by Jerry Dubs
“I was petrified. I felt the black coils of Apep encircling us. The stink of Seth’s breath was in the air.
“Then your mother grabbed a stone mallet and began to run across the wadi to save Brian. I didn’t know what would happen. If Siamun saw her ... ” he dropped his voice to a whisper. “He had a knife and he was so evil, Brianna.
“But Brian saw Diane approaching. He grabbed Siamun’s arms and he thrust himself upward toward the knife blade, taking it into his body so that Siamun could not turn the blade toward Diane.
“Siamun heard Diane’s footsteps and turned just as she began to swing the stone hammer at his face. But Brian held him fast and your mother, she was Sekhmet, fierce and strong, and Siamun died.”
***
“This is amazing,” Bakr whispered under his breath. He couldn’t believe these stories were being told in his guest house, that these people were here. He looked at Tim and at Ahmes, visitors from his country’s glorious past.
He had liked Ahmes from the moment he had seen him supporting Tim outside his doorway the night that they had arrived. The young man had been so earnest and caring. Then, as Ahmes had learned Arabic, Bakr had seen his playful side. And with a crayon or pencil in his hand, he was a wizard.
But Tim, he had been different.
He had been broken and sad when he had first arrived. Then he became secretive and withdrawn as he began to regain his strength. And then he had changed. He had told his story to Akila and then he had promised to speak of it no more until the day she believed him.
And so he and Tim played chess and talked of politics and America and the melting of the glaciers and of old movies and of the weather. They drank coffee and Tim helped make repairs at the guest house, always happy and friendly, quick-witted, generous and understanding.
But as Tim grew stronger, Bakr saw glimpses of the man hidden by the friendly exterior. He sometimes found Tim sitting on the low wooden bench in the back courtyard, his back against the wall, his eyes far away, his concentration so fierce that Bakr could walk past him unseen.
He was a man whose body was here, but whose mind and soul often were somewhere else.
“What are you thinking, my friend?’ Bakr had wondered.
Akila had told Bakr Tim’s tale of living in the past, of having a wife and two children, of losing his son and of being entombed alive.
“I don’t understand. It can’t be true, can it?” he had asked her.
“No, Bakr, it can’t be true. It is impossible. But he believes it. I’m sure he does. His mind has created an escape, a past that, even if it sounds horrible, is less horrible than the past it is hiding.”
But now, here in his dining room, it seemed to Bakr that a curtain was being drawn aside. He didn’t believe that Ahmes was capable of lying and the young girl, she seemed so sincere. How could they be in league? What purpose would it serve them to trick him?
***
“Brianna?” Akila said softly.
Her eyes wet with tears, Brianna raised her head and nodded to Akila. “Yes, that’s what mother wrote. Over and over again. She wrote it when she first returned home eighteen years ago. There were other things about a woman named Yunet and more about Brian, but what Ahmes and Tim said matches what she wrote.”
Akila put her hands on the table, laying the palms down against the wooden surface. Her hands were steady, the fingers arched slightly, relaxed and unmoving.
“Tim,” Akila said into the silence, turning to look into the eyes of the man who, she realized now, was exactly what he had said he was, “I believe you.”
Tim closed his eyes and nodded.
Turning to Bakr, she said, “I got a memo today about a new desk. No, don’t bother getting the envelope, I’m sure it will match what Tim wrote or drew.” She shook her head, Finding her own words and thoughts hard to believe.
“See, this morning a truck threw a stone at my car. It broke the logo so that now it matches Tim’s drawing exactly. And now ... ” she tilted her head toward Brianna.
“He couldn’t have known about the logo unless he had seen it. And the desk. It wasn’t even on the market when he told me about it.”
Brianna interrupted her. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
Akila held her hands together on her lap, amazed that she felt calm about her thoughts.
“Tim arrived here a year ago, Brianna. He told me about his past, about being Imhotep. I didn’t believe him. Then he also told me that he was here once before, but it was five years in our future. To prove it he made three predictions.
“One was that I would buy a new car. He named the model and color. He was right about the car and its color, but wrong about the front of it. He said that when he saw it, in our future, the logo was broken. He even drew a picture of the broken logo. The logo wasn’t broken when I bought the car, but it broke this morning.
“Then he described my desk. His description didn’t match my desk, but this morning I learned that I am getting a new desk and it is exactly what he predicted it would be.
“The third prediction was you.”
Akila sighed and smiled at Brianna and Tim. “I love the Sherlock Holmes stories. I love his logic and leaps of deductions. Several times he tells his friend Watson that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be true.”
“This is amazing,” Bakr said. “I cannot believe that I am here to see this.”
He turned to Tim. “So you, you really are Imhotep? You really built the Step Pyramid?”
“I am Imhotep,” Tim said. “And I did build the tomb of King Djoser.”
Bakr studied Tim’s face, mesmerized by the thought that he was staring at Imhotep, ancient scribe to King Djoser, father of medicine, builder of the first stone pyramid.
And then, to Bakr’s surprise, a small grin took shape on Imhotep’s face and his friend turned back into Tim, his eyes alight with an unspoken joke.
