Still on poison, he texted back.
Anything interesting?
Some poisons look like something else.
I puzzled over that, but Chris was finished for the evening.
“Want to see it?” Nic absently rubbed the back of his neck.
“The deep port?”
He nodded. “It’s just down the road, we can walk.”
“Close to Karnak?”
“Not even that far.”
That was depressing news, I worry about any project close to Luxor. Even though Nic was on the record claiming there was nothing important buried at the dredge site, who really knew what was buried in the Egyptian sand? Who knew what important artifact, mummy, palace, could be destroyed? We strolled under the heat of the mid-day sun. Nic’s hand was stiff in mine. I tipped my face into the brutal sun that even as it ruined my skin and faded my auburn highlights, I loved.
That the proposed port was even this close to the hotel as well as the most famous temple complex, Karnak, was appalling. All I could envision was a huge twenty-five deck ship between us and the glories of the West Bank. The high decks blotting out Aten, the sun, and throwing shade on all the residents and workers.
It was a longer walk than Nic promised. Almost an hour away. The sun, welcome during the first half of the walk, now pierced through my scalp hotter than a laser peel. My feet hurt. I wasn’t wearing walking shoes; I was wearing sandals I picked up from the Albania gift store. They were not up to the hike. I could feel a strap start to give.
Working digs are little more than huge, carefully marked holes populated by interns and students excited by small things half covered in heavy dirt and sand. This was much worse.
The three cranes I saw from the hotel window marked out the project. Like the worst nightmares of Sobek the crocodile god, the jaws of the back hoes had bit chunks out the riverbank. River water slowly circled in the declivities swirling flotsam and plastics in the blocked eddies.
“See? Bigger boats.” Nic gestured with obvious pride.
“Bigger boats.” I repeated, my eyes on the dirt, then to the Valley of the Queens shimmering across the calm river.
“People want action and excitement,” he continued to explain, then elaborated as if he had memorized a brochure.
“Gambling, dancing, entertainment. You can’t offer that on our tiny river boats. There is nothing to do at night here, and to attract more tourists, we need to change with the times.”
We.
I let it pass. All that change world stuff? I was too tired, too demoralized. Only a handful of really dedicated people still change the world and when they do, FOX News cuts them down. It’s no wonder that so many retirees feel they earned long afternoons doing nothing but dreaming on ships that plied the ocean, the rivers, the Nile. But when you do retire, what about dreams? With thoughts like this, I should just get embalmed today.
I glanced at Nic, frowning at the sand as if more tiny artifacts would sprout like zucchini in a home garden. He hadn’t published a quite a while; if he had, Chris would have found the article and forwarded it to me.
My treacherous heart surged with pity, was Nic unable to afford his own ethics?
“Is this where the digging park will be?” I asked gently. Maybe the plastic along with the real artifacts were part of the park, seeding it so there is always digging success, like the shells on the Disney island, like the authentic gold panning experiences in Alaska. Look, how easy it is to find things, all you need is a ticket and fifteen minutes.
“What?” He looked up at me and frowned, as if he forgot I was there.
“The park?” I nudged gently.
“Oh, it will be around here, you know, once the dock is built the park will be filled in after that. But first.”
“First you need to authenticate or disprove that there is any historical significance.” I put in.
There must be a great deal of pressure to not discover any artifacts.
He was lost in thought. It was the last quiet moment we would share.
He shoved his hands in his pocket. “You don’t understand. You’ve been living with other people for so long you don’t know what it’s like to be on your own.”
That drew me up short and I automatically raised up like a bear. And you don’t poke the bear.
“Excuse me? Since when was being responsible for everything in my household as well as invalids, not being on my own? Do you know how utterly claustrophobic yet devastatingly lonely that life is? Do you have any idea what it is like to not go where you want or do what you want with no end in sight? You try it. If I recall, you can’t even keep a cactus alive.”
“Ouch, sorry.” He held up his hands in supplication. “I hit a nerve, sorry.”
Chapter 19
We walked more slowly back to the Winter Palace. The texting had calmed, for which I was grateful. Chris texted that the site in question could have been a burial site, but it was still unconfirmed. Only one archeologist had discovered anything, and he had retired long ago.
From what university?
UCSB.
Can you contact him?
Of course.
I pocketed my phone and flashed Nic an insincere smile.
Much restored after a drink at the hotel bar, Nic continued his justification for a project that seemed, on the surface, rather obscene, but clearly representing a big investment. Big enough to kill for?
“It’s a great idea.” But Nic wasn’t looking at the site, his eyes were fixed on the valleys across the Nile.
“The current regime needs an economic win.”
“At the cost of their own history.” I sipped my white wine and followed his gaze. The West Bank was the land of the dead because that’s where the sun went to die every day, before Nut gives birth to it in the morning. My favorite god is Nut. She swallows the sun every night and gives birth to the sun every dawn. Many tombs feature Nut. Her long body arches over the ceiling, protecting the sarcophagus and representing the everyday miracle of death and birth.
