The Case of the Golden Greeks

by Sean McLachlan

  “It’s just so … empty. All day it’s been like this.”

  “Quite a change after Cairo,” Moustafa agreed. “I suppose you have never been this far into the desert before.”

  The boy shook his head.

  “Personally I think it’s wonderful,” Mr. Wall said. He lay on his back in one of the lean-tos, smoking a cigarette. “No people. No one to bother you. Perhaps I should move here.”

  “You’d be bored to death within a day!” Faisal laughed.

  Moustafa smiled. The little brat wasn’t so foolish. For someone who put on the airs of hating all humanity, Mr. Wall certainly had a full social life. If only he wasn’t so fixated on Mrs. Hanzade. She was an exquisite woman, to be sure, but a married one. Why did his boss torture himself so?

  Accepting a tea from Farouk—strong and thick with sugar the way the Bedouin liked it—he pulled out one of the books that Herr Schäfer had loaned him.

  It was a history of the Ptolemaic dynasty, those great descendants of Ptolemy, Alexander the Great’s childhood friend and right-hand man. Ptolemy had joined in Alexander’s campaign in Egypt and when the conqueror traveled to Siwa Oasis to consult with the oracle of Amun-Re and be named a living god and the new pharaoh, Ptolemy was named as a son of Zeus. After Alexander’s death in 323 BC, his vast empire, only a few years old, held together for a time but inevitably split. Ptolemy got Egypt, and used his divine pedigree as proof that he should reign.

  And reign he did. For the first time, Egypt began to look outward. The city on the Mediterranean that Alexander had named after himself became a center of Hellenistic culture and learning. People from all over the civilized world came to see it, and it exported not only the vast grain shipments that made Egypt so important, but also science and poetry and literature.

  Ptolemy’s successors were good rulers, for a time, but like all dynasties it began to deteriorate, with corrupt and profligate kings and much familial infighting. There were a few bright spots, including the brightest spot of all, that of the last ruler Cleopatra VII, who became as much a legend as Alexander himself.

  It was an era he knew little about, and yet it spanned three centuries of Egyptian history. Moustafa thrilled to every page. He’d had an insatiable thirst for learning ever since he was as young and as ignorant as Faisal. Leaving his village had been the hardest, and most rewarding, thing he had ever done.

  If only this book had more information on the archaeology of the period. Herr Schäfer had been correct when he said it was an era that had been overlooked by generations of Egyptologists. He supposed it was only natural. Those scholars interested in Classical antiquities had half of Europe to explore. Egyptologists, and the institutions that sponsored them, wanted gold mummy cases and alabaster statues. Only the historians appreciated what Ptolemy and his successors had achieved.

  The other two books Herr Schäfer had loaned him were equally limited. One described the antiquities of Alexandria, but focused on the more Egyptian monuments such as the Serapeum, that great underground tomb for the sacred Apis bulls. The other summarized many of the stray Greek and Roman finds scattered throughout the country, but gave far more space to the essentially Classical-style statues that had been found in Egypt rather than those artifacts that showed a fusion of Classical and Egyptian styles.

  He would change that, Moustafa decided. He would write an article on some aspect of the Greco-Roman period. Professor Harrell’s work had been left incomplete after his murder. There was much to be done, and ironically the public killing of the pioneer in the field would spark public interest and enthusiasm.

  Those mummies had been fascinating, with a level of craftsmanship hitherto unknown in Greco-Roman burials. Professor Harrell had said they dated from the late Ptolemaic Period into the early years of the Roman occupation. Perhaps he should concentrate his research on those. He wondered what had happened to the examples Professor Harrell had found. No doubt they were in storage somewhere in Cairo, out of reach to an African like him. He’d have to see if he could find some in Bahariya to bring back. Focusing on the gilded mummies would be pandering to the public taste, something unworthy in a scholar, but it would help him get published, and he could include other finds in his article.

  Mohammed al-Biwati leaned over and looked at the book with obvious distaste.

