Mysterical-E

Excerpt: House of the Sphinx

BOOK EXCERPT

The House of the Sphinx (Hilliard and Harris 2009)
by Sarah Wisseman

Chapter One. Sunday morning, September 5. Cairo.

“Soldiers, forty centuries of history look down upon you from these Pyramids.” (Napoleon, 1798)

The camel lurched to its feet, spitting and snarling. Lisa Donahue gasped as the animal rose on its rear feet first, tipping her forwards toward the hard asphalt. She gripped the horn of her saddle with both hands. Hugging the camel hard with her knees, she averted her eyes from the piles of stinking dung and straw just below her feet and concentrated on the mangy tan hide between her legs.

Her ten-year-old camel driver grinned at her, showing three missing teeth. “Is good?” he asked in his almost non-existent English.

“So far,” muttered Lisa as she sat up straighter. To her left loomed the Great Pyramid of Khufu, built as the funerary castle of a king about 2500 B.C. from some two million enormous limestone blocks. Behind it were the smaller pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure, all three tombs remnants of the original Seven Wonders of the World.

To her right was modern Cairo, whose buildings had crept right up to the Giza plateau like a metastasizing tumor. It was a messy skyline, with unfinished buildings adorned with naked, metal reinforcement bars and incongruous satellite dishes. Only an hour ago, their travel guide had told them that no one finished construction in Cairo, because then they would have to pay taxes. Better to build two floors, move in, and leave the third floor as a bird roost and a porch for drying clothes and storing sesame rushes.

It was the second day of a ten-day tour of Egypt arranged through Globus and its Egyptian counterpart, MISR Travel. Two days in Cairo, a flight south to Aswan and Abu Simbel, four days on the Nile, and then back to Cairo and home. Lisa hoped she’d like at least a few of the forty other Americans traveling with her.

Beside her, James Barber perched on his own camel, clutching his ratty old hat with one hand. “The one thing we have to do in Egypt, right?” His green eyes gleamed with an unholy glee Lisa rarely saw in him. Her physician husband hardly ever got away from his Boston hospital and he hadn’t had a real vacation for two years.

“So, does this trip count as a honeymoon?” asked Lisa as her camel undulated across the asphalt.

“Sure it does. Beats sitting around in your father’s house freezing to death,” teased James.

When they’d finally decided to marry, their incompatible work schedules had permitted only a weekend at Raymond Donahue’s house in Chatham the previous November. Although they’d had the privacy Lisa craved, her Dad had forgotten to tell her the oil delivery would be late. They had pulled out every blanket in the house, built a large fire, and boiled their fresh lobsters over a roaring blaze in the living room.

“You have to admit the lobsters and lemon butter were scrumptious,” she said.

“Yeah, and dessert was fine, too,” said James. His reminiscent leer was spoiled by the way he waggled his bushy eyebrows at her.

Lisa felt herself blush and he laughed at her.

She faced away from her husband. He could always do that to her. Her face changed color with every emotion, and James was an expert at riling her, embarrassing her and reminding her of private moments in public settings. It did Lisa no good to complain; James said half the fun was to get a reaction, and baiting her was so delightfully easy.

The small, barefoot boys led the caravan of tourists along the road behind the pyramids. Lisa took a deep breath of Cairo’s prevailing aromas of diesel and dung and relaxed her shoulders. How had the tourist police ridden their camels around the Giza plateau? She remembered seeing one guy galloping by, his legs stuck straight out in front of him, comically bouncing on the camel’s hump but miraculously staying on. Obviously, one didn’t grip with the knees on this mount. She tried loosening her hips and just flowing with the ungainly stride of the camel and suddenly it was easier. Rather like a yoga stretch—relax when it hurts, breathe through the stretch, and it will get better.

