by Melissa Yi
Tucker lifted one shoulder. "Not so unusual in an Egyptologist, maybe, but between that and the cobra bag, he's definitely a person of interest."
"If he's at the museum, you think it's safe for us to go visit him? After the IED?"
Tucker nodded firmly as he stretched back on the bed with me. "They've stepped up security. Like I said, they don't want to lose any more tourists. I told him we could treat him to dinner somewhere else, too. His choice."
Comforting thought. Oh, well. Abdallah Hussein hadn't even answered Tucker's messages yet.
Tucker swung his legs out and knocked The Murder of Roger Ackroyd to the ground. As he picked it up, he said, "I've barely gotten to read that thing. My mom gave it to me. You know what's weird, though? It talks about Rikki-tikki-tavi."
I pressed my lips together. "You're kidding."
"Seriously. Right near the beginning."
I flipped to a dog-eared page. The narrator says his sister is so curious, she's like a mongoose. He thinks she should adopt the mongoose family motto, "Go and find out."
I shook my head. "It's probably a coincidence that your mom gave us a book with a mongoose. You know what it's called when you see something once, and then it seems to appear everywhere, just because you're looking for it?"
"Right. Total Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon."
Anyway. I took a deep breath. Time to put up or shut up, Hope. "I've got some news, too. I have the notes Gizelda Becker made for her dad."
"What? How? Did you find anything?"
"Sort of." I brandished the red notebook.
"That's awesome! You're fantastic!"
I beamed as I handed it to him. It actually felt good to relinquish it. While he perused the little red book, I finished researching the story of Anubis and Bata in more detail online.
To recap: Anubis kills his faithless wife (wah) and Bata heads off to what is now Lebanon to build a beautiful home.
There, the god Khnum takes pity on Bata and creates the world's most gorgeous woman for him, although Khnum predicts that she will die by the sword.
Bata adores his Heavenly Wife. That's my name for her, since she was created by a god and doesn't seem to have an official moniker. Unfortunately, a) Bata's also missing some crucial equipment to satisfy her, and b) the heavenliness attracts the ocean, so Bata warns her to stay away. Nevertheless, Heavenly Wife heads to the ocean waves, which leap up and pursue her on land. She manages to escape, leaving behind a lock of hair.
That divine hair winds up on the pharaoh's shores, and it smells so irresistible that the pharaoh himself falls for her. Heavenly Wife marries the pharaoh and asks the ruler to cut down Bata's heart tree, which kills him.
I couldn't resist summarizing and continuing the story for Tucker. "Back in Egypt, Anubis's beer ferments. He makes his way to the Valley of Cedars and finds Bata's body in bed. After searching for almost four years, Anubis comes upon a flower that is, upon closer inspection, his brother's shrivelled heart. He places it inside a cup of water. Eventually, the heart drinks its fill and begins to beat once more. Anubis places it in his brother's chest, and Bata returns to life."
"Whew," said Tucker. "Did he get his penis back, too?"
I patted his hand. Always about the peen. "No, but then Bata turns into a bull. And the bull is the symbol of the pharaoh, so the pharaoh's stoked to have such a majestic symbol show up at his palace, certifying him as a divine ruler. Bata the bull lets his wife know who he is, and she in turn asks the pharaoh to kill the bull and feed her his liver."
"Ugh. Shades of Snow White."
"Right. Except this time, there's no merciful hunter. They really do kill the bull."
"And she eats the liver?"
"Presumably. But as they're carrying his dead body into the chamber, Bata the bull shakes his head. Two drops of blood fly on either side of the threshold, and two Persea trees grow."
Tucker made his way to my side of the bed so he could circle his arms around me and rest his chin on my head. "Those trees are Bata, reincarnated?"
"Right-o."
"And he tells the queen who he is again?"
"Of course. Then she asks the pharaoh to cut down the trees and make them into furniture."
"So he becomes a picnic table?"
"Two benches, but yeah. Still, this time she's watching them cut the trees down, and a splinter enters her mouth, making her pregnant."
Tucker snorted. "That's not how it works."
