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Rick had gone over the events at the bazaar a dozen times. He had compared notes with Scotty on what Bartouki had told them. Clearly, something was pretty strange about the whole affair. It was simply inconceivable that Bartouki would have given an inaccurate description of Ali Moustafa, so the man in the store had not been Bartouki's partner. Yet, he had known about the cat, and had called Rick by name. Who was he? And where was the real Ali Moustafa? There were no answers, at least for the present. But Rick didn't intend to give up.
He motioned to Hassan's coat. "Is it cold out today?"
"Yes. Good you wear coats when we go out. Later it will be warm, then cool again when sun goes."
The boys had decided to keep Hassan as a guide and driver during their entire stay. The dragoman's services were not expensive, and besides, both of them felt they had found a friend. The way Hassan had pitched in at the bazaar, with no questions asked and their interests obviously at heart, had been a fine example of professional loyalty coupled with a quick mind and fast reflexes.
After breakfast the boys went to the wardrobe and took out the coats they had brought. Rick's was brand new, a Christmas present from his father. It was a short, hip-length woolen coat that could double as a hunting jacket. In addition to the big outer pockets, it had inner game pockets lined with a leatherlike plastic. It was warm, but light. He was thoroughly pleased with it.
Scotty slipped into his own short coat, much like Rick's except for the game pockets. Then the ex-Marine motioned to the Egyptian cat, unwrapped and sitting in elegant repose on the writing desk. "What about Felix?" he asked.
Rick went over and picked up the cat. "We'd better take it along, I guess. It might get lonesome. Or we might run over Ali Moustafa on the way to the project." He slid the cat into an inner pocket. It fit with room to spare.
Scotty asked Hassan, with mock seriousness, "You know Sahara Wells?"
Hassan answered with equal seriousness. "Know Sahara Wells well."
The ride was an interesting one, up the Nile to a bridge different from the one they had crossed en route from the airport, along roads with a palm-shaded center strip, past mosques, stores, and airy, modern apartment houses. There was less traffic than in downtown Cairo, and Hassan went faster.
Scotty muttered, "Fewer close calls today."
Rick winced as the car almost scraped a woman with a basket of fruit balanced on her head. "Fewer, but closer."
The costumes on the street were mixed. There were many people, including women, in Western dress, but there were also many women in cloaks, and men in the traditional Arab bornoss , the enveloping robe called a burnoose in English. For the first time, the boys saw several men in blue gowns, and Rick asked Hassan what they were.
"Fellahin ," Hassan replied. "How you say? Farmers. From country. Man tell me that is where your word 'fella' come from."
Rick looked with new interest. He had heard of the fellahin , the farmer-peasants of Egypt. Many of them lived and worked as their ancestors had centuries ago, plowing with wooden plows, living in mud-and-wattle houses. They represented the past of Egypt, as installations like the atomic energy plant at En-Shass, or Inchass as it was sometimes called, represented the future.
There were soldiers along the route, too, dressed in British-style brown uniforms. Some carried Sten guns, vicious little submachine guns originally of English manufacture.
"Why the soldiers?" Scotty asked.
"Camp near," Hassan replied.
And then, abruptly, the boys lost interest in people, because looming ahead, like something from a travel movie, was a pyramid!
Hassan rounded a corner and another pyramid came into view. They were enormous, Rick thought. He hadn't expected anything so huge. "Are we at Giza already?" he asked.
"This Giza," Hassan agreed. He pronounced it more like Gize'h .
"I always thought the
pyramids were out in the desert," Scotty objected.
"Is true," Hassan said. "You will see."
They did, within minutes. The terrain changed from the green, fertile, Nile Valley to the bleak Sahara as though cut by a giant knife. For the first time, Rick understood the phrase "Egypt, gift of the Nile." Where the yearly Nile overflow brought fertile silt and moisture, there was lush green land. Where the overflow stopped, the desert began. No intermediate ground lay between. Egypt consisted of the Nile Valley and the desert, with nothing in between.
The road crossed the dividing line and they were in the Sahara Desert. Hassan drove between houses of faded red clay and tan stucco, unlike the modern apartments a few hundred yards back. It was as though they had driven into a different country. Children, goats, chickens, and Arab adults scattered before the car. It was a typical desert-country scene, and right at the edge of modern Cairo!
Hassan turned a sharp corner and Giza lay before them, up a gradual, rising slope.
In the immediate foreground was the Sphinx. Rick's first impression was that it was disappointingly small, as the great pyramids behind it were truly enormous. He could see all three Giza pyramids now.