A Rope of Sand by Elsie Burch Donald

Author:Elsie Burch Donald [Elsie Burch Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2013-05-14T00:00:00+00:00

14

THE NEXT DAY would prove fateful, although unfortunately I would be the last to find it out. Oh, I sensed the shifting sands all right, but not the deep movement of tectonic plates. That would have taken a finer sensibility and greater knowledge of the world than my mere twenty years provided. Besides which, everything began so pleasantly.

It started with an early morning ferry ride across the Nile, from a dock opposite our hotel, en route to visit the royal tombs. The little boat was packed with local people bent on immemorial routines, their dress, chores, religion and way of life unchanged in a thousand years. Boxes of melons, a few chickens, even a goat accompanied us, and of course the children hounded us for tips, or baksheesh as they called it. A canvas awning was stretched overhead to protect against the sun and standing outside it, in the bow, were almost certainly those two men I’d seen in Rome – although my saying so made Hugo laugh. ‘All Arabs look alike right now,’ he said. ‘But you’ll soon be in focus.’ He suggested I concentrate on one physical feature at a time and study it. Noses were a good beginning: unlike Europeans, Arabs had charismatic noses.

I meekly agreed, convinced, however, that Hugo was being watched and possibly was even in some danger. Used to enjoying unusual freedom in Egypt, he may have believed, as Alexei had suggested, that being his father’s son would get him off any unsavoury hooks. Nasser, after all, had merely shaken his finger at a naughty boy. Nonetheless, a serious power struggle was under way, arrests were being made, and reportedly some brutal reprisals had been taken. And what if Naguib lost? Olivia, I noted, looked uneasy too, watching those two Arabs. She was unconsciously biting the inner edge of her lip. And she knew more of Egypt and what was happening than I did.

At the dock, a turbaned guide met us with a string of tiny donkeys about the size of Mexican burros. He and Hugo knew each other, and warm greetings were exchanged in Arabic before we mounted, Olivia joining in. Donkeys are notoriously stubborn but these were an exception: like wind-up toys, they scooted along in a stiff-legged running walk, never once pausing to snatch a blade of grass – not that there was any after we began to climb. The route took us through two biblical-looking villages before ascending the steep hillside which rose like a rubble wall along the narrow strip of alluvial plain. The two mysterious Arabs followed at a distance, also on donkeys, and this time Hugo, looking over his shoulder, questioned our dragoman, who merely shrugged. Then Hugo did too. I looked back questioningly at Olivia, but she was talking to Polly and paid no attention.

Though not yet eight o’clock it was already hot, the sun, bouncing off the rocks, intensifying the heat by its reflection. I thought of Moses leading the Jewish people out of Egypt. They would have crossed a similar terrain, escaping from many decades of enslavement.

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