1987. Mansheya Nasir District, Cairo, Egypt.
Mohammed Muhr Junior stirred in his sleep, trying to find comfort on the lumpy mattress. In truth, now heading towards his tenth birthday, he was getting too big for this bed.
He didn’t want to bring that to the attention of his parents, though, as they seemed to have
enough to worry about already.
Mohammed, ironically called Little Mo by friends and family to prevent confusion
between father and son who shared the name, had always been big for his age. His mother
frequently told stories of the teachers at his first school needing proof of his age before they
would take him, so convinced they were of his advanced years based on his size.
“That’s just one of life’s miracles,” his mother would say, her voice soft and tuneful.
Mo could picture her now, looking down at him, a radiant smile standing out from her
weather-darkened skin. She didn’t seem to smile as much anymore, Little Mo thought,
turning again. Well, she did still smile, but it wasn’t quite the same. It wasn’t as radiant, as
vibrant, or as bold.
Little Mo had heard the arguments. Many nights he would lie there awake, wishing for
sleep to come and dull his senses, as the sound of his parents' warring voices floated into his
room.
“If only you cared for us as much as you did those long dead Pharaohs,” his mother
said. “They’ve been dead thousands of years, and they get all your time. We’re here. We’re
here now and we need you.”
“It’s what I must do,” was his father’s only reply. “One day, the world will know the
secrets that lie beneath those pyramids. The work I’m doing now is not just for us, but for the
whole of humanity.”
“You’re living in a dream world,” his mother snapped in reply, her voice hoarse from
shouting. “We’re your family and we’ve barely got enough money for food. Have you seen
the clothes our son wears to school? He grew out of them almost a year ago. Uncle Abdulla
said he would get you a job down driving for the recycling company. It’s stable money. Paid
every week. That’s what we need.”
Little Mo shook himself back to the present. He sat up in bed. There had been no
arguments tonight. In fact, there had been no arguments for a couple of weeks, but it felt to
Mo as though one was brewing. A big one.
Mo rubbed at his eyes and positioned the pillows behind him. Light from the street
below streamed through his window’s ill-fitting curtains, casting angular shadows across the
ceiling.
He listened to the silence of the apartment. Several stories below, a car rattled past,
serving as a constant reminder that rest, like everything else, was a commodity in this city. A
dog yapped several times.
Then, rubbing his eyes again, he heard something. Although little more than a gentle
thud, the sound carried like a tolling bell through the still night air. Mo straightened up,
listening hard.
There it was again.
Mo held his breath, concentrating on the noise. Another thud came a moment later, this
time followed by the scraping of something across the floor. Mo recognized that as the sound
of his parents’ bedroom door grinding against the tiles. Someone was coming out of his
parents’ room. That was very unusual at this time of night. The sound, which he now
recognized as footsteps, moved through the apartment and into the kitchen.
Mo climbed to his feet. The book he had been reading before bed—Chariots of the
Gods by Erich von Däniken—slipped off the cover. Mo caught the paperback a moment
before it dropped to the floor. Placing the book carefully on the table, Mo picked his way
across the room.
He reached the door and closed his hand around the handle. Willing the mechanism not
to make a noise, Mo twisted the handle. Allah was on his side, it seemed, as the door swung
open, emitting nothing more than a whisper.
Mo stole out into the hallway. He paused and listened. The movement came from the
kitchen now, which was at the far end of the apartment. For the first time, curiosity morphed
into fear. Mo wondered what he would do if he found the sounds were the result of an
intruder. Intruders around here were incredibly rare, but Mo had heard about them blighting
the city’s more affluent neighborhoods. Everyone in Mansheya Nasir—nicknamed Garbage
City because most of the people here worked sorting and recycling Cairo’s waste—looked
out for one another.
Mo glanced through the apartment. What an intruder would hope to find in one of
Cairo’s poorest districts, he couldn’t even guess.
Mo glanced back at his bed, just a few steps behind him. He could return there now and
no one would know he had heard a thing.
The noise of a cupboard opening drifted through the apartment. The interloper closed
the cupboard again, gently. Whoever they were, they were doing their best to be quiet.
Mo took a deep breath, suppressing his swelling fear. He covered the distance to the
kitchen door in five steps. Leaning in, Mo placed his ear against the thin wood. Mo heard a
zipper being pulled. Questions streamed through his mind. Once again, Mo steeled his
courage and pushed the door.
“You should be in bed. What are you doing here?” Mo’s father said, spinning around as
his son entered the room.
Shadows hung about the kitchen. A dim beam of light streamed from a flashlight
placed on the counter, the batteries clearly in their dying minutes. In the gloom, though, Mo
could see that his father was fully dressed and clutched a small bag.
“What’s going on?” Mo said, ignoring his father’s instruction. “Why are you dressed at
this time of night?”
Mo’s father placed the bag on the counter and stepped towards his son. He sunk to one
knee, took Mo’s hands in his and locked eyes with the boy.
“You’re growing so fast,” he said, more to himself than his son. “It’s been wonderful to
see you turning into a young man.”
Mo’s father lifted one hand to his face and rubbed it across his eyes. “It’s the dust,” he
said, sniffing. “It always gets in my eyes.”
Mo nodded, not believing a word his father said. Mo noticed now how patches
bracketed his father’s eyes, accentuated by the lines age and stress had brought on.
“What’s going on?” Mo said again, more softly now.
Father and son held hands again. “There’s something I need to do.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“It may take me some time, and it may be dangerous.”
Mo said nothing. Silence sat unfilled between father and son.
“Remember what I told you about the ancient civilization that came before us, the one
that was—”
“Much more advanced than we have been led to believe, and how one day, when we
are ready for it, their technology will become available to us?” Mo completed his father’s oft
spoken sentence word for word.
“That’s right,” Mo’s father said, a single tear finding its way down his weather-beaten
skin. “Well, I believe that time is upon us, but there is work to be done.”
“Is it important? Is what you do important?” Mo looked at his hands, so pale and small
inside his father’s.
“It’s the second most important task of my life.”
“What’s the first?” Mo looked up again, surprised.
“Being your father.” Several seconds of silence slid by like freighter ships on the Nile.
“But now that you are nearly ten, I can wait no longer. I will do all I can to make it back to
you, and soon.” Mo senior lifted his son’s chin. Their eyes locked. “It’s important that you
know, people may tell lies about me when I’m not here. They may try to tell you I’m crazy,
that I’m delusional. Believe me, that is just the fear talking. It is the easiest thing in the world
to tell lies about someone who isn’t there to defend themselves, right?”
“I suppose.” Mo nodded.
Mo’s father glanced at his watch. He had frequently told Mo about the timepiece. There
was an inscription on the back which Mo had committed to memory.
“As above, so below,” Little Mo said, repeating the inscription. His voice sounded loud
in the silent kitchen.
“As above, so below,” his father repeated back, several more tears now joining the first.
The man released Mo’s hands and stood. Then, without another word, he slung his bag across
his shoulder and strode towards the front door.
Barely breathing, Mo listened to his father’s footsteps clicking across the floor. The
door swung open, then the footsteps disappeared for the last time.
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
