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hesitated again, watching the widely varied faces. The fellahin were heavyboned, with wide mouths and thick lips, dressed in the traditional galabias and skull-caps. The bedouin were the pure Arabs, with sharp features and slim, wiry bodies. The Nubians were ebony, with tremendously powerful and muscular torsos, often naked to the waist.
    The surge of the crowds pushed Erica forward and carried her deeper into the Khan el Khalili. She found herself pressed up against a wide variety of people. Someone pinched her backside, but when she turned around, she couldn’t be sure who had done it. She had a following now of five or six persistent boys. She was being hounded like a rabbit in a hunt.
    Erica’s goal in the bazaar had been the goldsmith section, where she wanted to buy gifts. But her resolve waned, particularly when someone’s dirty fingers ran through her hair. She’d had enough. She wanted to return to the hotel. Her passion for Egypt involved theancient civilization with its art and mysteries. Modern urban Egypt was a little overpowering when taken in all at once. Erica wanted to get out to the monuments, like Saqqara, and above all she wanted to get to Upper Egypt, to the countryside. She knew that was going to be as she dreamed it.
    At the next corner she turned to the right, stepping around a donkey that was either dead or dying. It didn’t move, and no one paid the poor beast any attention. Having studied a map of the city prior to leaving the Hilton, she guessed she should reach the square in front of the El Azhar mosque if she continued heading southeast. Pushing her way between a clump of shoppers bargaining over scrawny pigeons in reed cages, Erica broke into a jog. She could see a minaret ahead, and a sunlit square.
    Suddenly Erica stopped dead in her tracks. The boy who had demanded a cigarette and who was still following her now crashed into her, but bounced off unnoticed. Erica’s eyes were riveted to a window display. There in front of her was a piece of pottery in the shape of a shallow urn. It was a morsel of ancient Egypt shining in the middle of modern squalor. Its lip was slightly chipped, but otherwise the pot was unbroken. Even the clay eyelets apparently made to hang the pot were still intact. Aware that the bazaar was filled with fakes, highly priced to attract tourists, Erica still was stunned by the bowl’s apparent authenticity. The usual fakes were carved mummiform statues. This was a splendid example of predynastic Egyptian pottery, as good as the best she had seen where she was currently employed, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. If it were real, it would be more than six thousand years old.
    Stepping back in the alleyway, Erica looked at the freshly painted sign over the window. Above were the curious squiggles of Arabic script. Below was printed Antica Abdul. The doorway to the left of the window was curtained by a dense row of heavily beaded strings. A tug on her tote bag by one of her hecklers was all the encouragement Erica needed to enter the shop.
    The hundreds of colored beads made sharp, cracklingnoises as they fell back into place behind her. The shop was small, about ten feet wide and twice that deep, and surprisingly cool. The walls stuccoed and whitewashed, the floor covered with multiple worn Oriental carpets. An L-shaped glass-topped counter dominated most of the room.
    Since no one came forward to help her, Erica hiked up the strap of her bag and bent over to look more closely at the amazing piece of pottery that she had seen through the window. It was a light tan, with delicately painted decorations in a shade somewhere between brown and magenta. Crumpled Arabic newspaper had been stuffed inside.
    The heavy red-brown curtains in the back of the shop parted, and the proprietor, Abdul Hamdi, emerged, shuffling up to the counter. Erica glanced at the man and immediately relaxed. He was about sixty-five and had a pleasant gentleness of movement and