She was swallowing the sun now. It hung low and orange over the valley hills.
“It’s not like they don’t do this kind of thing every thousand years or so. The Ptolemies weren’t exactly preservationists, neither were the Muslims.”
“Napoleon.”
“Didn’t last and the only way to save artifacts was to ship them out of the country.”
“You are not convincing me.”
“I don’t need to convince you, I need to tell you that these are not rulers, they are thugs, extortionists and have only their own reputations to solidify, they need a nice big dock that hosts four or five large cruise ships.”
“Built by?”
He shrugged. “Partners with money. The idea is to bring over all the parts up the Suez then assemble the ships in Alexandria and sail them up and down the Nile. It will make for a lot of press, lots of positive attention, tourism will increase. Look how great Egypt is again.”
“It’s always been great,” I put in.
“You say. They need rather more than academic promotion.”
“It takes time.” I considered the raw ground, the crumbling edges. The Nile no longer flooded, which was, in a way, a pity. Controlling the river engendered its own problems and unintended consequences. I lived on Max’s first floor apartment long enough to understand the downsides of river living. I didn’t blame the locals for getting fed up with losing their river side homes every year. Yet I always thought the dam and lake were little more than a giant vanity project for Nasser, not much different from Ramses II who built the enormous Hypostyle Hall in Karnak. Or the pyramids. The country was riddled with vanity projects.
And here we are again.
“It should be finished by January.” Nic seemed be reassuring himself more than me.
“Not at the rate they are going.” Even if the builders were coincidently the same people issuing the permits and approving EPA studies.
Dr. Anderson. Chris was
up late. He sent along another article. The research confirmed the area was little more than a village and burial site for workers. Of no consequence. Made of mud, the village had been destroyed year after year until the turn of the century when families just gave up and moved to higher ground.
So Nic was right, the area really wasn’t of historical value.
Unless someone, an intern, a worker, a digger, found a charming, adorable hippo. It wasn’t difficult to imagine what revealing the provenance of my hippo, especially with the reputation of The Met’s William, would do. Finding the hippo, linking him to the current project, which does not photograph well, would be like strangling a kitten on YouTube. There would be protests, there would be damaging press. Questions. Even if Nic stood on the sandbanks waving his arms and declaring there was nothing to see here. The regime, the men in charge, would not hold up well under any kind of scrutiny.
The term is overtourism, but right now, that’s not a problem for Egypt. If you shoot tourists on a regular basis, like those shoot tourists who died at the Temple of Hatshepsut, you end up with a pretty low visitor count. Egypt and tourism did bounce back the following year. But if limiting cruises is a thing in Venice, it seemed Egypt was ready to welcome them with open arms. Unless the hippo was from that site. The news would slow, or even stop while the hippo debate raged on. All the resort money would rush across the Red Sea to Sharm El Sheikh.
Nic broke the silence first. “Where is it, Vic? You aren’t safe as long as you are the only one who knows.”
“Nice try.” I wiped my forehead, but it was so hot, my perspiration just evaporated. “I told you, I don’t have it.”
“They don’t know that.”
I opened my arms. “Yes, they do. They stole my purse and searched my apartment, and I did not bring it with me to Egypt. I. Don’t. Have. It.”
He frowned. “Then why are they still following us?”
“If I don’t have it, maybe they think you do.”
“They are just middle-men, I don’t know them. Why would I put you at risk?” He trailed me into our room. I stopped so quickly he bumped into me.
“Is that a serious question? You never hesitated to put me at risk. Remember lowering me into the underground tomb?”
“You were the slenderest person there.”
“I have never been the slenderest person anywhere.”
“I could trust you,” I amended.
The tomb had been dark, smelly and stifling hot. I could make out a few painted figures, harvest offerings, a cartouche. And a whole floor littered with sharp debris. It wouldn’t have been so bad except someone, and I’m not making accusations these many years later, dropped me.
“And you can’t now?” It was an unfair question. He had to trust me. We were now dealing with two competing companies, both run by members of middle management so well-siloed that no one knew what anyone else was doing, what the other team knew. On the one hand, the original group, a man who was feared, worked outside the Mafia and used lovely girls like Cindy as their mules. On the other we had our emerging-economy men, Oslo and Oscar, who were busy with their own version of a hostile takeover.
Hostile.
“I’m taking a shower.”
When I emerged, fluffing my hair, Nic was on the edge of the bed staring at his phone.
“Need to contact the construction people? Give them the all clear?”
“They said they would call in an hour.” He glanced at his watch even though the time was displayed on his phone.
“Why the wait?”
He shrugged. “Why not the wait?”
He was not the guy in charge, that’s why the wait. I knew that game. By making him wait, the men in charge were asserting their power. Poor Nic.
It was like waiting for Godot. With little else on our schedule, we left the room to explore Luxor Temple. It was close to the hotel, an honestly easy walk, and better than staring at each other in the bar. We both felt better when we could move around.
