I strolled towards the recently (to me) revealed friezes, complete with more hieroglyphs. Chris has a hieroglyphic typewriter app and for about two years texted me in hieroglyphs. Not necessarily exact, the Rosetta Stone aside, trading an ancient image for a western symbol, like A is for Vulture, will reasonably lose much in the simplification, but close enough for a good time. Champollion would be proud.
Long blond hair glowed in the direct sun. My first thought was—he needs a hat. My second thought was, holy shit, Oslo, my Albanian kidnapper.
He held a guidebook, Fodor’s or Frommer's, Rick Steves doesn’t do Egypt. Oslo's partner, the man who met with Nic in the bar, caught a glimpse of me and gestured to his pal. Who, in turn, gestured to the next hall grander than the first, with a frown of disappointment. His partner was not having it and moved quickly towards me. But the Princesses of Prada cut them off, ooh and aahing at the tall (it was this tall, the guide was probably explaining), and I was suddenly gifted with precious seconds to disappear. But where the hell was Nic?
I stepped over a Do Not Enter barrier, red and imposing, and struggled along a rubble-strewn alley that snaked behind the main temple walls. Oslo and Oscar of course could meet me on the other side, but the rubble was easier to navigate than the Russian and French groups from Viking Cruise. I ducked out and brushed my legs. Nic, oblivious to the crowds pushing and photographing around him, was deep in thought as he stared at a section of preserved wall.
“We have to go,” I whispered.
“What?”
I glanced over at the entrance to this hall, the blonde had just negotiated the entrance waving his guidebook and arguing with his partner.
“Now.”
He followed my head nod and his eyes grew large. I glanced around, how much had the temple changed? Ah, not by much, fortunately.
I led Nic through the Christianized temple, easily converted by hacking out the faces of Isis and her child Horus, replacing them with Mary and baby Jesus. The temple looked like a dead end. But I remembered a slight opening at the back, easy to negotiate when I was thinner and younger, a bit challenging this afternoon. I winced as my new shirt and slacks grated like cheese through the opening, but I pushed through, both because I did not want to be stuck and because I needed to show off. I sucked in my breath, held it and pushed through worried I’d crack the wall, but it held.
Nic came through a little easier, I helped get his head clear of the stones and pulled him through by the arm. This was a younger person’s escape route.
There isn’t a back way out of the temple complex and, by the way, we were located in the center of town, so I figured we’d hide behind a food truck selling falafels rather than make a mad dash across the barren open desert. We had a head start, but no plan. We ducked over the untrodden debris, pushed behind the more beautiful walls. We dodged around the back ignoring the admonishing signs—Don’t Touch, Do Not Enter, Don’t. We dashed past the No Exit sign and tumbled out onto the sidewalk. Nic glanced back and gestured for me to crouch behind the parked cars.
Nic coughed, trying to catch his breath. We had kicked up quite a bit of sand, ancient stone and modern dust. Plus, the squeeze was a little extreme. I placed my hand on the scarred car for balance. There isn’t a car in Luxor, or even Cairo that escaped the paint searing sandstorms common this time of year.
“How did you know that back way?” He gasped.
I patted the side of the car and raised up enough to see if we did indeed escape.
“Old escape route. I used to dash out to shop, then slide back in.”
“I never noticed.”
“No, you did not.”
That was before the handy hieroglyphic app. I had picked up the ability to read some hieroglyphics and demotic but not enough spend hours in study. Nic took another breath and hacked unpleasantly. I turned my head and pretended to examine the car.
We rose again, urban prairie dogs. A tour group, this time made up of beet-red Germans dressed in flimsy tank tops and tee shirts and (to me) uncomfortably tiny shorts, clustered around the falafel stand. A trickle of tourists exited the temple at a sedate pace, no one was in a hurry. No one looked like they were searching for someone.
“They can just return to the hotel,” I pointed out.
Nic slowly stood. He extended his hand to help me up. “It’s not about being found.” He grunted and helped me get to my feet. “It’s about safety. Relative safety,” he amended.
