It was to spare the group these adversities that Phil was there. With his excellent Arabic (his father had been a petroleum engineer, and Phil had spent much of his first twelve years in Riyadh and Cairo), with his scruffy, eager, friendly manner, with a perpetually sunny disposition and a willingness to see the best in people, with an insider’s perspective on the Egyptian view of life, and with a resilient, take-things-as-they-come approach to the inevitable hard knocks of travel, he was just the person to smooth over whatever vagaries lay ahead.
Vagaries were not long in coming. The ZAS plane that he had chartered was not ready and waiting when they arrived. Worse, no one was able to tell them why it wasn’t there, where it was, or when, precisely, it was expected. Shortly, very shortly, they were told by an eager-to-please clerk in a trim, Sadat-style blue suit.
Phil was turned to for counsel. “Go, as they say, with the flow,” was his cheerful advice, delivered in the faint but crisp British accent that was a remnant of his Saudi Arabian school days. “Speaking for myself, I intend to sit down and have a Coke.”
“Third World travel,” said Bea philosophically. “How I love it. Well, I’ll have a Coke too, Bruno.”
At 3:00 there was still no sign-or word-of the plane. A testy Haddon, having gone with the flow as long as he could, stamped up to the counter. “I’m not going to wait here all day,” he snapped, his beard jutting aggressively. “Is it or is it not expected? Answer truthfully, please.”
“Oh, yes, sir, to be sure,” the clerk told him with an encouraging smile. “Inshallah.”
God willing. The others looked at each other. It didn’t look good.
“This is your fault, Forrest,” Haddon said crossly.
Forrest Freeman, who had been sitting glumly in a corner and not bothering anyone, surfaced from whatever worries he had been chewing over.
“What? My fault?”
“I maintain, as I have from the beginning, that there is simply no good reason for us to be making this trek, given our ridiculously compressed schedule.” Shedyule, Haddon said. “Tel el-Amarna hardly represents a critical milestone in the history of Horizon House.”
Forrest sighed, a man who had been through this before. “Sorry, but I have to disagree with you there. And as long as I have-”
But at that point ZAS Airlines was heard from, and twenty minutes later the plane rolled up outside the window. The party shouldered their carry-on luggage and prepared to leave the terminal.
“One moment, please, ladies and gentlemen, there seems to be an additional small problem,” the clerk told them jovially, “a very small problem indeed.”
“Imagine that,” Bea said.
“Hardly any problem to speak of,” the clerk went on. “No, not really a problem at all. It seems that the baggage hold of this airplane is already filled with baggages from an earlier trip which was unfortunately misrouted, through no fault of the airline or this airport. These baggages are on the way eventually to Cairo, and therefore there is no room for your own baggages on this airplane at this moment.”
“Yikes,” Julie said.
Next to her, Phil tapped the backpack that was slung over one shoulder of his T-shirt-his standard Middle Eastern apparel along with a long-billed “On the Cheap” baseball cap, rumpled beige shorts that came down to his skinny knees, and sockless canvas running shoes. “First rule: never travel with more than you can carry.”
“Now he tells us,” Gideon said.
Forrest, who had continued to sit in his corner quietly gnawing his lip, suddenly took to gibbering. “I knew this would happen! I knew this would happen! What about our equipment? We only have four miserable days, we don’t have any spare time, we, we-” He switched suddenly to a long string of loud and impressively fluent-sounding Arabic. Other passengers turned to observe with interest and respect.
The clerk shouted back no less loudly, waving his hands and thumping the counter. Gideon had no trouble with the gist of it but understood not a word. Ordinarily he took pride in being able to get along in the language of whatever country he was in, but this time he simply hadn’t had the time to learn. He could handle hello-goodbye, yes-no, and please-thank you, and that was it.
After a few seconds, Phil came to the rescue, edging Forrest out of the way and taking up the yelling match in his stead, his voice well up to the challenge. It went on for a good five minutes with, if anything, an increase in fervor; several times the clerk raised his face to the ceiling, apparently to address his thoughts to a higher authority. Phil, clearly having a good time, finally bent over the narrow counter and wrapped his arm around the clerk’s shoulder. They leaned together, talking more quietly, until there was a sudden spate of good-natured laughter, a spirited shaking of hands, and an obviously amicable conclusion.
Phil turned to Forrest. “All right, your equipment comes with us.”
“Whew,” Forrest said, spent. “Gad. I knew this would happen.” He appealed to his crew of two, slouched on a bench. “Did I or did I not say this was going to happen?”
“You said it was going to happen, man,” Cy agreed.
Julie looked at Phil. “How in the world did you do that?”
“You don’t want to know,” he said.
“You bribed him, you gave him some what-do-you-call-it, bakshish, didn’t you?”
Phil grinned. “I showed him the error of his ways. I revealed to him a better path.”
“You gave him money.”
“I did not give him money. No such thing. Not a single piaster. And anyway, I’ll be reimbursed.”
Julie shook her head. “Is this what it’s always like?”
“Yes,” Phil said happily.
“Fortunately,” the smiling clerk now said, “we will be able to place all of your baggages on the very next flight to Cairo. A special intermediate stop at el-Minya shall soon be arranged, I am happy to say.”
“Oh, yes? And when would that be?” Haddon asked. “Any time this week?”
“To be sure,” the clerk said earnestly. “Of course. You will have it in no time at all.”
Haddon was unimpressed. “Bukhra, you mean?” he said sourly.
The clerk threw back his head and laughed. “Bukhra, yes, without fail! And now, you may be boarding, please, gentlemen and ladies?” He shook Phil’s hand again and bowed them through the door to the tarmac.
“What’s bukhra?” Julie asked Gideon as the group walked toward the mid-sized plane. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“Phil, what’s bukhra?” Gideon said over his shoulder.
“Bukhra? Literally, it means tomorrow. But-put it this way. When someone in Egypt tells you bukhra, treat it in the same manner as when someone in Mexico tells you mahana.”
“Great,” Gideon said.
“Except, of course, without the same sense of urgency,” Phil finished.
“Rats,” Julie said. “And us without a change of clothes.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Gideon said with more assurance than he felt. “He said the very next flight. We’ll probably get it before the night’s out.”
Julie, who took logistical problems in her stride better than he did, laughed.
“ Inshallah,” she said.
Chapter Nine
Ninety minutes later they deplaned at el-Minya, a drab, sprawling city chiefly known for processing sugar and making cheap soaps and perfumes. There, as directed by Phil, they went to a waiting area where transportation to el-Amarna was to be waiting for them. There was nothing there. Passersby looked curiously at the stranded-looking knot of Americans surrounded by videotaping gear in dented metal trunks and valises.