The ditzy ladies from Iowa ambled along on their camels just ahead. Four sixty-something women, hooting and giggling. Nancy, Bertha, Patsy, and Linda traveled on an exotic girls’ outing without their husbands every year. Two of the four wore their hair teased into impossible beehives, with long, spider-like false eyelashes and thick makeup. Their skins resembled sun-baked riverbeds. Nancy and Patsy sported low-cut lacy blouses, numerous rings on their fingers, and gold chains around their over-tanned, scrawny necks.

Lisa and James had booked the Egyptian tour as an escape from their two jobs—hers at Boston University’s Museum of Archaeology and History, his at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital—and their two kids from previous marriages. Of course, Lisa had brought some work along—a series of articles she was writing: one for her museum’s magazine to accompany the upcoming exhibit on “Egypt: Past and Present,” and the other a more scholarly treatise on sphinxes in Near Eastern art.

Travel in a tour bus, Globus style, was about what Lisa had expected. The tourists were herded like sheep around the major sites, begged for baksheesh and American dollars at every turn, and fleeced by the local merchants. Lisa wasn’t sure how many of the stall owners forked over a cut of the proceeds to their guide, Mahmoud Sadaat, but Mahmoud certainly seemed to know all of them.

“Ramses,” said her young guide, pointing at the camel.

Lisa laughed. Only in Egypt could a mangy old camel be named after a pharaoh. She pointed at the boy and raised her eyebrows.

“Ali Baba,” he said proudly.

“And the forty thieves,” added Lisa to herself, thinking of his extended family of brothers, uncles, and cousins who probably all made their livings off tourists like herself.

“How does it feel?” asked James, moving up and down on his mount next to her.

“Like I’m unhinged at the hips,” she said. “But okay.”

An older man wearing a dirty gray gelabiyah, the traditional male Arab’s full-length robe, motioned to the boys to halt their camels so he could take pictures of the tourists. James struck a silly pose with both arms spread wide. Lisa supposed she’d pay the price for the finished photo, if only to prove to their friends back home that they’d really ridden camels. Of course, that was what Ali Baba’s relatives were counting upon—they’d be able to feed their families today from the fees collected from this one busload of American tourists.

Fifteen minutes later they were back in the grubby alleyway where the camels parked when not giving rides to tourists.

“Lean back, Madame,” said Ali Baba urgently.

Obediently she leaned backwards and her stomach muscles tightened as the camel lurched downwards, folding its front feet under it while bringing Lisa’s knees alarmingly close to the hard asphalt.

A scream tore through the air to her right.

Dismounting quickly, Lisa looked around.

Bertha Miller, the plumpest of the ladies from Iowa, lay crumpled on the pavement next to her camel. “My arm!” she shrieked. “My arm!”

Lisa ran over, joining a gathering crowd of horrified tourists and anxious camel drivers. James passed her, reaching the injured woman at the same time as a heavy man in his seventies.

“I think it’s broken,” whimpered Bertha. Her face was as white as skim milk. “I fell off because I was so dizzy all of a sudden.”

James knelt on the hard road surface, narrowly missing a pile of camel shit. “Can you move your arm at all?” he asked, turning her wrist back and forth gently.

“It hurts a lot when I try to bend it,” Bertha said, tears running over her plump cheeks. “And I’m so hot.”

The older man, who identified himself as retired New York physician Stanley Rosenberg, felt Bertha’s forehead and frowned.

“I think she has a temperature as well as a broken arm,” he said.

Stanley helped James clear a space for her to stretch out. Someone produced a folded towel as a cushion for Bertha’s arm and another for her head. Lisa marveled at James’ quick reactions until she remembered his experience as a young doctor with Doctors without Borders in Tanzania.

A young woman from the back of the bus produced a painkiller and some bottled water, and James gave both to Bertha. Then he stood up to talk to their guide, Mahmoud Sadaat. Mahmoud was a portly Egyptian with thinning dark hair and shiny brown eyes.

Bertha’s friend Patsy Davis bustled over. “Hasn’t Mahmoud phoned the ambulance yet? Mrs. Miller is in agony!”