I brushed off my shirt and slacks and I took his arm. Even in a strongly Coptic city, it was better—easier—to be literally attached to a man. I would never walk three steps behind him, but still. In the past I often enough pretended he was in charge, whispering behind him, telling him what to say.
I squeezed his arm every time I sensed he was about to glance backward. We headed toward the Winter Palace, the city on our left, the Nile running silently on our right. There is a saying in the Egyptian Tourism Bureau: Where the Perfect Climate Can Be Obtained.” It was indeed perfect.
I breathed in the hot dry air and raised my face. The true god or not, the sun here was important, worthy of worship.
“Why don’t they just wait outside the hotel, drag us into a car, and dump us in the desert?”
Which is exactly what they finally did.
Chapter 20
As soon as Nut swallowed the sun, we ventured from the hotel for dinner.
We had just gained the street when a battered car pulled up. We made to step around it, but before I could move, I was hit from behind. I remember falling forward. I don’t remember catching myself since I was occupied with the flashing pain and trying to come back to consciousness.
When I came to (like the phrase, then everything changed, I really have always wanted to say that), I was prone on the back seat of a very poorly maintained sedan. Under me was a restless Nic, all lumps and elbows. A blanket that smelled like it had been stolen off a camel smothered us.
I poked an arm and was rewarded with a grunt. Do I claw back the blanket? Do I stay down? What was the protocol?
“Where?” Nic’s voice was muffled. “Where are you getting the statues?”
Oh, like they would helpfully blurt that out while driving us out to the desert and certain death.
“Shut up.”
A dull thud. Nic stiffened. I inched my hand up to touch his shoulder; it didn’t calm him, but I felt better.
The roads leading straight out to the desert are often blocked or covered in drifting sand, I was confident that I would be able to tell when we hit what would be essentially the point of no return.
I did not relish being dumped out in the desert, not with Nic, not even with T.E. Lawrence, not even with Gertrude Bell. Not with anyone. I would prefer to be dumped any place else—the slums, the souk, the Nile itself since it’s surprisingly clean. That supply closet in Albania filled with handy tools.
We bumped along for more time than it takes to reach the desert. Which way? West over one of the few bridges over the Nile? Or east, into nothing much beyond the suburbs of Luxor?
Please let it be east, at least we could quickly figure out where to head, we’d have a goal.
It was not east.
The car stopped. I was pulled out first, coughing and brushing the hair from my eyes. My feet met hard surface, not the open desert at all. As I caught my breath, my captor did not lose his grip on my arm, which was still recovering from the last encounter. But was it the same man? I tried to make out his features, but my eyes weren’t focusing. At my age, it takes longer to recover from a direct assault.
The man behind me kept a grip on my arm as if there was some place to run. Nic stood on the other side of the car catching his breath. In the shadows our captors scanned the empty parking lot then pushed us forward.
We were at the foot of the Valley of the Kings, which judging by the empty lot, closed at 5:00. The scores of merchants selling everything from rugs to textiles to tees had all packed up for the night. No sign of a night
guard, just the locked visitors center and a chain pulled across the only road into the center of the valley. Above us I could just make out a corner of Mena House, where Howard Carter lived for years while he dug everywhere, including the unpromising section that eventually revealed Tutankhamun’s tomb. West of the Nile, the land of Anubis where the dead live.
“I don’t have enough for admission.” Nic commented.
One of men raised his hand as if to hit Nic again.
Were they wearing masks? Oh lord, Aten, Isis, and Horus. The two of them were masked, which meant, according to all the TV I had reluctantly been subjugated to, we might survive.
I was dismayed there wasn’t more security. I opened my mouth to say so but Nic gave me a look, why guard the dead? Especially since all the tomb entrances were gated and locked. Why lock in the dead? Keep animals out, keep careless tourists out. Keep murderous kidnapers out.
Like a nightmare tour where the guide insists that you see everything during a one hour stop, the men pushed and dragged us through the center of the valley to the southwest end of the West Valley finally stopping at the entrance of a tomb about fourteen feet from the valley floor. In the fading light I could just discern the sign: KV 25. The metal gate hung open as if expecting us. Damn.
