Egypt Rising

by Stan Schatt

  I banked everything on his cooperation. Without wanting it to happen, a tear ran down my cheek although I hated myself for it. I almost never cry. How could you be an archeologist and cry when something didn’t go right? Dad never did, and I planned to be just like him.

  Mister Thornton took out a monogrammed handkerchief and handed it to me. It was so soft I felt my fingers sinking into it. He waited until I had wiped my eyes and stopped crying.

  “Is this Abdul—one of the troublemakers who incited the demonstrations?”

  I had to give that question some thought. I didn’t want to lie to Mister Thornton, but I also promised Aasuma I would help. I mentally crossed my fingers and told myself he really wasn’t that bad, at least compared to Neguib.

  “He’s a big talker, but I don’t think he’s capable of hurting a fly. He’s just a boy who’s full of hot air.”

  Mister Thornton took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. He studied his well-manicured nails before speaking.

  “The secret police can be very difficult. I’ll see what I can do. Write down the names of the boy and his family and their address. I can’t promise anything, but I will make some phone calls.”

  I hugged him. His arms were surprisingly strong, and they gripped me tightly but with a gentleness that revealed that he didn’t want to hurt me. Everything about him was classy. He even smelled classy. His cologne was faint but really nice. His suit felt soft. How could such a nice man be Taylor’s father?

  I had composed myself by the time I returned to the underground parking structure. Mister El Haziz didn’t ask me any questions, so the ride back to my apartment was very quiet. I thought about my conversation. Rumors were that Tom Thornton visited the Presidential Palace regularly. Some people believed he even invested money for President Mubarak himself. If anyone could help, he could. He had to help. Abdul was a jerk, but he didn’t deserve to be tortured or killed. I remembered how Mrs. Nur had cried uncontrollably as the soldiers dragged him way.

  I felt hopeful. Still, I got this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. It’s the same feeling Dad says he gets just before something awful happens. My stomach never is wrong.

  Chapter Three

  Mister El Haziz stopped the car right in front of my apartment and watched me as I entered the lobby. I looked back and saw a dark colored sedan that I remembered was parked in front of the school. I saw a man dressed in black. When he saw me looking at him, he pulled out a cell phone and started talking. I shivered. Maybe he planned to kidnap me. I decided to look for the same car tomorrow. If it followed us, I’d tell Mister El Haziz. I knew it was easy to follow us because my schedule never changed.

  I walked into the lobby where Andaf Fawny always ruled. Every apartment building had a man responsible, a position known as the bowab. My bowab was a small, heavily wrinkled man with a perpetual smile on his face. Although I towered over him, I knew he was very strong. I saw him lift crates that weighed more than he did.

  His only goal in life in his position as bowab for the building was to ensure his customers’ comfort with little concern for his own. He sat on a high, wooden stool that gave him a view of the entire lobby. Papers, mail for his customers, and assorted food packages filled his desk. I heard some residents even persuaded the man to take their dogs for walks. Sometimes I wondered if he slept at his post because, no matter what time I went into the lobby, he always was there.

  I stopped, opened my backpack, and pulled out two paperback novels and handed them to him.

  “These are for Fatma.”

  I knew Mister Fawny lived in a section of Cairo known as “Garbage City” reserved for the city’s poorest residents, the Zabbaleen, or garbage workers. Dad explained that residents in that area lived among the heaps of garbage they brought back from their work. They spent most of their time sorting the garbage and selling what they could. Apparently, Mister Fawny was a success story, one of the few residents of that slum who found work other than as a garbage collector. I heard reports in school that Garbage City was not even safe in the daytime. I wondered about Mister Fawny’s family. Once the bowab confided to me that, by some miracle, his teenaged daughter had learned English and loved to read books written in that language.

  I knew Mister Fawny was much too poor to buy such things, so I made it a regular habit to give the man my novels for Fatma once I finished them.

