Auset yawned, covering her mouth. "I look forward to it. But for now I'd like to see only a nice soft cushion. The seat in the truck cabin * 161 *

will do for now. As the only one among you who's pregnant, I claim it.

I assume no one objects?"

"I'll go with you." Valerie got to her feet, gathering up one of the packing mats. "I'll sleep in the back. You boys can have the tent to yourselves."

The two women walked down to the disabled vehicle. With her ashlight, Valerie did a quick insect inspection of the truck seat for Auset and repeated the ritual for herself on the at bed of the truck.

Then she rolled out her mat alongside the casket and lay down. She was still restless and a bit feverish. The quiet throbbing in the side of her head persisted, like a stranger knocking, politely, but determined to be admitted. Weary, she looked again for the woman-shape in the night sky.

She saw only stars. But they were breathtaking. Stars beyond counting and beyond comprehension formed a bowl that covered the earth; stars sparkled even beneath her feet. The same stars that the priests of Ramses and Meremptah had used to measure the turning of the year. Did they once lie as she did now, on the roofs of their temples, discerning patterns, reading messages of both religion and science?

And one of those priests-she imagined him looking like Rekemheb-keeping bravely to his post one summer night, noticed that the appearance of the star Sirius on the horizon just before dawn coincided with the inundation of the Nile. What pleasure he must have felt at the discovery-that the sky and the earth were in synchrony. And from that discovery, at the beginning of human history, came the 360-day annual calendar.

And yet it was de cient, for the twelve thirty-day months did not bring the stars back to their starting point. They had to wait ve more perilous days before Sirius rose and the orderly year could begin anew.

When was the New Year, after all? Ah, yes, July 19.

She realized with a shock that it was already the night of July 15.

The Egyptian timeless days had just begun, and there were four more days before the world could begin its orderly count again. She turned her head slightly to the right, to touch the mummy's casket with her forehead. She whispered through the casket wall, "I guess that explains why we're homeless tonight, Rekemheb, living and dead alike. How much worse can it get, do you think, in the next four?"

The silence of the mummy spoke volumes.

* 162 *

v The two men were stretched out on their mats on unforgiving ground. Derek made a little tent with his hands over his chest and tapped his ngertips softly against each other. "You must really hate me for getting us into this." He turned his ring around his nger. "If it helps, I feel really rotten about it."

Yussif scratched his chest. "I have not time for hate anybody. I must to x all problems. How to take care of Auset and all of us."

"Yes, I want to take care of her too. I told her that. But tell me the truth, Yussif. Are we really in danger out here? Could we...like...

die?"

"No. I do not think so. Desert looks empty but is busy place.

Tomorrow or next day we see army, probably. Then only problem is to explain everything. You must to explain Rekemheb. And I must to bring truck back to Cairo. Somehow."

Derek sat up. "I don't know what a truck costs, Yussif, but I'll pay for it. I mean it. Here, to show you I'm serious, I want you to take this." He drew the heavy silver ring over his knuckle and rolled it once between thumb and nger, feeling the sapphires embedded all around it. "It should cover some of the cost. I'll make up the rest later."

Yussif closed his hand over the object and hefted it. "A rich man's ring. Are you sure?"

"Yes. It was a foolish extravagance, and now it can do some good.

Put it on so you don't lose it." Derek patted the other man brie y on the shoulder and then turned away, dropping down onto his mat. "Now I have one less guilt to carry around."

They let a comfortable silence fall again between them. With the burdens of fear and guilt lifted from him, Derek fell into an easy sleep.

Yussif studied the ring, feeling the precious stones, and then slipped it on his little nger. He brushed sand from his mat and then lay down as well, troubled by a surfeit of thought. The truck: how to bring it back to Cairo or surely lose his job? The goddess in the stars: was that not the very thing the Qur'an warned against? The Ka: what, in the name of Allah, was it?

Auset.

He savored inwardly the sound of her strange name: Auset. The son of a village mechanic, he had hungered all his life to win the attention * 163 *

of a woman like her, and when she walked into her father's Cairo of ce after nishing university in New York, he was a doomed man. The sight of her long uncovered hair and the sound of her sharp words seized his interest and never let it go. He gave no outward sign of his obsession, but every day of his employment was a day of willing fealty to her.

The shock of learning that the spoiled woman was pregnant-a scandal which in another age or place might have meant her death- rocked his devotion only slightly. He searched his heart and found only anger that she had given a precious gift so lightly. But it seemed she had more time for him now. It seemed he had a chance.

Why look at a woman who had soiled herself, his father had demanded. How could he explain? He could not face the thought of marrying one of the dull, barely literate girls of his own class, who had not a thought in their heads and no desire other than motherhood.

The foreign women were perhaps immoral. Yes, one had to accept that.

