27 August 2012
With shaking hands, Ahmed guides the key into the lock, opens the peeling door, and stumbles into the small, musty hotel room. He heaves his bags onto the narrow bed, locks the door and turns his back to lean against it, slowly sliding down until he is sitting on the floor. He rests his cheeks in his palms, his elbows on his knees, and exhales, long, slow and deep, seemingly for the first time in three days. There's a shower down the hall, and he wants to go use it, but just for now, for just this minute, he needs to close his eyes and stop, stop running and being vigilant, take a moment to just be.
The opportunity had taken him by surprise, requiring rash decisions and reactions on the fly, calling life changing consequences out of the murk of random circumstance. His experience, his past, the thrill of working on digs, that was all gone, he knew that. He'd never get near a working site again for as long as he lived. He couldn't imagine what he would do or where he would go, but that would all have to wait. One thing at at a time.
The only thing that mattered, the only thing he wanted, was to free his wife. For two years she'd been imprisoned, jailed for subversive activity by the old regime. Yeah, no shit, everybody had hated that asshole, except for the foreign companies and their local stooges. But just because there had been a coup didn't mean all the political prisoners got to walk away. It's not like the charges on the books had anything to do with reality, and "criminals" were still criminals until somebody got paid. The price of "justice" was far more than anything Ahmed could hope to earn honestly.
He finally roused himself to get cleaned up, washing away the sand and grime of a 3000 year old excavation site, the nervous sweat of travel checkpoints, the road dust of open sided busses rattling down desert roads. Returning to his room, he turned on the light against the settling dusk to inspect his prize. He had no idea yet what was in the bundle he'd been able to take and conceal in his bags, though from overhearing conversations among the lead archeologists, he gathered it was something quite rare and significant. As long as it was worth enough to sell on the black market and get what he needed to get his wife out of prison, that's all that really mattered. He closed his eyes, swaying in exhausted reverie, imagining their bodies pressed together, their hungry lips upon each other, rythmically moaning under the desert moon.
Pulling himself back to the present, Ahmed starts rooting through his suitcase, breathing shallowly in anticipation. Unrolling the robes that masked his treasure, then the protective blanket they used at the site, his eyes widen as he gets his first look at ... what is this? He lifts it, examining in wonder. Some kind of ceremonial loincloth? Certainly not what he expected, but in amazingly good condition for its age. Even the belt was still intact. Apparently made of fine leather, with gold patterns at the borders, inscribed with faded symbols. He'd picked up enough knowledge of hieroglyphics to take a stab at translating ... "for the protection of the Queen"? Or perhaps, "in service of the Queen"? Probably something for a priest to have worn during some ritual or other.
Not the statuary or pottery that collectors most commonly got their hands on, but maybe that would work in his favor. An unusual piece, exceptionally well preserved, it may fetch quite a price after all. Perhaps there would be enough left over after bribing freedom for his wife to set them up somewhere new. He began to imagine their new life together, perhaps on a beach in Greece or Turkey. Sinking haphazardly onto the stiff and lumpy bed, he unconsciously draws the ancient loincloth to him as fantasy melts into dream, his wife as Nefertiti and he an oiled priest, embodying the gods through rites of the night.
Ahmed is awakened by harsh sunlight intruding through the dust streaked window panes. Feeling stiff and out of sorts, still groggy from his ordeal of panicked flight, he struggles to full awareness. He has no memory of undressing, or donning the loincloth, which he removes. Puzzled incomprehension yields to dawning horror as he looks at himself in the cramped, dirty hotel room. "To serve the Queen." Gasping cries of denial choke in his clenching throat. Not the garb of a priest, but a eunuch ... This artifact, his salvation, this cursed relic has shriveled his Indiana Johnson!
The Relic • Opuss № I