My keeper pulled me up the metal stairs, making impatient noises when I stumbled. I righted myself and tried to find my footing, but he kept jerking my arm, pulling me off balance.
Nic behind me was more vocal. “I’m coming, don’t pull on me. I can’t see very well, I’m old, for Chrissake.”
His captor was as unimpressed with the protest as mine. No respect for their elders.
We plunged into the tomb following the dark narrow corridor. When Nic and his captor entered, their bodies blocked all available light. My captor stubbed his toe and swore in Italian. He fumbled for his phone and flipped on the flashlight app.
We passed the best of the wall art, protected by plates of plexiglass, ostensibly to protect the wall paintings, but the barrier ended up effectively trapping even more moisture. The moisture and salt push the paint away from the walls, like frost pushes up back-yard dirt. Just our breath, just the water content of our bodies leaches the beautifully painted tomb walls. Tourists come to see the tombs; tourists destroy the tombs. Egypt needs tourism, but tourists may not be the best answer.
Our captors were not all that concerned with our comfort or curiosity. As we moved forward the paintings faded into smooth plaster walls, ready for decorations that will never appear. No Anubis, weighing the heart against a feather, no loaded barca heading to the afterlife. No women decked out in their stiff linen gowns and stiffer headdresses. We walked past the black square entrances of side tombs and were shuffled over a plywood board bridge and into the main chamber. KV 25 wasn’t a grand tomb; in fact, it wasn’t much of a tomb at all. Which was a very bad sign. Visitors to the Valley of the Kings were currently limited to entering three tombs, which means only the most beautiful, like any tomb for a Ramses, will do. But this out-of-way tomb with a broken gate? Not so much.
We hiked in the flickering flashlight—Nic, for the first time, keeping his mouth shut.
Familiar with the idea that the reason criminals rob banks is because that’s where the money is? Forget tombs. Except for Carter’s spectacular find, there is little left in the average tomb except for the remains of the pharaohs themselves and even their remains were often ravaged for the amulets and gold folded into their wrapping linens.
And who were the robbers? Not, as you would guess, men like Belzoni or even Nic. Tomb robbers were often the very fellows who built the tomb in the first place. Who else would know where all the booby traps were placed? Who knew best how to negotiate the maze of dead-end cuts and blocked corridors than the men who built them? When I was with Nic, we excavated at one of the worker villages situated only a few kilometers from the Valley of the Queens. There Nic and his fellows found gold, masks, vases, tiny replica barcas, whips, furniture, jade, gold, and corals. All carefully concealed in tunnels under the village, tunnels that clearly lead to the valley tombs next door.
The pharaohs really did just keep on giving.
The two men pushed us onto rough cut rocks and set the phone on the edge of the empty stone sarcophagus, so the light illuminated the bare ceiling. No sign of Nut, goddess of the day and night.
Nic’s face was in shadows. We weren’t yet tied up, that was a help. But the guns the men held flashed in the light.
“Just tell me where. Where did you find the statutes?” Nic pleaded. I stole a look at him. He did not know?
“We don’t care about the statues.” The kidnapper’s voice was a bit muffled behind his mask.
I squinted in the dim light. What kind of mask was he wearing? It looked like the full head coverings favored by Mexican wrestling champions, but it was all black. With an open zipper slashed across the mouth.
Oh, good gods. All of them.
“What exactly do you want from us?”
“Be quiet, we are thinking.”
I nudged him, Nic, not my S & M aficionado. “What are you thinking?”
“That it’s amateur hour.” His face was in shadow, but he couldn’t disguise his tone.
“They may not let us go.” I finished softly. Suddenly, and I did not want this, I missed my nephews; even if I left for California within the next hour, I might not get home in time for Tina and Vince to catch their flight. What would they do without me? I had resisted Tina’s entreatments, but I loved those kids. After 9/11 they were my reason for living, and my excuse to escape the destitution of Manhattan. I wiped my eyes and for once hoped that Nic had some kind of plan.
