I could feel my face getting hot.
I knew what she’d told him.
She’d told him about hiding in the mummy case and making me scream like a scared baby. And now they were both chuckling about what a jerk I was.
“Merry Christmas to you, too!” I called bitterly.
And that made them laugh even harder.
We spent the night back in the hotel in Cairo. I beat Sari in two straight games of Scrabble, but it didn’t make me feel any better.
She kept complaining that she had only vowels, and so the games weren’t fair. Finally, I put my Scrabble set back in my room, and we sat and stared at the TV.
The next morning, we had breakfast in the room. I ordered pancakes, but they didn’t taste like any pancakes I’d ever eaten. They were tough and grainy, as if they were made of cowhide or something.
“What are we doing today?” Sari asked Uncle Ben, who was still yawning and stretching after two cups of black coffee.
“I have an appointment at the Cairo Museum,” he told us, glancing at his wristwatch. “It’s just a couple of blocks away. I thought you two might like to wander around the museum while I have my meeting.”
“Ooh, thrills and chills,” Sari said sarcastically. She slurped up another spoonful of Frosted Flakes.
The little Frosted Flakes box had Arabic writing all over it, and Tony the Tiger was saying something in Arabic. I wanted to save it and take it home to show my friends. But I knew Sari would make fun of me if I asked her for it, so I didn’t.
“The museum has an interesting mummy collection, Gabe,” Uncle Ben said to me. He tried to pour himself a third cup of coffee, but the pot was empty. “You’ll like it.”
“Unless they climb out of their cases,” Sari said.
Lame. Really lame.
I stuck my tongue out at her. She tossed a wet Frosted Flake across the table at me.
“When are my mom and dad getting back?” I asked Uncle Ben. I suddenly realized I missed them.
He started to answer, but the phone rang. He walked into the bedroom and picked it up. It was an old-fashioned black telephone with a dial instead of buttons. As he talked, his face filled with concern.
“Change of plans,” he said a few seconds later, hanging up the receiver and coming back into the living room.
“What’s the matter, Daddy?” Sari asked, shoving her cereal bowl away.
“It’s very strange,” he replied, scratching the back of his head. “Two of my workers came down sick last night. Some kind of mysterious illness.” His expression became thoughtful, worried. “They took them to a hospital here in Cairo.”
He started to gather up his wallet and some other belongings. “I think I’d better get over there right away,” he said.
“But what about Gabe and me?” Sari asked, glancing at me.
“I’ll only be gone an hour or so,” her dad replied. “Stay here in the suite, okay?”
“In the suite?” Sari cried, making it sound like a punishment.
“Well, okay. You can go down to the lobby if you want. But don’t leave the hotel.”
A few minutes later, he pulled on his tan safari jacket, checked one last time to make sure he had his wallet and keys, and hurried out the door.
Sari and I stared at each other glumly. “What do you want to do?” I asked, poking the cold, uneaten pancakes on my plate with a fork.
Sari shrugged. “Is it hot in here?”
I nodded. “Yeah. It’s about a hundred and twenty.”
“We have to get out of here,” she said, standing up and stretching.
“You mean go down to the lobby?” I asked, still poking the pancakes, pulling them into pieces with the fork.
“No. I mean get out of here,” she replied. She walked over to the mirror in the entranceway and began brushing her straight black hair.
“But Uncle Ben said —” I started.
“We won’t go far,” she said, and then quickly added, “if you’re afraid.”
I made a face at her. I don’t think she saw me. She was busy admiring herself in the mirror.
“Okay,” I told her. “We could go to the museum. Your dad said it was just a couple of blocks away.”
I was determined not to be the wimp anymore. If she wanted to disobey her dad and go out, fine with me. From now on, I decided, I’ll be the macho guy. No repeats of yesterday — ever again.
“The museum?” She made a face. “Well … okay,” she said, turning to look at me. “We’re twelve, after all. It’s not like we’re babies. We can go out if we want.”
“Yes, we can,” I said. “I’ll write Uncle Ben a note and tell him where we’re going, in case he gets back before we do.” I went over to the desk and picked up a pen and a small pad of paper.
“If you’re afraid, Gabey, we can just walk around the block,” she said in a teasing voice, staring at me, waiting to see how I’d react.
“No way,” I said. “We’re going to the museum. Unless you’re afraid.”
“No way,” she said, imitating me.
“And don’t call me Gabey,” I added.
“Gabey, Gabey, Gabey,” she muttered, just to be annoying.
I wrote the note to Uncle Ben. Then we took the elevator down to the lobby. We asked a young woman behind the desk where the Cairo Museum was. She said to turn right outside the hotel and walk two blocks.
Sari hesitated as we stepped out into the bright sunshine. “You sure you’re up for this?”
“What could go wrong?” I replied.
7
“Let’s go. This way,” I said, shielding my eyes from the bright sunlight with my hand.
“It’s so hot,” Sari complained.
The street was crowded and noisy. I couldn’t hear anything over the honking of car horns.
Drivers here lean on their horns the minute they start up their cars, and they don’t stop honking till they arrive at their destinations.
