House of Scarabs Read online

  "Ellie, my dear, just leave out the bedding on the beds. We are perfectly capable of making our own beds."

  "Speak for yourself," Ben quipped but quickly reassured Ellie after receiving an unusually disapproving glare from Gerhard.

  "It's no trouble, really. I can't let you make up rooms in my home. You’re guests.”

  “No. We are friends, and friends support each other and watch out for each other. You are dead on your feet, so we'll have no more arguing. Anyway, isn't it true that the British think it's rude to argue with their elders?"

  Ellie, caught between two contradicting sets of manners, gave in gracefully and took her leave.

  The next morning, it surprised her to find both Gerhard and Ben were keen to go with her on errands. First stop, the less than romantically named Road 9, which she remembered as the beating heart of Maadi. It was a long, straight road full of tiny grocers, hardware stores, and primitive little cafés, reminiscent of the old-fashioned high streets of Europe in the forties and fifties. It was only a short walk from her parent's house and gave Ellie a chance to give the guys a little orientation guide.

  As they entered the street, she stared around in shock and dismay. It was unrecognisable. The quaint, hand-painted signs of family-run businesses had been replaced with glossy, neon signs of banks, mobile phone operators, and huge café chains.

  "Oh, no!" she muttered. "It's changed beyond all belief. I was here only four years ago. How is that possible?"

  "Progression happens far too quickly, and often, it's not for the better," Gerhard replied. "I saw the 'westernisation' happen in Peru, and it was almost always a retrograde step, killing the community culture and support we'd all enjoyed. The West has a lot to answer for. Who says these countries need a Starbucks on every corner?"

  They quickly gathered their groceries and stopped off in Café Grecco, one of the few original cafés that Ellie remembered, for breakfast.

  At the electricity board, Ben and Gerhard gaped at the scene confronting them. The building resembled a condemned squat: filthy, unpainted for decades, and with a tide of bodies surging forward in a battle to get to the barred windows. The process seemed like bureaucratic lunacy. Ellie was logged in at one desk, then joined a mass of bodies surrounding the one window to take cash, everyone pushing and shouting, fighting to get their place at the window. Ellie, well used to the process, fared far better than either one of them would and soon came back to tell them they needed to go to another window to get the receipt in two hours.

  In the meantime, they needed to go to another office to book the reconnection. Cats, unkempt and dirty, prowled the halls, searching for dropped crumbs, and Ben caught the scuttling blur of a rodent out of the corner of his eye.

  "My God, Ellie, it's crazy. Is it always like this?" Ben quizzed.

  "No. Normally, it's worse. They seem to have streamlined the process since I was last here," she said with a grin. "Different, huh?"

  "Uh, ‘ridiculous’ might better express it."

  "Don't worry. You'll get used to it in time. It's the way we work here."

  Ben noticed that she'd said “we” but didn't comment.

  After several hours of traipsing from one location to another and paying copious amounts of “baksheesh” (“Tips,” Ellie translated; bribes, Ben thought), Ellie had managed to negotiate the reconnection of the power. She’d purchased a mobile Wi-Fi service, so they could connect to the outside world, and had organized for them to meet with Professor Soliman the next morning. With every foray back into Egyptian culture, Ellie blossomed, as if breathing the Egyptian air restored her energy and being. Both Ben and Gerhard noticed it.

  "She's returned to her spiritual home, and it's charging her," Gerhard stated as if it were an obvious observation. “I’ve seen it happen with the native Indians in Peru. When they return to their homelands after a long absence, it's as if the earth and air that bore them feeds them. Sounds far-fetched, I know, but I've seen it repeatedly."

  Meeting Mourad

  The next morning, after a restorative night's sleep and a cold shower, they set off for the Cairo Museum. Passing alongside the Nile, which ambled through Cairo on its final leg towards the Mediterranean, they watched feluccas glide through the water. They were powered by their billowing white sails, just as they had been throughout Egypt's long history. Young couples strolled aimlessly along the corniche, girls’ hands invariably tucked protectively in the crook of the boys’ arms in a quaint, old-fashioned gesture.

