The Curse (6 page)

The voices in her head urged her to follow them.

She knew where they were going.

Kaseem was staying at a hotel that was frequented by Egyptians and employed many Egyptians as staff. One of the clerks was her second cousin. Fatima convinced the girl to advise her of any requests that Kaseem made to the front desk.

After learning of his reservation at the Russian Tea Room and sure that he planned to meet the woman she'd attacked earlier, Fatima had changed her clothes and wore a scarf so that she wouldn't be instantly recognized.

Now she waited until they had gotten into the taxi before she took the next one in line.

11

“I enjoy the quiet elegance of the Tea Room,” Mounir Kaseem said after we were seated in a red booth at the West Fifty-seventh Street landmark. “I have fond memories of the times my wife and I enjoyed meals here years ago, before she passed away. Have you been here before?”

“Oh, many times. I enjoy the memories, too—not my own, but those that other people have left behind.”

He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “You experience other people's memories?”

“Not specifically, but I feel their aura. I believe people can pick up vibes from places and things. Sometimes when I handle an artifact I get a feeling that someone imbued it with strong emotions. Years ago in the Egyptian Museum I handled a necklace that had belonged to a queen who had died more than two thousand years ago. I nearly dropped it because I felt a vibration when I held it in my hands.”

“Perhaps the queen was murdered wearing it.”

“I like to think the necklace still possessed some of the strong love between the queen and the pharaoh who gave it to her.”

I diverted the conversation away from my feelings about objects because I didn't want him to think I was a crazy. We discussed the weather and traffic in the taxi ride to the restaurant, but not the attempt to stab me. He also hadn't yet volunteered why he had contacted me and I fought to keep my impatience in check.

“Dr. Kaseem, are you a scholar? A doctor of medicine?”

“I'm a professor of Egyptian history. And, I'm afraid, on sabbatical from my country. I also served in my country's armed forces. My criticism of the Egyptian government has made it necessary that I live in exile.”

Exile? That was a word you didn't hear much anymore. Sounded more like a term used when a king is banished from his country rather than someone who leaves to keep from being arrested for political views. Egypt had an authoritative government. In its entire history, it had never been a true democracy, though any regime that could keep peace and prosperity was supported by most of the people.

I noticed a slight tic in his left eye every so often when he talked and wondered if it was just a nervous twitch or due to some other symptom. I had eye spasms once in a while; mine were mainly due to stress and fatigue.

“You will have to pardon me,” he said, “if I come across as something of a fanatic about my country's history and the pieces that tell the story of that history. As I said, I am impressed by your own attitude toward antiquities. I find that money alone is only a short-term motivator.”

I resisted telling him that money lacked strong motivation only to those who had plenty of it.

“Having reached the pinnacle of your profession,” he said, “I assume you have visited Egypt more than once and have acquired a great deal of experience examining our artifacts.”

A polite way of asking for my qualifications?

“I've been to your wonderful country three times, including an internship that allowed me to stay three months. In terms of my background, I have a master's degree in art history and undergraduate degrees in both art and archaeology. Before starting my own company, I worked for museums and private collectors. I'm an expert on Mediterranean antiquities in general, but my main interest has been in Egyptology. I'll be happy to provide a curriculum vitae.”

“That won't be necessary. What I've been told by others is more important than one's own assessment. But I am curious as to why you studied archaeology. Was it your original intent to become a scientist?”

“I considered it—and did fieldwork in Egypt, Israel, and Jordan. I love the idea of recovering antiquities so they can be preserved in museums and enjoyed. But the reality of being hundreds of miles from the nearest restaurants, spending most of my time sifting through desert sand and shaking the scorpions out of my shoes before I put them on in the morning, wasn't my cup of tea. I'm afraid that my idea of camping out on sand is a deluxe room facing the beach.