Sari and I stayed close together, making our way through the crush of people on the sidewalk. All kinds of people passed by.
There were men in American-style business suits walking alongside men who appeared to be wearing loose-fitting white pajamas.
We saw women who would look right at home on any street in America, wearing colorful leggings and stylish skirts and slacks. Women in jeans. Followed by women dressed in long, flowing black dresses, their faces covered by heavy black veils.
“This sure doesn’t look like back home!” I exclaimed, shouting over the blare of car horns.
I was so fascinated by all the interesting-looking people crowding the narrow sidewalk that I forgot to look at the buildings. Before I knew it, we were standing in front of the museum, a tall stone structure looming above the street behind steeply sloping steps.
We climbed the steps and entered the revolving door of the museum.
“Wow, it’s so quiet in here!” I exclaimed, whispering. It was nice to get away from the honking horns, the crowded sidewalks, and shouting people.
“Why do you think they honk their horns so much?” Sari asked.
“Just a custom, I guess,” I replied.
We stopped and looked around.
We were standing in the center of an enormous open lobby. Tall marble stairways rose up on the far left and far right. Twin white columns framed a wide doorway that led straight back. An enormous mural across the wall to the right showed an aerial view of the pyramids and the Nile.
We stood in the middle of the floor, admiring the mural for a while. Then we made our way to the back wall and asked a woman at the information desk for the mummy room. She flashed us a nice smile and told us in perfect English to take the stairs to the right.
Our sneakers thudded loudly on the shiny marble floor. The stairway seemed to go up forever. “This is like mountain climbing,” I complained, halfway up.
“Race you to the top,” Sari said, grinning, and took off before I had a chance to reply.
Of course she beat m
e by about ten steps.
I waited for her to call me “slowpoke” or “snail face” or something. But she had already turned to see what lay ahead of us.
A dark, high-ceilinged room seemed to stretch on forever. A glass case stood centered in the entryway. Inside was a detailed construction of wood and clay.
I went up close to take a good look. The construction showed thousands of workers dragging enormous blocks of limestone across the sand toward a partially built pyramid.
In the room behind the display I could see huge stone statues, large mummy cases, displays of glass and pottery, and case after case of artifacts and relics.
“I think this is the place!” I exclaimed happily, rushing over to the first display case.
“Ooh, what’s that? Some kind of giant dog?” Sari asked, pointing to an enormous statue against the wall.
The creature appeared to have a fierce dog’s head and a lion’s body. Its eyes stared straight ahead, and it seemed ready to pounce on anyone who came near it.
“They put creatures like that in front of tombs,” I told Sari. “You know. To protect the place. Scare away grave robbers.”
“Like guard dogs,” Sari said, stepping up close to the ancient sculpture.
“Hey — there’s a mummy in this case!” I exclaimed, leaning over an ancient stone coffin. “Look!”
Still staring back at the enormous sculpture, Sari walked up beside me. “Yep. It’s a mummy, okay,” she said, unimpressed. I guess she’s seen a lot more of them than me.
“It’s so small,” I said, staring at the yellowed linen wrapped so tightly around the skinny head and body.
“Our ancestors were shrimps,” Sari replied. “Think it was a man or a woman?”
I glanced at the plaque on the side of the coffin. “It says it’s a man.”
“Guess they didn’t work out in those days,” she said, and laughed at her own remark.
“They did a great wrapping job,” I said, examining the carefully wrapped fingers on the hands, which were crossed over the mummy’s chest. “I was a mummy the Halloween before last, and my costume completely unraveled after ten minutes!”
Sari tsk-tsked.
“Do you know how they made mummies?” I asked, moving around to view it from the other side. “Do you know the first thing they did? They removed the brain.”
“Yuck. Stop,” she said, sticking out her tongue and making a disgusted face.
“Don’t you know about this?” I asked, delighted that I had some truly gruesome information that she didn’t.
“Please — enough,” she said, holding up one hand as if to fend me off.
“No, this is interesting,” I insisted. “The brain had to come out first. They had this special tool. It was like a long, skinny hook. They’d push it up the corpse’s nose until it reached the brain and then wiggled it back and forth, back and forth, until the brain became mush.”
“Stop!” Sari pleaded, covering her ears.
“Then they took a long spoon,” I continued gleefully, “and scooped the brain out a little at a time.”
I made a scooping motion with my hand. “Scoop scoop. They scooped the brain out through the nose. Or sometimes they popped off an eyeball and scooped the brain out through the eyeball socket.”
“Gabe — I mean it!” Sari cried. She really looked like she was about to hurl. She was green!
I loved it.
I never knew that Sari had a squeamish bone in her body. But I was really making her sick.
Outstanding! I thought.
I would definitely have to remember this technique.
“It’s all true,” I told her, unable to hold back a wide grin.
“Just shut up,” she muttered.
“Of course sometimes they didn’t pull the brain out the nose. Sometimes they just sliced off the head. Then they drained the brain out through the neck and put the head back on the body. They just bandaged it back on, I guess.”
“Gabe —”
I’d been staring at her the whole time, checking out her reaction. She was looking sicker and sicker. She was breathing real heavy. Her chest was sort of heaving. I really thought she was going to lose her breakfast.