Nor were they obedient. But for all that, they were...interesting. It was the happiest day of his life when Auset, swollen with her sin and unrepentant, had asked him to drive her to the Giza camel barn. Without a second thought he had joined her foreign friends in their crime. With Auset at his side, needing him, he would have driven into hell.

Now, here he was, lying half a meter away from the one who had de led her. And yet, the man had every other virtue; he was generous with money and with gifts, and pious toward his elder. He had shown Auset every brotherly affection, while making no claim on her. Yussif touched his new ring with the tip of his thumb. How could a man know what was the right way? If Auset had broken Shari'a by giving herself before marriage, so he himself had broken it by stealing a dead man from his grave, by giving credence to polytheists, by considering Satanic verses.

She carried the fruit of her sin and could not go back. But neither could he. He was the same pious man as before, but perhaps Allah had other names after all.

* 164 *

CHAPTER XXIII:.

BaDAWI.

Valerie awoke to the clanking of copper bells and the penetrating smell of goat. She sat up and found the truck an island in a sluggish stream of livestock. Out on the periphery, a dozen men sat on camels; their robes and thick turbans identi ed them.

Bedouin herdsmen, driving their ocks from one sparse grazing ground to another. She looked around her, fascinated. To the left, grayish brown sheep owed past, driven by women, an oozing mass of newly shorn backs. Young men carried the new lambs draped over their shoulders or led donkeys carrying immense loads. The nearest one bore a mountain of kindling high over its haunches and goatskins of water on both sides of its forelegs.

The smell of eece was overpowered by the stronger, viler smell of the goats that jostled by, bleating, on the right. Children walked among them, urging them on with sticks until they stopped to gawk at the spectacle of a woman standing in a pickup truck.

The men on camels seemed in no hurry to talk, although one of them had come close and studied the truck as she studied him. A graybearded man in a tan kaftan sat with his right leg hooked around the high horn of the saddle, the toes of his other foot gripping the camel's neck. His beast carried no baggage, but behind him, attached by a cord to the saddle, a wicker cage held a bird much too large for it. The way in which the man barked commands suggested he was the sheikh, or at least someone of authority. Valerie waved at him and called out, "As salaamu 'alaykum."

He ignored her, although he had gotten close enough to the truck to hold a conversation.

* 165 *

"As salaamu 'alaykum, " a male voice repeated cheerfully, and Yussif waded through the ood of goats toward the rider. Derek followed close behind him. A few of the shepherds edged closer to the sheikh.

They looked wild, biblical, in their wide desert robes that spread over their saddles. Yet several, she noted, had wristwatches, and one of the boys on foot wore a baseball cap.

Uninvited to the male discussion which was about to take place, she climbed down to join Auset, who was already making her way toward their little tent. It looked suddenly pathetic before the glance of real Bedouins. Auset glanced back over her shoulder and laughed.

"Yeah, come on over here to the harem and let the menfolk take care of business."

Sheikh and driver spoke for a while and, although they were too far away to hear, it seemed that Yussif explained their situation and negotiated for something. Valerie wondered if the custom of desert hospitality applied to reckless foreigners as well. Finally the men returned to the tiny campsite.

"They are tribe of Mahamid who take ocks to Dakhla Oasis,"

Yussif reported. "Sheikh's name is Janazil. Sheikh says they know nothing of trucks, but will give us food and water. If we want, they will let us walk with them to oasis."

"Well, that beats dying of thirst. How far is it?" Valerie asked.

"Two days' walk, he says."

"Two days on foot in the desert?" Derek looked down at his oxfords, where powdery sand was already embedded in every seam and hole. "What about Auset? Did you mention that one of us is eight months pregnant?"

Yussif's thick beard parted in a smile. "Yes, of course. And I ask to buy camel. Sheikh agree. One camel for one thousand Egypt pounds."

"That sounds like a lot. And besides, one isn't enough." Derek rubbed his back, obviously anticipating the discomfort.

"Yes, I know. So I say two camels for fteen hundred pounds."

Valerie was beginning to admire the taciturn Arab. "Did he agree?"

"He says fteen hundred pounds and black man's watch. Then we agree."

"My watch? Oh, great." Derek turned to the two women. "Do we even have fteen hundred Egyptian pounds between us? All I have are credit cards."

* 166 *

Auset shrugged. "I have about four hundred."

Valerie calculated on her ngers. "I've got eight hundred and change. The rest of my money is in Euros."

Yussif patted his shirt pocket, as if he could count by feeling his wallet. "I have three hundred, for food and gasoline."

Valerie pulled out a wad of bills and added it to the pile in Yussif's hand. "That should be fteen hundred. And Derek has the watch. I think we have a deal."

The bleating of the goats seemed a comment on the transaction.

Derek sighed as he drew the metal expansion band over his hand.