  “It is too much. I cannot accept these.” I knew Mister Fawny had his pride. I’d have to think like an Egyptian to allow him to save face and yet still accept the books.

  “It is a gift for Fatma. You told me she was having a birthday soon.”

  Mister Fawny smiled. It was a smile that said I am glad you understand how things must work. He looked down at his desk and then placed something on the counter.

  “This is for you.”

  He handed me a large piece of basbousa. My mouth watered as I smelled the spices and the sugar. The pastry was cut in the shape of a diamond and covered with almonds. I picked it up and began eating it. I know, it probably was a zillion calories, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “Thank you for this lovely gift,” I said.

  His honor satisfied, Mister Fawny smiled and swept the books onto his desk. I had no idea when Fatma would see the books. Mister Fawny was never anxious to go home. I tried to imagine what his home must be like. I pictured a small hole in a mound of garbage and shuddered.

  I rode the creaky elevator up to the fifth floor apartment where I’d lived my entire life. I put down my backpack and stared out the window at the normal chaos that passed for Cairo traffic. Cairo had a strange regulation. It taxed residents at the full rate if their buildings were completed and not in the process of being built or remodeled. As a result, most buildings in view looked unfinished. Many apartments had scaffolding attached while others had patches on their roofs with tiles piled up waiting to be installed.

  A key turning in the lock interrupted my thoughts. I saw Mrs. Sadam step into the kitchen and place the evening meal in the refrigerator. I returned my attention to the window, lost in thought. I didn’t realize that my fingers clutched the peridot amulet on the necklace I wore under my blouse.

  The ancient Egyptians had called this stone the “gem of the sun” and thought it possessed the power to break evil spells. Dad had found it on a dig in an area that he thought was close to where the ancient library might be hidden.

  In a very sharp break from everything Dad believed in, he had opted to give the necklace to me with specific orders that I must wear it under my clothes. It was illegal to remove antiquities from a dig. Certainly, the Deputy Minister of the Supreme Council of Antiquities would have required a sizable bribe to allow him to keep the jewelry.

  The gem apparently triggered something deep within Dad, who usually followed the archeologist’s creed of never taking souvenirs. Perhaps the gem’s brilliant green color reminded him of descriptions he had read about the mysterious Emerald Tablets that he spent much of his life hunting.

  I went to the Egyptian Museum with Aasuma one rainy Saturday and spent a couple of hours in the gem room looking at dozens of Peridot stones, some of which had belonged to Pharaohs. None matched my amulet’s beautiful shade of green, nor did they shine as brightly. My stone captured sunlight and then reflected it as if it were alive. In any case, Dad and I kept the secret, and I loved the necklace. Somehow touching it whenever I felt troubled brought me comfort.

  I knew it was just my imagination, but sometimes in the dark when I rubbed the stone, it grew warm and glowed. I ran my fingers against the stone while I waited for Dad to come home. It would not be an easy conversation. Sometimes he still treated me like a child.

  Dad came home on time and famished. I took one look at his flushed face and decided it was not a good idea to ask him if anything was wrong. He hated it whenever I openly worried about his health. He was short of breath lately and had trouble sleeping. He complained of pains, but wouldn’t be specific. I warmed the food, and then w
e ate silently, each lost in our thoughts.

  “The kushari has a bit too much garlic. I’ll tell Mrs. Sadat to use less next time,” I said.

  It seemed like a safe topic. Dad didn’t reply. His eyes were locked on something in the far distance.

  I saw Dad was distracted. It was not a good time to bring up Tiffany and Taylor’s actions in class or Abdul’s abduction, particularly because I didn’t want to mention Mister Thornton. I turned to another topic I thought was safe and reminded him that I’d seen the Minister of Antiquities and the exchange of the envelope.

  “How can he do that and still look you in the eye? It’s terrible!”

  “It’s the way things are done here. You shouldn’t be judgmental. No one here is paid enough to live on, so they have to make ends meet by squeezing anyone they can. It’s been that way since the first Pharaohs. Doctor Fayez’s position really amounts to a hunting license.”