If she did, I’d never let her forget it.
“That’s really gross,” she said. Her voice sounded funny, like it was coming from underwater or something.
“But it’s true,” I said. “Didn’t your dad ever tell you about how they made mummies?”
She shook her head. “He knows I don’t like —”
“And you know what they did with the guts?” I asked, enjoying the startled look on her face. “They put them in jars and —”
I suddenly realized that Sari’s startled look wasn’t for me.
She was actually staring over my shoulder.
“Huh?” I turned around and saw why she suddenly looked so surprised.
A man had entered the room and was standing just in front of the first display case. It took me a few seconds to recognize him.
It was Ahmed, the strange, silent Egyptian with the black ponytail who had stared at us in such an unfriendly manner down inside the pyramid. He was dressed the same, in loose-fitting white trousers and shirt with a red bandanna around his neck. And his expression was just as unfriendly. Angry, even.
Sari and I both backed away from the mummy case, and Ahmed, his eyes darting from one of us to the other, took a step toward us.
“Gabe, he’s coming after us!” Sari whispered.
She grabbed my arm. Her hand was cold as ice.
“Let’s get out of here!” she cried.
I hesitated. Shouldn’t we stop and say hello to him first?
But something about the stern, determined look on Ahmed’s face told me that Sari was right.
We turned and began walking really fast away from him into the vast room, Sari a few steps ahead of me.
I turned and saw that Ahmed was jogging after us.
He shouted something to us, his voice angry, threatening. I couldn’t make out the words.
“Run!” Sari cried.
And now we were both running at full speed, our sneakers drumming loudly on the polished marble floor.
We scooted around an enormous glass display case containing three upright mummy cases. Then we ran straight down the wide aisle between sculptures and shelves of ancient pottery and pyramid relics.
Behind us, I could hear Ahmed shouting furiously. “Come back! Come back!”
He sounded really angry.
His shoes clacked against the floor as he ran, the sound echoing in the vast, empty museum chamber.
“He’s gaining on us!” I called to Sari, who was still a few steps ahead.
“There’s got to be a way out of here!” she answered breathlessly.
But I immediately saw that there wasn’t. We were nearly to the back wall. We passed a gigantic sphinx, then stopped.
There was nowhere to go.
No doorway. No exit.
A solid granite wall.
We both turned and saw Ahmed’s eyes grow wide with triumph.
He had us cornered.
8
Ahmed stopped a few feet in front of us. He was panting like a dog, gasping for air, and holding his side. He glared at us angrily.
Sari glanced at me. She looked pale, really frightened. We both had our backs pressed against the wall.
I swallowed hard. My throat felt tight and dry.
What was he going to do to us?
“Why did you run?” Ahmed finally managed to say, still holding his side as if he had a cramp. “Why?”
We didn’t reply. We both stared back at him, waiting to see what he was about to do.
“I came with a message from your father,” he told Sari, breathing hard. He raised the red bandanna from his neck and wiped his perspiring forehead with it. “Why did you run?”
“A message?” Sari stammered.
“Yes,” Ahmed said. “You know me. We met again yesterda
y. I don’t understand why you ran.”
“I’m sorry,” Sari said quickly, glancing guiltily at me.
“We weren’t thinking clearly,” I said. “Sari frightened me, and I followed her.”
“Gabe was telling me all this frightening stuff,” she said, jabbing me hard in the side with her elbow. “It was his fault. He scared me with all this mummy stuff. So when I saw you, I wasn’t thinking clearly, and …”
Both of us were babbling. We both felt so relieved that he wasn’t chasing us — and so embarrassed that we had run away from him.
“Your father sent me to get you,” Ahmed said, his dark eyes trained on me. “I didn’t think I’d have to chase you through the whole museum.”
“Sorry,” Sari and I said in unison.
I felt like a complete jerk. I’m sure Sari did, too.
“Daddy came back to the hotel and saw Gabe’s note?” Sari asked, straightening her hair with her hand as she moved away from the wall.
“Yes.” Ahmed nodded.
“He got back from the hospital awfully fast,” Sari said, glancing at her wristwatch.
“Yes,” Ahmed replied again. “Come. I will take you back to the hotel. He is waiting for you there.”
We followed him in silence, Sari and I walking side by side a few steps behind him.
As we made our way down the long stairway, we glanced sheepishly at each other. We were both feeling really foolish for running away like that.
A short while later, we were back on the crowded, noisy sidewalk, an unending stream of cars honking past, all moving in starts and stops, drivers hanging out of car windows, shouting and shaking their fists.
Ahmed checked to make sure we were with him, then turned right and began leading the way through the crowd. The sun was high over the buildings now. The air was hot and humid.
“Hey, wait —” I called.
Ahmed looked back but kept walking.
“We’re going the wrong way,” I called to him, shouting over the cries of a street peddler behind a cart of vegetables. “The hotel is back that way.” I pointed.
Ahmed shook his head. “My car is just up there.”
“We’re driving back to the hotel?” Sari asked, her voice revealing surprise.