“Take it easy, Patsy. I saw him—he phoned right away,” said Lisa, resenting Patsy’s bossiness. But, she added silently, who knows how long it takes to respond in Cairo traffic. She remembered that her guidebook described driving in Cairo as like the chariot race in the movie version of Ben Hur, but without the chariots. It was a very apt description. Cairo drivers showed no concept of lanes and drivers clearly preferred horns to turn signals.

“Bertha’s doing okay,” said a tall, red-haired woman Lisa had noticed on the bus earlier. She was kneeling on the ground holding the hand of Bertha’s uninjured arm. Lisa saw her take a pulse and asked, “Are you a nurse?”

“Yes,” said the woman with a crooked smile. “Betsy Grover, the world’s most traveled ER nurse. Actually, I’m from Detroit. You’re husband’s a doc, right?”

“Yeah, a radiologist. He’s right behind you,” Lisa nodded at James, who was still talking to their tour guide. “He’s James Barber, I’m Lisa Donahue.”

“Pleased to meetcha,” said Betsy. She turned back to Bertha. “Hang on, honey, the ambulance is on its way. Has the Ibruprofen started working yet?”

“A little,” mumbled Bertha. “It’s not so bad as long as I don’t move my arm.”

James and Stanley Rosenberg encouraged everyone except Betsy and Patsy to step back so Bertha could get some air. The tourists milled around, chatting and sipping from their water bottles, waiting for the ambulance.

Twenty minutes later, Mahmoud appeared at Lisa’s elbow. “I can’t understand,” he said. “I telephone quickly.” He looked anxiously at the stricken woman, and then at his watch. Lisa sympathized with him—what a thing to happen at the beginning of a tour! Mahmoud Saadat was not the most efficient tour leader Lisa had ever met, but he was pleasant enough. His English was passable, and his history and Egyptology training quite good.

Another officious tourist, a balding forty-something man from Chicago (or was it Boston?), ambled over. “Why isn’t the ambulance here yet?” Lisa couldn’t see his nametag, but she thought his name was Wallis.

“Cairo traffic,” said James. He leaned over and whispered to Lisa, “And maybe they don’t have as many ambulances as we do at home.”

“Oh, we have plenty of medical vans,” said Mahmoud, who’d overheard them. “But the staffing, that is another matter.”

“What about all those guys lurking at the end of the alley? Shouldn’t we get them to move?” said Lisa to James. She felt a need to shield Bertha from the curious eyes of the camel drivers and their relatives who seeped out of the nearby mudbrick walls.

James glanced around. “They’re doing no harm,” he said. “And we might need some local help if the ambulance doesn’t arrive soon.”

As he finished speaking, a small white van appeared at the end of the alley.

“Finally!” said James. “Hey, Lisa, see if you can make the other tourists move out of the way.”

“Sure,” said Lisa. She urged people to move back—again—and most of them complied. Together, she and James cleared a path for the emergency medics.

Off to the right, Lisa saw their “suit”—the security guard who traveled with the tour group everywhere—in a huddle with a white-uniformed tourist policeman and an adult camel driver. The guard—Zawi Something—had initially blocked stray cars from entering the alley where Bertha lay; now he and the policeman and the camel driver faced away from Lisa. She couldn’t see Zawi’s face, but she could see the face of the camel driver. He held a cigarette in one hand and a small package in the other. She was just close enough to see that it was wrapped in brown paper, tied with string and marked with Arabic and a small red symbol. Cigarettes? Or maybe drugs? Lisa chastised herself for thinking in Hollywood terms. She couldn’t see whether it was Zawi or the policeman who accepted the little package.

The commotion of the stretcher-bearers getting into position around Bertha Miller and sudden awareness of her almost bursting bladder cut off her train of thought.

Ignoring her own discomfort, Lisa watched as Bertha was lifted by four medics. The poor woman, surrounded by her ditzy friends, yelped with pain as her arm was jostled on the way to the ambulance. Mahmoud hustled all the tourists back to the bus and then returned to give instructions to the ambulance driver. Lisa heard him mention calling the American Embassy; that meant Bertha would be in good hands.

