A few dozen feluccas, manned by four to six men in turbans, had tethered themselves around the Nefertiti and were throwing galabias up for us. It was like Pirates of the Caribbean, only the pirates were frocked up in man dresses. Carol tore a wrapper off and held up a purple galabia with gold-painted markings and a ghoulish picture of Cleopatra in the middle. She wasted no time in wriggling her ample figure into it, her bosom contorting the face of Cleopatra into a big-headed blob. Carol was happy though. Old people are easily pleased. She started doing belly-dancing maneuvers to impress Nigel. It was disturbing yet I couldn’t look away. Sort of like a car wreck.
Mohammed called out, “If you want to buy, you put money in the plastic bag of another you don’t want and throw back. The men, they share the money.” Then he walked off into the bar.
All the guys were pulling off their shirts and trying on the long, dresslike galabias. Sam had already been through three by the time I tried on my first. He tried on a purple one like Carol’s and shimmied up to her in it, shaking his shoulders like her, only he couldn’t make his belly wobble in the same way. Carol went crimson. One of the crew was videoing the scene. It was definitely memorable, so I took a snap on my phone. When I checked the image, I saw I’d focused on Sam. Purely coincidence, I’m sure. Besides, Rosie might like it.
“Try this one, Nigel. It’s your color,” Carol insisted, holding out a brown galabia.
“I don’t think so, Carol,” he replied firmly, looking even stiffer than he usually does. His lips were all pursed.
“Look, even Liz and Brian are at it.” She pointed over to Mr. Bell and Ms. Doyle, who were frolicking about like teenagers. It was quite literally a sight for sore eyes.
“Well, each to his own,” Nigel insisted gruffly, smoothing down the lapels of his polyester safari jacket.
That’s when Carol went bonkers and started grappling with the buttons on Nigel’s shirt. I’d never seen anyone quite so overcome with lust—at least, that’s what I assumed it was. Nigel put up quite a struggle, but Sam came to Carol’s aid and held him down so she could strip him of any dignity he may have ever deluded himself he had.
The whole scene was chaos. The felucca men calling out, the galabias flying on and off the boat. I felt like the only grown-up on deck. Eventually even Nigel was happily throwing back an unwanted galabia with his payment for the one he had been squeezed into.
I looked over and saw Salah sitting on a sofa, quietly pretending to read a book. He was really looking at the other side of the deck, where Rosie was working on a music score. She really was mad, not joining in with everyone. No wonder she hadn’t managed to pull Sam yet.
She couldn’t have found a better opportunity to pull him if we’d planned this moment for a month. He was there for the taking. No shirt, high spirited, and being very, very affectionate. He placed his arm around me to support himself while we cracked up over the sight of all the teachers doing their conga line.
I didn’t want to give Rosie the wrong idea about Sam and me, so I moved away, suggesting, “Sam, why don’t you choose a costume for Rosie?”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Rosie,” I repeated. No wonder it’s always down to the girls to do the pulling. “Look at her,” I said, pointing over. “She’s deep in composition mode, which is what makes her so exotic and interesting, don’t you think?”
“I guess.” He shrugged and made a face as if he wasn’t completely besotted with her. Boys!
“Come on, she’ll love it,” I assured him, giving him a knowing nudge.
“Fine,” he agreed disinterestedly as he grabbed a pink galabia from the deck and handed it to me. I was about to tell him to take it over to Rosie, but she suddenly stood up and cried out, “Oh look!” We all looked to where she was pointing, up the Nile.
Ahead of us there was an ancient ruin. More piles of pillars and rubble than a temple, but it was cool because it was the first impressive evidence of Ancient Egypt we’d actually seen from the river.
“Hey Mohammed, get out here,” Astin called into the bar. “There’s a ruin thing coming up. Check it out.”
Like Mohammed hadn’t seen enough ruins to last a lifetime.
“I think its Kom Ombo,” Rosie said.
