“Why is it burning?” Jake asked in wonder. He had never known a city, and this was the closest he had ever come to Cairo. He spoke in fluent Arabic, though his parents insisted on always speaking to him in English, which he understood perfectly well but very rarely used.

Gail pulled her son closer. He was more man than child now, but she could still remember when it was his head tucked under hers, and not the other way round. Sometimes, she longed for those days to return, when he would run to her and wrap his arms around her legs in the biggest hugs. Such moments were rare now. This was his world and it no longer scared him, but instead filled him with a sense of adventure that she desperately wanted to control and contain.

“Because there’s no one there to put out the flames,” she replied. “So when a fire starts for whatever reason, it just burns and burns. Eventually, all of Cairo will burn away.” She drew a short breath. “There’s only death in Cairo, which is why we should always avoid it.”

“Actually,” George said pensively, “they’re probably trying to get rid of areas that they no longer want, because of disease. It shows there must be some kind of organisation there, even if it’s only localised in one or two areas.”

Gail shot him a nasty look, and he shrugged. Of the two of them, Gail had always been the more adventurous. But motherhood had an uncanny way of changing that, and since Jake’s birth their roles had naturally reversed.

Jake kissed his mother softly on the top of her head and released himself from her grasp.

She watched, fighting back a tear, as he walked slowly away, towards the rest of the village who were assembling further down the road.

“He’s not a child anymore, he has to learn this stuff for himself,” George started.

“You’re wrong!” she cut him off, barely able to keep her voice down. “You tell him stupid things like that, and you make him believe that there’s hope in that hell-hole!”

“There might be hope.”

“There’s no hope in Cairo, and you know it. We’ve seen it. We saw what it was like years ago, and we barely escaped it. He’s here because we got out of places like that and learnt to survive, so don’t you throw all that away by inviting him to go in there because there must be some kind of organisation,” she pulled a face and waggled her head from side to side mockingly.

“I’m sorry, I just –”

“You should be,” she turned her back on him and crossed her arms. She stood rigid for several minutes, but softened as he wrapped his arms around her from behind and held her tight.

“I’m too tired for this,” she sighed. “The only reason I’m going along with this exodus of yours is because of Jake. Him and Fatima, and Saïd, and anyone else who still has some life left in them and deserves a better go at it than we’ve had here.”

“I know,” George whispered gently, kissing her on the cheek. “And so does he.”

She turned and pulled him in closer, burying her head in his chest. She listened to his heart beating for almost a minute before looking up into his eyes. Big, silent tears had started to roll down his face and his bottom lip had curled outwards in that ugly way she somehow found so attractive.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, wiping his tears away with her thumbs.

He nodded towards Cairo. “If we hadn’t landed there, twenty-seven years ago, do you think things would have been different?” he asked, swallowing any further tears.

“What happened was always going to happen,” she dug her chin into his chest and smiled. “But because we landed there all those years ago, and because of everything that happened from that point on, we both found ourselves hundreds of miles away from the nearest explosion when it did. Because of all that, we’re here, and so is Jake. And that’s all that matters.”

They walked hand in hand to the assembled villagers, who had already started to plan their route past Cairo.

 “The biggest danger is that we have no speed,” Zahra said. If anyone tries to stop us, for any reason, we have no way of escaping. I can guarantee you that they will have horses that are faster than our donkeys.”

Their migrations over the years had never taken them past Cairo. It had always been an un-passable barrier to the north of their world. For the younger generation, life in the countryside was all they knew or remembered.

“Why would anyone want to stop us? What do we have that they could possibly want?” Fatima spoke clearly and with an indignant tone.

 “Places like this are different,” Zahra explained. “It doesn’t matter what you have, you can still be shot just because you walk into the wrong street, or look at someone the wrong way.”

“So what is the right way to look at people?” Jake asked. No one answered.

Of all the villagers, Ben and Zahra knew Cairo best, and they had started to draw a map in the dust on the side of the road.

“This used to be the road, up from Saqqara and Dashur towards Giza,” Zahra explained. “We’re about here, and up ahead the pyramids will be visible on our left.”

The Pyramids of Giza, Gail thought suddenly. Jake’s never seen them! She envied the fact that he was going to see them for the first time, and wondered how much time, if at all, she would have to show them to him. When he was very young he’d seen other pyramids, like the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, and the Red Pyramid and Bent Pyramid slightly further north. But never Khufu’s Great Pyramid.

“Giza was still there ten years ago, and our visitor a few nights ago confirmed that it was still there now, though there’s not much left. Hopefully we should be able to go through relatively quietly.” Zahra saw the look in Gail’s eyes and laughed. “We probably won’t have time for a history tour Gail, I’m sorry.”

Gail shrugged it off and smiled, though inside she clung to the hope of an unexpected detour.

Zahra’s biggest fear was that they would lose their donkeys. The animals had been with them for so long, and had been indispensable throughout their travels; no human could carry enough water to last that many days between refills. Camels and horses would certainly have to be handed over to whatever militia controlled the Saqqara road. Who knew how desperate they’d be for six tired donkeys?

“Then we should reach the sea in two days by following the road to Alexandria,” Ben finished the plan off.

“And as for how you look at people,” Gail said to Jake with a smile, “don’t.”

Chapter 93

Gail was shocked at how little their party took notice of the pyramids. Admittedly, from where the road lay it was impossible to get a good view. They took a right angle turn off the main road and onto the principle crossing of the canal, which with its stagnant waters and years of detritus could probably be walked across without getting a toe wet.

They turned their backs on Cairo as they crossed the flat bridge, and got their first decent glimpse. Khafre’s pyramid, though half a mile away and partly hidden by the encroaching sand-dunes, stood proud, the smooth limestone casing still clinging to its upper reaches. The Giza plateau was a dozen or so metres higher in elevation compared to the bridge, exaggerating the monument’s scale, but her scientific mind ignored that for the time being. She’d never walked across this bridge, never stood there, looking at it as an ancient Egyptian would have: from water-level.

George stopped and gave her time to reflect, but hurried her along as soon as the last of their group had passed them. She looked at Jake, who had paused on the other side. He was looking past her, at the ruins of Cairo.

She could sense Jake’s eagerness to explore, and the realisation that he was more intrigued by what remained of Cairo than the ancient Egyptian pyramids upset her. She would later acknowledge that they were both fascinated by a lost culture, just not the same one.