“I studied archaeology because of my father's encouragement. He was a college teacher but also a frustrated adventurer who would rather have been playing Indiana Jones saving antiquities for museums than lecturing behind a podium. But knowing how archaeologists worked actually helped me in appraising antiquities because it gave me an insight as to the environment that artifacts were in for thousands of years as opposed to fraudulent reproductions being produced on a daily basis.”

“Yes, that would be valuable experience.”

“What piece are you looking for?”

“Are you familiar with the Heart of Egypt?” he asked.

I nodded. “Familiar enough to know that it might not exist.”

The Heart of Egypt was a scarab, an amulet cut from stone or gem. It didn't look like a heart but as with all scarabs, it was a representation of the dung beetle that the ancient Egyptians believed were sacred and had magical powers.

I had my own scarab on a gold chain in my jewelry box, next to my bracelet with a cartouche on it. Like any good tourist, I bought the two amulets at Cairo's medieval Khan el-Khalili marketplace. My name inscribed in hieroglyphics on the bottom of the cartouche identified that I was its owner. Naturally, I never questioned how the marketplace engraver managed to find the right glyphs for “Madison Dupre” because that would have taken the fun out of buying “ancient” magical artifacts for less than the price of a tube of lipstick.

Unlike the small scarabs that could be pinned on clothes or worn as a necklace, a heart scarab was larger, about three inches long to mimic the size of the human heart. It's significance came into play after death.

To the Egyptians of the pharaohs' time, the human heart not only epitomized the power of life, but was the source of both good and evil acts and thoughts, literally the source of a person's conscience.

One's heart was considered a source of potential trouble after death because it would be questioned about the person's actions during life in a process called “Weighing of the Heart.”

Osiris, the god of the dead, questioned the heart about the owner's past and the heart had to disclose the truth.

If the heart divulged bad acts or thoughts on the part of the person, Osiris ripped out the heart and threw it to a beast that devoured hearts instead of permitting the person to proceed into the paradisiacal afterlife.

The beast, Ahemait, was part lion, part hippopotamus, and part crocodile. Once Ahemait feasted on the person's heart, the person went to the dark and dreary Egyptian version of hell instead of paradise.

To ensure that one's heart didn't rat them out to Osiris, the clever Egyptian embalmers removed the deceased's human heart and replaced it with a sacred heart scarab.

The substitute scarab was inscribed on the bottom with a magical spell from
The Book of the Dead
so Osiris wouldn't realize it wasn't the real heart.

Unlike a real heart, the heart scarab would lie about the person's sins.

Wouldn't we all like to have one of those?

12

“As I'm sure you know,” Kaseem said, “King Tutankhamen's mummification was slightly different than other royal mummies of that era. While the brain was removed through the nose, and the liver, stomach, and other innards also extracted, it was customary for the heart to be left in place with a heart scarab placed over it.”

“Yet Tut's heart was removed,” I said, digging a long way back for that recollection. I was an expert on artifacts, not history, though the two often went hand in hand. “A scarab with a heron carved on it was found on the body.”

“The heron scarab was not a heart scarab,” Kaseem said.

“I agree. The heron scarab was placed over his abdomen,” I said, trying to get up to speed on the controversy about Tut's heart scarab. “And you're right. While some people have called it a heart scarab, the heron scarab was found in the wrong position in the mummy wrappings.”

“There is no heart scarab in the Tutankhamen treasures in Cairo,” he said, “but there was one found when his tomb was uncovered by Howard Carter and his team of archaeologists.”

The heart scarab had not been mentioned in the article Kaseem had slipped under my door, but I knew a little about the controversy.

“A dispute raged at the time about whether the heart scarab was stolen,” I said. “Some said there never was one.”

“I think you would agree with me,” he said, “that Tutankhamen's lack of a heart scarab is troubling, to say the least. He was buried with all the pomp and riches of a pharaoh. He had suffered a crushing chest blow that damaged the heart so severely they may have taken it out when the lungs and other innards were removed. But could it be true that he wasn't given a heart scarab to keep him from being devoured by Ahemait, the beast? Rubbish.”