“He seems odd.” I passed by a formally dressed young man, the conservative suit a marked contrast with his youthful face. It was like passing Magritte’s The Age of Man: discreet, business-like and out of place.
Nic glanced at him and shrugged. “They still do business here.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“I know what you meant, don’t worry about him, keep an eye out for our tall Eastern Europeans.”
“With long rock star hair and guns.”
“Yes, possibly with guns.”
“And they aren’t your people.”
He touched my bruised face, fading to a gross green (the British description is bilious, but it was fading so it wasn’t necessary to get the terminology exact).
“They aren’t my people. They are just opportunists. Dangerous because now they are desperate.” Thank you for that confirmation Dr. Ratzenberg.
“Aren’t we all?”
“Dangerous?”
“Desperate.”
I did not care why we needed to travel to Egypt. I did not care that Nic couldn’t just call and assure his people that all was under control. I indulged in the moment, conscious that my moments were ticking away.
I threw Tina a bone and texted that I now had my passport and would return at the end of the day tomorrow. I did not wait for her response.
By the time Matt and Chris graduated from high school, it would probably be time to care for Vince and Tina, or Vance would want to have a turn at having a full-time, live-in maid. Or someone will break a hip. I shook my head and tried to focus on the moment.
We strolled down the renovated Avenue of Sphinxes. The sphinxes were always here, lining the path between Luxor Temple and the great Karnak complex, but for years (thousands of years) the statues had served as climbing structures, planters and glorified ash trays. No more. Tourists loved the Avenue, Egyptians loved tourists; the temple path was beautiful and well cared for.
The temple pylons, two towering walls, loomed over us as we entered the temple. There is no question you are entering the house of the gods, many gods, and like any good temple or mosque or church, it was built so you really felt the glory and the awe.
At the entrance, just on the other side of the pylons, were the remains of a mosque, built on top of the temple when the temple was so thoroughly buried the top of the pylons were ground level.
The phone pinged—Tina.
I pulled away from contemplating the mosque and making an inane comment about life, sand and preservation and moved to the shadows of the first hypostyle hall—lined with thirty-two columns, all sanded clean, but back in the day, would have been brightly painted.
We’ve been really patient, but you owe it to us to return home immediately and help the family. We let you live in mom and dad’s house rent free and now you need to come back and help with the boys. They are out of control. Need I remind you that I’m still working? And Vince is busy with Rotary and can’t be watching the boys every afternoon. I …
She must have hit send before finishing the rant.
I read the text again. Owe them? The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
Nic stopped and turned. “What’s wrong? Bad news from home?”
I looked up from the phone. “Do you think I am codependent?”
“With Max?”
My eyes widened. He shrugged. “It was always Max this, or Max said that. You never detached from him, even when you were with Miranda.”
I must have looked as stunned as I felt.
He took my hands. “It’s okay. We had a great run, I loved you. I still love you. I had excitement and sex on my side. I was willing to take that for as long as I could. Miranda too. But Max was like your father.”
I tipped my head.
“Your Victorian, controlling, overbearing father.”
“I loved Max.” I said.
“And he loved you.” Nic confirmed.
“Shouldn’t I love my real family the same way?”
H
e fixed me with a look I couldn’t read.
“Haven’t you already loved them enough? Come on, see how they restored some of the friezes. I don’t agree with the restoration technique, but you can’t argue these are fabulous.” He led me away, chattering so I could compose myself.
I had a tiny hope that left on their own, Vince and Tina would find a way back to their own children, that they would actually parent. But I’m not Mary Poppins. I am me, an aging fashionista, but maybe with a little ista sill left.
Nic spied the friezes first. “And here we are.”
I followed him, still holding the phone in my palm, anticipating Tina’s follow up text. But the phone remained silent. I was just slipping it into my pocket when a movement caught my eye.
The temples are usually crowded, I don’t know what Nic’s people are concerned about, but there seems to be plenty of tourists brought in daily to admire Luxor Temple and Karnak before loading into buses to sweat through the tomb tour of both Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens. And of course, the obligatory stop in a factory featuring hand-carved artifacts, anything you want as long as you want poor-quality marble.
A large tour group from Japan flowed into the hall and wedged between me and Nic. To a one, the young ladies were dressed head-to-heel in Prada, as if they had all raided the Prada flagship store in Milan, which they very well may have. Wearing bright flowered dresses and high-heeled Mary Janes, the girls moved slowly because of the heat and their finery. I enjoyed the contrast of light bright fabric against the harsh earth-toned columns. Their guide held a yellow umbrella and spoke rapidly, gesturing with a handful of brochures. The group paused and nodded as their guide walked them through the temple calling out—this many—this tall—this old.
I always admired the shear audacity of the pharaohs. They had the manpower, they had more food than they needed, let’s build a pyramid, let’s build a grand hall. Let’s build an incredible rock-cut temple just to show the Nubians who is King. Commissioning large buildings and tall phallic obelisks in honor of yourself is apparently a human impulse that never went out of style.
After I'm Buried Alive Page 19