05 - The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb

I saw the Great Pyramid and got thirsty.

Maybe it was all the sand. So dry and yellow, it seemed to stretch on
forever. It even made the sky look dry.

I poked my mom in the side. “Mom, I’m really thirsty.”

“Not now,” she said. She had one hand up on her forehead, shielding her eyes
from the bright sun as she stared up at the enormous pyramid.

Not now?

What does “not now” mean? I was thirsty.
Now!

Someone bumped me from behind and apologized in a foreign language. I never
dreamed when I saw the Great Pyramid there’d be so many other tourists. I guess
half the people in the world decided to spend their Christmas vacation in Egypt
this year.

“But, Mom—” I said. I didn’t mean to whine. It was just that my throat was
so dry. “I’m really thirsty.”

“We can’t get you a drink now,” she answered, staring at the pyramid. “Stop
acting like you’re four. You’re twelve, remember?”

“Twelve-year-olds get thirsty, too,” I muttered. “All this sand in the air,
it’s making me gag.”

“Look at the pyramid,” she said, sounding a little irritated. “That’s why we
came here. We didn’t come here to get a drink.”

“But I’m
choking
!” I cried, gasping and holding my throat.

Okay, so I wasn’t choking. I exaggerated a little, just trying to get her
attention. But she pulled the brim of her straw hat down and continued to stare
up at the pyramid, which shimmered in the heat.

I decided to try my dad. As usual, he was studying the handful of guidebooks
he always carried everywhere. I don’t think he’d even looked at the pyramid yet.
He always misses everything because he always has his nose buried in a
guidebook.

“Dad, I’m really thirsty,” I said, whispering as if my throat were strained
to get my message across.

“Wow. Do you know how wide the pyramid is?” he asked, staring at a picture of
the pyramid in his book.

“I’m thirsty, Dad.”

“It’s thirteen acres wide, Gabe,” he said, really excited. “Do you know what it’s made of?”

I wanted to say Silly Putty.

He’s always testing me. Whenever we go on a trip, he always asks me a million
questions like that. I don’t think I’ve ever answered one right.

“Some kind of stone?” I answered.

“That’s right.” He smiled at me, then turned back to his book. “It’s made of
limestone. Limestone blocks. It says here that some of the blocks weigh up to a
thousand tons.”

“Whoa,” I said. “That’s more than you and Mom put together!”

He turned his eyes from the book and frowned at me. “Not funny, Gabe.”

“Just kidding,” I said. Dad’s a little sensitive about his weight, so I try
to tease him about it as often as I can.

“How do you think the ancient Egyptians moved stones that weighed a thousand
tons?” he asked.

Quiz time wasn’t over.

I took a guess. “In trucks?”

He laughed. “Trucks? They didn’t have the
wheel
.”

I shielded my eyes and stared up at the pyramid. It was really huge, much
bigger than it looks in pictures. And much dryer.

I couldn’t imagine how they pulled those big stones across the sand without
wheels. “I don’t know,” I confessed. “I’m really thirsty.”

“No one knows how they did it,” Dad said.

So it was a trick question.

“Dad, I really need a drink.”

“Not now,” he said. He squinted at the pyramid. “Gives you a funny feeling,
doesn’t it?”

“It gives me a thirsty feeling,” I said, trying to get my point across.

“No. I mean, it gives me a funny feeling to think that our ancestors—yours
and mine, Gabe—may have walked around these pyramids, or even helped to build
them. It gives me kind of a chill. How about you?”

“I guess,” I told him. He was right. It
was
kind of exciting.

We’re Egyptian, you see. I mean, both sets of my grandparents came from
Egypt. They moved to the United States around 1930. My mom and dad were both
born in Michigan. We were all very excited to see the country our ancestors came
from.

“I wonder if your uncle Ben is down inside that pyramid right now,” Dad said,
shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand.

Uncle Ben Hassad. I had nearly forgotten about my uncle, the famous
archaeologist. Uncle Ben was another one of the reasons we had decided to come
to Egypt over the holidays. That and the fact that my mom and dad had some
business to do in Cairo and Alexandria and some other places.

Mom and Dad have their own business. They sell refrigeration equipment. It
usually isn’t very exciting. But sometimes they travel to neat places, like
Egypt, and I get to go with them.

I turned my eyes to the pyramids and thought about my uncle.

Uncle Ben and his workers were digging around in the Great Pyramid, exploring
and discovering new mummies, I guess. He had always been fascinated by our
ancestors’ homeland. He had lived in Egypt for many years. Uncle Ben was an
expert on pyramids and mummies. I even saw his picture once in
National
Geographic.

“When are we going to see Uncle Ben?” I asked, tugging Dad’s arm. I
accidentally tugged too hard, and the guidebooks fell out of his hands.

I helped him pick them up.

“Not today,” Dad said, making a face. He didn’t like to bend over to pick up
things. His stomach got in the way. “Ben’s going to meet us in Cairo in a few
days.”

“Why don’t we go up to the pyramid and see if he’s there now?” I asked
impatiently.

“We’re not allowed,” Dad replied.

“Look—camels!” Mom poked me on the shoulder and pointed.

Sure enough, some people had arrived on camels. One of the camels seemed to
be having a coughing fit. I guess he was thirsty, too. The people riding the camels were tourists and they looked very uncomfortable. They
didn’t seem to know what to do next.

“Do you know how to get down from a camel?” I asked my dad.

He was squinting at the pyramid, studying the top of it. “No. How?”

“You don’t get down from a camel,” I said. “You get down from a duck.”

I know. I know. It’s a very old joke. But my dad and I never get tired of it.

“Do you see the camels?” Mom asked.

“I’m not blind,” I replied. Being thirsty always puts me in a bad mood.
Besides, what was so exciting about camels? They were really gross-looking, and
they smelled like my gym socks after a basketball game.