Salah went over to her, stood by her side, and whispered something in her ear, which was tremendously annoying and blatantly meant to make me jealous. But what about poor Sam!
We eventually docked at Kom Ombo as the sun was setting. By seven, the gangplank and red carpet were laid out and we all set off on foot to explore the town. All, except for Rosie. I tried pleading.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Totally, I need to get this piece down while it’s still in my head. I’ll catch up,” she insisted.
I really am in awe of Rosie and her talent. I felt like such an airhead as I skipped down the gangplank and along a small dirt pathway lined with bustling cafes. The sun was nearly down and the aroma of coffee and the sweet scent of pipe smoke wafted into the air. I recognized a couple of chaps who’d been chucking galabias up at us earlier, but they were all solemn and dignified now.
I could see Sam’s head, way up at the front of the straggling group, so I sidled up and put my hands over his eyes. I wasn’t flirting or anything, it was just that Sam had been such a sweetie earlier that day at Edfu and I felt really close—Oh my God! I thought. I so should not be having thoughts of closeness to Sam. A horrible feeling of guilt descended on me, but I still let him pull me into him.
I nestled under his arm and we walked along. It felt nice hanging out with a guy as friends. Yes, I realized, that’s all these feelings were. I’d never had a boy as a friend before. Well, not as a close friend that I could share the deepest and darkest with. Was that why I’d told Sam the truth about how poor my family was? I felt an incredible sense of relief at having shared the truth with someone. Even if he hadn’t really understood. I’d never really had boys as friends. At some point I usually find they want a lot more.
“Now for the blah, blah, blah,” Mohammed announced, clapping his hands to get our attention.
Sam still had his arm around me. I looked around for Salah because, well, there we were, standing on the dark steps of a temple, illuminated by floodlights: if this wasn’t Salah’s perfect chance to pull me, I don’t know what was. And that’s when it occurred to me that perhaps Salah was inside, waiting for me the way I’d waited for him at Edfu. That was exactly what I’d wanted that morning but not anymore … I was enjoying being snug under Sam’s arm.
“… known also as the Temple of the Crocodile because crocodiles used to sun themselves on the steps you stand on now. Watch your ankles, please!”
“Also known as the Temple of the Falcon, I think you’ll find,” Ms. Doyle added.
Mohammed ignored her. “The temple, which dates back to the Ptolemy’s, has been inhabited by Coptic Christians and later by local villagers, who used the stones to build themselves houses. Inside there is still many interesting things we can accept. For example, surgical instruments just as they use in hospitals in London and New York to this very day.”
“Perhaps that’s pushing it a bit,” muttered Nigel to appreciative guffaws from his fellow teachers.
“Speaking of pushing, we push on,” Mohammed said grimly.
“Darling, aren’t you getting a bit worried about Rosie?” I asked Sam, but really I was sort of hoping he wasn’t.
“Who?”
I punched him in the arm. “Behave,” I said, secretly pleased with his answer. Talk about conflicted!
“I am behaving,” he replied, tickling me.
It was as I struggled with him that I felt an odd stirring of excitement. The worst part was, I didn’t pull away when I had the chance. I honestly meant to. I thought about it. But I didn’t. In fact, I did the opposite, and as I was pulling his hand away, I entwined my fingers in his. Then I let him take me by the hand and lead me to a small antechamber where the floodlights couldn’t reach us
. I let him take my face in his hands and I let him kiss me.
I keep saying “I let him,” but actually, I’ve never in my life let a boy do anything I didn’t want him to. I wanted Sam to kiss me. Looking back, I think I’d wanted him to kiss me since that morning at Edfu when he’d found me alone in the chamber. His kisses were gentle and delicious. I wish I could lie, but the truth is, I didn’t think of Rosie once.
The guilt didn’t hit me until we were approaching the boat and I saw Rosie and Salah sitting together on the deck. Rosie’s head was bent over her composition and Salah was looking at her while pouring water. And then I had the most evil thought: it would be great if they got together. I was ashamed as soon as the thought occurred to me. I pulled my hand from Sam’s as if it were a hot coal.
