1
Cachay Goodkin was not amused. One lives in the suburbs of New Jersey for a little peace and quiet, and a good pedicure. Not an out of body experience traveling to ancient Egypt. During the Middle Kingdom, no less, with so much weak governance.
It had been several weeks since she had allowed herself the diversion of a good spa treatment at Glenclaire Nails. The masseuse had soothed Cachay’s busy mind from the cares of her day at Social Services. To think she had gone back to school, at her age, for a law degree from The University of Chicago, only to fill out forms in triplicate.
The hand massage was delicious, but the smell of the exfoliant went to her head. Cachay twitched as she saw flashes of torchlit rooms. Awkwardly, she smiled at the woman kneading her flesh. Cachay fought the visions, as she had these past weeks. For example, glancing at a picture of the Sphinx, her mind had slipped off to an alley in Cairo. While visiting her friend Sahara, the cat jumped on her lap and Cachay had envisioned an Egyptian cat goddess. She couldn’t even think about what had happened when she heated sunflower oil on the stove. Impossible.
It had to stop. Her son Zachary welcomed such hallucinations; they were the lifeblood of the odd group he had joined. But they upset Cachay’s world view, her need to get things done right.
As the manicurist worked on her cuticles, Cachay sensed feelings in other parts of her body, as if someone was trying to emerge from her skin. If she gave into this alien feeling, she knew what would happen. The other body would overtake her, whisper in her brain, force her to hear its story. That’s what Zachary’s group does at their frightful meetings, share these unbelievable stories. The qaraq. A group of souls traveling through Time. Preposterous.
With fingernails held up to dry, Cachay propped open a fashion magazine with her elbow and tried to shut out the strange physical sensations. But every whiff of chemical product twisted her perceptions. She imagined lustrous oils used to prepare a corpse for embalming. Why were these visions happening to her? The qaraq sought them out, Zachary complained when the visions eluded him, and others she knew in the qaraq complained they were not receiving their bizarre tales lately. Cachay hated the phantasms. Nonsense.
Then came the pedicure. As the technician snaked paper wadding between her toes, Cachay felt like an Egyptian mummy wrapped for eternal preservation. If the qaraq’s visions had ceased, why was she flooded with this misery? She didn’t even believe the group’s time-travel theories.
In her magazine, a model with smooth, ivory skin morphed into the face of a heavily made-up corpse. Cachay looked away in shock. Designs on the wall chart of fingernail colors appeared as archaic glyphs, exotic birds, heads in profile. A story from another world invaded her mind.
THE TALE OF THE PYRAMID TOMB SALESMAN
LOOK
FORWARD
TO YOUR BURIAL!
DON’T BE CAUGHT WRAPPED
IN A SHEEPSKIN LIKE AN OLD CORPSE!
TAKE THESE FOUR STEPS TO A LONGER AFTERLIFE!
Kha-nen-set wished there was a way someone other than a priest could read the words of the text. The idea of heralding the offer of new tomb sites was a good one, but Kha-nen-set had created the text himself, memorized it, and would have to teach it to the heralds. He had to get things done right, and there was much else to do. He went over the heralds’ text once more:
ONE: To preserve you forever, your skin shall be coated in the finest natron powders, your inner cavities filled with luscious oils and spices. (We use no offensive tars.)
As overseer of the new Pyramid complex, Kha-nen-set had continual problems. Without proper embalming fluids, a corpse might disintegrate in the heat and he’d have an angry dynasty on his hands. Without the right color fingernail paint a beloved of the deceased would unleash her grief on him. Had that shipment of green eyebrow paint come in? Shipments were always damaged, threatening adequate supplies. Preserving dead bodies ensured eternal life. If only his inventory was everlasting. He went back to his script for the heralds:
TWO: Your heart shall be replaced with an elegant, carved, jewel encrusted scarab, the beetle-emblem of resurrection.
Kha-nen-set shook his head. To think he had used his mastery of group conflict to rise to a powerful position, only to sell dung beetles. The sacred scarab beetle was born in dung, sculpted into a charm, and then placed in the heart of a corpse to renew its life. The nobles shaved their heads for sanitary purposes, but for immortality they counted on a filthy bug. Preposterous.
THREE: As singers chant the names of your incarnations, and dancers express the joy of merging with the immortal, a gold casket bears your face in lapis, so Osiris will recognize you as you enter the world beyond.
