She rushed along, holding the ribbons tight so that the strange headdress would not fly from her hair. So easy to walk fast. And the sun felt so good to her. The sun. In a flash she saw it flooding down from a high portal in a cave. A wooden shutter had opened. She heard the creak of the chain.
Then it was gone, the memory, if it had even been a memory. Wake, Ramses.
That was his name. But she didn't care now. She was free to roam this strange city; free to discover, to see!
CAMIR PURCHASED several Bedouin garments in the first shop in old Cairo that sold such clothes. He ducked into a small restaurant, a filthy alleyway of a place full of down-on-their-luck Frenchmen, and there put on the loose, concealing garb and tucked the other garments - those heft bought for Julie - under his arm, inside his robes.
He liked this loose peasant costume, which was infinitely older than the tailored robes and hats which most Egyptians wore, in fact, it was probably the oldest mode of dress still in active existence - the long, loose drapery of the desert wanderers. He felt free in it, and safe from all eyes.
He hurried along through the winding honeycomb streets of Arab Cairo, towards the house of his cousin Zaki, a man he disliked dealing with but one who would give him exactly what he wanted more easily and efficiently than anyone else. And who knew how long Ramses must hide in Cairo? Who knew how these murders would be solved?
When he reached the mummy factory of his cousin - surely one of the most distasteful places in the entire known world - he entered by the side gate. A load of freshly wrapped bodies baked hi the harsh afternoon sunshine. Inside, no doubt, others were being stewed in the pot.
A lone worker dug a trench now into which these fresh mummies would be laid for a few days," browning" as it were in damp earth.
It disgusted Samir completely, though he had come to this little factory as a boy long before he had known there were real mummies, the bodies of the ancient ancestors to be studied, to be saved from theft and mutilation, and preserved.
"Look at it this way," his cousin Zaki once argued." We are better than the thieves who sell our ancient rulers bit by bit to the foreigners. What we sell isn't sacred. It's fake."
Good old Zaki. Samir was about to signal to one of the men inside the place, a man who was in fact engaged in wrapping a body. But then Zaki himself emerged from the reeking little house.
"Eh, Samir! So good to see you always, cousin. Come have a coffee with me, cousin."
"Not now, Zaki, I need your assistance."
"Of course, you would not be here if you did not."
Samir accepted the rebuke with a humble little smile.
"Zaki, I need a safe place, a little house with a heavy door and a back entrance. Secret. For a few days, maybe longer. I don't know."
Zaki laughed good-naturedly, but a little smugly.
"Ah, so, the educated one, the one whom all respect, and he comes to me for a hiding place?"
"Don't question me, Zaki." Samir produced a roll of bills from under his robe. He held this out to his cousin." A safe house. I can pay."
"All right, I know just the thing," said Zaki." Come into the house and take coffee with me. One whiff, and you get used to the smell."
For decades Zaki had been saying that. Samir never got used to the smell. But he felt compelled now to do what his cousin wanted, and he followed him into the" embalming room," a miserable place where a vat of bitumen and other chemicals was always simmering, waiting for a new body to be thrown in.
As he passed, Samir saw that the pot had a new victim. It sickened him. He looked away, but not before he had glimpsed the poor devil's black hair billowing free on the surface as his face floated just beneath it.
"How about a nice fresh mummy?" Zaki teased him." Straight from the Valley of the Kings. Name a dynasty, I give it to you! Male, female, whatever you wish!"
"The hiding place, cousin."
"Yes, yes. I have several such houses vacant. Coffee first and I send you off with a key. Tell me what