The Pharaoh Key, page 11
Verbotenen Bereich—Kein Entritt!
Zona Proibita—Non Entrare!
The sign stood alone in battered isolation, the level sands stretching away in all directions almost as far as the eye could see. But as if placed in warning, the skeleton of an animal with massive horns lay at its base, upturned eye sockets staring at the sky. The sun cast a long, grim shadow over the sand.
“Barbary sheep,” said Mekky.
Gideon could feel the heat of the sun on his back. The strange black hills loomed closer. They rode on toward them.
“Musaeadat!” Imogen cried out suddenly in Arabic. Her camel shied to one side. Gideon turned and saw what she had seen—a human skeleton lying partially exposed in the sand, a small rill of sand encircling it downwind. A few tatters of clothes clung to the pelvis, and a brass button lay nearby. A bit of hair remained by the skull, and the jaws stood wide open as if frozen in a scream. An ancient army helmet rested nearby, half filled with sand.
“This is where the battle was,” Mekky said. As they rode past he related the story of the famous battle, in which the two sides fought to a draw and then killed their prisoners of war in view of the other. The bodies, he said, were given good Muslim burials in the sand; but they’d had nothing to make coffins with, and now with the passage of years the wind was exposing them.
As they rode on, Gideon saw another skeleton to his right, which almost appeared to be crawling out of the sand, the legs buried, the arms thrown forward, skull facedown. Another skeleton lay behind it, and another. As they progressed, the sandy flat was soon dotted with skulls and rib cages and bones.
“Miss Imogen, may I offer you advice?” Mekky said. “With camels, remain calm. Do not shout again.”
“Sorry,” said Imogen. “That skeleton startled me.”
Garza turned to her. “Interesting how fluent your Arabic sounds.”
“I’ve picked up a few words here and there since arriving in Egypt a few weeks ago.”
“A few weeks,” said Garza. “So what have you been doing? Organizing your expedition?”
“I spent some time in Cairo, playing the tourist. And then it took a while to get to Shalateen. It’s like taking a journey to the edge of the world—as I’m sure you know.”
“I see,” said Garza. “Did you take the ferry?”
“No, I came by bus and rental car.”
“Of course.”
She turned in the saddle to stare at Garza. “What’s your problem, exactly?”
“I just like to know who I’m traveling with.”
“Would you care to check my passport?”
“As a matter of fact, I would. The date of your entry visa stamp would interest me.”
“I’m the one who should be suspicious. I know much less about you lot than you do about me. For example, you’ve been lugging around that camera, but you haven’t yet taken a single picture.”
“We’re not where we’re going yet.”
It sounded lame. Gideon winced; as Glinn had observed, Garza was a terrible liar.
“The photographers I’ve known are always taking snaps.”
“Hey,” said Gideon. “Let’s cut the inquisition all around, shall we? It’s too damn hot.”
The woman laughed. “Tossers,” she murmured. Garza fell silent.
The heat was climbing along with the sun. On the backs of the camels they were fully exposed. Gideon felt his thirst rising, his lips drying out. They passed a row of abandoned army trucks half buried in sand, canvas tops shredded and hanging, door panels riddled with bullet holes.
“Say, Mr. Mekky?” Gideon called out. “How about a halt for a drink of water?”
“We drink at Bir Qidmid when we stop for heat of the day.”
“What is Bir Qidmid?”
“An old well.”
“A well? You mean a well with water?”
“No water now. Just forage for camels. And a ruined mosque where we have shade.” He turned to Garza. “The mosque makes very good photos.” His eyes rolled around in an amused way.
“Right,” said Garza.
They entered the hills. Mekky steered them up an alluvial fan into a dry wash. It wound among gigantic piles of split boulders, pockmarked with holes.
“Interesting geology,” said Gideon to Imogen, trying to be friendly. “Very dramatic, these black hills against the pale-yellow sand.”
“Indeed,” said Garza, looking at Imogen. “Do you know how these hills formed—geologically speaking, I mean?”