By the time the white van pulled away and headed for the nearest hospital, it was two o’clock and the whole group was fractious and starving.

Mahmoud Sadaat took them to a Cairo restaurant surrounded by date palms and flanked by musicians at the door. One of them, a dark young man beating on a tambourine, swayed as if he were on the verge of belly dancing. His liquid brown eyes fastened onto Lisa’s face and he beat his tambourine faster. Lisa smiled as she passed, enjoying the insistent beating of the drums. Part of her wanted to linger, but the rest of her body was intent on finding a bathroom. On her way to the necessary facility, Lisa passed a young, veiled woman seated cross-legged in front of an ancient brick oven. Smiling at the visitors, she lifted out circles of fresh pita bread and placed them on the surrounding brickwork to cool. Lisa remembered seeing fresh pita set out on the sidewalks—much less sanitary than these low brick walls—in another part of the city.

Lisa and James found places at a long table covered in a white tablecloth. They were joined by Betsy Grover, the ER nurse, and an Ohio family. The Reese parents were about Lisa’s age, with a small boy named Nicky in tow. Nicky’s engaging grin reminded Lisa of Sam.

“Hungry?” she asked him.

“Starving!” he said, and bounced on his chair. His red cowlick dropped over his small forehead.

Barbara Reese rolled her eyes at Lisa. “He’s always hungry,” she said with an indulgent smile.

“Yes, I know what you mean. Our son, Sam, is just the same,” said Lisa.

Soon the waiters appeared with little plates of baba ganoush, hummus, and tomato salad. Before he left them to make phone calls, Mahmoud had told them to eat freely. “The food here is very good, very safe. Not to worry.”

James raised his eyebrows, but Lisa needed no second testimonial. She and Nicky Reese were already scooping up garlic-laden hummus and delectable roasted eggplant with torn bits of the warm, freshly baked pita. She noticed that James, by nature more cautious around foreign food, steered clear of the tomato salad.

Patsy Davis and her friends alternately wailed over Bertha Miller’s fate and caught up on their shopping triumphs.

“Phil will be devastated he’s not here with her! I’ll call him this evening. What’s the time difference from Dubuque to here?”

“…and he only asked twenty pounds.” That was Nancy, bragging about one of her purchases.

“Egyptian, or English pounds?”

“Well, it was five American.”

“She’s going to miss the best part of the tour!” cried Patsy.

Betsy Grover wiped her appetizer plate clean with a piece of pita. “I hope she has insurance,” she said to Lisa.

Lisa hoped so, too. She was thankful she’d paid the extra sixty dollars for herself and James for emergency medical care and travel interruption. One expected things like that in Africa, or at least she did.

A coffee-colored baby at the table across the aisle squealed with delight as his pretty young mother made faces at him. Lisa’s gaze fastened avidly on the bright little face. A baby. So adorable, with that big forehead and those chubby cheeks. Maybe she and James should have another child, one that belonged to their marriage alone…

Lisa was yanked back into the here and now by the return of their guide, Mahmoud Sadaat. His phone calls completed, he looked tired and hungry. But the ladies from Iowa mobbed him before he reached the buffet table.

“Is Bertha going to be okay?”

“Can she join us in Luxor?”

“Is she in the best hospital? I mean, for Cairo?”

Mahmoud mopped the sweat from his brow with a dubious handkerchief. “Mrs. Miller will have her arm mended. She maybe will join us later. I will telephone her tonight,” he said, moving hopefully towards the appetizers.

“But Bertha can’t travel all by herself! Are you going to arrange a guide to escort her?” cried Patsy.

Poor Mahmoud. He sure had his hands full with the Iowa ladies. Lisa switched her focus to the main course, a delectable mixed grill of lamb and chicken with rosemary. She might be in her mid thirties, but she still had the appetite of a teenager.