  “Why do you read such things?”

  “It tells of the history of Egypt. It was a great nation once and can be so again.”

  Moustafa glanced at his boss as he said this, but the man appeared to be dozing. Faisal was listening, though, sipping his tea and staring at him.

  Mohammed al-Biwati pointed at an engraving of a nude statue. “This is forbidden. You shouldn’t make images of people, and certainly not shameful images like this. Don’t let the boy see.”

  “See what?” Faisal asked, moving closer.

  “Nothing,” Moustafa said, snapping the book shut. He turned back to the Bedouin. “These images are not harmful. The Koran says that we should not set up graven images. What God meant by that was putting up idols to worship like the pagans. This is merely a drawing of an old sculpture.”

  “One of the very same idols the pagans used to worship, and here it is in a book, being read by a Muslim! The only books you should read are the Koran and the Hadith.”

  Moustafa shook his head and didn’t reply. How could he explain to an uneducated man that one could be faithful to one’s beliefs and still look at such things with detachment? It wasn’t like being a scholar was going to turn Moustafa into a worshipper of Apollo or Thoth!

  And yet Mohammed al-Biwati’s words still stung. He had heard them many times before from many mouths. Everyone judged him for what he was, Muslim and foreigner alike.

  He looked from the book in his hand to the vast desert beyond. Why couldn’t he love both?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Faisal was already missing his little home on the Englishman’s roof. He had fixed it up really nice just a few days ago but now here he was in the middle of the desert.

  The money he had made from hawking the silverware had bought him lots of food. He had been feasting ever since.

  During his feasts on the roof he fumbled with the unfamiliar fork. He stood in the street in front of Shepheard’s Hotel and watched how the Europeans did it, and then tried to imitate them. He still hadn’t gotten the hang of it. He knew it was silly to keep these things he didn’t need when he could have gotten some money for them, but they made him feel good. After every meal, he used a clean cloth and some water to shine them up, holding them up to the strong sunlight and watching how they gleamed.

  They were nice things. He had never owned any nice things before. He had never expected to have any nice things. He had sure never expected to have any nice European things. They made him feel special somehow, holding them in his hands and sitting on the cushion in front of a box like it was a chair and a table in some fine European dining room.

  Faisal urged his camel forward to catch up with the Englishman and Moustafa. He was beginning to get better at ordering the camel around. It was a lot easier to handle now that it was out in the desert. It acted calmer here.

  “Hey Englishman, why do the Europeans all eat with knives and forks instead of their hands? And why do the Arabs eat with their hands and not with knives and forks?”

  “I don’t know. That’s just how things turned out.”

  “Are knives and forks better?”

  “For eating our kind of food, yes.”

  “Those pastries were nice. I haven’t eaten any other European food.”

  “They’re called scones. Don’t you remember eating that chocolate cake in the German house?”

  “Oh yes. That was nice too.”

  He remembered the gunfight in the German house more than the cake. And he remembered seeing for the first time the Englishman go away in his head. That hadn’t been so nice.

  Remembering that reminded him of why they were out here.

  “Do
you think the flute player went to the oasis on an earlier caravan?” Faisal asked.

  “Most likely,” the Englishman said. “There’s something there he’s after. That’s why he killed Professor Harrell, to keep him from divulging the secret.”

  “Divulging? What does that mean?”

  “Giving away the secret.”

  “Is that an English word?”

  “He’s speaking Arabic, you blockhead!” Moustafa called over.

  “How can he know more Arabic than I do?” Faisal asked.

  “Because he’s an educated man instead of an ignorant Little Infidel,” Moustafa growled.

  “I’m not ignorant. I’m the only one who knows what the flute player looks like.”

  “How many times to I have to tell you he isn’t a flute player!” the Nubian shouted. “That wasn’t a flute, that was a blowgun that shot poison darts.”

  “Yes, a blowgun is what a flute is when you use it to shoot darts. Everybody knows that.”

