had affected her. He always wanted the scroll there on the table, even
when there was no real call for it. He had the photographs and the
microfilm to work with. It was as though he needed the unseen presence
of the ancient author close to him as he studied the texts.
Then he threw off the mood and was the dispassionate scientist once
more. 'Your eyes are better than mine, my flower,' he said. 'What do you
make of this character?'
She leaned over his shoulder and studied the hieroglyph on the
photograph of the scroll that he pointed out to her. She puzzled over
the character for a moment before she took the magnifying glass from
Duraid's hand and peered through it again.
'It looks as though Taita has thrown in another cryptogram of his own
creation just to bedevil us.' She spoke of the ancient author as though
he were a dear, but sometimes exasperating, friend who still lived and
breathed, and played tricks upon them.
'We'll just have to puzzle it out, then,' Duraid declared with obvious
relish. He loved the ancient game. It was his life's work.
The two of them laboured on into the cool of the night. This was when
they did their best work. Sometimes they spoke Arabic and sometimes
English; for them the two languages were as one. Less often they used
French, which was their third common language. They had both received
their education at universities in England and the United States, so far
from this very Egypt of theirs. Royan loved the expression 'This very
Egypt' that Taita used so often in the scrolls.
She felt a peculiar affinity in so many ways with this ancient Egyptian.
After all, she was his direct descendant.
She was a Coptic Christian, not of the Arab line that had so recently
conquered Egypt, less than fourteen centuries ago. The Arabs were
newcomers in this very Egypt of hers, while her own blood line ran back
to the time of the pharaohs and the great pyramids.
At ten 'clock Royan made coffee for them, heating it on the charcoal
stove that Alia had prepared for them before she went off to her own
family in the villa . They drank the 9 sweet, strong brew from thin cups
that were half-filled with the heavy grounds. While they sipped, they
talked as old friends.
.. For Royan that was their relationship, old friends. She had known
Duraid ever since she had returned from England with her doctorate in
archaeology and won her job with the Department of Antiquities, of which
he was the director.
She had been his assistant when he had opened the tomb in the Valley of
the Nobles, the tomb of Queen Lostris, the tomb that dated from about
1780 BC.
She had shared his disappointment when they had discovered that the tomb
had been robbed in ancient times and all its treasures plundered. All
that remained were the marvelous murals that covered the walls and the
ceilings of the tomb.
It was Royan herself who had been working at the wall behind the plinth
on which the sarcophagus had once stood, photographing the murals, when
a section of the plaster had fallen away to reveal in their niche the
