and Turkey! Turkey was a civilized country compared to Egypt.
Forrest had accepted the assignment to make The Story of Horizon House in a weak moment, because it was so easy to tack onto the Turkish trip, and, frankly, the money wasn’t bad, but it had been sheer misery from the beginning. In the first place, as he should have remembered, he couldn’t stand Egypt; he’d made five documentaries here in the last seven years, and you’d think he’d know by now. In the second, Clifford Haddon, as he also should have remembered, was the most self-centered, fault-finding, aggravating old fart anyone ever had to deal with. And third, the project itself was the most excruciatingly dull, pedestrian thing he’d worked on since The Joy of Spring Bulbs. He didn’t mind exacerbating his ulcer, he’d said, as long as it was in a meaningful cause, but this…! He was a maker of serious films, after all, not just another hack for hire.
And so he was. Despite his twittering air of impending doom, Forrest had built a respectable reputation as a maker of archaeological documentaries. A few years ago Gideon had seen and admired the one that had made his name, The End of Eternity, a four-part PBS special on the destruction of Upper Egypt’s greatest monuments by erosion, pollution, and the crush of tourists. That had been a six-month project, produced as well as directed by Forrest, and he had done most of his on-site research at the Horizon House library, getting to know the institution and its people.
All of which made The Story of Horizon House a natural for him, at least from the foundation’s point of view.
The last of the twelve was Gideon and Julie’s old friend, Phil Boyajian, free spirit. Divorced (amicably), a few years older than Gideon, and also an ex-student of Abe Goldstein’s, he now lived in Bellingham, a couple of hours north of Seattle. Of all the anthropologists Gideon knew, Phil had had perhaps the most peculiar career. Armed with a Ph. D. in cultural anthropology and Middle Eastern studies, he had begun with fieldwork in Jordan and Tunisia, but claimed it made him feel like a voyeur. So he’d taken an assistant professorship at the University of Washington, only to find university politics more than he could stand. He’d then tried teaching at a Seattle junior college, but couldn’t bear the committee assignments. And finally, completing this resolutely backward progression, he’d wound up teaching at a high school in Olympia, which had kept him contented for almost five years-a long time for Phil.
Then, seven or eight years ago, he’d spent a summer vacation doing travel research for a new guidebook called Egypt on the Cheap, geared primarily to students and backpackers. The book had been a great success, and Phil was now firmly and happily ensconced as a contributing editor to the flourishing On the Cheap series, which helped travelers get around in developing countries with a minimum of stress and confusion. In addition, two or three times a year he accompanied alumni tours to North Africa or the Middle East, acting as a sort of cultural liaison to ensure that their existence was as untroubled as possible. Whenever he came back from such a trip, Gideon and Julie could be assured of an evening’s good stories, but this time they wouldn’t have to wait for them. It was Phil who had arranged the flight to el-Amarna, and the Nile cruise, and he was along to head off whatever problems might arise.
Gideon understood the need for him. Egypt wasn’t an easy country to get around in. There were frustrations at every turn: bureaucratic muddles, “rules” that didn’t exist yesterday and wouldn’t exist tomorrow, unexpected demands for fees or for permits that could only be gotten in Cairo on the first day of the second week of alternate months. There were confusions and noisy fracases over matters whose import-whose very sense-eluded foreigners. And, especially, there was an utter unconcern for time-nobody in Egypt was ever in a hurry- and a disinclination to interfere with the not-always-transparent manifestations of God’s will that had driven more than one harried Westerner around the bend.
It was to spare the group these adversities that Phil was there. With his excellent Arabic (his father had been a petroleum engineer, and Phil had spent much of his first twelve years in Riyadh and Cairo), with his scruffy, eager, friendly manner, with a perpetually sunny disposition and a willingness to see the best in people, with an insider’s perspective on the Egyptian view of life, and with a resilient, take-things-as-they-come approach to the inevitable hard knocks of travel, he was just the person to smooth over whatever vagaries lay ahead.