Sam looked bewildered, adorable, and upset.
“Darlings, there you are,” I said. “You should have come with us. It was wonderful, wasn’t it, Sam?” I asked, red-faced with guilt.
Rosie and Salah were both looking at me like I was mad.
I turned to Sam but he was storming off.
And it was then that it hit me hard, the full enormity of what I’d done and how many people’s lives I had complicated. Had I been chasing the wrong boy all along?
“I think you should go after him, Octavia,” Salah said. And so I ran off, confused and ashamed.
Chapter 15
Salah
Even our best plans can lead to our own destruction.
I’m a big believer in fate, kismet, you know, the whole “God’s will, not my will” thing. The point is, accepting your fate makes everything more relaxing. I watch people running around trying to bend the world to their own will and getting bent out of shape in the process. If you just kick back and let fate carry you along, it’s a hell of a lot more peaceful. Well, that’s how it had worked up until meeting Rosie. And now, I was fed up waiting for fate to make her mine.
Sam’s always saying that life is what you make of it. So even though it went against all my principles and my belief in Allah’s will, I’d decided it was time to take fate into my own hands. I was going to go after Rosie with everything I had.
I’d walked in on Sam and Octavia at Kom Ombo the previous night. Sam had finally managed to get her alone, and it looked like he was making progress. But there I was, wandering around alone while the girl I couldn’t get out of my head was all alone back on the boat. I looked up at the stars and remembered the night we’d looked up at the stars and talked about Egypt.
Sam and Octavia had no idea I’d seen them. I’d run as fast as I could back to the boat, where Rosie was still working on her composition. She had her back to me and as I approached, I could hear her humming, “Dum, diddlie, dum, dum dee.”
So, like the suave, sophisticated guy I am, I said, “Hey, is that your song?”
She turned to me. “It’s not a song. It’s a movement.” Then she turned around again and left me standing there like an idiot.
Eventually I sat down across from her and picked up the composition sheets she was scrawling on. “Wow, that looks hard,” I said. Hard? Had I just said hard? How old was I? Two?
She snatched the page back from me, shuffled the sheets into a pile, and put them in a folder. “Oh yes, very, very hard.”
“Cool. I mean, good.” I wanted to smack my head on the table. And that’s exactly what I did. I leaned over and banged my head on the table several times.
Rosie said nothing. What could she say?
I stopped after a while. It hurt a little.
We sat in silence.
“So, music,” I said, struggling to get a conversation off the ground. (And failing miserably.) “That’s not something I know a lot about.”
“Oh?” she replied.
“Funny thing is, Egyptian music has more notes.”
She leaned forward and looked at me curiously. “More notes?”
“I think they’re called quarter chords or half-half notes or something. That’s why Arabic music sounds …” I groped for words like a drowning man. Help! What was the word I was looking for?
“Exotic? Complicated? I love it. I love the complexity. Do you mean quartertones?”
My face lit up. “Do I? Yeah, that’s it, quarternotes.”
“Quartertones,” she corrected.
“Quartertones,” I repeated. “Yeah, that’s it.” I tapped the table with my fingers and cleared my throat. Could I be any more stupid? Why had I decided to discuss music—a subject I knew nothing about—with a musical genius? I should have stuck with astronomy. The silence became more and more awkward, so I told her I was thirsty just to fill it. Then I poured myself a glass of water from a pitcher on the table. Not wanting to appear rude, I offered her some.
“Thanks,” she replied.
Suddenly I realized there was only one glass. It must have been her water pitcher and her glass. I pushed the glass back toward her and poured some more water into it to show her I really meant it.
“No, honestly, you may as well have it,” she told me. “I’m fine.”
Great. Of course I knew what she was really saying. “You may as well have my water now that you’ve helped yourself, you greedy self-centered American.”
I was dying. I was a dead man sitting and while I was sitting, thinking about my dead status, I looked at Rosie and continued to pour the water over the rim of her glass and into my lap. That was when it blurted out of me. “You don’t like me, do you?”