  Ellie pointed out key sights as they traversed Cairo. “You see that conical roof over there?” she said, gesturing to a building on their left. “That covers the old Nilometer, which used to measure the Nile's flood and determined the annual taxation rate for the peasant farmers.”

  She showed them the grandeur of the American University campus and various heavily protected embassies until they crawled into the now infamous Tahrir Square, scene of the downfall of the former dictator Hosni Mubarak.

  The Cairo Museum of Egyptian Antiquities was nestled at the far end of the square. They had to clear multiple security barriers, all protected by armed tourist police, to get close to the grand building. Coated in a faded salmon wash, the domed facade of the museum had a colonial gentility. A buzz of excitement surrounded them as they exited the taxi and negotiated their way to the main entrance, through the persistent postcard and tacky gift hawkers.

  In contrast, the museum guards, who were lounging in the shade, fanning themselves with old leaflets, seemed barely to notice the tourists. The tour guides did though and pounced on them the moment they cleared security, desperate to secure business. Ellie marched over to one of the more senior guards and explained they had an appointment with Professor Mourad Soliman. The officer stared up at her over the top of his sunglasses and remained seated, just waving his hand in a general direction before continuing his conversation with his friends.

  The trio passed old, granite statues of ancient deities and ponds full of papyrus and water lilies before making their way up the stairs, into the huge entry hall.

  Gerhard gazed around in wonder at the mammoth statues and the jumble of precious antiquities that had outgrown the building that housed them. The museum building mimicked the ancient relics it held, with yellowed walls and a liberal coating of dust. The handwritten exhibit descriptions curled with heat and age.

  "I could spend days here and still not have seen everything. It's overwhelming," Gerhard said to Ben.

  "Yes, it's a country rich in archaeology. It's furnished most of the world's museums and capital cities and still has so much that all the museums in Egypt have more in storage than on show. And, as is obvious here, they have a lot on show. It's an archaeologist’s dream," Ben replied.

  A man shuffled up to them, wrapped, to the bemusement of the trio, in a thick logger's shirt, sweater, and parka. "Hello. Are you here to meet Professor Soliman? I'm Walid, his assistant."

  Ellie confirmed their identities to him in Arabic.

  "You speak Arabic. Like an Egyptian too. I'm impressed," he replied. "I'll talk in English, if you don't mind. I get little chance to practice, so I always try when I can."

  "That suits me," Gerhard replied. "Unlike my young friends, I can't speak Arabic, and they don't speak German."

  Walid led them up the wide staircase and through a huge, heavy door into a long, utilitarian corridor which abandoned all pretence of decoration. He pushed open a door and welcomed them into a grubby galley office barely wide enough to house a row of red vinyl chairs with deep slashes from which foam erupted. At the end of the room was a tiny desk just large enough for the small laptop, desk journal, and phone. There was a hole in one pane of the window behind the desk, through which a knotted tumble of wires and cables poured into the room.

  Walid gestured for them to sit and shouted, "Hussein, refreshments for our guests."

  A dark-skinned man, also wrapped up for the artic, bustled into the room and asked each of them their preference before pickin
g up the phone and ordering their drinks.

  "I'm sorry for the wait, but the professor is chairing his weekly team meeting, and it’s overrun. No fear. He knows you are here and is eager to meet you, so he will speed them – inshallah," Walid explained.

  With that, a man dressed in full butler regalia pushed a 1970s maid’s trolley into the room. The trolley held a range of eastern treats and dainty china cups and saucers.

  "Ah, Stefan would have loved to see this. He'd have been... how do you say it?" Gerhard asked.

  "Enchanted," Ellie replied. "He'd have been in his element."

  They shared a sad smile and remained quiet as the “boy”, as Walid referred to him, undertook the elegant ritual of pouring the drinks and serving the sweets. Time ticked by, and the padded, green leather door remained resolutely shut. After forty-five minutes, they appreciated why Walid and Hussein were dressed so warmly as the stone floors and walls generated a bone-chilling slow freeze.

  "I'd forgotten how cold these old buildings can get in winter," Ellie murmured to them. "It's often colder inside the houses than outside. They are all built to stay cool, and I've yet to come across the concept of heating here. We used to sit in the garden to warm up when I was a kid."

