by Jerry Dubs
Ignoring him, Diane paced and complained: There was no bar, no hotel, no air conditioning, no roads, no other Americans and no sign of a goddamn bathroom or shower.
Brian finished the beer and bread then he stretched and worked out the kinks in his back and legs. He shared her worries, but there was little to be gained by complaining, so he leaned back against a tree and tried to take in everything he could, imagining himself in a baseball dugout studying an opposing team as they warmed up before a game.
Children played by the edge of the lake, splashing water and chasing each other while a few women washed clothes in the water and others sat in the sand working at something in stone bowls and talking. No one seemed in danger or afraid; everyone seemed relaxed and unhurried.
The kids, except for being naked, were pretty much like kids anywhere, he thought. They chased and yelled at each other.
Four older boys were playing a game of catch. Two of them stood apart from each other, each carrying another boy piggyback. The riders threw a ball to each other, trying to toss it just out of reach. Sometimes the standing boys would stumble as they tried to get into position for their rider to catch the ball. Then they would fall laughing to the soft sand. Once in awhile after a dropped catch, the riders would slide down and switch partners.
Brian was trying to work out the rules the kids were using, when he saw a woman leave the stone building where Bakr had gone and walk in their direction.
She wore a white linen skirt wrapped around her waist and a wide, beaded necklace that draped over her chest, leaving her small breasts uncovered. Her long black hair was braided, held back with a narrow band decorated with dark red and blue beads. Instead of the heavy swipes of dark blue kohl that Bakr wore under his eyes, she had a thin green line of eye shadow that outlined the top and bottom of her eyes, meeting at the outer edge in a point and extending to form a short line.
She looked a little older than Brian and Diane, but not yet thirty. As she got closer, Brian saw that a long deep scar ran down her right cheek. Even with the scar, Brian thought she was stunningly attractive. Sunlight seemed to dance across her brown skin.
It wasn’t until she stopped near them in the shade of the small grove of trees, that Brian noticed the two girls who trailed behind her. The girls were naked except for a narrow belt that hung loosely around their boyish hips. They were as tall as the woman, but younger, their breasts were just beginning to form and they hadn’t grown pubic hair.
As soon as he saw them, Brian turned his eyes away, uncomfortable with their nudity. He didn’t mind seeing the little kids naked, but these two girls were too close to being women.
“Greetings great Netjrew, welcome to To-She, home of Netjer Sobek. I am Yunet, chantress of the temple of Sobek,” the woman said.
Brian understood nothing except 'To-She' but he smiled at her and answered with the welcoming phrase Bakr had taught him. Then he pointed to himself and said “Brian,” then at Diane and said her name.
The woman turned to him and nodded as he spoke, but her attention was on Diane. She took a step toward her and slowly raised her hand, as if calming a frightened horse. Diane stood still, her arms crossed protectively, as the woman’s hand touched her red hair cautiously. Once she was satisfied that Diane’s red hair was not truly on fire, she brushed her fingers through it, almost as if she were petting Diane.
“Netjret Diane,” she said softly.
She stepped back slowly and without turning to the girls, she said, “Take these gods to the temple and bathe and anoint them. Bring them to me when they are comforted.”
Then she turned and walked back to the stone building.
One of the girls approached Brian and reached for his hand. The other took Diane’s hand, and then they led them toward the building where Yunet had gone.
Inside the building, Brian was led through a doorway to his right; Diane was taken to a doorway on the other side.
“I just want you to know, Brian,” she said as they parted, “whatever happens, I do blame you.”
Light filtered softly through palm branches that lay across the wooden beams that crossed the open ceiling of the room where Abana stopped with Diana.
The walls were painted with scenes from the lake outside: on calm water, shallow reed boats carried fishermen who used nets to catch fish that seemed to jump from the water into their boats; flocks of brilliant, white birds flew across the pale blue horizon; ducks swam near the shore where gazelles drank.
Two more girls, a little younger than Abana were waiting in the large, square room. They stood by a circular stone slab with hole in its center. Buckets of water sat on the ground beside them.
Abana took Diane’s hand and led her to the center of the stone circle. Hesitantly she touched Diane’s shirt and blue jeans. She raised her eyebrows in question.
Taking in the buckets, Diane nodded. “Yeah, I get it.”
She sat on the ground to untie and remove her boots. Abana gasped and then clapped her hands sharply, motioning to the younger girls. The girls ran to a corner of the room and came back with a low, wooden chair. Together they offered their hands to Diane and helped her to stand.
Sitting back into the chair, Diane undid her jeans and tugged them off. Then she stood to pull off her T-shirt, which she dropped on the chair. She slipped off her white thong and unclasping her bra, she shrugged out of it, adding it to the pile of clothes on the chair.
Naked, she stepped onto the stone slap and looked expectantly at Abana.
The Egyptian girl was rooted to the ground. She had never seen skin so pale and smooth.
“Quit ogling and let’s get on with it,” Diane snapped, then she closed her eyes and braced herself.
Abana heard the irritation in the goddess’s voice. She bowed and apologized. Of course the goddess would be anxious to be bathed. She was beautiful beyond words, Abana thought. What a blessing to be able to serve her.