"I hope you appreciate that I'm giving up a ne Bulova, worth about two hundred dollars."

"I will tell him that," Yussif said, patting him on the shoulder. "But is not so bad for you. You will have best camel. Someone must to carry Grandfather."

"You mean like before?"

"No. Is possible to tie box to camel on one side, food, water bottles on other. But I explain about mummy to sheikh and he does not like it.

He says you must to ride behind the tribe. Is not allowed to carry dead man near the people. Very bad luck."

"So it would seem," Valerie said.

v "Y'alla bina! " The sheikh called for the march to continue, and the tribe of Mahamid resumed its amoebic ow southwestward. At its rear, keeping a discreet distance, the fugitives took their place. The unencumbered ones walked between the two who rode, burdened with coming or departed life. Auset rode the smaller camel cushioned by several packing quilts. Derek sat astride the larger camel which, with stoic dignity, bore the casket tied to its left side and camp supplies dangling on its right.

Valerie marched purposefully, modern muscles slowly learning the ancient rhythmic stride of migration. She glanced at Yussif, who walked alongside of her, and matched her step to his. He had untucked his shirt so that it hung over his trousers to his knees. Turbaned and rough-bearded as he was, he seemed at home among the nomads.

"Strange where fate takes us, isn't it?" Yussif said suddenly in Arabic. "You think you've got an idea of where you're going, and some * 167 *

hand comes along and sets you down someplace else. The only thing that is constant is the kind of person you are- strong or weak, pious or..." He paused, apparently trying to decide what the opposite of piety would be. "Or lost."

Valerie was taken aback for a moment, for this was the rst time he had spoken to her alone and did not need to use English. She was surprised at how intelligent he sounded, at how much he had to say.

Language, it seemed, was everything.

"I know what you mean," she said. "But I still resist the idea that some supernatural hand of fate plays with my life. I insist that I have a will. As for the sort of person I am, I'm afraid I stopped being pious as a schoolgirl."

"Did your teachers really lock you in a closet?"

"Yes, all of us, when we were disobedient. And I was disobedient a lot. It was terrifying. We were little children, and they thrashed us rst. Then they locked us for the night in a small, dark place. Some of the young ones went in screaming and came out silent, broken. The nuns said it would teach us humility before God." She stared into the distance. "Whatever Rekemheb has to show us, it better have more to offer than brutal authority."

"Rekemheb is the mystery, isn't he? We thought we were carrying him, but I think now he's leading us, or at least his gods are." He scratched his beard. "To what end, I wonder?"

She had no answer to give and strode silently, trying to nd a pace that she could maintain for eight hours.

Yussif began again. "The images in the stars we saw last night-"

"The Goddess Nuut?"

He chuckled bitterly. "Muslims called them Lat and Uzza, the goddesses of the moon and stars. The Prophet once recited their names to the people of Mecca, but he was under the in uence of Satan. You must realize that from a Muslim standpoint, Rekemheb was revealing something that was long ago refuted." He shook his head. "And yet I saw them both with my own eyes."

"Oh, yes. The Verses of Satan. Sura 53, isn't it? About accepting the goddesses as intermediaries with God? Mohammed named them to win over the polytheists, but later he recanted. Is that what you're afraid of? That Rekemheb is Satan?"

"When you put it that way it sounds foolish."

* 168 *

She blew sand particles from between her lips. "'Sinner' is the name that believers give to those who have the courage to doubt."

"And you are not afraid of doubt?"

"No, not at all. In science, doubt is an excellent beginning. It lets the mind travel to places that are new..." She looked up at Derek on his camel, discovering himself both as father and as scion in an ancient lineage. He was on her eastern side, and his image was blurred by the corona around him from the morning sun. The nemes he had devised sat handsomely on his head, and it seemed as if the Falcon-god perched at the back of his neck and hung its wings down, protecting him as in the temple icons it once protected Pharaoh.

"Or very, very old."

v Enveloped in the cloud of dust stirred up by the ocks, Valerie wrapped another layer of cloth around her face. Muf ed and dry-mouthed, she wandered silently from one end of the shapeless owing mass to the other as the hours passed, watching the nomads through squinted, sand-scraped eyes.

She found herself at the periphery where the camels, like moving guard towers, formed the outer line. The beasts were lean, even the camel of the sheikh, although its trappings, as be tted a tribal leader, were striking. The red camel bag hanging down on both sides of his saddle was extravagantly tasseled, and the leather harness was studded in brass. Behind the saddle, the tiny wicker cage once again caught her attention. The bird it held was a hawk. Something to be sold at market in El Dakhla, she supposed. Its wings were tied back cruelly, and the cage itself was so constricting that the poor creature could not move.

As she drew closer the hawk twisted its head toward her, wild-eyed and panting through its small curved beak.