PROLOGUE
EGYPT’S BLACK DESERT, Modern Day: Ibrahim al-Safar squinted at the
approaching brown line that covered the horizon. The dust storm was still miles away, but it
was approaching fast, and that meant trouble.
His battered Toyota truck was the only concession to modernity in his
life. He still wore the traditional
robes of his Bedouin ancestors, prayed five times a day towards Mecca, and
worked as a shepherd, like his father and grandfather before him – although he
also worked as a digger when the foreign archeologists were hiring. The great oasis at Kharga was originally his
home, but he had been driven from it several years before during the tumult and
confusion that Westerners, in a fit of unbridled and largely unjustified optimism,
had called the “Arab Spring.” Ibrahim
had no love for Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s former dictator, but the longtime
American ally had kept Egypt at peace with her neighbors and kept some of the
more fanatical elements of Islam from disturbing the lives of everyday citizens
for three decades. Like most of his
people, Ibrahim hated the Israelis and resented the Americans, but at the same
time, he had enjoyed the peace and stability Mubarak brought to the desert
land, and didn’t realize how good the average Bedouin had it until those times
were gone.
During
the months after mobs of angry citizens had forced Mubarak from office, Ibrahim
had watched in dismay as Egypt descended into chaos. The more radical elements of the Muslim
Brotherhood had seized control of every level of government, unleashing an orgy
of persecution against Egypt’s non-Muslim population and a wave of destruction
at many of its historical monuments. One
radical cleric had even proposed destroying the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids at
Giza as relics of a pagan culture. Safar
shook his head at that memory. While he
was a deeply religious Muslim, he was also a proud Egyptian, and the knowledge
that his country had created an advanced civilization at a time when the rest
of the world was languishing in the Stone Age was a source of great pride to
him. How could anyone want to destroy
the proudest relics of the greatest civilization of the ancient world?
Now
the Army had taken control of the government, and Muhammad Morsi, the
Brotherhood’s chosen President of Egypt, was in prison awaiting trial on
various corruption charges. But the
radicals had fled into the desert, laying waste to peaceful villages that had
endured without significant change since the Muslim conquest of Egypt thirteen
centuries before - villages like the one that Ibrahim called home. Wadi-al-Duresh was a small town just south of
the larger Kharga community, and the radicals had occupied it two years
before. As soon as they seized control
from the village elders, they had descended like a pack of jackals on the small
group of Coptic Christians that had shared the community with Bedouins for as
long as anyone could remember. The men
were taken out and shot, the women raped and then divided among the jihadists
as trophies, and their homes burned to the ground. As Muslims, Ibrahim’s family had been spared
the worst of the slaughter, but his wife had been forced to clean and do
laundry for the terrorists, and his only unmarried daughter had been taken from
the family at gunpoint and forced to wed one of the group’s clerics. Ibrahim had only seen her once or twice
since.
Six
months later, the army had come in and driven the radicals out, but the jihadists
had simply fled into the desert, where they still lurked in ancient caves and
tiny oases, living as bandits and highway robbers. The poor shepherds and day laborers who
populated the region didn’t have much to steal, but that didn’t stop the
Islamists from taking whatever they could lay their hands on. The worst group, led by a fanatical cleric
named Muhammad al-Shavadi, had pledged their loyalty to the Islamic State. They
were not just thieves but murderers as well, mainly targeting the handful of
remaining Copts and Sufis, but also any Muslim family who cooperated too
closely with the government for their taste.
No wonder, Ibrahim thought, that so many Westerners thought that all Muslims
were terrorists. A religion that could
spawn such fanaticism was certainly capable of great evil. And yet . . . there is one God and Muhammad
is His prophet, he reminded himself.
Despite the horrible acts of his co-religionists, Ibrahim remained
convinced that Islam was the answer. He
was not sure; however, that jihad was the way. Perhaps it had been in Muhammad’s time, but
that was fourteen centuries ago. Surely there was another path that could lead
Islam into the modern world - but he was a simple shepherd and part-time digger. Such matters were beyond his ken.
