The scribes were always men. I knew that my father’s decision was an act of courage and love: teaching a girl to read and write. That was why, after I grew up and got married, I could do something very good: writing the words of the hymns I made up and sang myself. Playing, singing and dancing was part of girls’ education. It was like sewing and embroidering. But reading and writing? Very few could do it. I thank my father.
I have never felt so important as on the day when I could write my own name and, when it was done, trace firmly the cartouche, the rounded frame we use around people’s names, to protect it. You cannot do it now on your computer. But if you would like to see, I will leave you a link here. Just visit the website and browse until you find my name, ‘Nefertiti’.
Someone is playing a weird joke on me, thought Sonia. She decided it was best not to mention this to anyone, but instead wait to see if the joker would show up again.
But there was nothing to stop her from following the link, which was to the website for some museum, the Egyptology section. More specifically, it was about Egyptian writing.
The webpage had a whole lot of stuff about hieroglyphics, the symbols used for writing in ancient Egypt. There was a list with lots of little drawings and their corresponding sounds in modern languages. And there were some more general explanations, such as the information about how names of people were circled with an oval-shaped frame, or rather a rectangular frame with rounded edges, with a straight line on the base. The so-called cartouche. Just as the message that Sonia had got had described.
Then she saw something that made her curious. On a corner of the page, there was a sentence that read: Do you want to see how some famous names were spelled? Click here!
She clicked and up came a list: Cleopatra, Ptolemy, Rameses, Tutankhamun, Tutmes … and there in the middle, as if it were winking at her, Nefertiti. Sonia selected and clicked again. The screen showed:
This must be some brainy joker! Sonia was definitely not going to make a fool of herself by telling the others about this, but she was curious now to know who was trying to have fun at her expense.
3 – The Brainy Joker Strikes Again
‘Bye, I’m running late!’
Sonia’s older sister, Andrea, was rushing to catch her lift to work. ‘Colin will be here any minute now.’
It was the same thing every morning. The alarm clock would ring but Andrea didn’t get up right away. She stayed in bed for ages, snoozing and stretching. Then, all of a sudden, it was like someone had plugged Andrea in. She would sprint into the bathroom, turn on some upbeat music, take a shower, get dressed in minutes and would be running from one place to another without even having time to sit down and have her breakfast properly. She would swallow half a glass of milk and rush out with a biscuit or a piece of fruit in her hand to get her lift with Colin to Dr Barry’s law firm. You’d think it was the most desirable job in the world, in the most important company on the planet, but actually she was just an intern.
This morning, though, Andrea took a moment to catch her breath before running out the door. She turned to her two sisters, who were sitting at the table, and said, ‘By the way, Sonia, I’ve been meaning to tell you for days and keep forgetting, I think your computer has a virus.’
Sonia was running late too but, unlike her sister, she was still half-asleep at the table. She couldn’t understand how Andrea could be this electric when she woke up, talking her head off. Sonia was much slower: she woke up gradually, slow and steady.
But this piece of information woke her up all right. A virus? Oh, no! Let’s hope it isn’t true, or at least let it be nothing too serious. Her computer had never been infected by a virus, but she’d heard some awful stories. She would have to call Pedro so he could reformat the hard drive, like he’d done with Matt’s computer when he’d had problems. Pedro was great with technology. Come to think of it, calling Pedro for help was really an excellent idea, even if there turned out to be no virus. It was a good excuse to get him to come to her house.
She took a little sip of her tea. Ah, good. It was finally at the temperature she liked: not so hot that it burned your tongue, not so cold that it tasted bad. Just right.
She sighed and thought about Pedro again. Or still.
This had been happening a lot lately. She kept catching herself thinking about Pedro. Like the tea, he too was just right. But what should you do when you find out that your best friend, your classmate for years, is suddenly more to you than just a friend? A new boy would be easier – there’s an exchange of looks, some flirting. It becomes clear to both people. It’s part of what everybody expects: two people meet, like each other, things can happen. But what about somebody who’s been in your class your whole life, since your first day at school? It’s hard to change all of a sudden.
Maybe she would need that thing they had been talking about the other day in literature class: a new image, seeing the familiar in a fresh way, the kind of thing advertisers are good at.
‘… but on ours?’ Carol’s voice interrupted Sonia’s thoughts.
‘What did you say?’ Sonia asked her little sister.
‘You were really in another world, weren’t you? It’s like you don’t care about what your sisters have to say.’
‘Don’t start, Carol. What do my sisters have to do with anything?’
‘Everything! Your older sister just said our computer has a virus. And your younger sister has been asking how she even knows that? Andrea shouldn’t be messing around with our stuff. She’s got her own computer.’
That was true. The family had a better, newer, faster computer that, in theory, they all shared in their dad’s study. But Andrea had taken it over. All that was left for the two younger sisters was the old PC, which had been put in their room. It really was a dinosaur and took hours downloading anything. But there was an advantage: it belonged to the two of them and them alone. Andrea didn’t need to use it. Apart from the family computer, she also had a computer at the company where she was doing work experience. And her boyfriend was always offering to let her use his laptop. So why on earth had she been sticking her nose into their computer?