James, eyeing her full plate, raised his eyebrows. “You might want to slow down a bit. I’m sure tourists get sick here—they probably call it King Tut’s Revenge instead of Montezuma’s Revenge.”

Lisa made a face at him and took another mouthful of tomato salad.

She was to regret that salad—very soon.

Chapter Two. Same morning. Luxor.

Seventeen-year old Abdul Farouk raced through the family compound near the Avenue of the Sphinxes at Luxor, hell-bent on beating his cousin Mohammad, Jr., to the next batch of tourists. It was a school holiday, and he was determined to make every hour pay.

His dusty olive-green gelabiyah was draped with cheap, colorful canvas bags tied together at the handles. Each was decorated with ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses copied from the tombs nearby. Abdul planned to ask for three American dollars, a clear profit for him. Each bag was manufactured by the extended family of the Farouks for a mere fifty cents apiece. Making bags was only one of several money-making endeavors, not all of which were legal.

He smiled as he ran, thinking of how he would spend the extra money. Half for his secret savings account so he could leave Luxor and study biology and medicine in Cairo, a quarter for the cigarettes and CDs he required to make life bearable, and the rest for his mama’s older brother, Uncle Ali. His uncle did not realize that Abdul hid most of his earnings from the family.

Abdul slowed his steps and frowned as he thought about his mother. Mama was terribly worried about her sister Safaa, Ali Farouk’s wife, who was very sick. No one else at home was ill, so Abdul couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. But his mama wouldn’t make her honey and pistachio pastry if she was nursing Safaa, and that impacted Abdul right where it counted—his voracious appetite.

The only person Abdul would share his favorite food with was his younger sister Zara. He slowed down even more until he was barely shuffling as he thought about Zara. She was sixteen, with a slight but seductive figure and huge brown eyes. He knew his father would choose a husband for her soon, but it wouldn’t be the one she wanted. Zara was in love with a penniless youth called Farzad Hammadi. He was just eighteen and worked in his father’s alabaster stall in the souk. Farzad was Abdul’s best friend and accomplice in all his ploys. Abdul’s father, Zawi Farouk, was always trying to better himself and increase his income by investing in local businesses; he would choose a business partner, an older man of means, and offer his young daughter as a bribe to cement a new alliance. But Zara wanted to finish her education. She was full of fire and melodrama. What would she do when her father tried to push her into a marriage she didn’t want? She…

“You’re late,” taunted Mohammad, who had already grabbed the best spot by the ticket booth at the entrance to Karnak.

“No matter,” replied Abdul, unloading his gaudy canvas bags onto a nearby granite block. “It is early. In sha’allah, we will have rich American tourists all day, and I will make twice as much as you.” He glanced disdainfully at Mohammad’s shabby three-stringed instruments. They looked like they would fall apart if anyone strummed them for five minutes.

“Huh!” said Mohammad, and spat within two centimeters of the nearest canvas bag, a blue and gold number that depicted the Queen Nefertiti in gorgeous array.

Abdul yanked his merchandise out of range. “Hold your spit,” he snarled. “You son of a jackal!” He added some other choice epithets in gutter Arabic.

A typical day had begun.

***

Zara Farouk entered the miniscule kitchen shortly after her brother Abdul had vacated it. She unwound her headscarf and draped it over the chair, sighing with relief as a slight breeze ruffled her dark hair.

Her eyes gleamed with anticipation. Now was her chance to make some pastry, while her mother and aunt were occupied, the other women were at the market, and the men were away pursuing various money-making schemes.

Zara loved to cook specialty dishes and sweets, but she rarely got the opportunity. With the women from three families crowded into one compound, sharing cooking duties, the personal desires of the youngest were rarely considered. When Zara was asked to “help,” it usually meant menial tasks like scrubbing vegetables or sorting lentils or washing endless piles of dishes.

Quickly, she assembled the ingredients for a local version of baklava: phyllo pastry, butter (with any luck, not rancid yet), honey, chopped pistachio nuts, cinnamon, and cardamom. In the narrow slot between the stove and the wall, she found a flat pan and greased it. Then Zara melted the butter. She added honey and spices and cooked the fragrant mixture over low heat until it was ready to spread.