“Well,” she said, “I would guess we’re looking at the remnants of an ancient volcanic field. These hills are the eroded remains of lava flows.”
“Why the black color?”
“Basalt is dark to begin with, and it has a lot of iron in it. In the desert environment it weathers into an even blacker desert varnish.”
“And the pale sand? Why isn’t it black, too?”
“The sand is invasive, blown in here from the shores of the Red Sea.”
Garza frowned and fell silent. Gideon hoped he was satisfied; in his opinion the woman not only was beautiful, but was also obviously who she said she was.
They continued on, the hills mounting higher. The ravine, or wadi, they were riding up was now an oven with black walls radiating heat, the temperature inching upward until it was almost unbearable. Gideon’s thirst mounted.
“Mr. Mekky, I really need to get at least a sip of water. It’s not good to get dehydrated in this environment.”
“I second that,” said Imogen.
“When we get to Bir Qidmid,” said Mekky. “Not far! We must ration water. You must get used to thirst!”
But it was far. Finally, they came around a bend in the wadi only to pause at a picturesque sight: in a round valley, at the base of a black ridge of lava, stood a dramatic minaret rising from the sand. Nearby, a maze of adobe walls rose above drifts of sand, amid a scattering of thorny acacia and tamarisk trees.
“Here is where we stop for the rest of day,” said Mekky, bringing the camels around in a circle. “We start again at sunset.” They all drank deeply, then unloaded and unsaddled the camels. They retreated into the shade of the acacia trees, while Mekky hobbled the camels so they could browse, then he spread out his rug and made a lunch of tea, flatbread, and dates.
“Anything else to eat?” Garza asked, squinting unhappily at the simple fare.
“Cheese.”
“We had that for breakfast. Anything else?”
“Chickpeas. But they need to be soaked and cooked. We have chickpeas for dinner. This is very good diet! You can live for months on chickpeas, dates, bread, and cheese.”
Garza sat down, saying nothing.
They remained in the grove of trees all day, dozing fitfully in the extreme heat. No one had the energy to talk. As the sun began to sink toward the horizon, they had dinner—chickpeas and cheese, as Mekky had promised—then saddled and packed the camels for the evening ride.
They rode and rode, the days and nights blending together. The black hills and the winding dry washes never seemed to end, with heat rising off the sand, the camels endlessly plodding. Once in a while a bizarre mirage would appear—shimmering lakes with waving grass; trembling ridges and mountains that vanished as one rode toward them. Mekky rationed their water, their tea, and even their bread and cheese, keeping them in a constant state of hunger and thirst. The water, carried in the packs, sometimes became too hot to drink and had to be set out in an open bowl to cool by evaporation before it could be consumed. This was far worse, Gideon mused, than any trip he had taken in his life. Even when he’d been at sea with Amiko a few months earlier, searching for the Lost Island, they had booze, good food, and beds to sleep in. Garza had fallen completely silent, no longer giving Imogen the third degree, while Imogen, too, remained quiet. It was too hot; conversation took too much energy. The songs Mekky sang periodically to the camels—mournful, wailing tunes that rose and fell—were the only diversion amid the endless black hills.
On the third day of the journey Gideon saw, rising over the tops of the hills, a triple-peaked mountain the color of mahogany, surrounded by lesser peaks, Soon, layer after layer of other mountains came into view, mounting to the horizon. The central peak, Mekky told them, was Gebel Umm. They would reach its foothills on the fifth morning, after sunrise. Finally, Gideon thought, they were approaching their proximate goal. What lay after was beyond imagining.
On the fourth day, they stopped at midnight to camp in a place where four wadis came together. It was a place Mekky identified as Bir Rabdeit. It consisted primarily of a dense stand of tamarisk trees surrounding an ancient stone well, now drifted full of sand. Nearby was a stone corral. Under a sandstone overhang, Mekky—after warning the three to beware of vipers—showed them a panel of rock art of men with spears riding camels, along with faded paintings of antelope and Barbary sheep. The images were decorated with mysterious geometric designs. After a subtle nudge from Gideon, Garza got out his camera and took a series of pretend photos. They went to sleep as usual, rolled up in their galabeyas.