  "It's aggravating my rheumatism," Gerhard said in the first complaint Ellie and Ben had ever heard from him. Walid had left them on their own for over thirty minutes, and they had no idea what was happening. Ben had been pacing the floor like a caged tiger ever since and was deflecting Ellie's suggestion they use the time to practise his Arabic.

  Eventually, the soundproofed door swung open, and a troop of flustered Egyptians flooded out, looking relieved to be free. Walid appeared from nowhere and was at his desk to answer the intercom, from which a voice barked, "Walid, where are my guests? What are you waiting for? Show them in. Don't keep them waiting, man. It's rude."

  Smiling at them apologetically, Walid opened the door and gestured for them to enter the professor's inner sanctum.

  The decorator had clearly not gotten the message when it came to the professor's office, which was in stark contrast to the outer office. Sumptuously decorated with silk Turkish carpets, large leather chesterfield sofas, a walnut desk, and a large meeting table, the room was an ode to opulence. The walls had deep alcoves painted in black, each containing stunning artefacts that were spot-lit from above. A slim and elegant man with a mane of manicured grey hair and a smattering of large freckles across his nose uncoiled from behind the desk and smoothed out his immaculate navy suit.

  "Ellie, my dear girl, this is a pleasure beyond my humble ability to communicate in English. Wahashtini habibti. It has been too long. Yes, too long. You look beautiful as always, although paler than usual – as if that were possible. I'm so sorry for my tardy timekeeping, but the ineptitude of my team knows no boundaries, and I had to resolve issues before they exploded. Ah, how I wish I'd persuaded you to follow the family business. What a team we would have been. Come give me a hug."

  Ellie moved quickly into his arms, and he showered kisses on her cheeks as an old man does on his young nieces.

  "Uncle, it's so good to see you. You’re as suave as always and ageless - you never change. What's your secret? You could be sitting on a fortune, you know."

  "And your ability to make an old man happy never diminishes. Now introduce me to these gentlemen you bring me."

  "Professor Mourad Soliman, please meet Dr. Ben Ellis and his uncle, Mr. Gerhard Webber. Ben is taking up a fellowship here with Professor Badri, and he's stumbled across a rather interesting paper I thought you may help shed light on. Ben's been on a crash course at my language academy. He hasn't graduated yet, so he's asked me to accompany him here to complete his Arabic studies."

  The men shook hands, and Mourad gestured for them to be seated.

  "It seems I owe you thanks, Dr. Ellis. You have achieved something all my begging, bribery, and entreating have failed to do. You've brought Ellie back to us and to Egypt. For that, I'm indebted to you. So, tell me, how can I help you?"

  "Well, I've been digging around and preparing for my fellowship, and I came across a fascinating description of a religious ceremony among the private family papers of a contact of mine in Italy. I've read nothing like it elsewhere, and I was wondering if you'd come across references to it or other ceremonies like it. My friend wants me to authenticate the document but will not allow it to be copied, so I've transcribed it here."

  Ben handed his description of the ceremony to the professor, who slipped his silver-rimmed glasses on and settled into a poised quiet to study the document. After completing it, he returned to the beginning and reread the sections. His face remained passive, giving nothing away.

  Ben fidgeted, his leg bouncing as he waited for any clue as to the professor's thoughts. He glanced across at Ellie, who shrugged her shoulders and frowned at him.

  After some time, the professor peered up over the top of his glasses at Ben. "This is fascinating. It's the single most intact description I have ever seen of an ancient ceremony. Where did you say they found it?"

  "I didn't say and unfortunately can't, as I'm sure you recall, but a good try, professor."

  Mourad acknowledged his words with a wry smile. "Well, nevertheless, it has elements I've seen before but also details I haven't seen referenced elsewhere. If verified, this would be ground-breaking material that the entire Egyptology community will want to access."