He did not.
The other man, who also wore a fetching head covering, checked his phone. He nodded to his partner. He approached us to deliver one more fatal blow.
“This should hold you.”
He raised his arm. I closed my eyes. Nic grabbed me and pulled me to him, either to comfort me or use me as a shield, I was no longer clear on his motives. I took a breath, ready for the pain, a final blow.
And nothing.
I did not expect nothing.
A muffled scraping and a call from just outside the tomb door. I opened my eyes, my would-be executioner was still holding the small gun, but his partner had stopped him.
“Listen.” The other man spat out.
Nic released me and carefully moved to shift his feet under him. I pushed up as slowly as I could, my leg muscles screaming in protest, my back was tweaked from the awkward drive out. I flexed my toes to confirm there was still blood circulating. Would we run? Knock over the men, overpower them, wrestle the gun from their hands and in a hair flipping moment of triumph call out, Now we have you!
“They will hear you.” Nic pointed out helpfully.
The acoustics in these tombs were marvelous, a guide can talk from one long end and the last person in the tour group at the other could hear every word. A gun shot would echo from one end of the tomb to the other and inspire the armed guards to join in. They don’t need much encouragement. In my imagination, I downgraded from hair-flipping triumph to finding myself in the middle of a show down, one of those innocent victims of gun violence so popular in the US.
Nic was in full crouch now, I felt him tense, ready to jump.
I felt around for a weapon, okay, a stone; that was the dominant feature in a partially cleared tomb, rocks. I found one close. My fingers closed around it as I too started to rise.
The men looked at each other just as a shout came from the entrance. They conferred in grunts, a language I’ve heard Chris and Matt use as their own wordless communication. A guy thing, women always use words. Many, many words.
Nic almost reached full standing, but our friends were too fast. One shouted to the guards that they would be out in a minute. (At least that’s what I thought he said, my Arabic was rusty, it’s been a long time since I negotiated for oranges in the market). The other guy hit Nic so hard his h
ead sounded like a watermelon against the rock tomb wall. He slid, unconscious to the floor, his head landing on my far softer lap.
The men yelled to the guards and turned back to me. I instinctively raised my arm to ward off the blow. Too late, the man pushed me hard, just as he had Nic. I tucked my head forward, so my shoulders took the blow against the wall. I groaned for good measure and slumped over the more authentically incapacitated would-be hero.
The two men scurried out of the tomb taking the light with them. As soon as the light disappeared, I opened my eyes and listened, rolling my shoulders. My hand hurt; I probably ruined my manicure. It would take weeks of PT to work out the damage to my back. But I was in one piece.
From the entrance there was a lot of noisy shouting and yelling, but that could have just been conversation. I listened absently stroking Nic’s poor head. The guns were not engaged, the shouts reduced to murmurs. There was likely an exchange of cash and unfortunately for us, an escort off the premises. I waited. Yes. The bang of the gate, the click of the lock.
I took a breath. We were trapped.
Only after counting to a million did I feel it was prudent to move towards the entrance. I nudged Nic, but he was still out. Should I stay or should I go? I didn’t want to hang out in the recesses of the tomb, not when I could press against the entrance gate and scream for assistance, spooking the hell out of the guards. I pulled my phone from my jeans and turned on the flashlight. Nic’s head was bleeding, but his eyes fluttered. I trained the light right in his face, resisting the urge to slap him awake. He groaned, a better rendition of pain than my groan and his eyes fluttered. He frowned against the bright light, I set down the phone and raised my hand to help him.
He blocked my hand. “I’m good. Stop helping me.”
I touched his head. He winced.
“You’re bleeding. But head wounds always bleed a lot.” Copiously, actually. Matt once somersaulted off the bunk bed and smacked his head on the dresser. There was a lot of blood. Once we were through dragging him, and his hysterical brother to the emergency room, the bedroom looked like a kindergarten massacre, which used to be an exaggeration.
After I'm Buried Alive Page 20