Gideon woke with a start at dawn, torn from a rapidly receding dream of swimming with a naked woman in the pool atop the Gansevoort Hotel. He sat up, blinking. The sun was already close to rising; it was very late. He glanced at Garza, still sleeping, and then all around—and then he realized something was terribly wrong. The two of them were alone. Again he looked around in a panic; he saw nothing but sand beyond the rug they were sleeping on and some items scattered on the ground. The camel jockey and the woman were gone, along with the camels, supplies…and their water.
Everything was gone.
20
GARZA ROSE ABRUPTLY at Gideon’s shout and looked around wildly. “What the hell?”
“We’ve been robbed.”
Garza exploded. “It’s Imogen,” he said. “I knew something was wrong with her from the start. The way she arrived so conveniently. The way she bid up the price of the camels. The way she insinuated herself into our expedition.”
Gideon didn’t answer, but he had to admit to himself that Garza was probably right. “They took all the water,” he said.
“Sons of bitches.”
As Gideon looked around at the landscape of sand and rock stretching to the horizon, the gravity of their situation began to sink in.
“This was carefully planned,” Garza said. “They must have conspired to dump us in the worst possible place: eighty miles from Shalateen, thirty miles from the mist oasis. They left us where they were sure we’d die. And they took our water.”
Gideon shook his head. “It seems like a lot of work just to steal our money and a few hundred dollars’ worth of stuff.”
He felt sudden heat on his face as the sun peeked over the eastern foothills, casting long shadows.
“We’d better get the hell out of here,” Garza said.
“We can’t travel without water. We should dig out the well.”
“Water could be twenty feet down, if it’s there at all.”
Gideon looked at Garza, saw incipient panic in his eyes. “The only sure water is eighty miles back. We’d never get there alive. Our only option is to dig—unless you’ve got a better idea?”
Garza shook his head.
Gideon walked over to the stand of tamarisks beside the old stone well. A circular wall encased the well, and a stone staircase had been built in the side, spiraling downward. The sand had drifted into the well to within about five feet of the top.
“We need to rig some kind of system,” said Garza, coming up beside him. “We can make buckets from that rug.”
It took them half an hour to cut up the thin rug and fashion two buckets from it, stitching the pieces into containers. They tore their headcloths into strips and braided them to make ropes. Even as they worked, the sun was rising and the heat building.
“I’ll fill the bucket with sand,” Gideon said. “You haul and dump.”
He climbed down the short staircase and began scooping sand into the bucket with his hands. When it was full Garza dragged it up and dumped it, while Gideon filled up the second bucket; and while Garza hauled that up, he filled the first bucket again.
The sand was loose and dry, and it refilled the hole even as Gideon scooped it out. He soon realized he couldn’t just dig a hole in the sand—they would have to clear out the entire well, wall-to-wall. It was backbreaking work, and as the heat of the day mounted it became almost intolerable. Gideon’s thirst grew rapidly.
By noon, they had brought the level of sand down only four feet, with no sign of moisture. They were both nearly dead from exhaustion, heat, and thirst. They switched jobs several times, and their hands were now raw from scooping the hot sand.
“We can’t keep this up,” said Gideon. “We need to knock off for a while.”
Garza agreed silently, dumping the last bucket while Gideon dragged himself up the staircase a little dizzily. He felt close to hyperthermia. The well had been like an oven, the air dead and unmoving and full of dust. Silently they shuffled over to a large tamarisk and flopped down in the shade.
Gideon looked at his partner. He was like a zombie, his face mottled with dust and sand that had caked onto his perspiration. His eyes were bloodshot. Gideon figured he probably looked as bad himself.
