Prologue

 

Cairo, Egypt

October 1997

 

"So, I guess we're the lonely 'three' of the tour?" the young man jovially asked as he pulled a chair from the table. The two older women who hadn't been talking to each other, at all, looked up in surprise. Judging by the looks on their faces, the man wasn't sure what had surprised them more- the fact that he'd had the audacity to sit down uninvited (and yet the table they occupied contained the sole remaining empty chair) or that he was a man (although now upon closer inspection of their faces he deemed them both far tool old to have been part of the bra burning contingent of the '70s. 

 

"I'm not lonely," said the slightly younger woman of the two in a stern and somewhat unwelcoming tone. She spoke in a rather peculiar accent, one the young man couldn't place. 

 

"I don't know her," the other woman replied and the man could immediately place an English accent. Well, that explained the frigid air, he thought. But he was just happy they had both heard him over the rather loud and blaring music that the belly dancer was, as his yiayia would say, "doing her thing to." He would never say this out loud, at least not in front of the suffragette contingent as he would dub the two elderly ladies, but he was surprised by how rather rotund the dancer was. Granted, this wasn't Arabia and yet he had still pictured any Egyptian belly dancer to look like Disney's Princess Jasmine, not someone whose belly protruded over her sheer and gauzy scarlet red pants legs.

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"Well, mind if I join you?" he said now, realizing it was much more of a polite afterthought considering he was already seated, doing his best to tuck his very long legs uncomfortably at his sides lest they accidentally brush up against one of the women and set off an international incident. "Seeing as how you're already seated, I think you can forgo the asking part," the woman with the peculiar accent said. She still wasn't smiling but the but could already feel a slight thawing of temperatures. Pure irony considering the oppressive Cairo heat. It was almost eight o'clock at night and the temperature was still above 90 degrees. No one in their group had wanted to sit indoors even though the restaurant's air-conditioning was at its max. Every time a waiter came and went through the automatic doors, a fresh arctic blast would waft their way, for all of a few seconds. Then the stagnant hot air would return just as quickly.

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"But it was worth it, all three of them were thinking at that very moment. For in front of them, set against the backdrop of beautiful illuminating floodlights, sat the Great Pyramid, and my god, if that wasn't a sight you would always remember. Air-conditioning and not sweating through one's clothes be damned. A more than 4,000-year-old structure sat there before their very eyes. But this was the Mena House after all. A hotel in operation for more than 100 years whose sublime location made tourists lust for it- it was situated next to the pyramids and a royal hunting lodge before that. There wasn't a tourist in all of Egypt who wouldn't want to stay here if given the chance. 

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“I’m Jim,” the man said, extending his hand first to the British woman, and then the younger one.

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“Eleanor,” the British woman said, taking his hand in hers. 

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When Jim turned to proffer his hand towards the other woman, she regarded it almost quizzically. As if when earlier he thought she acted like she was from another time, a time where women, even if they were what, 70, 80 years old, didn’t shake men’s hands even if it was almost 2000. But then rather reluctantly, she finally accepted. 

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“Lux.” 

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“So, first time to Egypt for you ladies?” Jim said, not sure why he so desperately wanted to win over women who could have been his yiayia’s age. 

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“I’d say you’re being rather rude, asking so many questions,” Eleanor said, “but then you are a Yank after all, the rudest, most impertinent of bunches if I ever saw any.”

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And here Jim had thought the Brit would be the easier of the two to fold. But then she smiled, a deep warm smile which instantly reassured him that what she had said moments earlier was all in jest. 

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“I was actually here during the war, working.”

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At Jim’s questioning look she added, “The Second World War. I was a companion to a countess.”

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“Have you ever been back?” Lux asked.

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“No, I haven’t stepped foot here in more than 50 years,” Eleanor replied, her tone slightly catching, making Jim feel there was more to her history, her connection to her place than she was willing to share right now. 

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“And you, our inquisitive young traveler?” Eleanor posed to Jim. “Are you one of these young people on what are they calling it now, ‘gap year’? Traveling ‘round the world?” 

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“I’m actually almost 30,” he replied, chuckling that Eleanor thought he was ten years younger than he really was. “My yiayia, um, my grandmother I mean, she recently died. She was born in Greece but her family fled here, fled to Egypt during the war. Her grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, they had all been deported to the camps. None of them survived. But Egypt saved her and her parents. She had always wanted to come back here, come back to the land that had taken her in but she never got the chance. She made me promise on her deathbed that I would. And so,” he said almost nervously, his voice now catching thinking of his tiny little yiayia just about to cross over, asking that of him. “But no, I’ve never really been much of anywhere before. Egypt, well, it’s all a bit much.”

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It was clearly not the type of response she had been expecting. But recovering quickly and unruffled she said warmly, “What a beautiful thing,” then placed her impeccably manicured hand on top of his before turning to Lux and saying, “And you my dear?”

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“I feel as though this has always been home, but it’s not. I’ve never been here before now,” she began, not looking at either of them. Rather, her eyes were entranced by the glistening silhouette of the Great Pyramid before them. She was quiet for a few moments before continuing. “But I feel so inextricably tied to his place.”

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Jim and Eleanor exchanged a quick bemused look between them, each perhaps thinking was Lux a now aged hippie that had once traversed the infamous Hippie Trail in Asia during the ‘60s. 

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A table of secrets, multiple lifetimes of heartache and regret between them, these three very different strangers would have no idea on how much the next 10 days would change them. 

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“I read that if you drink the water of the Nile, you’ll always come back,” Jim said, raising his glass of water. 

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“Whether or not you want to,” Eleanor said half-jokingly, clinking her glass with Jim’s. 

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“The moment you come here,” Lux began, “she leaves her indelible mark on you, no matter how hard you try to erase it,” her tone now catching, tears brimming in the deep blue pools of her eyes as she continued gazing at the Great Pyramid which eerily enough was almost reflected back in them. “Qui aquam nili bibit rursus bibet.”

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