Now for the best part. She arranged the phyllo sheets so she could reach them easily, buttering each before laying it in the flat pan. Every few layers, she added nuts and a drizzle of honey. The smooth motions of buttering soothed her and allowed her mind to wander.

What was Farzad doing this time of day? Probably working in his father’s shop, absorbing methods of attracting and hooking customers, storing up knowledge against the day he would run his own alabaster shop. With Zara, of course, as his wife. He would choose and acquire the best pieces and sell them while she kept the books. Maybe south, near Aswan or Abu Simbel; that would be the best way to get away from Luxor and Zara’s impossible father, Zawi Farouk.

Zara paused, her buttering brush in midair as she thought of her father. Mean old Papa. He had recently made noises about marrying her off to a colleague, but she was determined to refuse any such proposal. Papa was very old-fashioned, but she didn’t really believe he would force her to marry against her will. She was her father’s favorite, the youngest of three daughters. But Farzad Hammadi was the love of her life, the future father of her children, her destiny. She shrugged her slender shoulders as if her father’s plans could slide right off and wither on the dusty floor. Gently, she picked up the next sheet of phyllo and buttered it.

Her position would be so much better if she had a college degree and money of her own. Zara’s grandmother and mother had never finished high school, let alone college. Zara was unusually good at numbers, and she wanted to be an accountant. Then, she would never be dependent on her father and could help Farzad with the business. But Papa was pushing her towards stopping with a high school degree when she wanted to go to college. She couldn’t move to Cairo if she married Farzad, but there were other places with night school and correspondence courses. But her father made it so hard for her to save money. He feared she would buy cosmetics and CDs—or shoes—instead of food for the household, so he counted out only the coins she would need for each trip.

Zara looked with satisfaction at her new sandals, acquired yesterday for only one dollar American. They were pink leather, decorated with pink and white plastic jewels. The new shoes, coupled with her new pink-and-white striped headscarf, made her long skirt and long-sleeved blouse look much more fashionable.

The beautifully layered confection was ready to bake. Zara slid the pan into the warm oven and set a small timer. She was about to make herself some mint tea when her mother walked into the room.

Mina Farouk looked around the kitchen and exploded as she saw the pile of dirty dishes. “Look at this mess! I am just about to start the dinner after nursing your aunt all day, and now this!”

“I am making Abdul’s favorite pastry. And I thought Aunt Safaa might like some, too.”

“Safaa is in no condition to eat anything, let alone sweets! She will need my special broth and a lot of care. You should be helping me with the regular cooking, not making sweets.”

“Mama, I will help you cook, I promise. And I will clean it up,” said Zara, sensing her mother’s distress. “How is Aunt Safaa?”

Mina sank down in the rickety chair and covered her face with her hands. “She is worse. I think the doctor must come again. I can’t understand why she isn’t getting better…”

“I will go fetch him,” promised Zara. “You know running over to his office is often faster than trying to telephone at this time of day. And I will make the couscous when I return, so you don’t need to worry about that.”

And she could sneak in a quick visit to Farzad’s shop on the way back…

***

By late morning, Abdul had made enough money to make his date-brown eyes shine. Today, he could buy the latest Mariah Carey CD in the market and still put most of his earnings into his savings account.

He slung his gaudy canvas bags over his shoulder, not trusting his cousin to watch over his stuff while he grabbed some lunch. His pace quickened and his stomach rumbled as he remembered his mother’s leftover couscous flavored with almonds and apricots.

When Abdul arrived at the Avenue of the Sphinxes, there was very little traffic. At the hottest part of the day, most people retreated to the cool, mudbrick houses with their thick walls that kept out the heat. Abdul’s house was part of the Farouk compound, a cluster of one-and-a half story buildings covered in mudbrick and wood. The roofless upper floor served as sleeping quarters in really hot weather as well as storage—perfectly safe from water damage as it hardly ever rained. Three of the five Farouk brothers lived in the compound, along with their families, a mangy dog named Tut, and a few chickens who pecked grain in the central courtyard.