As he sat with his back against the tree, he closed his eyes and tried to clear his head. His lips were cracked and his tongue was a hunk of dry plaster in his mouth. It was frightening how quickly they had become dehydrated. His thirst was all-consuming. He could hardly think of anything else.
“What now?” Garza managed to say.
“We wait for dusk and resume digging.”
In silent response Garza held up his hands, which were swollen, the skin cracking. Gideon glanced down and saw his own hands were in a similar state.
“Maybe we should make a dash for the mist oasis,” Garza said. “There must be water there.”
“Thirty miles in these mountains? That would kill us for sure.”
The sun was directly overhead now and the temperature in the shade was at least a hundred and twenty degrees. No matter what they did, Gideon thought, they were probably going to die.
It would be wonderful to go to sleep, to lose consciousness, but the raging thirst made that impossible. It was obvious they weren’t going to find water in the well; nor could they go forward to the mist oasis or back to Shalateen. There were no other options.
He roused himself, looking eastward down the broad wadi. The black hills on either side widened to reveal a horizon of pale sand. It was the time of day when mirages began, and he saw one materialize now: a lush oasis, a sheet of sparkling water, and rising from it something that looked like a city of minarets. He could hardly believe that, after all he’d been through—after brooding about the death sentence hanging over him for nearly a year—he’d be leaving the world in such a totally unexpected and pointless way.
The sun passed the meridian and continued on. Soon he would have to move to stay in the shade, but when the sun crept around he felt it wasn’t worth bothering. Something was going wrong with his head; it was as if he was becoming detached from reality and drifting into another world. So this is how it ends. He watched the play of mirages on the distant horizon. It was something to do, he thought: the television of the desert. The mirage of the city changed into a row of palm trees, swaying in unison and catching fire, the flames flickering back and forth. As the sun continued to move, stranger mirages came and went: cities, sheets of water, a great ship, mountains rising and falling, a caravan moving like a row of ants across the sands.
The idea of waiting until dark to resume work was now a joke, as it became clear that by the time the sun had set and the cool night returned, neither one of them would be able to function. I’m dying a month and a half ahead of schedule, he thought with bitter irony, in this godforsaken place. But now that death had in fact arrived, a month and a half seemed like a long time indeed, and he fervently wished he could have it back.
His thoughts became feverish and unbearable. He was not going to put up with it any more. He glanced over at Garza, who seemed lost in his own hellish world.
“Manuel?”
Garza slowly turned in his direction.
“Your knife.”
“Why?” Garza stared at him for a moment, then Gideon saw understanding in his eyes. The man reached into his galabeya and slid out the fixed-blade he carried on his belt, offering it to Gideon.
“I’ll use it after,” he said.
Gideon took the knife and tested the blade—razor-sharp, as he knew any knife of Garza’s would be. He took the point of it and pressed it slightly into his left wrist, knowing the cut should be longitudinal. He would just go to sleep—simple as that.
“Sorry about everything,” Gideon said.
Garza shook his head. “Me too. No hard feelings.”
A tiny drop of blood welled up around the knife tip. Gideon raised his eyes to look at the horizon one last time, and once again the mirages flickered about; yet another caravan distorted and dancing in the heat waves. The realism of the mirage enraged him. He was about to plunge the knife into his flesh when he felt Garza’s arm grasp his.
“Wait.”
“For what?”
Garza nodded at the horizon. “That one’s real.”
Gideon stared. He blinked, blinked again. The mirage did look real—but then, they all did. They eventually dissipated…but this one was getting clearer; as he gazed it solidified into a woman, riding a camel and leading three others, two with packs.
It wasn’t just any woman—it was Imogen. This wasn’t a mirage; it was a hallucination brought on by heatstroke and thirst. But it loomed ever closer, and finally, when he could hear the wheezing and grumbling of the camels and the crunch of their footfalls on the gravelly surface of the wadi, he accepted that it was real.
Gently, Garza removed the knife from his hand and slipped it back into its sheath. Imogen led the camels into camp, dismounted, and walked up to them carrying a canvas water bag. She leaned down and offered it to Gideon.
