The Calling by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

Author:Kathryn Meyer Griffith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ankhesenaton Nefertiti Aton, Egypt Egyptian pharaoh Ba horror, ghost KathrynMeyerGriffith, obsidian kohl kohl-ringed sphinx RiverNile scarab amulet, cursed papyrus reed menechechou catacombs, necropolis sarcophagus Akhenaton Anubis Bastet, Isis Akhetaton cartouches ankh hieroglyphs Amarna, Egyptology Egyptologist archeology archaeological jackal Hitittes galabia pyramids Giza
Publisher: Kathryn Meyer Griffith
Published: 2015-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

THEY WERE ON THE RIVER for almost four days. The eighty miles lazily unraveling as they skimmed past small villages and large towns. Thousands of teacup topped mud cubes clustered on the edge of the desert like ceramics baking in a kiln. Lone pyramids of varying sizes. Dead villages: domed tombs slumbering beneath stark cliffs and looking like real cities, but full of the dead—and live squatters.

Sharif was often off in a huddle with Mohammed or one of the other crew members, mocha brown, skinny men in patched clothing and with weather-beaten faces. Their guide seemed to know the crew well. He helped sail the boat. Just another thing he was expert at. She heard his laughter on the wind many times. Everyone seemed to know him. Like him.

The other passengers kept away from her and Nick. Not that they were rude, on the contrary. When they met on deck, some would actually smile and say something she couldn’t make out in Arabic before they scrambled away. Muslims mostly. The peasant women, in their malaayas with their faces covered, were nothing like the women in Cairo. Westernization hadn’t touched them. They’d watch her modestly from under lowered lashes, probably as curious about her as she was about them. Yet she didn’t speak their language well enough to carry on a conversation, so smiles and looks were all that passed between them. Sometimes Faye thought there were more passengers than just ten. The boat was virtually empty during the day for they hid in nooks and crannies from the sun. At night they were swathed shadows flitting about the deck, jabbering among themselves. Eating and waiting for the trip to end.

Faye leaned on the rail during the hot days and watched the women on shore plunging clay pots into the river’s water or washing their clothes or, once, making pots. One morning a group of women in black chadars like hers were gathered under the soft shade of palm trees, mixing brownish-gray clay with water and chaff, using their feet to knead the thick paste. A flock of black ravens. Taking the finished product to little huts where men were probably pumping shaping wheels, also with their feet, and forming pots that were then taken out to be laid in rows under the drying sun. For six hours pots would sit there, drying. Sharif had been watching the women that morning, too, and had explained it all.

One day Faye saw donkeys waiting on the western bank to carry visitors to a crumbling temple high on a hill. She looked down to the water not far from their hooves and saw huge crocodiles sliding into the river. She’d gotten both Nick and Sharif to come and see the large reptiles. Nick took pictures.

Sharif said, “Once plentiful, now they are rare. They can grow to as long as eighteen feet, weigh a ton, leave footprints the size of a divers’ fins; and they devour anything they can scavenge or catch from weaverbirds to buffalo.

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