Death on Tour - Janice Hamrick [84]
I was pleased to note that I wasn’t the only one. Flora and Fiona hardly counted, since they’d looked bad the first day and had gone downhill since, but Tom Peterson had a small stain on his shirt, and Susan looked just as rumpled as I did. Yvonne de Vance looked fine in her expensive Chico’s travel collection with its dark colors and unsquashable synthetic fabrics, but Charlie looked as though he’d pulled his clothes from the bottom of a damp laundry basket. I relaxed.
A little to my surprise, Alan claimed the seat directly in front of me and Kyla. He had not been present in the lobby, and he looked as though he had not slept well. His eyes were red and he was paler than usual. I wondered if I looked as bad and decided that he wouldn’t appreciate any remarks on it.
Kyla took one look at him and said, “God, you look like crap. What did you do last night?”
He stared at her coldly. “A touch of the Mummy’s Revenge, if you must know.”
She wrinkled her straight little nose. “Say no more. Please. God, I hope it’s not contagious.”
“Your compassion does you credit,” he said with an ironic glance at me. I looked away. Let him try his damn jokes on someone he didn’t suspect of smuggling and murder. And someone who didn’t suspect him of the same thing. Something about that thought made me pause. There was a flaw in my reasoning, but with my head aching, I couldn’t quite work out what it was.
Like the ancient Egyptians, we crossed the Nile from east to west, a deeply symbolic journey. Of course, they had ferried across in tiny rocking boats, constantly on the lookout for crocodiles and floating hazards instead of riding in a massive luxury coach over an asphalt bridge. Nevertheless, I could feel the power of the journey. Crossing the Nile to the west, toward the setting sun, was a journey toward death and the afterlife, the reason they built almost all their massive necropolises, tombs, and temples on the western shore. The eastern side was for living.
This morning, however, the sun was hovering low over the eastern horizon, casting a rosy bronze glow on the smooth surface of the water. In the deep blue of the western sky, three rainbow-hued hot-air balloons hung in the still air like beads on a necklace.
We passed a few tiny houses made of mud bricks and straw. Several had small donkeys standing sleepily in pens or tethered by a rope to an acacia tree. The scene had not changed for a thousand years.
“Look, there are children playing by that ruined little house,” said Kathy Morrison.
We all turned to look. Anni smiled and took the microphone. “Those houses are not ruins. They are occupied family dwellings.”
“But there’s no roof,” said Lydia Carpenter. And indeed, from the raised bed of the road, we could clearly see the naked tops of the walls.
“Egyptians build their homes as they can afford the materials. I have been told many times by my clients how strange this seems to visitors from other countries, but you must remember that this is the desert. It does not rain here, nor does it snow. A roof is not required. Those taking the balloon ride sometimes pass over these houses and can see families inside sleeping.”
The bus pulled into a small parking lot, and we caught a glimpse of the fabled Colossi of Memnon, two enormous statues guarding the entrance to the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III. We disembarked, most of us moving fairly slowly, the exception being Chris and David Peterson, who ran ahead, took a single look at the massive statues before us, and darted off, apparently to look for rocks to chuck at each other. I longed for that kind of energy. Every step I took sent a dull ache through my head.
The colossi looked like they had been smashed to the ground by a giant child and then put back together like Humpty Dumpty. Which is basically what had happened. An earthquake in the second century AD had destroyed much of the temple complex, and the river and stone-pilfering pharaohs had done the rest. Now, all