“Yes.” Moustafa nodded. “And this line is interesting. It says, ‘Cheops leads the way to the underworld.’”
“That’s an odd phrasing. It was the job of various gods with the help of the Book of the Dead to lead the deceased to the underworld. That line seems to imply that Cheops would act as some sort of guide to the afterlife.”
“Ah, you misunderstand me. When I said ‘underworld,’ I didn’t mean it in the usual sense. This symbol here means ‘country,’ and this one means ‘beneath.’ I’ve never seen that used to refer to the land of the dead. I think it may actually mean some sort of world underground.”
“Perhaps some large subterranean tomb complex, like the Serapeum?” Augustus suggested.
“Perhaps,” Moustafa murmured, studying the sketches.
“What do these other inscriptions say?”
Moustafa grinned. “Have you given up reading hieroglyphics altogether?”
“You’re better at it.”
“Many of these are fragments, single words or parts of words, and I’m afraid they don’t make much sense. There’s this one other lengthy fragment here, though. It says, ‘Down the main corridor past the guardians who stand eternal watch to the great altar of Isis, collector of body parts.’”
“Hmm. Not sure what that’s all about.”
“Surely you know the legend of Isis collecting the dismembered Osiris and putting him back together.”
“Of course, but I’ve never heard her referred to in that fashion. Egyptian inscriptions tend to be quite formulaic, and here we have two inscriptions with previously unknown turns of phrase. What could it all mean?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to find that gunman and force it out of him. He took two shots at me. I’d like to get my hands on him.” Moustafa balled one of his meaty hands into a fist to emphasize his point.
“If we do catch him, I’ll give you free rein. I don’t think he knows what this is all about, though. Schäfer said he’s an oaf, not an educated man at all. I bet he was given this notebook to help him look for what the Germans want.”
“But then what do we do? You said Neumann is a diplomat. We can’t touch him.”
“No, but perhaps it isn’t just the two of them. Perhaps there are more, and not all have diplomatic immunity. Well, there’s nothing more to do here except finish our meal and go back to town. I’m friends with the police commandant. Perhaps he’ll have nabbed our gunman. Hello, what’s this? All my bread and half of my chicken have disappeared.”
“You ate it, you silly Englishman,” Faisal said around a mouthful of food.
Moustafa turned to Augustus. “I will give up a week’s wages if you let me kill him.”
***
They headed back to town, dropping off a bloated and still living Faisal close to Ibn al-Nafis Street before driving to the main police station on Tahrir Square.
They found it in an uproar. The holding cells were packed with Egyptian students shouting slogans, and the police were hauling in fresh batches of them. Several of the officers had torn uniforms and bruises. The students looked far worse. Some had to be carried in by their comrades.
The desk sergeant informed Augustus that Sir Russell was out dealing with the protests.
“How is it going?” Augustus asked. “Is he getting the upper hand?”
The man shook his head. “No, sir. One group got a bit bold, and the troops had to open fire. Killed one of the natives, sir. That’s got them even more worked up than before.”
“I don’t suppose there’s been any further investigation of the murder at my house last night.”
“I’m afraid we don’t have the manpower, sir. The man’s description has been sent to all railway stations and ports, but the way things are . . .” The man gave a helpless shrug.
Augustus thanked the officer and headed back to the car. Moustafa waited for him outside the entrance.
“Any luck?” Moustafa asked.
“In abundance, and all of it bad. Those idiots just gave the independence movement its first martyr.”
CHAPTER TEN
“It’s almost ready,” Khadija umm Mohammed said.
Faisal watched as the old woman scratched lines of Arabic and mystical symbols onto the back of a little stone scarab beetle made by the ancients. The flat base had those funny picture words the ancients made, but the smooth carapace of the scarab had been left blank. Now the old woman was adding a spell onto the empty space that would banish all jinn from the Englishman’s house.
How clever she was! She combined the power over the jinn that the ancient ones had with the power of the Koran. It was sure to work.
Faisal’s hand gripped hard on the twenty piastres in his pocket. Khadija umm Mohammed blew the last dust away from her inscription, said a prayer over it, and held it out to him.
“Do you have the money?”
Faisal’s hand gripped the coins tighter. He’d never had so much money in all his life. It was enough to eat for a couple of weeks. He could get his jellaba cleaned and patched or get the man down the street to weave him a pair of rush sandals. He could do so much with it.
But then he remembered how the Englishman had protected him from Hassan and protected him again from the village children, and he remembered that wonderful car ride and the huge meal that would keep him satisfied all day. And he’d swiped enough from the table to eat well tomorrow too.
He pulled out the money and gave it to her. He couldn’t help feel a bit bad at seeing it disappear into her pocket. All that money gone for a little amulet. It had better work.
She gave him a stern look.
“You earned it?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“How?”
“Posing for photographs for the tourists.”
“Then go with God,” she said, and handed the amulet over.
Faisal turned it over in his hand. He could feel the power in it. It prickled his skin and sent shivers up and down his spine.
“So what do I do?” he asked.
“Just put it someplace in the house and say a prayer.”