Zona Proibita—Non Entrare!
The sign stood alone in battered isolation, the level sands stretching away in all directions almost as far as the eye could see. But as if placed in warning, the skeleton of an animal with massive horns lay at its base, upturned eye sockets staring at the sky. The sun cast a long, grim shadow over the sand.
“Barbary sheep,” said Mekky.
Gideon could feel the heat of the sun on his back. The strange black hills loomed closer. They rode on toward them.
“Musaeadat!” Imogen cried out suddenly in Arabic. Her camel shied to one side. Gideon turned and saw what she had seen—a human skeleton lying partially exposed in the sand, a small rill of sand encircling it downwind. A few tatters of clothes clung to the pelvis, and a brass button lay nearby. A bit of hair remained by the skull, and the jaws stood wide open as if frozen in a scream. An ancient army helmet rested nearby, half filled with sand.
“This is where the battle was,” Mekky said. As they rode past he related the story of the famous battle, in which the two sides fought to a draw and then killed their prisoners of war in view of the other. The bodies, he said, were given good Muslim burials in the sand; but they’d had nothing to make coffins with, and now with the passage of years the wind was exposing them.
As they rode on, Gideon saw another skeleton to his right, which almost appeared to be crawling out of the sand, the legs buried, the arms thrown forward, skull facedown. Another skeleton lay behind it, and another. As they progressed, the sandy flat was soon dotted with skulls and rib cages and bones.
“Miss Imogen, may I offer you advice?” Mekky said. “With camels, remain calm. Do not shout again.”
“Sorry,” said Imogen. “That skeleton startled me.”
Garza turned to her. “Interesting how fluent your Arabic sounds.”
“I’ve picked up a few words here and there since arriving in Egypt a few weeks ago.”
“A few weeks,” said Garza. “So what have you been doing? Organizing your expedition?”
“I spent some time in Cairo, playing the tourist. And then it took a while to get to Shalateen. It’s like taking a journey to the edge of the world—as I’m sure you know.”
“I see,” said Garza. “Did you take the ferry?”
“No, I came by bus and rental car.”
“Of course.”
She turned in the saddle to stare at Garza. “What’s your problem, exactly?”
“I just like to know who I’m traveling with.”
“Would you care to check my passport?”
“As a matter of fact, I would. The date of your entry visa stamp would interest me.”
“I’m the one who should be suspicious. I know much less about you lot than you do about me. For example, you’ve been lugging around that camera, but you haven’t yet taken a single picture.”
“We’re not where we’re going yet.”
It sounded lame. Gideon winced; as Glinn had observed, Garza was a terrible liar.
“The photographers I’ve known are always taking snaps.”
“Hey,” said Gideon. “Let’s cut the inquisition all around, shall we? It’s too damn hot.”
The woman laughed. “Tossers,” she murmured. Garza fell silent.
The heat was climbing along with the sun. On the backs of the camels they were fully exposed. Gideon felt his thirst rising, his lips drying out. They passed a row of abandoned army trucks half buried in sand, canvas tops shredded and hanging, door panels riddled with bullet holes.
“Say, Mr. Mekky?” Gideon called out. “How about a halt for a drink of water?”
“We drink at Bir Qidmid when we stop for heat of the day.”
“What is Bir Qidmid?”
“An old well.”
“A well? You mean a well with water?”
“No water now. Just forage for camels. And a ruined mosque where we have shade.” He turned to Garza. “The mosque makes very good photos.” His eyes rolled around in an amused way.
“Right,” said Garza.
They entered the hills. Mekky steered them up an alluvial fan into a dry wash. It wound among gigantic piles of split boulders, pockmarked with holes.
“Interesting geology,” said Gideon to Imogen, trying to be friendly. “Very dramatic, these black hills against the pale-yellow sand.”
“Indeed,” said Garza, looking at Imogen. “Do you know how these hills formed—geologically speaking, I mean?”
