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and
family. She focussed her attention on direct messages and emails.
    The first was
from Ellie.   She had sent it barely half
an hour earlier, and from the way it was written she must have been drunk.   Gail almost laughed out loud as she realised
about halfway down that Ellie obviously thought she was writing to her mother. Closing
the message she scrolled down, ignoring several general emails from the
University until she reached the previous day’s auto-reply message from
Professor Mamdouh al-Misri of the Egyptian Museum of Cairo, regarding her
application form.   She sighed and
scrolled back up to the top.  
    Rotating the
remote lazily she refreshed the feed. It was only six in the morning, but you
never knew who might be up sending funny things. Her heart missed a beat as she
saw the new email appear: ‘RE: Tell el-Amarna dig.’ She quickly opened the
message and read it, her eyes resting on the last line: ‘Look forward to seeing
you soon!   Mamdouh.’
    Within seconds
she was shaking George.   “Honey! I got
the place!” she screamed, her voice so high-pitched it was almost unintelligible.
“We’re going to Amarna!”
    George broke
into a huge sleepy grin and tried to reach out to hug her. His twisted pyjama
top stopped him from lifting his arms, and he spent several frantic seconds
freeing himself from it. “Well done,” he said eventually. “I knew you
would.   Now all you have to do is write
your research proposal.”
    But she had
already left the bedroom, and was taking the steps back down to the living room
two by two. “I know,” she shouted back up the stairs. “I know!”

 

Chapter 5
     
    The hot tarmac of the road
gleamed in the late-afternoon sun as their car moved slowly south.   The encroaching desert threw tentative
fingers of light yellow sand across both carriageways from their right.   In the distance, mostly hidden behind the low
mounds of sand, the tops of a group of palm trees could just be seen, swaying gently
in the light breeze.  
    Gail looked
above the desert at the deep blue sky.   It seemed almost alien to her, having arrived the previous evening from
the cold and wet winter climate of England.   On top of that, she could not remember the last sunny day in
Southampton.   One, perhaps two weeks of
sunshine over the summer months, but the relentless clouds mostly won the
battle for the skies of northern Europe.   Here, it seemed the other way round; a small, cotton-like cloud, devoid
of rain, glided slowly across the horizon to their left, but it was totally
alone against the azure background.  
    For thousands
of years, the Sahara desert had fought an ongoing battle with the fertile banks
of the river Nile. In the time of the most ancient pharaohs, the Great Pyramid
on the Giza plateau had overlooked a landscape of fields and palm groves, which
had helped to feed a young and expanding kingdom.   Every year, the Nile would spill over into
the surrounding fields, bringing with it the necessary nutrients that made the
area so welcoming to farmers and their animals.   And every year, the sands of the desert would fight back.   The incessant tug of war between the desert
and the river meant that for a great deal of its length, only a narrow band of
cultivated land separated the Nile from the sands.  
    Better
irrigation and modern technology during the twentieth century had meant that
the land could be used all year round with less reliance on seasonal flooding.   However, the beginning of the twenty-first
century had already seen a rapid change in climate, and for the past twenty
years the desert had been steadily gaining ground.  
    On their left,
the sand quickly turned to grass, which within ten yards had developed to a
rich variety of trees and other plants, their green leaves a welcome break from
the yellows and blues of the desert and sky to their right. George slowed down
to give way to an oncoming van.   The road
was barely wide enough for both of them to