She looked me straight in the eye with those big golden eyes of hers and replied, “What?”
I kept pouring the water down my pants.
And then Octavia and Sam turned up. And a whole new mess began.
Thursday, Day 4
Nefertiti sails to Aswan
Sunrise: 06:24 Sunset: 17:57
08:00 Wake-up call
08:00–09:00 Breakfast in the Nefertiti restaurant
09:30 Visit the Temple of Philae, the High Dam & the unfinished Obelisk by bus
13:00 Lunch in the Nefertiti restaurant
15:00 Felucca trip around Elephantine Island
19:30 Dinner in the Nefertiti restaurant
Overnight in Aswan
Chapter 16
Rosie
Sometimes revenge can taste annoyingly sweet.
“Darling, we have to talk,” Octavia announced the next morning as we were getting dressed for another hot bus journey. This time to Philae.
I really didn’t want to talk. I had barely slept after the conversation with Salah the night before. I’d just ruined my life and I didn’t care about anything or anyone else. I mean, Salah had made an effort to come and chat with me. In other words, it was my big break, my chance to show what a wonderful, interesting, charming, funny girl I could be. But then when he’d approached me to talk about music (which he clearly knew nothing about, bless him), I’d made him feel like a fool. I hated myself. I couldn’t have been colder if I’d tried. “Octavia, I’m not really up for a chat right now. Let’s just grab our water and get upstairs. We’re late.”
“Okay,” she agreed hesitantly. “But honestly, I’ve done the most evil thing. I’ve behaved worse than that really, really horrible goddess that did that really mean thing to her son.”
“Octavia, I can’t.”
“What I’m trying to say is, I know I told you Sam likes you and I know I said I liked Salah, but well, the thing is—” Only she didn’t get to give me her confession because there was a knocking on the door. Octavia opened it and in walked Salah.
“Did we invite you into our room?” I asked, trying to sound teasing but probably sounding more like a prize cow.
“I won’t stay …,” he began. Yes, I had definitely sounded like a prize cow.
“I brought you this. I mean, I wanted to give it to you earlier but then I poured water over everything and … just take it,” he said, holding out a package. “I hope you like it. You can throw it out.”
“How promising,” Octavia said after
he left. “Rosie, whatever did you say to make him feel so awkward? I’m starting to think I’m not the most evil girl in all the world, after all.”
“You’re not. I just can’t seem to stop being horrible to him and …”
“That’s what I always do when I fancy a boy. Torture him. Oh my God!” she cried, stuffing her fist into her mouth as the penny finally dropped. “You fancy Salah, don’t you!”
I went bright red.
“Oh Rosie, why didn’t you say anything? Don’t you see this is perfect!”
I stared at the package in front of me in disbelief, until finally Octavia announced, “Well, if you’re not going to open his present, I will!”
“No!” I said as the tears banked up behind my eyes. “I’ll open it,” I told her, and as the ribbon gave way a pile of old sheet music fluttered to the floor.
I gathered up the pages and leafed through them.
“Wow!” Octavia said. “He must be pretty keen to buy you such a perfect gift. And where and how did he manage to get hold of them?”
I ran my hand over the scores, the music already seeping into my fingers, suffusing my brain.
Octavia babbled away as the music played on in my head. “He must have used family connections. I think you and he make a perfect couple. I don’t feel the least bit evil about stealing Sam. I really don’t know why you pretended to like Sam all that time …”
Eventually I looked at her and said, “Salah bought me these.”
“Well, of course he did,” Octavia said, rolling her eyes with a laugh.
“There’s a card too,” she added, chucking an envelope at me. “He must really like you!”
I went red, and then even redder, as I scanned the letter.
Rosie,
Here’s some Bach I had a guy get from town. My dad tells me that Bach’s the composer’s composer, so I hope you like it.
True Love, the Sphinx, and Other Unsolvable Riddles Page 11