I agreed with him. The lack of a heart scarab was puzzling.

“I know there were rumors of a heart scarab being found,” I said, “but my recollection is that it never appeared on the list of treasures recovered at the site.”

“It never appeared on the inventory because it was pocketed by one of the key people at the site. One of the laborers actually observed Sir Jacob Radcliff with the scarab. The laborer's story changed when he suddenly found himself in possession of more money than he would have otherwise earned in a lifetime.”

More facts about the controversy were coming back to me. “Wasn't there also a dispute between Carter and his British financiers, Lord Carnarvon, Sir Jacob Radcliff, and the Egyptian government over the division of the treasures?”

“A bitter dispute. During that era, because my country was so desperately poor and under foreign influence, it entered into contracts with wealthy foreigners, mostly French, British, and German, to excavate archaeological sites.”

“Fifty percent was the standard terms at the time,” I said. “Half to the discoverers and half to the museum in Cairo.”

“Yes, it depended on how intact the tomb or site was when the foreign excavators found it. If evidence showed that the site had been previously invaded by looters, the foreigners were allowed to keep half of any artifacts found. If there had been no previous entry, my country had the right to keep everything.”

“And Carter claimed there was evidence that King Tut's tomb had been entered twice before by looters, so they had a right to half the treasures.”

“Yes, the outer area of the burial site had been entered in the distant past, but obviously King Tutankhamen's burial chamber had not been discovered and entered by thieves because the incredible treasures in it were all still intact.”

I remembered now why the controversy about the heart scarab and other artifacts arose.

“Carter and the wealthy men who financed the dig,” I said, “were angry about the government's refusal to accept the fact that the site had been previously robbed.”

“They were greedy. They didn't want to help uncover my people's history. They were thieves of history who coveted our treasures.”

I didn't agree with him that foreigners who legitimately obtained artifacts from poor nations in the past were all a bunch of thieves. They were operating under what the rules were at the time, not to mention that the artifacts ended up well preserved in museums for the most part, rather than being left to the elements and in careless hands.

Much of what we have from antiquity would have been destroyed long ago if museums in the wealthier nations had not preserved them.

In a way, financing archaeological digs in search of buried treasures had about the same risks as the wildcatters had drilling for oil in the early days—most of the holes turned out to be dry because the site was chosen based upon a wing, a prayer, and a lot of guesswork.

A small opening often no bigger than a doorway had to be found in thousands of square miles of desert landscape. More often than not, even when a tomb was found, it had already been looted.

My own objection was that so much looting was still taking place because there were private collectors and museums willing to look the other way in order to get prize pieces.

I felt all artifacts acquired illegally should be returned to the countries of origin.

Since Kaseem was such a fierce advocate of his country and his version of history, I refrained from giving him my opinion.

“So a witness claimed, at least initially, that he saw Radcliff with the heart scarab,” I said. “I take it Radcliff wanted something nice from the site before it all got shipped off to the museum in Cairo.”

“Exactly. He simply put the scarab in his pocket and returned to Britain. There was no law, no customs inspections as there are today.”

“Your article mentioned the midnight visit and the belief that other items were taken.”

“Yes, but the most valuable piece of all the Tutankhamen treasures was the scarab.”

“Why? There have to be many more dazzling objets d'art in the collection than the scarab.”

“For its magic.”

13

I kept a straight face because I thought his answer was comical, but asked him a serious question.

“Do you believe that the scarab has magical powers?”

He gave me a deep, throaty chuckle. “Absolutely, but not the way you might think. The magic lies in how it affects people. Egypt is a poor country with a rich history. For two thousand years, since the days of the Roman Empire, Egypt has been trampled by invading armies who stole from it, and the most prized pieces of Egyptian history were looted and taken to foreign lands. No doubt foreigners would have taken the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx had they been able to move them.”