At Abana’s signal, the girls raised their buckets and slowly poured water over Diane. Abana stepped forward with a linen cloth and gently began to wash the desert’s grit from the goddess.
The cool water was refreshing after three days in the desert. After she got over her initial fear and then the awkwardness of being bathed, Diane began to enjoy the soothing attention of the three girls. They washed her slowly, working perfumed soap into a lather and then rinsing her. After a few minutes the younger girls began to sing a soft, lilting melody as they worked. They washed and rinsed her a second time and then gently patted her dry with linen towels.
Abana led Diane to a narrow raised platform that was covered with white linen. Tables on either side of the bed held painted ceramic jars. Abana showed her a small wooden step beside the bed and held her arm as Diane stepped up and then sat on the bed. She noticed a sweet, slightly bitter fragrance hanging in the air.
The two girls walked over and stood on either side of the bed. Abana gently pushed on Diane’s shoulders until she lay back, her head resting on a pillow that was nestled in a curved wooden headrest. Once she was settled, the girls began to rub scented oil on her arms, gently massaging her.
She didn’t know that she had drifted off to sleep until Abana softly shook her shoulder. The young girl was smiling at her with undisguised affection. Abana signaled for her to roll over onto her stomach so they could complete the massage.
As she rolled over she realized that the tension that had built up during the trek across the sand had been drained away by the massage. She felt relaxed for the first time since she and Brian had left the taxi at the Step Pyramid. It was only three days ago, but it seemed like another lifetime.
As the girls began to rub her back, she sighed deeply. There was so much to think about, so much to worry about. But it was hard, she thought as the girls kneaded her shoulders, so hard to concentrate when she felt so good.
Sunlight slipped through the ceiling at a steep angle when Diane awoke. Flickering oil lamps had been lit and Diane thought for a moment that she wa
s alone. Then Abana approached the bed and spoke to her soothingly.
“Thanks,” Diane said. “That was great. Now, if we could just call the Mena House and arrange a taxi ride.”
Abana smiled at her as the two young girls approached from the shadows where they had been sitting, while Diane slept. One of them carried a white linen sheath dress across her extended arms. The other held bleached white sandals, made from twisted reeds. Diane noticed that an ornamental wooden box now sat on the bedside table and the low chair where she had dropped her clothing was empty, and had been moved near the bed.
Abana held out a hand and helped Diane step from the massage table. The girl with the linen sheath stepped up and with Abana’s help raised the sheer dress over Diane’s head. Diane raised her arms and let the soft linen fall to her shoulders.
The other girl knelt by her feet with the sandals and when Diane was ready, slipped them onto her feet. They led her to the chair where one of the girls stood behind Diane and gathered her hair away from her face.
Abana opened the box of cosmetics. One of the girls took a polished silver mirror from the box as Abana leaned toward Diane to begin applying make-up. She worked carefully and slowly, making up Diane’s eyes, plucking hair from her eyebrows, adding lipstick and finally tying her hair back with colorful linen band.
Satisfied, Abana took the silver mirror from the young girl and handed it to Diane.
Although she was expecting it, Diane still gasped when she looked into the mirror. Staring back at her was a living image that could have been a tomb painting of an Egyptian goddess.
Brian was dressed in a short linen kilt and wore a wide beaded necklace. His eyes were outlined with green kohl and his bare chest glistened with the sheen of massage oil.
He sat on a straight-backed wooden chair by a table that was heaped with dishes of food.
Yunet sat at the end of the table. She wore a linen dress that was gathered just below her breasts. A single, wide strap that held the dress over her left shoulder covered one breast. She was sipping from a silver cup as Diane was led into the room.
Yunet nodded toward a chair with legs carved like lion’s paws across the table from Brian and smiled at Diane.
“Wow, babe, you look like Cleopatra. I’m thinking Russell Crowe for myself, you know from that gladiator movie. No wait, that wasn’t Egypt. Maybe Rock from that mummy movie.” Brian flexed his biceps and laughed.
At the sight of Brian, the tension flooded back into Diane's body. While she had been with Abana and the two other girls, she had tried to pretend that she was at an Egyptian-theme spa. Although part of her knew that her situation, whatever that was, hadn’t changed, she had tricked herself into enjoying the only pleasant experience she had had in days.
Now, seeing Brian dressed like an ancient Egyptian and laughing, oblivious to their danger, her anger at him returned and as it did fear rushed in, filling her with a stomach-churning feeling of doom.
“Hey, are you OK, Diane?”
She stumbled as her legs weakened. Yunet, who was nearest to her, stood quickly and put her arms around Diane to steady her. Brian came around the table and put his hand on Diane’s shoulder to pull her into his arms, but she turned angrily away from him. Yunet pulled her in closer, holding and comforting her as Diane began to shiver and cry.
Brian reached out to caress her hair.
“Diane, babe, it’s OK, really. I just got a bath and a wonderful massage and then Yunet set out this fantastic meal. I mean, it’s like a feast. I don’t know where we are or who these people are, but they’re nice people, Diane. Really, they’re OK. We’ll get this all sorted out and get back to our trip. You know we will.”