No one was in the tiny kitchen, but Abdul smelled honey and spices and saw evidence of recent baking stacked in the sink. Zara had made baklava! Where had she hidden it? He opened the cupboard and found it—it was still warm. He grabbed a knife and cut himself a generous wedge. His mouth full, he rooted around in the miniscule fridge that was the largest his father could afford for the couscous leftover from yesterday. Good, there was a small amount left. Abdul wrapped it in a stale pita bread and bit into it before his mama could appear and ask him to save some for his sisters. It was all part of living in a tiny house with twelve people and never quite enough to eat.

Normally his appetite was huge, but today Abdul could eat only half the pita. Absently, he wrapped the second piece and stuck it into his robe. He could hear the rising and falling tones of his mother’s voice in the bedroom six people usually shared down the hall. She sounded upset. Abdul lifted his chin and listened for his Aunt Safaa’s reply. The soft babble reassured him; she wasn’t unconscious anyhow, so it couldn’t be too bad.

Glancing around the tiny kitchen, he saw that Uncle Ali’s huge, azure tobacco jar containing his special tobacco had shifted slightly. It stood close to a second jar—full of ordinary, everyday tobacco—and a chair they all used as a clothing rack. He couldn’t resist sniffing the aromatic mixture as he had done before; he’d only done this when his uncle, who was possessive about his stash, was absent. Abdul lifted the lid and scooped up a handful, holding it close to his nose. A faint whiff of anise—or was it basil?

There was no package this time. Two weeks ago, when Abdul had sniffed his fragrant handful, he’d discovered a small, narrow object inside. His agile fingers had quickly untied the string and loosened the brown paper to reveal a cardboard tube that was labeled in a foreign script.

Inside, he found a small glass ampule, pointed at one end. It was terribly fragile; the slight pressure of his questing fingers caused the thing to shatter in his hand, spilling fine dust on his aunt Safaa’s pink headscarf lying over the chair back.

Carefully, he rewrapped the now empty cardboard tube, tied the package with string in the same pattern of knots, and thrust it deep in the tobacco jar.

Now, two weeks later, the memory made him feel slightly guilty. But Uncle Ali hadn’t even noticed the missing glass container, so it couldn’t have been important. Abdul rubbed his forehead, which was aching and felt hot. He was extra thirsty, too. He looked longingly towards the bed he shared with two cousins; a nap would be wonderful. But his father and uncle would beat him for being lazy. Abdul filled his water bottle and left the house for another afternoon shift of fleecing tourists at Karnak.

Chapter Three. That afternoon. Giza.

“Then he also erected some huge statues and massive, man-headed sphinx figures.” (Herodotus, Histories 2:175)

It towered forty feet above her, solid and sinister. The vacant eyes stared past her, the right side more smashed than the left. The missing nose only added to its visceral impact.

The Great Sphinx, built by the Pharaoh Khafre, took Lisa’s breath away. Awe swelled in her throat. She’d been studying sphinxes of the ancient Near East for the past five years, but the reality was so much more than any image captured in a book or on a computer screen.

The Great Sphinx of Giza was called “Abu al-Hol,” or “Father of Terror” in Arabic. Lisa thought he deserved the name. He was monstrous, huge, and timeless.

Lisa remembered that in Greek, “sphinx” meant “strangler.” The Greek sphinx—a female—was a mythical creature with the body of a lion, the wings of a bird, and the head of a woman. She was an oracle, celebrated in Homer with the famous riddle asked of Odysseus: “What walks on four feet in the morning, on two at noon, and on three in the evening?” (Answer: man. He walks on all fours as a baby, upright as an adult, and with a staff in old age). She mentally composed another section for a series of articles she had promised to write for her museum’s magazine:

“The Egyptian version of the sphinx retains the lion’s body, but the head is that of a pharaoh in traditional headdress, or was, until someone—probably Napoleon’s men in about 1800—hammered off his nose. Later, his beard fell off and part of it was carted off to the British Museum by nineteenth century travelers.