  We continued talking about inconsequential matters as if neither one of us wanted to talk about anything important. After dinner, I reluctantly agreed to do some translating for Dad, although I knew it wasn’t a good idea. It never went smoothly. He interrupted me shortly after I started.

  “Pay attention and try again.”

  Dad spoke without anger, but he clearly was irritated at my lack of precision. I knew I read hieroglyphics better than the graduate students who came to visit with him. He no longer gave me easy passages to read. Now he only gave me the same passages that he struggled with. I studied the line of hieroglyphs and suddenly smiled when I saw the trap I’d fallen into.

  “Wisdom from the ‘Gods on high’ not ‘wisdom from the sky’.”

  “Now you’ve got it. Do you see how the hieroglyph for ‘Gods’ differs from what we read in later dynasties? It’s as if it were from an earlier version of the language, call it proto-Egyptian. Maybe some of the original glyphs described words that came directly from the language of the Atlantis survivors.”

  Dad’s face was flushed with excitement. We discussed the possibilities of an earlier language, one containing many words with no modern counterpart. It was almost as if scribes had translated from the more ancient language by combining parts of different hieroglyphs of more modern Egyptian. Dad believed that the more ancient language was one spoken by refugees from the sunken Kingdom of Atlantis.

  He believed these survivors from a very advanced civilization taught the Egyptians many things including how to build pyramids using technology lost now for centuries. He collected photos of many of these more ancient hieroglyphs in order to discover the secret of where the Emerald Tablets were buried. He meticulously recorded every discovery in a small brown, bound notebook that he kept in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  Dad frequently asked me to read his notes and comment. I always felt proud when he did so because it made me feel like a real archeologist. I read some passages so many times that I’d memorized them. I knew all the details involving the new dig, including the results of the ground-penetrating radar probes Dad had commissioned secretly because was illegal to use radar without a license, and Doctor Fayez had drawn the line when it came to radar. He would not approve its use no matter how large the “gift.”

  Dad now used the same tone of voice he used when he lectured my class. I knew once he started it would be hard to stop him.

  “The Government doesn’t want anything discovered. It’s afraid such a discovery would ruin their tourist business. I suspect our Government has told President Mubarak that it doesn’t want to rock the boat either. If there’s new technology and advanced technology, it would roil the markets and cause some religious fanatics to riot.”

  “I know. You’ve told me. You said I could really help on this dig. You haven’t changed your mind, have you?”

  “You’ll be able to help after school and on weekends. I told Anwar that you would supervise the workers when I’m not around.”

  “How’d he take it?”

  “About the way you’d expect.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. The older Egyptian man would not be able to hide his disappointment because he felt himself far superior to me even though I was around digs since I was a toddler. Objectively, I knew I was the right choice, but the poorly educated and very religious Anwar would never agree. He would not argue with Dad, but I knew he would find ways to sabotage me and try to make me look bad. Luckily, most of the other workers had been on other digs with me and they had grown to respect my knowledge, particularly when they found ancient tablets that I’d translated with ease.

  I continued to quiz Dad about the dig until I felt it was safe to bring up what I really wanted to talk about.

  “What did Mister Raza do? Did he suspend Taylor?”

  Dad looked at me for a couple of seconds before replying. He weighed his choice of words carefully.

  “He made her apologize to me, and she’ll have to write an essay explaining why her behavior is not acceptable. He’s also going to inform her father.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Dad shook his head. “You need to grow up. You’re old enough to understand how the world works. There’s no way that Mister Raza would want to offend Tom Thornton by kicking out his dear daughter.”

  I noticed the way Dad’s voice changed when he mentioned the wealthy investor. He rarely spoke badly about anyone, but there was something in his voice that made my blood run cold.

  “The kids won’t know about the apology or that she has to write an essay. They’ll think that Taylor can do whatever she wants.”