‘Fair enough,’ said Sonia. ‘You’re right. I’ll have to ask Andrea about that.’
‘Not just ask,’ Carol corrected her. ‘You need to give her a good telling off.’
‘OK, leave it to me. I’ll have a serious talk with Andrea. I’ll do it today.’
It wasn’t until the next day that Sonia got a chance to speak to Andrea, however, because Andrea was late home that evening. So they didn’t meet again until the following morning, once again over breakfast at the kitchen table. Sonia would have forgotten all about it, she was so sleepy in the mornings, but Carol wouldn’t let it go.
‘Andrea, Sonia wants to talk to you about our computer.’
That seemed to set Andrea off. She started gabbling.
‘I’m glad you brought this up. I’ve been wanting to have this out with you two. Computers are not kids’ toys, you know, and they’re expensive. If you have a problem, you should call technical support right away.’
The conversation was not going the way Carol had planned. The two younger girls could hardly get a word in edgeways, and it was all the wrong way around. The one who was doing the telling off was Andrea. That wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
‘At first I thought it was just nonsense,’ Andrea was babbling on, ‘a stupid virus, because of those weird little symbols that appeared on the screen. That’s why I said that thing yesterday morning. Only later, when I got to the office and started revising the terms of a petition with Colin, he noticed something strange and asked me what that was doing in the middle of my work. I was so embarrassed! There I was, concentrating on serious stuff, work stuff, and looking like a fool … I had this really well-grounded argument, based on a long history of jurisprudence and case histories, and then in the middle of it comes all this rubbish from you girls. Colin was really sweet about it, but of course he thought it
was weird. Frankly, girls …’
‘Can you explain exactly what happened?’ Sonia was trying to sound focused.
Putting her empty glass on the table and getting ready to leave, Andrea said, ‘I spent days researching this stuff. I went to a lot of trouble. I even found precedents for our argument in ancient Roman law, in Hammurabi’s code …’
Whose code? Sonia had never heard of the guy.
‘… in lots of places, and then there was all that childish nonsense scattered in the middle of it. It was lucky that Colin noticed it before we handed it all to Dr Barry, otherwise …’
While she was talking, Andrea was fussing with her folder. She shuffled a few sheets of paper, then took two pages and left them on the kitchen counter, putting the sugar bowl on top of them so they wouldn’t fly away. Before either of her younger sisters had time to say anything, she had already picked an apple out of the basket on the table and was standing on the threshold, about to sink her teeth into the fruit and disappear from sight on her way to work.
She snapped, ‘I should have thrown it away, of course. I just kept it out of the goodness of my heart. There it is. I’m in a hurry. Bye!’
And she was gone.
‘You didn’t even ask what she was doing on our computer!’ Carol complained. ‘She can’t just –’
‘Shut up, Carol,’ Sonia interrupted, getting up slowly and walking to the counter.
Carol was used to Sonia’s foul mood in the mornings so she didn’t say anything, but she was surprised to see her sister getting up and picking up the sheets of paper. Kind of looking like a zombie, it’s true. Still, she was moving a lot more than usual for that time of the morning.
Sonia sat down with the pages in her hand and examined them carefully. On the first page was a list. A shopping list, perhaps, but quite weird. There were some insane items, some crazy amounts and some nonsense prices in a very strange currency. But it couldn’t be a shopping list. Nobody writes down the price of something in order to remember to buy it. So what could this list be for?
30 sheep
20 packs of Anatolian wool
2 combs for wool
2 hair combs
3 wooden spoons
2 wooden looms
1 wooden container full of spindles
15 good quality cloths
Carol was on tenterhooks, but Sonia read in silence. She didn’t say a word, intrigued with the whole thing. Combs for wool and hair combs? What on earth was that? Perhaps somebody wanted to comb a sheep? Or comb the yarn made on one of those wooden looms?
She moved on to the next page. There was a message like that Egyptian one that had appeared in the history project: no sign of being an email and no letterhead this time either. This time, it started with the kind of language Andrea used at her work. But it soon changed:
Once again I apologise for the intrusion and insistence. However, I hope that with the repetition of this procedure I may count on your understanding.
It gives me great satisfaction to verify that our juridic model continues to interest you, even after such a length of time. We are all very proud of the codification work that the great king Hammurabi, shepherd of our salvation, has done by gathering in writing the laws that bind us, so as to orient the strict discipline and good conduct of our people.
But I would like to tell you something of which I am deeply proud: I am a woman and a commoner, but I too can write. This is my personal pride. I do not know how to use the complicated terms of the codes (or did not know, but now, in these ethereal waves, any scribe absorbs every language around, in a virtual state, so I can attempt it). I have never had the scribe profession, mother of eloquence, father of knowledge, a delight from which one never gets tired, to quote a poem written to its glory. I have learned, however, the basic concepts and could always form in the clay tablets the essential words of my role.