“Well,” she said, “I would guess we’re looking at the remnants of an ancient volcanic field. These hills are the eroded remains of lava flows.”
“Why the black color?”
“Basalt is dark to begin with, and it has a lot of iron in it. In the desert environment it weathers into an even blacker desert varnish.”
“And the pale sand? Why isn’t it black, too?”
“The sand is invasive, blown in here from the shores of the Red Sea.”
Garza frowned and fell silent. Gideon hoped he was satisfied; in his opinion the woman not only was beautiful, but was also obviously who she said she was.
They continued on, the hills mounting higher. The ravine, or wadi, they were riding up was now an oven with black walls radiating heat, the temperature inching upward until it was almost unbearable. Gideon’s thirst mounted.
“Mr. Mekky, I really need to get at least a sip of water. It’s not good to get dehydrated in this environment.”
“I second that,” said Imogen.
“When we get to Bir Qidmid,” said Mekky. “Not far! We must ration water. You must get used to thirst!”
But it was far. Finally, they came around a bend in the wadi only to pause at a picturesque sight: in a round valley, at the base of a black ridge of lava, stood a dramatic minaret rising from the sand. Nearby, a maze of adobe walls rose above drifts of sand, amid a scattering of thorny acacia and tamarisk trees.
“Here is where we stop for the rest of day,” said Mekky, bringing the camels around in a circle. “We start again at sunset.” They all drank deeply, then unloaded and unsaddled the camels. They retreated into the shade of the acacia trees, while Mekky hobbled the camels so they could browse, then he spread out his rug and made a lunch of tea, flatbread, and dates.
“Anything else to eat?” Garza asked, squinting unhappily at the simple fare.
“Cheese.”
“We had that for breakfast. Anything else?”
“Chickpeas. But they need to be soaked and cooked. We have chickpeas for dinner. This is very good diet! You can live for months on chickpeas, dates, bread, and cheese.”
Garza sat down, saying nothing.
They remained in the grove of trees all day, dozing fitfully in the extreme heat. No one had the energy to talk. As the sun began to sink toward the horizon, they had dinner—chickpeas and cheese, as Mekky had promised—then saddled and packed the camels for the evening ride.
They rode and rode, the days and nights blending together. The black hills and the winding dry washes never seemed to end, with heat rising off the sand, the camels endlessly plodding. Once in a while a bizarre mirage would appear—shimmering lakes with waving grass; trembling ridges and mountains that vanished as one rode toward them. Mekky rationed their water, their tea, and even their bread and cheese, keeping them in a constant state of hunger and thirst. The water, carried in the packs, sometimes became too hot to drink and had to be set out in an open bowl to cool by evaporation before it could be consumed. This was far worse, Gideon mused, than any trip he had taken in his life. Even when he’d been at sea with Amiko a few months earlier, searching for the Lost Island, they had booze, good food, and beds to sleep in. Garza had fallen completely silent, no longer giving Imogen the third degree, while Imogen, too, remained quiet. It was too hot; conversation took too much energy. The songs Mekky sang periodically to the camels—mournful, wailing tunes that rose and fell—were the only diversion amid the endless black hills.
On the third day of the journey Gideon saw, rising over the tops of the hills, a triple-peaked mountain the color of mahogany, surrounded by lesser peaks, Soon, layer after layer of other mountains came into view, mounting to the horizon. The central peak, Mekky told them, was Gebel Umm. They would reach its foothills on the fifth morning, after sunrise. Finally, Gideon thought, they were approaching their proximate goal. What lay after was beyond imagining.
On the fourth day, they stopped at midnight to camp in a place where four wadis came together. It was a place Mekky identified as Bir Rabdeit. It consisted primarily of a dense stand of tamarisk trees surrounding an ancient stone well, now drifted full of sand. Nearby was a stone corral. Under a sandstone overhang, Mekky—after warning the three to beware of vipers—showed them a panel of rock art of men with spears riding camels, along with faded paintings of antelope and Barbary sheep. The images were decorated with mysterious geometric designs. After a subtle nudge from Gideon, Garza got out his camera and took a series of pretend photos. They went to sleep as usual, rolled up in their galabeyas.