Faisal looked at her. “What kind of prayer?”
Khadija umm Mohammed sighed and raised her eyes heavenward. “This is what happens when a child’s parents stray from the path of God and abandon their children.”
“My mother didn’t abandon me. She died giving birth to me.”
The old woman looked at him sadly. “Of course she did.”
Faisal nodded. “So what do I say?”
“Can you say, ‘God is great’?”
“Yes.”
“Say that then.”
***
Faisal was in luck. The night was warm, and the Englishman had left the window open. He squeezed through, swung himself over to the arch, and climbed down.
Even with the amulet clutched in his hand, he watched the shadows nervously, alert for jinn. He waved the amulet in front of him.
“God is great,” he whispered.
He began to go from room to room, poking the amulet in the far corners and darkest shadows, everywhere the jinn liked to hide. He repeated the prayer Khadija umm Mohammed had told him over and over again as he worked his way down to the second floor. Like the previous time, he could hear the Englishman snoring softly. Faisal crept into his room and was irritated to see another bottle by the bed next to the mask and the little tin box with the strange smelling gummy stuff. Frowning, Faisal took the bottle, emptied it down the sink, and replaced it where he had found it. Then he waved the amulet over the Englishman’s sleeping form.
Now that the top two floors had been cleansed of all the lesser jinn, Faisal had to summon up the courage to face the worst jinni of them all—that giant one with the crocodile head that lived on the ground floor.
He paused at the top of the stairs, his heart racing fast.
“God is great!” he repeated, and made his way downstairs. His shivered as he crept down the dark hall leading to the main room.
His breath caught as he saw it standing in its usual corner. Faisal almost bolted, but he managed to summon enough courage to stand his ground and hold the amulet in front of him. He looked at the jinni, suspicious. Had it really turned back to stone like it did in the daytime, or was it trying to trick him?
Keeping the amulet between himself and the creature, Faisal moved around the room, clearing it of unseen spirits before returning to the crocodile-headed one. He approached it warily, until at last he was close enough to touch the amulet to the jinni’s chest.
“Ha! Now you’re trapped in stone forever. I’ve saved the Englishman’s life once again!”
Faisal thought for a moment. Had he saved the Englishman more times than the Englishman had saved him? He couldn’t remember. Maybe he shouldn’t take anything just to be on the safe side. Well, maybe some food. The Englishman would never miss it, and he’d feed him if Faisal asked anyway. He was a generous man but a preoccupied one. He didn’t like to be pestered with questions and requests. So the Englishman would prefer it if Faisal just took some food instead of bothering him by asking. Yes, that would be all right. Just some food for tonight. And tomorrow. And some to share for the other boys.
“But first I need to hide this,” he whispered, “and I know just the place.”
He squeezed his thin arm between the frozen jinni and the wall and pushed the amulet into the narrow space behind the stone base. No one would see it there, and it would keep the crocodile-headed jinni from turning back into a living thing again.
Satisfied he’d done something good for the Englishman, he hurried off to the kitchen to get some food. Just a little. Just enough for tonight, tomorrow, the other boys, and maybe a little extra if he felt hungrier than usual. Just a little extra. The Englishman wouldn’t miss a thing.
***
“Must you leave so early?” Nur asked. “We’ve only just finished the dawn prayer.”
Moustafa smiled at his wife. The firelight in their hut by the road to Giza illuminated her face as she bent over the hearth. His five children slept nearby. They lay on a mat all in a row, from largest to smallest, covered by a couple of blankets. It was still only half light outside, the rising sun hidden by the Mokattam Hills. It was that wonderful quiet time between making your peace with God and the start of a new day.
“I’d like to wait until they wake up and have breakfast together as usual, but the protests will make travel difficult. It’s going to take time to get into the city.”
“God be with them,” his wife said.
“They’re fools. The British have brought so much to this country, as did the French before them.”
“We shouldn’t be ruled by Christians. This is a Muslim country, and it should be ruled by Muslims.”
“The Europeans are too smart to interfere with our religion. Plus, if they go, they will take their wealth with them, and their organization. Did we have a Suez Canal before the French built it? Did we have reliable steamer services and trams before the British made them?”
“They made those things for their own benefit,” Nur said, wrapping up some falafel and bread for Moustafa’s lunch.
“Of course they did. No one does anything for free in this world unless it’s for family. But we benefited from those things too. The Europeans are smart enough to know that a prosperous colony is better off than one that’s squeezed to the limit. Sure, they squeezed us during their war, but that’s all over now, and the good times are starting again.”
Nur looked at him with a knowing smile. “You’re too proud to live in a colony. You want independence as much as the protestors.”
Moustafa kissed her on the forehead. “Leave the politics to men.”
She went back to preparing breakfast for the children. Moustafa smiled as he watched her work. It had been hard to find a wife as a stranger here with no family. It had taken him more than a year, and plenty of gifts to a matchmaker, to finally find a woman, and then he had to settle for an uneducated woman from a poor family whose father had been impressed by Moustafa’s salary.