"It does in legend. The newborn baby is Bata himself. So after the pharaoh dies, Bata becomes the king and the god, and denounces his wife. She dies by the sword, like the prophecy predicted."
He grimaced.
"Exactly. We're supposed to concentrate on Bata, the king-god and rightful ruler of the world, who summons his brother and appoints Anubis as one of his muckety-mucks. So now the brothers are reunited."
Tucker ruffled my hair sympathetically. "The wicked women have been decapitated, and all is well."
I sighed. "That's my big problem with it. They blame the women, and I'm not saying they're saints, but the guys could have saved themselves so much grief. I mean, if Bata hadn't cut off his own dick, then maybe his wife would have stayed with him in the first place."
"Harsh."
"Yeah, but she doesn't want to be on house arrest. She wants fresh air. So then the ocean attacks her. And it's not her fault that the gods made her with super-strong smelling hair. Not that it justifies her repeatedly having her husband killed. Ahh, everyone's awful in this story. The only one who doesn't kill anybody is Bata."
Tucker lifted me into his lap and kissed my neck, distracting me. "You're the most gorgeous woman in the world. Please don't have me killed."
I wound my fingers through his hair. "Please don't have me decapitated."
"Deal."
I had to giggle. "Who said romance was dead." I kissed him once, twice, and sighed. "We should talk about Becker's notes. Figure out why he brought up two similar legends."
"Kings getting kicked off their thrones."
"Guys missing this." My hand headed south.
Tucker spread his legs to allow more access. "Treacherous women."
"Isis isn't treacherous! She's more faithful than Penelope!" That part of The Odyssey always annoyed me: ever-dependable Penelope, fighting off suitors, while Odysseus screws around.
"But Anubis and Bata both had bad wives." He pressed against my hand. "Nephthys kept going back and forth"—he enacted the back and forth motion, his voice deepening—"on helping her sister and helping her brother-husband."
I wrapped my fingers around the main event. "Well, does that make Nephthys a good sister or a good sister-wife? She kind of took turns."
"In the end, everything turned out all right," said Tucker, pushing me back on the bed and climbing on top of me.
I linked my ankles behind his back and drew his head down for another kiss. "Better than all right."
Then we did our level (and occasionally vertical) best to banish all thoughts of severed penises and women dying by the sword.
I sank into sleep afterward.
Never heard my phone.
26
Sunday
please doctor
help hadi
I woke up to a dozen texts and phone messages.
we need $$$$$
can u help us?
Some of the texts were photos from the ICU. The little boy looked frail. Intubated. Eyes closed and taped (to prevent corneal abrasions. This hospital knew what it was doing).
But it was not a good sign.
I called back before I was fully awake, before I woke up Tucker, before I peed or brushed my teeth.
The phone rang and rang. No one picked up.
I threw off the warm covers and paced the tiny hotel room, glancing at the time (4:17 a.m.).
I didn't understand the Arabic voice message, but I spoke after the beep. "Sorry, Amal, I didn't see these until now. I'm trying to help. Where are you? What hospital? Call me ba
ck."
I checked my e-mail. Nothing from Isabelle.
On the other hand, Amal's parents hadn't sent me the bill. Isabelle had nothing to work with, even if she wanted to, on the weekend. I brought up the voice messages. Two from Amal, with her tiny voice saying the same thing. We need money.
Tucker sat up in bed, his hair askew, his voice rough with sleep, but alert. "What is it?"
I showed him my phone. Watched him scroll through ten more pleas. He handed it back to me.
"Did she message you?" I asked.
He reached for his phone on his bedside table. "No. But I didn't give her my number. Let me see how much my crowdfunder got, though."
Time to pace some more. Limited foot space, but I could circle the bed to the window, walk the small hallway to the door, and back to the window. Again and again.
Finally, Tucker said, "It's $139."
It took me a second to dig up an encouraging thought. "That's good. The first hundred is the hardest."
"The first hundred was from me."
"Well. All our friends are poor students. And maybe asleep. My parents will contribute. Hell, I'll put some in. Sorry I hadn't gotten around to it."