Gideon woke with a start at dawn, torn from a rapidly receding dream of swimming with a naked woman in the pool atop the Gansevoort Hotel. He sat up, blinking. The sun was already close to rising; it was very late. He glanced at Garza, still sleeping, and then all around—and then he realized something was terribly wrong. The two of them were alone. Again he looked around in a panic; he saw nothing but sand beyond the rug they were sleeping on and some items scattered on the ground. The camel jockey and the woman were gone, along with the camels, supplies…and their water.
Everything was gone.
20
GARZA ROSE ABRUPTLY at Gideon’s shout and looked around wildly. “What the hell?”
“We’ve been robbed.”
Garza exploded. “It’s Imogen,” he said. “I knew something was wrong with her from the start. The way she arrived so conveniently. The way she bid up the price of the camels. The way she insinuated herself into our expedition.”
Gideon didn’t answer, but he had to admit to himself that Garza was probably right. “They took all the water,” he said.
“Sons of bitches.”
As Gideon looked around at the landscape of sand and rock stretching to the horizon, the gravity of their situation began to sink in.
“This was carefully planned,” Garza said. “They must have conspired to dump us in the worst possible place: eighty miles from Shalateen, thirty miles from the mist oasis. They left us where they were sure we’d die. And they took our water.”
Gideon shook his head. “It seems like a lot of work just to steal our money and a few hundred dollars’ worth of stuff.”
He felt sudden heat on his face as the sun peeked over the eastern foothills, casting long shadows.
“We’d better get the hell out of here,” Garza said.
“We can’t travel without water. We should dig out the well.”
“Water could be twenty feet down, if it’s there at all.”
Gideon looked at Garza, saw incipient panic in his eyes. “The only sure water is eighty miles back. We’d never get there alive. Our only option is to dig—unless you’ve got a better idea?”
Garza shook his head.
Gideon walked over to the stand of tamarisks beside the old stone well. A circular wall encased the well, and a stone staircase had been built in the side, spiraling downward. The sand had drifted into the well to within about five feet of the top.
“We need to rig some kind of system,” said Garza, coming up beside him. “We can make buckets from that rug.”
It took them half an hour to cut up the thin rug and fashion two buckets from it, stitching the pieces into containers. They tore their headcloths into strips and braided them to make ropes. Even as they worked, the sun was rising and the heat building.
“I’ll fill the bucket with sand,” Gideon said. “You haul and dump.”
He climbed down the short staircase and began scooping sand into the bucket with his hands. When it was full Garza dragged it up and dumped it, while Gideon filled up the second bucket; and while Garza hauled that up, he filled the first bucket again.
The sand was loose and dry, and it refilled the hole even as Gideon scooped it out. He soon realized he couldn’t just dig a hole in the sand—they would have to clear out the entire well, wall-to-wall. It was backbreaking work, and as the heat of the day mounted it became almost intolerable. Gideon’s thirst grew rapidly.
By noon, they had brought the level of sand down only four feet, with no sign of moisture. They were both nearly dead from exhaustion, heat, and thirst. They switched jobs several times, and their hands were now raw from scooping the hot sand.
“We can’t keep this up,” said Gideon. “We need to knock off for a while.”
Garza agreed silently, dumping the last bucket while Gideon dragged himself up the staircase a little dizzily. He felt close to hyperthermia. The well had been like an oven, the air dead and unmoving and full of dust. Silently they shuffled over to a large tamarisk and flopped down in the shade.
Gideon looked at his partner. He was like a zombie, his face mottled with dust and sand that had caked onto his perspiration. His eyes were bloodshot. Gideon figured he probably looked as bad himself.
As he sat with his back against the tree, he closed his eyes and tried to clear his head. His lips were cracked and his tongue was a hunk of dry plaster in his mouth. It was frightening how quickly they had become dehydrated. His thirst was all-consuming. He could hardly think of anything else.