“What’s your problem?” Mom asked, fiddling with her straw hat.

“I
told
you,” I said, not meaning to sound so angry. “I’m thirsty.”

“Gabe, really.” She glanced at Dad, then went back to staring at the pyramid.

“Dad, do you think Uncle Ben can take us inside the pyramid?” I asked
enthusiastically. “That would really be outstanding.”

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. He tucked his guidebooks into his armpit so
he could raise his binoculars to his eyes. “I really don’t think so, Gabe. I
don’t think it’s allowed.”

I couldn’t hide my disappointment. I had all these fantasies about going down
into the pyramid with my uncle, discovering mummies and ancient treasures.
Fighting off ancient Egyptians who had come back to life to defend their sacred
tomb, and escaping after a wild chase, just like Indiana Jones.

“I’m afraid you’ll just have to appreciate the pyramid from the outside,” Dad
said, peering over the yellow sand, trying to focus the binoculars.

“I’ve already appreciated it,” I told him glumly. “Can we go get a drink
now?”

Little did I know that in a few days, Mom and Dad would be gone, and I would
be deep inside the pyramid we were staring at. Not just inside it, but
trapped
inside it,
sealed
inside it—probably forever.

We drove from al-Jizah back to Cairo in the funny little rental car Dad had
picked up at the airport. It wasn’t a long drive, but it seemed long to me. The
car was just a little bit bigger than some of my old remote-control cars, and my
head hit the ceiling with every bump.

I’d brought my Game Boy with me, but Mom made me put it away so that I could
watch the Nile as the road followed along its bank. It was very wide and very
brown.

“No one else in your class is seeing the Nile this Christmas,” Mom said, the
hot wind blowing her brown hair through the open car window.

“Can I play with my Game Boy now?” I asked.

I mean, when you get right down to it, a river is a river.

An hour or so later, we were back in Cairo with its narrow, crowded streets.
Dad made a wrong turn and drove us into some kind of market, and we were trapped in a little alley behind a herd of goats for nearly half an
hour.

I didn’t get a drink till we got back to the hotel, and by that time, my
tongue was the size of a salami and hanging down to the floor just like Elvis’.
He’s our cocker spaniel back home.

I’ll say one nice thing about Egypt. The Coke tastes just as good as the Coke
back home. It’s the Classic Coke, too, not the other kind. And they give you
plenty of ice, which I like to crunch with my teeth.

We had a suite at the hotel, two bedrooms and a sort of living room. If you
looked out the window, you could see a tall, glass skyscraper across the street,
just like you’d see in any city.

There was a TV in the living room, but everyone spoke Arabic on it. The shows
didn’t look too interesting, anyway. Mainly a lot of news. The only channel in
English was CNN. But that was news, too.

We had just started to talk about where to go for dinner when the phone rang.
Dad went into the bedroom to answer it. A few minutes later he called Mom in,
and I could hear the two of them discussing something.

They were talking very quietly, so I figured it had something to do with me
and they didn’t want me to hear it.

As usual, I was right.

They both came out of the bedroom a few minutes later, looking kind of worried. My first thought was that my grandmother
had called to say that something bad had happened to Elvis back home.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Who called?”

“Your dad and I have to go to Alexandria. Right away,” Mom said, sitting down
beside me on the couch.

“Huh? Alexandria?” We weren’t supposed to go there until the end of the week.

“Business,” Dad said. “An important customer wants to meet with us first
thing tomorrow morning.”

“We have to take a plane that leaves in an hour,” Mom said.

“But I don’t
want
to,” I told them, jumping up from the couch. “I want
to stay in Cairo and see Uncle Ben. I want to go to the pyramids with him. You
promised!”

We argued about it for a short while. They tried to convince me there were a
lot of cool things to see in Alexandria, but I held my ground.

Finally, Mom had an idea. She went into the bedroom, and I heard her making a
phone call to someone. A few minutes later, she came back with a smile on her
face. “I talked to Uncle Ben,” she announced.

“Wow! Do they have phones in the pyramid?” I asked.

“No. I talked to him at the small lodge he’s staying at in al-Jizah,” she
replied. “He said he’d come and take care of you, if you want. While your dad
and I are in Alexandria.”

“Yeah?” This was starting to sound outstanding. Uncle Ben is one of the
coolest guys I’ve ever known. Sometimes I couldn’t believe he was Mom’s brother.

“It’s your choice, Gabe,” she said, glancing at my dad. “You can come with
us, or you can stay with Ben till we get back.”

Some choice.

I didn’t have to think about it for more than one-eighteenth of a second.
“I’ll stay with Uncle Ben!” I declared.

“One other thing,” Mom said, grinning for some reason. “You might want to
think about this.”

“I don’t care
what
it is,” I insisted. “I choose Uncle Ben.”

“Sari is also on Christmas vacation,” Mom said. “And she’s staying with him,
too.”

“Barf!” I cried, and I flung myself down on the couch and began pounding the
cushions with both fists.

Sari is Uncle Ben’s stuck-up daughter. My only cousin. She’s the same age as
me—twelve—and she thinks she’s so great. She goes to boarding school in the
United States while her dad works in Egypt.

She’s really pretty, and she knows it. And she’s smart. And the last time I
saw her, she was an inch taller than me.

That was last Christmas, I guess. She thought she was really hot stuff
because she could get to the last level of
Super Mario Land.
But it
wasn’t fair because I don’t have Super Nintendo, only regular Nintendo. So I
never get to practice.

I think that’s what she liked about me best, that she could beat me at games
and things. Sari is the most competitive person I know. She has to be first and
best at everything. If everyone around is catching the flu, she has to be the
first
one to catch it!