Ample bottled water would be provided to each room daily. Women guests were asked to refrain from using the swimming pool or wearing immodest clothing when the ship was close to land, as when going through the locks at Asyut the following day.
Mr. Wahab, himself an amiable man, moderated the severity of this presentation with the announcement that this evening’s special meal would be a typical American dinner in honor of the guests and their recent national holiday of Thanksgiving.
Whereupon the four servers who had gone back into the kitchen returned with happy smiles, wearing white jackets and black ties, and bearing trays of roast turkey, cranberry sauce, and Yorkshire pudding.
It made a pretty good combination, Gideon thought.
The staterooms were forward on either side of a lushly carpeted corridor. Gideon and Julie’s surprised them with its roominess, and with the small but sparkling bathroom and shower. Heavy curtains covered two big rectangular windows. There was a table, three chairs, an ottoman, a TV set, a knee-high refrigerator, an ample chest of drawers. The air-conditioning was quiet and effective. The only importantdeficiency was readily repaired by their moving a night table aside and pushing the two single beds together.
“Posh is right,” Julie said appreciatively. “I don’t think I’m going to have any trouble living here for a few days. As long as our luggage catches up with us pretty soon.”
“
Bukhra
,” said Gideon.
“That’s what worries me.” She took a hairbrush out of her bag, put it on the chest, and lined it up neatly with the edge. “Well, it certainly makes unpacking a snap.” She held up a plastic container. “At least we have toothbrushes.”
She kicked off her shoes, plumped up the pillow and sat on the bed. “Is there anything cold to drink in here?”
In the little refrigerator he found miniature soft-drink bottles, water, and a stack of plastic glasses. He poured them each a glass of mandarin-flavored
Schweppes.
“Did you happen to notice the name of the ship?”
“The
Menshiya
!”
“Right. Phil probably lined it up on account of the name. Do you happen to know what the original
Menshiya
was?”
She shook her head.
“Have you ever heard of the Deir el-Bahri cache?”
She sighed. “Gideon, dear, have I ever pointed out to you that you have a slightly annoying habit of starting your stories by asking me if I’ve heard of something that hardly anybody has ever heard of? The Deir el-Bahri cache, the
Menshiya,
the Neiman-Marcus fragment—”
“Many times,” he said, flopping into one of the beige armchairs, putting his feet up on the ottoman, and stretching comfortably out on his lower spine. “It’s just a pedagogical stratagem, well known to ensure listener participation in the communication process.”
“Well, sometimes it just ensures listener teeth-gnashing. What’s the Deir el-Bahri cache? Just tell me, don’t worry about my participation in the communication process.”
Deir el-Bahri, he explained, was the name of one of the rocky burial canyons near the Valley of the Kings. In it, at the beginning of the Twenty-first Dynasty in about 1000 B.C., the authorities took action to protect the great pharaohs’ mummies from the profanations of the thief-families that had been robbing the nearby royal tombs for five hundred years. They had gathered up the desecrated mummies from their plundered tombs and put them all in a single place—the tomb of Queen Inhapy, behind the more famous, more showy temple of Hatshepsut, and there, stripped long ago of anything worth stealing, they were to lie undisturbed and eventually be forgotten.
Centuries passed. Millennia passed. Then, in 1891, a thief named Ahmed er-Rassul, a member of one of the local families that still made their living by systematically looting the same tombs—a piece here, a piece there, so that the market was never flooded—had a falling-out with his brothers. Out of spite he led
Mr. Wahab, himself an amiable man, moderated the severity of this presentation with the announcement that this evening’s special meal would be a typical American dinner in honor of the guests and their recent national holiday of Thanksgiving.
Whereupon the four servers who had gone back into the kitchen returned with happy smiles, wearing white jackets and black ties, and bearing trays of roast turkey, cranberry sauce, and Yorkshire pudding.
It made a pretty good combination, Gideon thought.
The staterooms were forward on either side of a lushly carpeted corridor. Gideon and Julie’s surprised them with its roominess, and with the small but sparkling bathroom and shower. Heavy curtains covered two big rectangular windows. There was a table, three chairs, an ottoman, a TV set, a knee-high refrigerator, an ample chest of drawers. The air-conditioning was quiet and effective. The only importantdeficiency was readily repaired by their moving a night table aside and pushing the two single beds together.
“Posh is right,” Julie said appreciatively. “I don’t think I’m going to have any trouble living here for a few days. As long as our luggage catches up with us pretty soon.”
“
Bukhra
,” said Gideon.
“That’s what worries me.” She took a hairbrush out of her bag, put it on the chest, and lined it up neatly with the edge. “Well, it certainly makes unpacking a snap.” She held up a plastic container. “At least we have toothbrushes.”
She kicked off her shoes, plumped up the pillow and sat on the bed. “Is there anything cold to drink in here?”
In the little refrigerator he found miniature soft-drink bottles, water, and a stack of plastic glasses. He poured them each a glass of mandarin-flavored
Schweppes.
“Did you happen to notice the name of the ship?”
“The
Menshiya
!”
“Right. Phil probably lined it up on account of the name. Do you happen to know what the original
Menshiya
was?”
She shook her head.
“Have you ever heard of the Deir el-Bahri cache?”
She sighed. “Gideon, dear, have I ever pointed out to you that you have a slightly annoying habit of starting your stories by asking me if I’ve heard of something that hardly anybody has ever heard of? The Deir el-Bahri cache, the
Menshiya,
the Neiman-Marcus fragment—”
“Many times,” he said, flopping into one of the beige armchairs, putting his feet up on the ottoman, and stretching comfortably out on his lower spine. “It’s just a pedagogical stratagem, well known to ensure listener participation in the communication process.”
“Well, sometimes it just ensures listener teeth-gnashing. What’s the Deir el-Bahri cache? Just tell me, don’t worry about my participation in the communication process.”
Deir el-Bahri, he explained, was the name of one of the rocky burial canyons near the Valley of the Kings. In it, at the beginning of the Twenty-first Dynasty in about 1000 B.C., the authorities took action to protect the great pharaohs’ mummies from the profanations of the thief-families that had been robbing the nearby royal tombs for five hundred years. They had gathered up the desecrated mummies from their plundered tombs and put them all in a single place—the tomb of Queen Inhapy, behind the more famous, more showy temple of Hatshepsut, and there, stripped long ago of anything worth stealing, they were to lie undisturbed and eventually be forgotten.
Centuries passed. Millennia passed. Then, in 1891, a thief named Ahmed er-Rassul, a member of one of the local families that still made their living by systematically looting the same tombs—a piece here, a piece there, so that the market was never flooded—had a falling-out with his brothers. Out of spite he led
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