“What now?” Garza managed to say.
“We wait for dusk and resume digging.”
In silent response Garza held up his hands, which were swollen, the skin cracking. Gideon glanced down and saw his own hands were in a similar state.
“Maybe we should make a dash for the mist oasis,” Garza said. “There must be water there.”
“Thirty miles in these mountains? That would kill us for sure.”
The sun was directly overhead now and the temperature in the shade was at least a hundred and twenty degrees. No matter what they did, Gideon thought, they were probably going to die.
It would be wonderful to go to sleep, to lose consciousness, but the raging thirst made that impossible. It was obvious they weren’t going to find water in the well; nor could they go forward to the mist oasis or back to Shalateen. There were no other options.
He roused himself, looking eastward down the broad wadi. The black hills on either side widened to reveal a horizon of pale sand. It was the time of day when mirages began, and he saw one materialize now: a lush oasis, a sheet of sparkling water, and rising from it something that looked like a city of minarets. He could hardly believe that, after all he’d been through—after brooding about the death sentence hanging over him for nearly a year—he’d be leaving the world in such a totally unexpected and pointless way.
The sun passed the meridian and continued on. Soon he would have to move to stay in the shade, but when the sun crept around he felt it wasn’t worth bothering. Something was going wrong with his head; it was as if he was becoming detached from reality and drifting into another world. So this is how it ends. He watched the play of mirages on the distant horizon. It was something to do, he thought: the television of the desert. The mirage of the city changed into a row of palm trees, swaying in unison and catching fire, the flames flickering back and forth. As the sun continued to move, stranger mirages came and went: cities, sheets of water, a great ship, mountains rising and falling, a caravan moving like a row of ants across the sands.
The idea of waiting until dark to resume work was now a joke, as it became clear that by the time the sun had set and the cool night returned, neither one of them would be able to function. I’m dying a month and a half ahead of schedule, he thought with bitter irony, in this godforsaken place. But now that death had in fact arrived, a month and a half seemed like a long time indeed, and he fervently wished he could have it back.
His thoughts became feverish and unbearable. He was not going to put up with it any more. He glanced over at Garza, who seemed lost in his own hellish world.
“Manuel?”
Garza slowly turned in his direction.
“Your knife.”
“Why?” Garza stared at him for a moment, then Gideon saw understanding in his eyes. The man reached into his galabeya and slid out the fixed-blade he carried on his belt, offering it to Gideon.
“I’ll use it after,” he said.
Gideon took the knife and tested the blade—razor-sharp, as he knew any knife of Garza’s would be. He took the point of it and pressed it slightly into his left wrist, knowing the cut should be longitudinal. He would just go to sleep—simple as that.
“Sorry about everything,” Gideon said.
Garza shook his head. “Me too. No hard feelings.”
A tiny drop of blood welled up around the knife tip. Gideon raised his eyes to look at the horizon one last time, and once again the mirages flickered about; yet another caravan distorted and dancing in the heat waves. The realism of the mirage enraged him. He was about to plunge the knife into his flesh when he felt Garza’s arm grasp his.
“Wait.”
“For what?”
Garza nodded at the horizon. “That one’s real.”
Gideon stared. He blinked, blinked again. The mirage did look real—but then, they all did. They eventually dissipated…but this one was getting clearer; as he gazed it solidified into a woman, riding a camel and leading three others, two with packs.
It wasn’t just any woman—it was Imogen. This wasn’t a mirage; it was a hallucination brought on by heatstroke and thirst. But it loomed ever closer, and finally, when he could hear the wheezing and grumbling of the camels and the crunch of their footfalls on the gravelly surface of the wadi, he accepted that it was real.
Gently, Garza removed the knife from his hand and slipped it back into its sheath. Imogen led the camels into camp, dismounted, and walked up to them carrying a canvas water bag. She leaned down and offered it to Gideon.