Accustomed to Tim’s sense of humor, Bakr said, “What? Oh, you’re going to want a better room, aren’t you?”
As Time Goes by
“You know what I want to hear,” Humphrey Bogart told Dooley Wilson.
Sitting on her couch, her shoulder leaning against Tim’s, Akila silently mouthed the words as they watched her favorite movie, ‘Casablanca.’
A year had passed since Brianna’s arrival.
Sitting at Bakr’s dining table, stunned by the breaking of her car’s logo so that it exactly matched Tim’s drawing, shocked by his impossible description of her desk and finally astounded by Brianna’s revelations, Akila had felt sure that nothing would ever be the same.
Time, something so fundamental and reliable that Akila seldom thought of it, had become elastic and capricious. It was as if she had been allowed a peek backstage at a complicated musical production and seen the extra painted scrims that would create illusionary scenes.
Now, when she passed strangers on the street she wondered if they were concealing not just personal secrets but entire alternate universes. Was Napoleon unknowingly walking the streets of Helwan, was she herself about to slip through a doorway and become Cleopatra or some unknown future person?
But, in the end, nothing had changed. Life had continued its leisurely stroll forward through time.
Five days a week she went to work at the clinic. Tim, or Imhotep, as she sometimes thought of him, continued leading tours in Saqqara and spending every free moment amid the ruins. He continued to live at the Blue Lotus, although they had begun to spend more evenings together and met for lunch whenever their schedules allowed.
On the television, protecting Rick Blaine from himself, Sam pretended to not understand his boss’s request. “No, I don’t.”
“You played it for her, you can play it for me,” Rick said angrily.
Akila whispered to Tim, “I love this scene. He is ripping the bandage from his heart so that he can bleed again.”
She thought of Fahim and of Tim’s Mery
t, both lost, leaving behind wounds that would never heal. Although the pain had dulled, there were moments – the opening notes of a song that had played as they made up after a political argument; the aroma of a meal eaten alone as she waited for his return from a rally; the sight of a flower offered in a silent gesture of forgiveness; the fall of sunlight on a couple walking hand in hand along the bridge where tanks had later entered the city – that reawakened the ache in her heart.
“Well, I don’t think I can remember ... ” Sam lied.
“If she can stand it, I can! Play it!” Bogart said as Akila whispered the words with him.
As Sam played the opening chords to “As Time Goes By,” Tim reached into the nearly empty bowl of popcorn that was nestled between his thigh and Akila’s. He looked at Akila’s face. Her eyes, glistening with unshed tears, were focused on the movie. Feeling him watching her, she turned to him.
“We should smoke a joint,” she said out of nowhere, rubbing her eyes with the heel of her hand.
“Too late,” Tim joked, “we already ate the munchies.” He saw that she was serious. “You have marijuana? Isn’t that seriously illegal here?”
“I work at a university, Tim.”
“An Arab university.”
“That’s true, but they are still teenagers.”
***
“Shouldn’t you have one of those big water pipes, like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland,” Tim said as Akila returned from her bedroom with a small, yarn-covered tube.
“A sheesha?” Akila said as she sat beside Tim. “I’m sure they are used at parties, but I don’t host a lot of marijuana parties.” Sliding open a drawer in the coffee table in front of them, she pulled out a small plastic bag containing crumbled, greenish-brown leaves.
She pinched a thimble full of marijuana and placed it in the small copper bowl at the end of the pipe. Lighting a match, she put the pipe to her mouth and drew the flame into the marijuana. She shook out the match and, holding her breath, passed the pipe to Tim.
He pulled in a lungful of smoke and held it. When he was slow to pass the pipe back to Akila, she started to giggle.
“What?” he said coughing out the smoke.
“I was going to tell you not to bogart the weed, then I saw Bogart on television.”
“Are you high already?” Tim asked, amused.
“A little giddy, but more from the situation than from the marijuana.”
Smiling, Tim sneaked another quick hit and then gave her the pipe.
***
The pipe finished, they turned back to the movie.
“I can’t fight it anymore. I ran away from you once. I can’t do it again. Oh, I don’t know what’s right any longer. You have to think for both of us. For all of us,” Ingrid Bergman told Bogart.
“All right, I will. Here’s looking at you, kid,” he said wisely, sadly.
“I wish I didn’t love you so much,” she answered, with Akila whispering the words along with Bergman.
Embarrassed, she looked up at Tim, unsure herself if she had been talking to him or to the memory of her lost husband. Either way the emotion was real, flooding her with a bittersweet longing.
In response, Tim raised his arm and draped it around her shoulders, pulling her close to nestle against him.
Soft, gray images of Bergman and Bogart continued their dance of love amid the clash of ideals and desperation. Her face lit with passion, Bergman looked up at Bogart and said, “Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time.”
Tim felt Akila stiffen. She raised her head from his shoulder, her eyes darting away from him. As she moved away, his fingers trailed along her shoulder and slid across her neck touching soft skin and wispy curls of her black hair.