Yunet spoke softly to one of the serving girls. The girl took Brian’s arm and tugged him toward the doorway.
“Diane?” he said softly.
She shook her head and cried silently. Brian let himself be led from the room. When he looked back, he saw Yunet stroking Diane’s hair and murmuring softly to her.
He asked about Diane the next morning when Pahket, the servant girl who had led him away from Diane and Yunet, came to his small room. When he said Diane’s name, Pahket nodded, smiled and said “netjret nefer.” So he patted his chest and said “Brian.” Pahket nodded again and smiled.
“Brian go to Diane,” he said, making the fingers of his right hand walk across the palm of his left.
Pahket nodded vigorously and then took him to breakfast in the same room where he had seen Diane and Yunet the night before. There was no one there, but the table was set with fresh fruit and bread, still warm from the ovens.
After breakfast Pahket accompanied him as he searched through the temple, calling Diane’s name at each doorway. Although he had been embarrassed by Pahket’s casual nudity when he first saw her in the morning, by mid-day, after seeing that everyone they encountered wore as little, he stopped thinking about it.
The stone building where he had eaten and slept had only a few enclosed rooms, two small, shaded courtyards with shallow pools of water and a larger courtyard surrounded by walls made from palm tree trunks.
At the larger courtyard, a canal from the lake passed through an opening in the palm trunk wall where it fed a pond that took up almost half the enclosure. A pathway wound around the pond to a stone shrine at the far end of the courtyard.
When Brian started to follow the pathway, Pahket grabbed at his arm and shook her head. He pulled free and walked along the stones with her following cautiously. Halfway around the pond he heard from his left, across the pond, a long roar that sounded like a lion trying to gargle.
He stopped and cocked his head, trying to identify the source of the sound.
Pahket pulled at his arm again, trying to get him back to the building.
When he turned to look at her, at the edge of his field of vision he saw a flash of low movement on the far bank. He quickly turned back to it and realized with a start that it was a crocodile raised up on its legs and it was running faster than he imagined they could move, headed for the water.
It reached the lake and soundlessly slid into the water, disappearing beneath the surface.
Another roar from the far side of the water brought Brian’s attention back to the land. He saw now that the entire lake bank was filled with crocodiles sunning themselves. As he watched, two of them raised up on their legs and bellowed, snapping their jaws challengingly at each other.
He took another look at the small shrine and saw motion along its floor. A crocodile emerged from the shadows carrying the bloody leg of a goat in its mouth.
Brian cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted toward the small building.
“Diane! Diane!”
Pahket tugged once more on his arm, shaking her head.
“OK,” he agreed when there was no answering call from the small chapel, “we can go now.”
That day and then another passed without Brian catching a glimpse of Diane.
There were no locked doors and, aside from the crocodile courtyard, Pahket didn’t try to stop him from going anywhere else in the settlement. He looked throughout the temple and walked through the rambling settlement of mud brick huts.
Most of the huts had only three sides, just enough he saw, to support cross beams that held palm branches atop the roof to keep out the sun. There really wasn’t anywhere for someone to hide.
Not that these people tried to hide anything, he thought.
All of the children and most of the men were naked; a few men wore the same kind of short kilt that Brian wore. Although some of the women wore kilts like Brian’s, most of them wore just a narrow cloth belt with one end hanging down a little from one side.
He tried to remember if he had ever heard of a place like this. You’d think it would have been on The Discover Channel or something, he thought.
The oasis was much larger than it had looked when he first had seen it as he, Bakr and Diane had crested the last sand dune. The lake was small enough that he cou
ld see the opposite shore, but he realized that the flatness of the calm water made the distance seem shorter than it was. It would probably take two or three days to hike around it, he guessed.
A few small boats were tied to wooden posts by rough docks built along the canal that fed the lake. The boats were made of bundles of waxy reeds lashed together to form a long, thin hull that curved up out of the water at both ends. Another bundle was tied to the center of the boat to help keep the crew dry.
Even simpler reed rafts were pulled up on the bank of the canal. Brian had seen men take these rafts out fishing on the lake. The rafts looked like surfboards, yet the men balanced on them effortlessly.
Brian ached to try one, but he needed some place safe to practice. He didn’t want to fall into the same water where those huge crocodiles lived.
On the other side of the village, he had found grape arbors and beyond them orchards of fig and olive trees and gardens with onions, radishes and cucumbers. There were other plants he’d never seen before and open fields of something he thought was wheat, but it looked shorter and darker than the wheat he remembered from his childhood drives through the farms of southern Pennsylvania.
There were pathways everywhere, too many for Brian to explore each one. First he followed the ones that looked most traveled and then he tried some that look like they were little used.
A few stopped at the edge of the oasis, ending where the scruffy grass gave way to sand. Brian stood there, peering off into the unending emptiness, wondering why a path to this spot even existed. Others ended with a view toward a rocky area that rose from the desert near the horizon. There was nothing for comparison, so Brian couldn’t tell if the outcropping was a mile away or twenty miles away.
Two of the pathways ended by larger mud-brick homes where Brian and Pahket were greeted warmly and offered food by the families who lived there.
