Chapter 5

Amer and Zakaria were digging in one of the old houses that Amer had identified at one night when the moon was full and the sky was beautiful, being not polluted by any thing during night, when Zakaria was lighting his cigarette enjoying a magical night watching the place from outside while Amer continued to dig more and more, they had been digging for about a week and had dug about twelve meters under the abandoned house without finding anything and when Amer felt tired he climbed the wooden ladder that they had placed, which was a set of short wooden ladders that were no more than three meters high each at most. Amer saw Zakaria looking at the moon longingly as if it was talking to him so he said to him while taking his cigarette from him to smoke some of it as he was too lazy to roll a cigarette for himself from the fatigue of digging and the failure to get anything so far after all this effort as well. Amer looked to his friend who seemed sinking in his own thoughts and memories, Amer asked his friend with a smile taking him of all of his ideas and dreams:

- What does the moon tell you?

Zakaria sighed a little then said:

- It tells me that something will happen soon.

Amer's face turned to be amazed and excited and couldn't hide his joy saying:

- May be we will find a great tomb soon then.

Zakaria smiled and said sadly:

- It doesn't seem like that to me.

Amer felt worried and asked:

- What then?

- I don't know, rest a little now and pay attention to the road until I continue digging.

- Okay, take care of yourself.

Amer finished smoking his cigarette without looking at the moon, but only paying attention to the road. Only a few minutes later, he heard a loud scream coming from this dungeon they were digging. The voice was his friend Zakaria's. He rushed to him, almost falling from the wooden ladder that was taking him down. His friend was catching his breath with difficulty, placing his left hand on his chest while pointing with his right hand to something in the other direction. Amer raised his lamp and looked at the direction where his friend was pointing to, but he didn't see anything. He said to Zakaria in fear:

- What? What's there?!

Zakaria couldn't answer him, as his gaze was fixed on what he was pointing to, his heart was beating very quickly, and panic filled his eyes until his heart stopped completely and he breathed his last breath in front of his friend, who was struck by a terrifying tremor and didn't know what to do. He rushed upstairs frightened and shocked and began crying for his second friend with copious tears and fear, A fear that he did not understand the source or reason for.

After a short time, Amer woke up from his shock and began to think about what to do with his friend's body that was still lying down below where they were digging inside this old house. He went down to him and kissed him goodbye on his forehead, then dug a suitable grave for his body and buried him. Then he went upstairs after reciting the Fatiha and praying for mercy for him. He watched the road carefully before slipping away in the darkness of the night back to his house. The next day, as he expected, his friend's wife came to him with her little daughter, asking for her husband, who is his closest friend, in fear, as he was not used to spending the night outside his house before. Amer who buried his dead friend Zakaria with his own hands couldn't tell his friend's wife the truth that her husband died suddenly, frightened and alone in one of the abandoned places they used to dig many years ago.

He tried to be calm, steady, and hide his sadness. He told her that he had not seen him since the sunset of the day before and that he would search for him until he could trace him soon. As soon as she left to search for her husband and ask her neighbors and acquaintances about him, he quickly returned to his room and began to cry intensely. After several days of crying and recalling sad memories and beautiful moments between him and his two deceased friends, Amer remembered the moment of Zakaria's death, who seemed to have been terrified by something before he died. He was looking sharply at the thing that terrified and killed him, but Amer did not see any trace of anything strange at that time. However, he returned to the words of his friend who told him that he had not been feeling well since they had handed over the princess's mummy to engineer Salah, and perhaps he felt his death was approaching, as he feared things that he had not explained to Amer.

Amer's fear began to increase day after day without knowing the reason for that, but within a week he had made the decision to sell everything he owned in his village and move to Luxor city to buy a house or an apartment and open a shop to trade in anything and leave everything that had passed behind him; His wife did not understand anything or know the reason for what he wanted to do, but she attributed it all to the death of his best friends Jamal and Zakaria. She did not burden him with more questions and inquiries than he could bear, but rather told him that she would move with him wherever he wanted. Indeed, Amer moved with his wife to live in a large apartment in Luxor and bought a hardware and agricultural machinery shop near it. He began a new period of his life with his wife, who was expecting having her second child two months after they moved to the city.

Life in the city differs from it in the village especially when you don't know people there, no friends, no neighbors or relatives you are used to visit or speak to, Amer used to stay the whole day at his market while his wife who had no work or job so had to stay all the time at her new flat with her little child.

Amer knew that engineer Salah lived in Luxor city and wished if he could have met him to ask him about the mummy they bought to him if there had been some thing strange about it, a curse perhaps, that might have been a reason for the death of his two deceased friends.