For centuries, only the royal family had been blessed with burial within the Pyramids, so Kha-nen-set delighted that Pharaoh had opened up the new tombs to non-royals. When Sen-Usret became Pharaoh, he mollified upper class dissidents by offering them everlasting life. Sen-Usret’s action was a radical departure from the past. A conniving move, after Kha-nen-set’s own heart.
But Kha-nen-set had to do all the work, satisfying each family that they have a more opulent casket than the last, while keeping funeral costs down so they can afford it. At least Pharaoh mandated that each governmental nomarch encourage the arts in his province. There was no shortage of tomb interior designers or cortege dancers. But the heralds had to bring in customers.
FOUR: When your soul awakens, you will see paintings and statues in your tomb of daily life, rich stores of sweetmeats and grains for your physical strength, and a personal Book of the Dead with the latest stories from court.
Under Pharaoh Sen-Usret, the scrolls of the Dead bulged beyond measure, full of old tales, fresh epics, and experimental story cycles. The hymns and spells guided the new aristocracy into the afterlife, but Kha-nen-set saw them as busywork. As he scrambled to oversee scribes, he shrugged off the dazzling messages of immortality. He believed more in the needs of his customers.
This clan wanted the statues of their servants to be away from the sarcophagi, so whispered gossip could not be heard. That clan requested more clothing, to look presentable for Osiris. And that night was the Kharman family staging party, a sales innovation Kha-nen-set had created. Included in the tomb price, the family gathered in the Pyramid to plan out their tomb and celebrate with a feast. On the way, Kha-nen-set had all five kinds of beer make it past the guards.
His wife was furious with him for attending the festivities. Kha-nen-set felt his wife’s neediness and disinterest in sex so unnerving that he wondered if the Pyramids had an effect on him from beyond this world. His family loved their gardens and sunshine, but Kha-nen-set preferred the security of a client’s tomb deep inside the Pyramid complex.
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At the party, the Kharman clan unveiled a giant statue: a deity in the form of a thick snake astride an Arabian charger that stood on the back of a huge elephant. Kha-nen-set had seen snakes and elephants from Africa, but the powerful horse was a frightening vision from eastern lands. He saw the sculpture’s jewels less as a warning to evil spirits and more an invitation to tomb robbers.
On the ferry home after the party, Kha-nen-set bristled at the Kharman’s demand for protection of their tomb’s treasure from a minor divinity of their hometown of Elephantine. Kha-nen-set refused to let some upstart family diminish Pharaoh, the incarnation of the god Osiris. So upset, he wondered if his soul had once existed as Osiris’ heart or fingernail.
As he walked back to his house through the gardens, Kha-nen-set looked down at his fingernails. Nonsense! He had been working too hard. Was there really an afterlife? Or were his labors all a sham? Was he wasting his life? On the other hand, if life did continue after death….
Given his frantic life, Kha-nen-set never thought about such things. Looking up from his reverie, he saw he was in an unfamiliar area of the gardens. Fear swept over him, like he was in an unknown land after death. Why was this happening to him? All because of fingernails. Impossible.
ق
“Mother? Are you all right?” Zack Goodkin shook his mother’s shoulder. Cachay did not respond to the jostling, but thought she was in a smoke-filled sepulcher.
“Zachary? You’re in the afterlife? There is everlasting life? Pharaoh let me in, too?”
“Hate to tell you, Ma, you’re in New Jersey. 2000 AD, not BC,” Zack whispered in his mother’s ear. “You freaked out the manicurists. I drove up and they dragged me into the shop to pay. If you don’t start speaking in tongues, I think we can slip out respectably.”
Cachay stood, taking in the situation. She embraced her son with uncharacteristic warmth, took his arm, and let him guide her to the car. Her husband had died when Zack was in high school, so she had often counted on her son’s support. He may have been away traveling for years, and she may have criticized his choices too many times, but they were undeniably close.
As they drove away, Zack said, “What was all that everlasting life stuff? And Pharaoh?”
Cachay was silent.
“Ma! Ancient Egypt? I’m begging for a bone, and you’re consorting with King Tut?”
“It was Sen-Usret,” Cachay corrected. “Middle Kingdom. Four thousand years ago.”
“We may be African-American, but you’ve never been into Egypt. Where’d you get such expertise? Out of nowhere?” Zack’s face lit up. “Fess up, you’ve had a past life memory.”
Cachay looked at her son with utmost seriousness. “Poppycock. It was the fumes.”