  "My friend is adamant that this document remains with him alone. He's a deeply private guy and doesn't want to be pestered by viewing requests. He's amenable to sharing my notes, to broadcast the ceremony to the wider archaeological society, but the notes may be met with scepticism if not backed by the original document," Ben replied. "I'm eager to find evidence of where this ceremony took place and any elements we can correlate with known records or evidence. The story has captured my uncle's interest, and he's keen to visit the temple whilst he's here," Ben said, and Gerhard nodded his agreement.

  "I'm willing to help but on my terms. I want you to deliver a letter from me to your friend about the potential verification of his document. I will assign one of my team to find some answers for you, if they're to be found. How does that sound, my young friend?" Mourad replied.

  "More than fair, but don't get your hopes up. My friend is stubborn as an old mule, and I don’t think your request will change his mind.”

  “Well, that may be, but Ellie will confirm that I can be very persuasive when I set my mind on something, so we'll agree to disagree. Let's shake on it," Mourad replied as he reached across his desk towards Ben.

  "Well, that went better than I'd hoped," Ben said as they left the museum having promised to meet with Mourad later in the week for supper.

  Gerhard nodded. "But it's wise to not lay all our eggs in, how do you say... one nest. I think we should go visit Saqqara tomorrow and check if we get any reaction from our familiars."

  "Agreed," said Ben. He then narrowly avoiding ploughing into Ellie, who had slammed to a standstill and was staring with wide eyes into the crowded museum gardens. Ben studied the crowd to see what Ellie was staring at and saw the tall, sylph figure of his old college friend, Sam, Ellie's ex-husband.

  With a muffled sob, Ellie turned and ran back into the museum, leaving a startled Gerhard calling after her.

  Sam

  "Leave her, Gerhard! She needs space. She's had a shock. Her ex-husband is walking towards us."

  "Oh, Lord, what do we do?”

  “Saying ‘hello’ is the norm, so maybe we could try that," Ben replied sarcastically.

  Sam hadn't changed at all since they'd last met. He'd always looked like Michelangelo's David, with curls that played against his collar, but his eyes were the attention-grabbers. They were the deepest brown with glints of gold and glowed with intelligence and an innate kindness. Now they were shadowed with sadness. Despite this, he approached his old friend with a warm smile.

  "Ben! What a surprise, habibi. What a wonderful surpri
se. How are you?" The two men hugged, and Ben turned to introduce Gerhard to his friend.

  "Sam, may I introduce Gerhard Webber, my uncle. Gerhard, this is Samir Gamal, an old and dear friend of mine from my college days."

  The two men greeted each other cordially before Sam turned to Ben. "Was it my imagination, or was that Elena with you?" he asked.

  "Yes, it was. And thanks for the heads up, by the way. You could have warned me that the 'Ellie' you recommended was your Elena. Let me tell you, it caused a few awkward moments there, buddy."

  "Ben, I must see her - please help me."

  "Your name is toxic, Sam. I can't see I'll ever get her to agree to meeting you, and just opening the subject would get me in extremely hot water. That woman is one tough cookie."

  Sam’s eyes dropped down and studied the floor. "Elena? No, she's the gentlest woman I've ever met," he murmured, looking up with pained eyes.

  Ben spluttered in shock, "Maybe once, although I can't imagine it, but not anymore, she's not. She's a shrew."

  Gerhard touched Ben's elbow. "We should go after her before she goes too far. It could compromise us, no?"

  "Ben, please, I'm begging you. I need to see her," Sam said, grabbing hold of Ben's shoulders. "Meet me tonight, please. I need to talk to you. You're the only access point I have to Elena. You are my last hope."

  Ben stared into Sam's wide, pleading eyes. “Oh, God! All right, but believe me, it won’t help you any. The woman despises me. Come to Maadi, Road 9, and we can meet in Café Grecco." Ben gave Sam his mobile number and then hurried off with Gerhard to locate Ellie in the mammoth halls of the Egyptian Museum.

  Ellie collapsed against a column in one of the many unvisited back halls displaying fragments of pharaonic pottery. She'd always preferred visiting the intimate everyday items that reflected the intricacy of ancient Egyptian society. The big-ticket items like Tutankhamun's treasures and the ancient royal mummies captured the tourists’ attention, but few, if any, visited the back halls, so Ellie was confident she wouldn't be disturbed.