid with indignation. Behind us, Alexander muttered something to Caron that elicited a giggle. The last thing I needed was for Caron and Inez to squabble for the next two and a half weeks. Alexander was likely to be the incendiary spark, although I couldn’t blame him for his sophisticated charm. I decided that I needed to have a word with him, if only to remind him that he was entirely too old to flirt with seventeen-year-old girls. If he ignored me, I would have no option except to tell Peter to thrash him soundly for his impertinence (or however the Brits phrase it).
Peter leaned toward me. “They’ll work it out,” he said softly. “Remember when you were that age and some handsome older guy flattered you?”
“I do. That’s the problem.”
“Care to elaborate?”
I took a guidebook out of my bag and opened it to the chapter on the Valley of the Kings. Although reading in a car often makes me queasy, I was not at all inclined to continue a discussion about episodes in my past. Some of them were worthy of interment in a tomb that rivaled King Tut’s.
Bakr found a space in a parking lot clogged with tour buses and cars. After I’d made sure we were all equipped with sunglasses, sunblock, hats, and water bottles, we walked up a road to a strip of open-air shops selling sunglasses, sunblock, hats, water bottles—and an endless array
of souvenirs. Local craftsmen had been driven away by purveyors of T-shirts, camera film, postcards, flimsy clothing, amateurish paintings, and colorful plastic figurines of ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses.
I was fingering a carpet of dubious origin when Caron grabbed my arm and dragged me aside.
“Why didn’t you tell me that guy—Alexander—was coming with us?” she whispered hotly.
“I didn’t think about it,” I admitted. “Last night at the cocktail party he asked if he might accompany us.”
“Look at me! My shorts are baggy and my shirt looks like it came from a yard sale. I didn’t even bother to dry my hair this morning, since we were going to be out in the sun all day. And Inez might as well be a shill at a sideshow attraction at some stupid county fair, trying to lure people inside to see a two-headed snake! I am so humiliated I Could Die.”
“Then we’re at the right place.”
“You are So Not Funny!” she snapped, then stomped away.
I caught up with Peter, who was defending himself from an eager merchant with a rack of glittery jewelry. Peter and I exchanged amused looks, then headed for a kiosk to buy tickets to enter the Valley of the Kings. Caron, I noticed, had retreated to the shade of an awning to apply lip gloss, while Alexander and Inez chatted nearby.
We rode in a faux trolley car up the hill to a concrete-block building. Soldiers stood in the shade, impassively watching mundane tourists and openly leering at scantily clad women. I studied the valley, no more than fifty to sixty feet across and defined by steep mountainsides lined with what I supposed were goat paths. It was hard to believe that over the millennia flash floods had carved this foreboding reddish brown canyon in the limestone. Wadis branched out on both sides; the map in the guidebook resembled a pinnated leaf. Boulders and chunks of rocky rubble continually tumbled down the cliffs, altering the landscape. The mutability, as well as the remoteness, had made a perfect
hideaway for the priests to bury their pharaohs in hopes the tombs (and treasures within) would remain undisturbed. Now the valley was protected by the soldiers at the entrance and a few guards in a tiny building perched on the top of one of the cliffs.
Inez was well prepared. “There are sixty-three excavated tombs. The first, down that path on the right, belongs to Ramses VII, and has been open to tourists since Greek and Roman times. Ramses IV is next, and it has graffiti on the walls dating back to 278
B.C.
Farther up and on our left is the tomb of at least six of the fifty sons of Ramses II. This tomb has one hundred and twenty-one chambers and corridors, making it larger and more complex than any other tombs that have been found to date in all of Egypt. On the right is the tomb of Ramses II, who was the son of Seti I. He and his father both had sarcophagi made of alabaster.” She paused for a breath. “The farthest tomb is that of Tuthmosis III at the end of the—”
“That’s Tut,” Alexander said, gesturing toward a long line of tourists waiting in front of an entrance with a barred gate, “or Tutankhamun, if you prefer. It’s officially known as KV62. Only one other tomb has been found since 1922, and that was in 2006. There was great hope that KV63 would also be filled with gold, jewelry, and of course a mummy or two. The media and the Egyptologists were breathless with anticipation.”
“And …?” said Caron. She’d managed to nudge Inez away, and now was gazing at him with something closely akin to adulation.
“Although it contained seven coffins, none had a mummy,” Inez said before Alexander could respond. “The stone jars and the coffins held fragments of pots, fabric, and natron, a form of carbonate salt used for cleansing and cosmetic purposes as well as mummification. The style of the lintel above the door is similar to the one at Tut’s tomb, leading to speculation that it might have served as a storage area for another tomb built for Tut’s wife, Ankhsenamon.
Their two known daughters were stillborn, their mummies found in Tut’s tomb.”