  “Bah! I give up!” Moustafa kicked his camel to make it trot further up the line.

  Faisal giggled. Teasing Moustafa was fun, and it was good for him to think Faisal was ignorant. Of course he knew that killer wasn’t really a flute player. The Englishman had explained it all that very same night. Faisal was smart and nobody knew it. That was good because everybody underestimated him, like when he said he had to pay the shoeshine boy a piastre when he really only paid him half a piastre. Faisal got to keep the other half.

  “Must you torment him so?” the Englishman asked.

  Faisal put on an innocent face. “What did I do wrong?”

  “You pretended to be ignorant. You should never do that. There’s enough ignorance in the world as it is.”

  Faisal thought for a moment. Was the Englishman saying he was intelligent? He had never been called that before.

  “Hey Englishman, do you think I’m—”

  “Good Lord, Faisal, are you going to badger me with questions all the way to Bahariya?”

  Faisal slumped. “No.”

  “What did you want to know?” The Englishman asked in an exasperated voice.

  “Nothing.”

  The Englishman didn’t ask again.

  Faisal looked at his blue djellaba, still almost new. Edmond had given him it to him. Of course he had only given it to him as a disguise to break into the Citadel, but he had given it to him all the same. He had even bought one that was better than the cheapest.

  Edmond had never gotten impatient with him for asking questions. Faisal had asked him about France, and the gang that called themselves Apaches after the tribe in America, and about the strange religion Edmond called anarchism. Edmond had answered all his questions. He never seemed to get tired of answering his questions.

  But Edmond had used him to try and hurt people, good people like the Englishman. He tried to hurt Cordelia too. Cordelia wasn’t a bad person as long as she stayed away from the Englishman. Edmond was no different than a lot of the thugs who prowled the streets of Cairo, thugs he had learned to avoid.

  And if he missed Edmond and thought of him as a friend, what did that make him?

  These thoughts went round and round in his head like a swarm of midges, never stopping, never settling down to an answer.

  But after a while he found himself thinking less and less of these things, because the vast space and silence of the desert began to get to him. Up one side of a dune, down another. Sand dunes stretching as far as he could see in all directions. The sky overhead. Blue. Brown. Blazing yellow from the sun. No other colors. No other shapes. Faisal found himself looking at his hand, or the saddle or his camel’s head, anything that had a bit of texture and coloring to it. Anything that had a bit of life.

  This was a scary place. He didn’t know how to survive here. If everybody left him he would be dead within a day, that was for sure. When his father disappeared, Faisal had already been living more on the street than at home, so when he had to move to the street all the time he had figured out how to survive. Sure, he had been beaten. He had been robbed. But he had survived. There was no way to do that here. The desert was bigger than every bully in Cairo put together, and had far less pity. You could run from a bully, or bribe them, or flatter them to please their arrogance.

  You could do none of those things with the desert.

  The sun dipped low to the west and the Bedouin stopped and pitched camp. They unloaded the camels, hobbled them, and stacked the saddles and packs in a big pile. Faisal watched all this, interested. The Englishman made a pile of their own things and Faisal sat on it. He looked for stones but couldn’t find any, so he kept a hold of the stick he used to drive the camel.

  The Bedouin made a fire out of dried camel dung and started making tea. Faisal had learned that was one of the ways the Bedouin knew they were on the right course, by the dried droppings of the camels that had passed before them.

  Moustafa set out some blankets for himself and showed Faisal which pack held more.

  “Get several,” the Nubian said. “It gets very cold in the desert at night.”

  “Try sleeping in an alley.”

  “You wouldn’t have to sleep in an alley if you stopped being lazy and got a job! Then you could have a house to live in.”

  Moustafa stormed off. Faisal stuck out his tongue at him.

  I do have a job, Faisal thought. And I do have a house.

  The Englishman moved a little away from the fire and set up a tent.

  “Are we going to sleep in that?” Faisal called over.

