Reflections in the Nile Read Online Free PDF

drawings? Only structures and plants?”
    “I don't do people,” I said a little embarrassed.
    “Why not?”
    “I can't capture their essence, their personality or spirit. They come out very flat, lifeless. Like cartoon characters.” It would have been too much to say I didn't have enough depth as a human being to interpret others’ faces accurately.
    “I see.” He lit a cigarette. “I love comics and cartoons.”
    I laughed. In silence we watched a boat debark tourists from every nation, fanning their faces rapidly and drinking bottled water. There were Aussies, having escaped their scalding winter on the other end of the planet; German students in shorts and backpacks, thrilling in the sun; American retirees in hats, sunglasses, and cameras; and packs of Asians, immaculately dressed and videotaping madly. I fiddled with my necklace. Anton glanced over.
    “What is this necklace you are always touching? Is it for good luck?”
    I flushed. “No. I've had it a long time and play with it. It's just a habit.”
    He picked up the silver chain and brought the ankh close, looking at the hieroglyphs etched into the silver. “From where did it come?”
    “Cairo.”
    “So you have been here before?”
    “No. Not Luxor. Just Cairo. My father traveled through Egypt when I was about eight and my sister twelve. Lizza, our au pair, took care of us while my parents traveled on diplomatic missions. We were in the
souq
with Lizza when this woman stepped forward.”
    I could see it all as if it were yesterday. The dirty, dusty street, our correct au pair behind us, Cammy and I holding hands, cringing as a wrinkled shop woman, who looked for all the world like a character from the Brothers Grimm, came forward calling out to us, her bright black eyes acknowledging our foreign coloring. She hustled us into a small shop and looked back and forth between us, as if making a decision. Then she held out the silver ankh necklace. Cammy, after a moment, reached for it. The woman screeched and snatched it back. Frightened Cammy started tugging on my arm, but the woman placed the long silver chain around my neck and started laughing.
    We were both terrified. Leaving Lizza to pay whatever the old woman wanted we ran through the crowded streets, searching for a way out of the bewildering and smelly market.
    “Do you know what it says?” Anton asked breaking into my memory.
    “No. Cammy has never wanted to touch it; she claims it burned her as a child” I scoffed. “She regards the whole thing superstitiously. However, she's the only one I know who reads hieroglyphs.”
    His angular face was close to mine now, his brow creased in concentration, dark glasses hiding his eyes. “I read hieroglyphs,” he said releasing the necklace but not moving away. I looked at the expanse of tinted glass two inches from my nose … and felt my breath check. Anton licked his lips. “Would you like to know what it says?” he asked softly.
    Time stood still, a frisson making me shiver, suddenly cold on this Egyptian afternoon. I felt rather than heard a still, small voice in my head say this was where the road divided What road? Was Anton going to kiss me and change my life? Not likely.
    “Tell me,” I said, equally softly.
    Anton leaned back and took off his sunglasses, his pupils becoming pinpoints of black in the intensity of the sun. “It is a time.”
    “A time?” I blurted out, disappointed.
    “Yes. A certain designation of time, and the name of that time. It has to do with Egyptian astrology. Maybe your sister can illuminate it for you.” His gaze was intent on my face.
    I looked away. A time? An astrological time? As an imaginative child and even as a young teenager, I had fantasized that it was a secret message, a hidden identity.
Something.
“A time” was definitely anticlimactic.
    Anton rose to his feet, stubbing out his cigarette. “I shall see you later? Yes? Maybe we will walk together?”
    “Walk together?”
    “To the Son et