He
had left Wadi-al-Duresh that morning looking for his brother’s camel. He hoped the beast had simply wandered into
the desert, but he feared that one of Shavadi’s men had stolen it. He had followed its tracks for miles west of
the village, into the scorching Black Desert that stretched before him now,
over two hundred miles wide. He knew of
no shelter for the beast in the direction it was heading, but he supposed it
was possible that there was a cave or spring in the rough range of sandstone
hills that protruded from the dunes a few miles in front of him. It was said that camels could smell water
many miles away if they were downwind.
Now
he saw that there was no way to get to the hills before the sandstorm arrived. He knew that it was possible for a vehicle to
be completely buried in the shifting dunes, and had no intention of becoming a
find for a future archeologist. He
wheeled about and gunned the Toyota’s engine, already rehearsing the
explanations he would give his brother when he got back to the village. The sandstorm was closing fast, he saw in the
rearview mirror. It looked like a bad
one, too, covering the whole horizon like a brown scar, growing taller by the
minute. The dunes and rocks flew beneath
him as he headed for home.
Suddenly
the Toyota bucked wildly and shuddered, the wheel twisting in his hands. He braked to a stop and got out, dreading
what he would see. Sure enough, the
right front tire was shredded – one of the jagged desert rocks had done it in.
He had a spare tire and a jack, but the storm was coming on too fast now. He mouthed a silent prayer to Allah, asking
for guidance. Should he stay in the vehicle,
or look for shelter? The winds were
already picking up, blowing the sand along the ground in swirling
patterns. He scanned the desert on
either side of the road, looking for a place that might be preferable to the
cab of his truck. Something was
protruding from the side of a dune about a hundred yards away. Was it a stone wall? He was far distant from the Nile, but there
had been many more oases in the desert once, and ancient structures dotted the
sands. Could it be a house or building
of some sort? Eyeing the rapidly
approaching brown line on the horizon, he grabbed a flashlight and ran for it.
It
was indeed a sandstone wall, over two meters of its height exposed, its bricks
scoured smooth by centuries of desert erosion.
The roof was also of stone, and surprisingly, it appeared to be
intact. Visibility was declining by the
minute as the volume of sand in the air increased, but when he rounded the
corner he saw that there was an ancient doorway of dried wood, standing partly
open. He wriggled through, and then
kicked enough of the sand away so he could get the door to close. He looked for
something to reinforce it with, and then saw an ancient wooden table nearby. He pushed it against the door, knocking over
a small pottery bowl of some sort, and paused a moment. That should keep the worst of the sand out,
he thought. In fact, although the
building had apparently been buried in the dune for centuries, there were only
a few inches of sand on its floor.
Whoever built the place knew a thing or two about keeping the desert at
bay. But what sort of building was it?
Ibrahim
scanned the back walls with his flashlight.
The building was about ten meters wide and maybe twice that in
depth. There were shelves lining the
walls, and each shelf had multiple niches carved into it. The taller niches held pottery jars, each about
half a meter high, many with lids still attached. The smaller niches held scrolls and books –
dozens of scrolls, two or three to a niche, some partly unrolled, others still
tied with coarse twine. It was a
library, he realized - a library that had stood here, undisturbed, in the
desert for centuries. He wondered how
old it was, and looked for something that might give him a clue.
He
spotted a row of wooden cots against the far wall, and walked over to
them. In one was a mummified human body,
tattered garments still clinging to it. It was clutching a roll of papyrus in
one hand, and next to it on the floor a glass inkwell was protruding from the
sand. He had worked on enough digs as a
day laborer to know that the papyrus would crumble if he tried to unroll it,
but there was something else sticking out of the sand beside the cot. He brushed the sand away from it, confirming
his suspicions. It was a small
drawstring bag, made of leather that was as stiff as wood. But the mouth of the bag was open, and when
he poured it out into his hand, several coins fell out along with the sand that
had filled it. He studied them in the
beam of his flashlight. He could not
read the inscriptions on them, but he recognized the language. It was Latin, and the faces on the coins all
wore laurel wreaths. This library had
been here since the days of ancient Rome!
Safar
smiled. There was enough here to keep a
team of archeologists busy for years, he thought, and he had discovered
it. Allah willing, if he survived the
storm, this discovery would make him a rich man.
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