Without thought, he fit his hand around the curve of the back of her neck. She turned her face slowly to his. Her mouth was open slightly, her breath caught as the moment seemed to freeze.
His eyes moved from her mouth to her eyes. He saw questions and hesitation and expectation. With his free hand, he caressed her cheek, the tips of his fingers barely touching her skin as they brushed from her ear to her parted lips.
Their painful pasts and their uncertain futures dissolved as he leaned toward her and she moved toward him.
***
Akila awoke from an indistinct dream of peace and contentment.
Sleepily, languorously she rolled to change position, smelled coffee and heard Tim softly singing “As Time Goes By.”
She opened her eyes and looked around her bedroom. The curtains were pulled shut, but light slid through at the edges. She twisted to reach the nightstand and her phone to check the time. It was eight o’clock, an hour later than she usually awoke.
Swinging her legs out of bed, the sheet fell from her and she realized that she was naked.
“Good morning,” Tim said, entering the room behind her.
Reflexively Akila crossed her arms over her chest.
Seeing her embarrassment, Tim backed out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him. “I made coffee and started frying some potatoes,” he said through the door.
Fully awake now, Akila remembered with a rush their lovemaking, frantic at first on the floor as Rick and Ilsa resigned themselves to living with only memories of their love, and then later with a dreamy sensuality as they tasted and explored each other’s bodies. She turned her head toward the closed door and called, “Tim?”
“Yes?”
“Turn off the potatoes and come back to bed.”
***
“Is this wrong for you?” she asked afterward.
Tim turned his head on the pillow so that he was looking at Akila. Her hair was pulled back, held in place with an elastic band to keep it out of her face as they had made love. He looked at her hairline, the individual strands of hair at the front, each of them nestled in her skin, skin that caused a riotous vibration in his whenever they touched.
He didn’t know if it was chemical, emotional or imaginary, but the effect was overwhelming. He reached over and brushed his thumb across her lips.
“You are so beautiful, Akila.”
She turned her head to kiss his hand. “I haven’t been with anyone since Fahim. To be with another feels ... I think I thought that I would never be with another. I had put that part of life behind me.”
Tim moved his hand higher on her face. His thumb softly followed the arc of her eyebrow, then along the side of her face to trace the line of her jaw. He closed his eyes. He could hear a light, distant rumble from trucks. The aroma of coffee drifted into the room. Outside her bedroom window two birds called to each other.
Under his hand he felt a light frictional resistance as his fingers followed her chin and then down to her neck where the thin sheath of skin was more vulnerable and fragile. Then he traced the swell of her collarbone and the gentle incline of her breasts.
Taking his roaming hand in hers, she squeezed it, pulling it away from her breast.
“What I meant, was – us being together, does that feel wrong to you. I have been alone for eight years, but you have been here just two years. Last night ... well, no one can resist 'Casablanca,' ” she said with a smile. “But now, this morning?”
“I miss Meryt and Maya and Tjau with all my heart,” Tim said. “And my friends and my rooftop terrace and the beer and the painted temples and the noisy, smelly markets and the squawking of geese being herded down the street.
“I miss the lack of noise from cars and airplanes and music; there is background music everywhere here. It is impossible to find silence. Even in the desert, there are kids on four-wheelers, planes overhead, the distant sound of construction.
“But I love plumbing and electricity and restaurants and soft cushions. I even love the hubbub of the city streets, there’s an energy there, even if it often seems misdirected, or maybe undirected.
“And this,” he squeezed her hand and leaned close to give her cheek a tender, lingering kiss. “I most certainly love this. And you, Akila,
you are beautiful and intelligent and caring and ... ”
“No, Tim,” she said quickly, “You don’t need to say that you love me. I’m not asking for that. I don’t need the words. I just, I don’t want you to be ... unhappy.”
Tim propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at her, his face serious as he thought of what to say. Her brown skin and black hair against the cream colored pillow case evoked thoughts of faded color photographs, of the past.
“There weren’t a lot of diversions in the Two Lands,” he said. “No movies or books. No Internet, no coffee shops. No one took long trips or thought about saving for college or retirement. Life was really day-by-day, hour-by-hour.
“You know how sometimes you’ll be reading a book or watching television while you eat and you finish the meal and have no idea what you ate, no memory of the taste or aroma? Those moments are lost, as if they never existed. That never really happened in the Two Lands.
“Maybe it was because everyone lived shorter lives or maybe it was simply a lack of distractions, but we were more involved in each moment. When I first arrived there I noticed it. I liked it. It felt like a good way to live.”
He arched his back, stretching, and shifted his weight on his elbow.
“What I’m trying to get at is that there are moments, a lot of them, when I think about my future and my past. But when I am with you, Akila, I am totally here. When I look at you, it is only you I see. When I hear your voice, when I touch you, when I taste you, I am here, Akila. I am with you and only you.
“And I love each moment of it. And I am happy, Akila. You make me very happy.”
***
“I thought you said that when you eat, you eat,” Akila said as she swallowed a bite of the scrambled eggs Tim had made for their breakfast.