God had made sure it all turned out for the best. Nur was a wonderful woman—pious, modest, and hardworking. Most important of all, she had borne him five healthy children, including two sons who would carry on his family name.
He gazed at his children for a minute, gave Nur a final kiss, and left for work.
All during the long early morning walk through the outskirts of Cairo to the nearest tram stop, and then the second-class ride crowded in with the other Egyptians while staring through the glass partition at the Europeans and rich Egyptians riding in the first-class carriage, Nur’s words haunted him.
While she was a simple woman who didn’t know anything about how the world worked beyond her home, she was right in a way. It always had rubbed him wrong that he lived under the rule of foreigners, even relatively benign foreigners. He had read enough history to know that Egypt was better off under the British than it had been under the Ottomans or the Mamluks or even the glorious Muhammad Ali. And the Soudan was far better off. Before the British came there had been only the Mahdi, and before that lunatic, there had been nothing but greedy warlords until you got back to the great Nubian pharaohs. Egypt should be ruled by Egyptians and the Soudan by Soudanese, but neither people were ready. Someday, yes, but not now. The protestors were acting too hastily.
Yet he still he couldn’t shake a low, simmering anger at riding in the tram standing up, packed together with a bunch of fellow Africans while Europeans who couldn’t even speak his language sat on padded benches up front.
He had to watch that anger. It had nearly spelled disaster for his family. What would have become of them if Mr. Wall hadn’t hired him directly after he’d quit working for that bastard Dupris?
But what could he do? There was only so much humiliation one man could take!
The tram turned a corner, running smoothly along the tracks, and jerked to a stop. The driver started ringing the bell as if he was going through a busy intersection or telling a donkey cart to get out of the way. There was a disturbed motion in the first-class carriage in front. People put their heads out the windows, then hurriedly pulled them back inside and slammed the windows shut.
Moustafa muscled his way to the side of the car and peered out a window.
A large crowd blocked the street, chanting, “No trams until independence! Long live Egypt! Long live Sa’ad Zaghloul!”
“No trams until independence?” Moustafa scoffed. “What is this nonsense? Do the fools think stopping Egyptians from getting to work is going to win them a nation?”
“Go back south if you don’t like it,” someone said behind him.
Moustafa whirled around. “Who said that? Who said that to me?”
No one met his eye.
Still ringing the bell, the driver slowly edged the tram forward. The chanting grew louder. The Europeans and rich Egyptians in the front carriage grew more animated. Through the glass partition, Moustafa could hear them shouting at the driver in a mixture of English, French, and Arabic, some telling him to back up and others telling him to drive full speed into the crowd.
The driver did neither. Instead he kept edging forward, slowly but resolutely advancing while giving the protestors plenty of time to get out of the way.
Suddenly the tram jerked to a stop, and he heard several loud thumps against the tram’s sides. A woman in the first-class carriage screamed.
At first Moustafa thought they’d run somebody over, but then he saw that the crowd was pounding the sides of the tram with their fists.
“All Egyptians off!” some of them shouted. “We are on strike until they fulfill their promises!”
They yanked the doors to the second-class carriage open.
“Get out of the tram, you Egyptians! Stand with us. Already one of us has been martyred by British bullets, and you give our oppressors ticket money?”
Some of the Egyptians got off, while the rest bunched at the center of the car and stood st
iffly, not looking at the angry faces of the protestors. Moustafa glanced inside the first-class car and saw the conductor had locked the doors.
“The rest of you, get off! Why are you still standing there?”
“I have to get to work,” one of the braver commuters said. “I work in an Egyptian-owned business, making money for our nation!”
“And you pay the British to get to work. Get out!” the protestors shot back. “Get out or we’ll pull you out!”
At that, several more commuters sheepishly got off the tram. The man who spoke stayed put, as did several others. Moustafa glared at the protestors and flexed his muscles. If these idiots dared come aboard, he’d throw them out on their heads.
“Why are you still standing in there?” one protestor demanded. “I was forced into the Labour Corps and spent two years slaving away in France, and when I got back, the price of food had doubled! How am I to feed my family? We need to stand together against them, brothers!”
The protestors moved forward. The ones on the front line grasped the handrail and looked about to step up into the car.
The sound of police whistles cut through the shouting. The protestors turned and looked down the street. Moustafa saw a line of colonial police, led by white officers, blowing on whistles and waving truncheons overhead. They charged the protesters at a full run.
Most of the protestors broke and fled. A brave few held their ground. Many of the passengers who had stepped off a moment before leaped back onto the tram, waving their tickets at the conductor.
The police were upon the remaining protestors the next instant, their truncheons swinging down. A chaotic, whirling melee broke out, with the protestors getting the worst of it. One policeman got punched in the face. Another got thrown to the ground, but a dozen protestors fell to the pavement to join him, heads cracked open and blood pouring down their faces.
As the tram pulled away, the driver ringing the bell furiously, Moustafa craned his head out the window and watched the scene dwindle into the distance. All the protestors who hadn’t fled were on the ground now, each with a circle of policemen smacking them with their truncheons and stomping them with their booted feet.
The Case of the Purloined Pyramid Page 11