Egyptian Moon Book1: Return

Partial - Chapter 1

Present day … New York City …

Dad had chosen the timeframe for our trip to Egypt for the summer before my first semester at Morgan Nielsen University. In truth, it wouldn’t have been the best time of the year to tour the super-heated sands of Egypt. Still, he wanted one last vacation with me before I moved out of the house.

“Fear not, my lovely Meg,” he had said. “A brain surgeon of any worth always has a Plan ‘B’ tucked away inside his surgical bag of tricks.”

“Plan ‘Bs’ always suck, Dad,” I had said. “I wanted to see ancient Egypt in person, not just a watered-down New York tour.” After I voiced my disappointment, neither one of us spoke for a while.

Since my sophomore year of high school, my dad, Dr. Eli Christopher Smart III, a noted Professor of Neurological Surgery at Duke University—totally white, but born in Cairo, Egypt—had started creating his idea of the perfect pre-college family trip. He and I were scheduled to travel to Egypt to tour the ruins of ancient cities. Mom had refused to come with us.

At an early age, Dad started talking to me about his love for the place of his birth. Our library housed several books on ancient Egypt. My granddad, Eli Christopher Smart, Sr. was a successful businessman in the import/export business, traveling extensively through North Africa until his mysterious and untimely death last year.

As the elevator crept downward, slower than a normal one, I thought about Papa. God, it still hurt to think about him gone. I blinked back my sadness and returned my thoughts to Egypt—the place where Papa had built his career.

Even though I barely read what was written in the Egyptian study guides in our home library, I loved the awesomeness of the cool and colorful design of Egyptian clothes, make-up, jewelry, and the extraordinary architecture of the ancient cities. I wasn’t very knowledgeable about the inner workings of the ancient civilization or even the people now living in the region.

I did know about the power of the pharaohs and how a few of them may have been women in disguise. I’d always thought of that as very interesting. Queen Nefertiti was my favorite ancient woman of power.

One part of ancient Egyptian lifestyle rang quite clear and it disgusted me. How gross was it for the pharaohs to marry their own children, and how gross to expect a sister to marry a brother—not cool at all. Eeeew.

Inside the elevator, the air seemed to thicken as if at any second it would become opaque enough to see. My knees buckled a bit, weakened from the downward pressure or… maybe something else. I just couldn’t shake a weird apprehension. I felt more secure when I wrapped my arm around Tyler’s tight muscular arm. Dad had invited Tyler to come with us, much to Mom’s displeasure.