Vagaries were not long in coming. The ZAS plane that he had chartered was not ready and waiting when they arrived. Worse, no one was able to tell them why it wasn’t there, where it was, or when, precisely, it was expected. Shortly, very shortly, they were told by an eager-to-please clerk in a trim, Sadat-style blue suit.
Phil was turned to for counsel. “Go, as they say, with the flow,” was his cheerful advice, delivered in the faint but crisp British accent that was a remnant of his Saudi Arabian school days. “Speaking for myself, I intend to sit down and have a Coke.”
“Third World travel,” said Bea philosophically. “How I love it. Well, I’ll have a Coke too, Bruno.”
At 3:00 there was still no sign-or word-of the plane. A testy Haddon, having gone with the flow as long as he could, stamped up to the counter. “I’m not going to wait here all day,” he snapped, his beard jutting aggressively. “Is it or is it not expected? Answer truthfully, please.”
“Oh, yes, sir, to be sure,” the clerk told him with an encouraging smile. “Inshallah.”
God willing. The others looked at each other. It didn’t look good.
“This is your fault, Forrest,” Haddon said crossly.
Forrest Freeman, who had been sitting glumly in a corner and not bothering anyone, surfaced from whatever worries he had been chewing over.
“What? My fault?”
“I maintain, as I have from the beginning, that there is simply no good reason for us to be making this trek, given our ridiculously compressed schedule.” Shedyule, Haddon said. “Tel el-Amarna hardly represents a critical milestone in the history of Horizon House.”
Forrest sighed, a man who had been through this before. “Sorry, but I have to disagree with you there. And as long as I have-”
But at that point ZAS Airlines was heard from, and twenty minutes later the plane rolled up outside the window. The party shouldered their carry-on luggage and prepared to leave the terminal.
“One moment, please, ladies and gentlemen, there seems to be an additional small problem,” the clerk told them jovially, “a very small problem indeed.”
“Imagine that,” Bea said.
“Hardly any problem to speak of,” the clerk went on. “No, not really a problem at all. It seems that the baggage hold of this airplane is already filled with baggages from an earlier trip which was unfortunately misrouted, through no fault of the airline or this airport. These baggages are on the way eventually to Cairo, and therefore there is no room for your own baggages on this airplane at this moment.”
“Yikes,” Julie said.
Next to her, Phil tapped the backpack that was slung over one shoulder of his T-shirt-his standard Middle Eastern apparel along with a long-billed “On the Cheap” baseball cap, rumpled beige shorts that came down to his skinny knees, and sockless canvas running shoes. “First rule: never travel with more than you can carry.”
“Now he tells us,” Gideon said.
Forrest, who had continued to sit in his corner quietly gnawing his lip, suddenly took to gibbering. “I knew this would happen! I knew this would happen! What about our equipment? We only have four miserable days, we don’t have any spare time, we, we-” He switched suddenly to a long string of loud and impressively fluent-sounding Arabic. Other passengers turned to observe with interest and respect.
The clerk shouted back no less loudly, waving his hands and thumping the counter. Gideon had no trouble with the gist of it but understood not a word. Ordinarily he took pride in being able to get along in the language of whatever country he was in, but this time he simply hadn’t had the time to learn. He could handle hello-goodbye, yes-no, and please-thank you, and that was it.
After a few seconds, Phil came to the rescue, edging Forrest out of the way and taking up the yelling match in his stead, his voice well up to the challenge. It went on for a good five minutes with, if anything, an increase in fervor; several times the clerk raised his face to the ceiling, apparently to address his thoughts to a higher authority. Phil, clearly having a good time, finally bent over the narrow counter and wrapped his arm around the clerk’s shoulder. They leaned together, talking more quietly, until there was a sudden spate of good-natured laughter, a spirited shaking of hands, and an obviously amicable conclusion.
Phil turned to Forrest. “All right, your equipment comes with us.”
“Whew,” Forrest said, spent. “Gad. I knew this would happen.” He appealed to his crew of two, slouched on a bench. “Did I or did I not say this was going to happen?”