  “You’ll be fine under the stars,” the Englishman said, putting his things inside.

  Moustafa stormed back over to him. “Why are you bothering him?”

  “I’m not!”

  “You think you’re too good to sleep by the fire with the rest of us?”

  “Well, why doesn’t he?”

  “Because he values his privacy.”

  Faisal remembered the time he had seen the Englishman without his mask and shuddered.

  “It looks terrible,” he whispered to the Nubian, “but he shouldn’t think we’re not his friends just because he’s missing half his face.”

  Moustafa smacked him upside the head.

  “He is not your friend.”

  “He is so! He’s your friend too.”

  “Nonsense. He’s my boss.”

  “He’s only your boss at the shop. You came all the way out into the desert because he’s your friend. The cleaning lady didn’t come, did she?”

  “Quiet, you ignorant scamp.”

  Moustafa walked off, grumbling.

  Faisal hung around the fire as the Bedouin made tea. They ignored him, but he knew he’d get some of that tea because they worked for the Englishman, and so did he. When it came it was hot and sweet, heaped with sugar. Faisal slurped his tea, feeling quite content. Moustafa joined them and this time he didn’t shout at him. Instead he looked around the desert with a dreamy expression. After a time, the Englishman joined them too. He sat quietly, sipping his tea. Faisal wanted to ask him all sorts of questions about their trip and where they were going, but everyone was so quiet he didn’t want to disturb them.

  The whole desert was quiet. He had never been someplace so silent. There was always noise in Cairo, even in the middle of the night. You could always hear people talking in the street, or market vendors trundling carts across the cobblestones, or some baby crying or some husband and wife screaming at each other. Then there were the dogs barking and the cats howling. You were never alone in the city. You could always hear lots of things happening around you.

  Here all you heard was a strange hissing sound. He looked around and didn’t see where it came from. It seemed like it was all around them.

  “What’s that noise?” he asked.

  “Just the wind moving the sands,” Moustafa said.

  Faisal nodded. That made sense. During the summer windstorms in Cairo the dirt on the street made a noise a bit like that.

&nbs
p; The Englishman got up, nodded to Farouk, and went to his tent.

  One of the Bedouin, a wizened, thin man with a pointed beard beginning to grow grey, poked Faisal in the ribs.

  “Only some of that is the sand moving in the wind.”

  Faisal looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  The Bedouin, whose name was Mohammed al-Biwati, leaned in closer. His breath was stinky.

  “Some of that noise is the djinn talking to each other.”

  Faisal trembled. “No!”

  Mohammed al-Biwati nodded, his face growing serious. “That’s their language, a hissing like a cobra. Hear them? Hsssss. Hsssss.”

  “Stop it,” Moustafa said. “You’re putting nonsense into the boy’s head.”

  “It is not nonsense,” Mohammed al-Biwati said. “I know the desert better than you, my Nubian friend. The djinn fly in between the grains of sand and swirl up around travelers in the desert.” He turned back to Faisal. “They look for people to take away to the City of Brass, far, far away in the middle of the desert. There they make them work as slaves for all time. They especially like city dwellers, because they are easier to catch, and most of all they like young boys.”

  “Enough!” Moustafa shouted. The Bedouin all laughed.

  “I’m not afraid,” Faisal said, although his voice trembled as he said it. “I have a charm against djinn.”

  He pulled out the pendant Khadija umm Mohammed had sold him just before he left. It was a smooth green stone that was bright and shiny like glass, although you couldn’t see through it. Strange symbols were etched on its surface.

  Mohammed al-Biwati studied it, then turned to Farouk. “What do you think of this?”

  Moustafa cut in, “I think it’s base superstition and the boy wasted his money.”

  “I’ve gotten rid of lots of djinn with Khadija umm Mohammed’s charms,” Faisal said.

  Farouk nodded. “It does look like a good charm. I think if you’re lucky you will still be here in the morning …” he glanced at Mohammed al-Biwati.