"This sucks." A bitter smile slashed across his face. "I'm poor, and I hate it."
"Tucker. You'll graduate in 18 months and start making money."
He shook his head. "You're doing the emerg year. That's another year of tuition and crap pay. And you know how much I owe on student loans and line of credit?"
I tensed. We'd never talked about money, and suddenly, I didn't want to.
"Over $275,000. I have to start paying that back the minute I graduate. And it's not just me. My sisters need tuition too."
I licked my lips. "You're a good brother."
"I'm a month behind after 14/11." He never brought up the hostage taking. I sucked in my breath before he went on, "And you know how much money L.A. cost me?"
I'd asked him once. He'd never answered. He'd told me not to worry about it.
He half-laughed instead of answering now. "Plus we're getting married. That's a wedding. And kids? You want kids, right?"
"Yes. But you know I'll earn money, too, and I don't have as much debt." My parents were saving up for Kevin's tuition. I'd help with that if I could, though.
"You're in the red. We want to have kids before we're 35, right? Which means one or both of us on parental leave, unless we want someone else to raise our kids. It's not like I started working when I was 22. We're fucked. I hate not being able to help Hadi."
"Yeah, but we are helping Hadi. We got him into resus and into a pediatric hospital. I asked Isabelle to look at his bills. You're doing the crowdfunding. And—" I hesitated. Tucker might hate me. Oh, what the hell. I'd say it anyway. "—I'm worried that Amal keeps asking me for money."
Tucker gazed at me from the window side of the bed while I stood on the bathroom side, one king-sized comforter between us.
I forced the words out of my throat. "She's not asking for our medical expertise. She wants money."
"Well, they're at a pediatric hospital now. They have medical expertise. That's not the issue."
"Right. So the one thing she wants from us is cash. She hasn't sent me a bill to forward to Isabelle. I'm not in Hadi's circle of care. I don't even know what hospital he's in. He didn't have any obvious injuries with us except he was unresponsive. She sent photos, but I can't be sure it's the same kid. Meanwhile, the cutest little girl keeps asking us for cash."
"Hope."
I wasn't sure what to make of his voice. Disapproval? Disappointment? Dis-something, anyway. "Sorry if I seem too suspicious, but the whole thing is strange. Amal says a scorpion bit him, but Muhamed told me there aren't scorpions in the city. We know that Hadi was buried in sand, but no one will tell us how it happened."
"Babe. We're both exhausted. Maybe you should come back to bed and sleep on it. We're not going to raise more money at four in the morning."
"It's 10:30 p.m. back home. The whole thing stinks, Tucker. Why'd we get a free trip to Egypt when a third of their own young people are unemployed? Was the IED a coincidence, or did someone kill Phillip Becker on purpose? Was Becker ranting, or did he actually keep treasure in the cobra bag that his daughter gave away?"
Tucker climbed over the bed and sat with his legs dangling on my side, but didn't try to touch me. "Okay. We can do something about the last part. We have today off. I was going to take you to the Pyramids, but we can try to find Abdallah Hussein instead."
"You know where he is?"
"He tweeted a photo from El-Malek Fouad yesterday, and he was at the Grand Egyptian Museum last week."
I sighed. "So we're playing Where's Waldo in a city of 20 million people? I guess of those two, I'll pick the GEM, since that's where Phillip Becker was headed. Also, I have no idea where the first one is."
"Perfect. Let me set that up. And you sleep, okay?"
"I can't sleep."
"Just try, babe."
I attempted to meditate to make him feel better. I lay down, breathing in and out for what seemed like an hour. Our friend Tori said she liked to inhale while thinking the word "Space" and exhale on "Freedom."
Maybe it worked, because I could've sworn I'd barely closed my eyes when Tucker made a choking noise.
"What is it?"
"He—he DM'd me."
"Who?" Maybe Rudy would direct message him in the wee hours of the morning.
"Abdallah Hussein. He wants to meet us. Now."