  “I know about the punishment, and now you do too. That’s enough. I wish you would spend more time working on your schoolwork and less time worrying about a very spoiled girl.”

  I related what had happened in Mister Aziz’s class.

  “Honey, you need to not let anyone see that they’re getting to you. Remember when you were much younger and used to scream every time you saw a spider, even though I kept reminding you whenever we were on a dig that the white spiders are fatal here in Egypt and that the black ones are of no consequence? You finally stopped reacting whenever they’d put a spider on your desk, and they eventually stopped trying to scare you.

  “That’s not the point.”

  “I know what the point is. Taylor and her friends will continue to torment you as long as you let them. If you laugh it off, they’ll stop.”

  “Easy for you to say. You weren’t bitten on your face when you were six while you were sleeping. You’ve never been afraid of anything in your life or embarrassed about anything. When you were a kid, you probably had a pet spider.”

  “It was a tarantula I named ‘Willy’, if you must know. Still, that doesn’t matter. I remember when you were bitten and I do remember the nightmares. I’m proud of you for fighting through those. Now, you just have to handle the teasing from Taylor and her friends the same way.”

  Dad put his arm around me and hugged me tightly.

  “I wish I knew more about raising a girl. I wish your mother…”

  His voice broke and I saw tears in the corners of his eyes. I returned Dad’s hug, and gradually he regained his composure. He gently took my arms off his shoulders. I decided to tell him about Emily.

  Dad listened without interrupting me. I noticed his jaw was rigid because he was grinding his teeth so hard. That was something he only did when he was really angry. He sighed when I finished, and I waited for his reaction.

  “I’m so disappointed in you. It’s not like you to lie to me just to get your way.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Emily told me that you would probably make up some horrible lies to try to disrupt our wedding, but I told her you’d never to do something like that. Now, you’ve done it.”

  “You’ve got to believe me. I’d never lie to you about something like that.”

  “I don’t believe you. I think I’d like you to go to your room. I don’t want to say something that we’ll both be sorry for later.”

  I c
losed the door behind me and just sat, looking out the window. When Dad was mad at me, it made me feel completely alone. I didn’t know what to do.

  I tried to sleep that night, but I felt uneasy. I sensed at school that everything was up in the air. It wasn’t just Dad’s job prospects or the fact that he was furious with me. Something big was about to happen, something that probably would shake up the entire city. I kept hearing rumors of plans for even bigger demonstrations.

  Chapter Four

  The next morning I climbed into the car with Dad. His fading blond beard now contained spots of gray that set off his pale face. His blue eyes were clouded, and I wondered if he’d spent the time in his room the previous night drinking. Any mention of my mother set off these incidents even though she’d been gone now for fifteen years. I wasn’t sure he would talk to me, but he broke the silence.

  “I understand you are getting ‘C’s in a couple of classes. Given your aptitude tests, you should be getting straight ‘A’s’. I don’t understand why you don’t work harder.”

  That’s a great way to start the day, I thought. I didn’t know how to answer him. Mister Aziz’s class was a special case. It really didn’t matter how hard I worked in there. I wasn’t doing well in Chemistry either, but I blamed that on Mister Piedmont because he spoke in a monotone and stood in front of the board as he wrote equations. He would erase the equations before I could copy them.

  Paul was the only one getting an ‘A’ in the class. I saw Taylor’s tests and knew she was about where I was, so I felt vindicated and blamed the stuffy man from South Africa rather than myself. I found the daily hour to be excruciatingly painful.

  “You’ll need better grades to earn a scholarship.”

  Dad’s comment didn’t come as a surprise. I knew there wasn’t any money for college. I wanted to follow his path and become an Egyptologist. No matter how smart I might be, the academic path of college followed by graduate school was impossible without money.

  Dad hesitated as if he didn’t know how to begin, and then he continued. “When I talked with the Principal yesterday; we also discussed another subject.”