The Great Sphinx wasn’t always as exposed as it is today. Eighteenth century drawings of the Great Sphinx show it buried up to its neck with sand. Over time, several attempts were made to clear the sand, but the wind always brought it back. A massive restoration project led by Zahi Hawass, the head honcho of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, has been conducted over the past twenty-five years. An international team studied the problems caused by pollution and the rising water table and prepared a plan for long-term preservation of the monument.”

She swabbed at her face with the sleeve of her rather scratchy, sun-protective shirt and stepped back to obtain more of a panoramic view with her camera. The hollow feeling in her gut changed to an ominous rumbling. James was right. She who ate too much in a strange restaurant would live to regret it. Lisa hoped she would not be up all night, clinging to a cold porcelain throne instead of dreaming about tombs and sphinxes.

James appeared next to her. “Is the Great Sphinx everything you expected?”

“And how,” Lisa said, lowering her camera and pulling out her water bottle. She unscrewed the cap and glugged down a third of the contents. One of her least favorite things about third-world travel was remembering to drink only bottled water. It was especially hard brushing her teeth, when the habit of decades dictated that she run the toothbrush under the faucet. Or in the middle of the night when she couldn’t remember where she was when she stumbled into the bathroom to get a drink. She and James had decided that the symbol of America should be the public drinking fountain: clean, fresh water available everywhere—something totally unknown in most of the non-Western world.

“You’ll be able to get lots of atmospheric background for your articles,” James said.

“Yes, oh yes,” Lisa smiled.

This was a tease, since they both knew that she’d do a good part of her research and writing in Boston University’s library when she arrived back home. But research on the mythology of sphinxes in several ancient cultures of the Near East was a second excuse—if she needed one—for the trip to Egypt. Lisa had longed to visit Egypt since she was sixteen. And the popular articles on “Egypt: Past and Present” would almost write themselves when their tour group took the Nile Cruise.

That is, if she could concentrate on writing—the incident with Bertha had shaken her up. It felt like a bad omen, right at the beginning of their trip. Lisa had looked forward to traveling without Emma and Sam in tow. So why was she being a Nervous Nellie now that they were actually in Egypt? Maybe because her friend Barbara had regaled her with horror stories of her husband getting hospitalized in Nairobi after a car crash in Tanzania. Or maybe just because her stomach was so unsettled…

“Is he really male?” asked James, squinting into the sun as he gazed up at the chin of the Sphinx.

Lisa was glad to turn her attention back to archaeology and mythology. “This version is. The Greek sphinx was female, but the Egyptian one was all tied up with sun-worship—the Pharaoh as the incarnation of Ra, the Sun God.”

“Yeah,” said James, who was a quick study with the Lonely Planet guidebook they’d brought along. “But didn’t you tell me some scholars dispute its exact origin?”

“You’re right. But from what I read right before we came over here Zahi Hawass—he’s the head honcho of the Egyptian Antiquities Service—and his gang have pretty much proved that the Pharaoh Khufu was Ra, at least as far as his son Khafre was concerned. The Sphinx represents Khafre as Horus giving offerings to Ra.”

“But since Ra is also Khafre’s father, it’s sort of ancestor worship too, isn’t it?” said James.

“True. But most Egyptologists would probably argue with you there. Everything—and I mean everything—in ancient Egypt had to do with the gods and worshipping them. Religion was never separate from daily living. Belief in the gods of sun and sky and underworld infused everything people did.” Lisa frowned a little as a sinister cramp struck her lower gut.

“You’re looking a bit green about the gills,” said James, who was an expert at reading Lisa’s facial expressions.

“I feel green,” she confessed. “I think lunch is catching up with me.”

“I’ll see what I have in my bag after we get back to the hotel.”