27
"What's up with all the water?" was the first thing I said when the hotel doors opened, revealing dripping grey skies and, more importantly, water up to the hubcaps of the poor vehicles splashing through the streets.
"Not good, miss," said one of the hotel doormen, a younger man with a round face.
That was an understatement. I'd sort of gotten used to the road as a shallow stream, but it had grown so high that now I could detect murky waves of water on the sidewalk too. "Don't the storm drains work?"
"Sorry, miss."
Tucker held up his phone. "Says here that their sewage, drainage systems, and infrastructure are 'dilapidated,' and that the situation is even worse outside of Cairo, especially in the poorer areas.'"
"What, exactly, does that mean?"
"Flooding," said Tucker.
We met each other's eyes.
"I guess we could cancel our meeting," I said.
But I knew neither of us would renege on face time with Abdallah Hussein, even though we seemed to have waded into the origin story of the phrase "come hell or high water."
"Let me see if he'll meet us closer to our hotel," said Tucker, texting on his phone. "He was hoping we'd go to El-Malek Fouad."
"Where the heck is that, anyway?"
"Southwest of Giza. He said it was important. He had something to show us."
"Could you send me the name of that place? I have no idea how to spell it."
He texted it to me. I should've mapped our destination before heading off before dawn to God knows where. I used to rely on Ryan to tow me around, depending on his excellent sense of direction, but I was in Egypt with another man, for heaven's sake. Time to woman up.
I checked the map and shook my head. "Way too far and too dangerous."
"I'm trying to convince him of that right now."
"We might be able to meet him halfway. At the GEM, maybe."
"Maybe."
Tucker got him on the line, made pleasantries, and put him on speakerphone in time for Abdallah to say, "I don't know if I can travel to the city. I am very busy."
Busy, hell. At 5 a.m. on a Sunday? Irritation zapped through me. Try working in an emergency room with an unconscious kid after a transatlantic fight and an IED, and tell me you're busy.
Tucker uttered a soothing, "I'm sure. Dr. Sze and I appreciate your time and expertise."
Abdallah's voice warmed up. "Does that mean you will be able to contribute for my time?"
"Excus
e me?" I said before I could stop myself. As Apu used to say on The Simpsons, What has been implied here?
"I work as a consultant and have established rates for my time. I'm asking if you and Dr. Tucker are able to compensate me for this visit, including travel."
Damn it. He wanted a bribe. From poor students.
Tucker snatched the phone toward his ear. I reached for it, but he walked away from me, shovelling charm. "Mr. Hussein. This is Dr. Tucker, I'm sure we can figure something out to our mutual convenience. We could treat you to a meal."
"No, I require more substantial compensation for my time," I clearly heard him say through the speakerphone.
The hotel lobby guy watched Tucker move to the edge of the overhang, toward the cars sloshing their way through the water.
I followed Tucker and called out, "How do we know you have anything that we want to hear?"
"You want to know about the bag."
The cobra bag. He was promising to tell us what was in the cobra bag. I decided to push a step further.
"Will you give us the bag?" I'd travel for that.
"Just a second, Hope." Tucker pressed the buttons, moving it off speakerphone and talking to Abdallah in a lower tone before telling me, "Good news. He agreed to a closer meeting place."
"With the bag? For how much?" I eyed the nascent river in the street.
"He wouldn't commit. Just said he'll meet up and we'll 'discuss.'"
"He wants more money."
Tucker grimaced. "I'll stop by a bank machine on the way."
"Tucker, this is blackmail. Or extortion. Something. Should we talk to the police and be done with it?"
After a long minute, while we watched the rain drip off the overhang, and we declined an umbrella from the hotel lobby guy, Tucker said, "I've heard the police want bribes, too. Sometimes you have to pay them just to open a complaint."
I sighed. "Plus what we saw on our first day at the hospital." I could still picture that poor doctor with the fractured nose and the crooked silver glasses.
"Yup."
Everyone here had a hand out. I understood why, but not how I'd fix their problem with my sad line of credit. "We can't go to the middle of nowhere, walk up to him, and say, 'Hey, we're rich tourists, take everything.'"