When my husband left in a caravan to do business with merchants from other lands, I was the one in charge of writing the messages necessary for his commercial contracts, and also the one who kept in order all the accounting from our business, especially that which referred to the textiles. I was the one who reminded him of exactly which merchandise another merchant was taking in the caravan and still owed us money for, for example.
That must be what the list was about, Sonia thought. Something to do with keeping track of the goods for sale.
And I was not the only one. A few other women also did this – after all, we were the ones who have always woven and understood textiles and yarns. It was our production. It has always been so. This is why, among our people – who invented writing before anyone else, it’s worth remembering – several feminine hands learned to use the different kinds of reed we needed. Sharp for scratching, with a triangular tip to engrave the characters in the soft clay, or with a round tip for the numbers.
But none of this matters now. My knowledge grows and transforms into any writing that may reach you by computer. Today I wished to show you that I can write and how happy this makes me. A happiness that remains throughout the centuries, even though I myself do not write codes and understand that it is merely research that brings you close to me now, from a time in which women can study codes, write laws or judge.
That was it. There was nothing more. Maybe there had been another page, which Andrea had not kept. Maybe not.
Once again, what Sonia had in front of her was not exactly a letter or an email, but a message from someone who addressed the reader directly. But this communication didn’t seem to be from Nefertiti or have anything to do with Egypt. Instead, it was full of all that stuff about lawyers and codes and said something about this Hammurabi person that Andrea had also mentioned. Why?
The Brainy Joker had clearly struck again. But there were new clues here. Sonia was more curious than ever now. She would definitely talk to Pedro about this and ask for his help.
4 – A Clue – Maybe
‘You know something? This sounds like a virus – and possibly one I’ve come across before.’
Sonia was doubly happy when she heard Pedro say that. She had just told him she’d been getting these weird messages through her computer that seemed to be coming from someone claiming to be from another era. She had been half afraid her friend would laugh at her and not take it seriously. So it was a relief to hear that someone else had come up against something like this before. And it was really good that Pedro had some experience of a virus like this. That might help.
Before she even had time to invite him to her house to see the computer, he was already offering.
‘Can I come over and take a look?’
‘Of course you can. Any time you like!’
‘I’m really curious,’ Pedro said. ‘Maybe I can get a better grasp of it this time. Last time, I didn’t get anywhere with it.’
‘Oh, what happened?’
‘Luckily, the problem disappeared out of the blue, just as randomly as it had appeared. I didn’t even get a chance to show it to the school’s IT support guys.’
‘But why would you want to show it to the school?’ asked Sonia, mystified.
‘Because it was on one of the PCs in the computer lab at school that I came across it. Didn’t I say that already?’
No, he had not. And there were other things that Pedro had not explained either, that came out bit by bit as they talked.
He explained that the problem had happened at Garibaldi High School, on one of the shared computers in the lab. Those PCs never rested. Dozens of kids took turns on them for schoolwork.
‘But what exactly happened?’ she asked.
He countered with another question: ‘Do you know Robbie?’
‘Of course, Pedro, who doesn’t know Robbie?’
Robbie was not a student at their school, but everyone there knew him. One of the things about Garibaldi High that the school was especially proud of were the after-hours community classes taught by the students themselves to underprivileged kids. The school made the
classrooms available and students volunteered to teach classes in the subjects they were good at (such as the piano or French or maths – Sonia taught history on Wednesdays), while the school’s regular teachers gave them support.
The idea was for the students to do voluntary work in an extracurricular activity that would look good on their CVs later on, while helping out young people who lived in a neighbourhood where the schools were not so well funded by the government. Robbie worked part-time in the school cafeteria and was one of Sonia’s students in her Wednesday history class – a good student, it had to be said. In addition to that, he was an excellent football player and was often seen playing with the students in the Garibaldi High gymnasium. Every now and then, when they played a match against another school, the PE teachers would sneak Robbie in to play for the school’s team. Then they would all head out together to celebrate the victory or forget the defeat. So Robbie was practically a celebrity in the school, although he wasn’t technically a Garibaldi student.
‘Well, the problem with the school computer actually happened with Robbie,’ Pedro was saying. ‘He had a new song and wanted to print a few copies of the lyrics for the rest of the band.’
That made sense, because not only was he a good football player, Robbie was also a songwriter and he hosted a council-supported internet radio show – he had been writing some wicked rap songs lately.
‘So he asked me to take the lyrics home with me,’ Pedro continued, ‘type them up and print out a few copies for him. But I thought we could just use the computer lab in the school. That would be quicker and more practical, so I asked Joe and he said that was OK.
‘Robbie is not exactly a computer whizz, though. He doesn’t own a computer and he gets some of the commands muddled up sometimes, so I thought it would be good to stay with him while he was doing it.’
Sonia nodded. She wished he would get to the point, but at the same time, she liked listening to his voice.
The History Mystery Page 2