The Eye of Horus

Chapter 1

Birthdays suck. Period. Especially this one. Period.

I know that sounds a bit pessimistic, but what normal teenager wants to listen to an old guy droning on about sixty different types of rocks found in the desert for their fifteenth birthday? None that I know of. Any normal teenager would throw a party or go out with friends. But I suppose it would help to have friends. Anything besides going on a tour of some Ancient Egyptian archaeological site in the middle of the goddamned desert had to be better.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Ancient Egypt, but combined with the choking heat draining water from me by the gallons and burnt toes that came into contact with hot sand, big crumbling walls of more sand just weren’t pulling my interest.

None of my birthdays have ever been all that exciting in fact. I’d always just hung out with my best friend, which was all I ever wanted.

“This historical site is presently called Tel el-Amarna, but three thousand years ago, during the Eighteenth Dynasty, it was called Akhetaten, named after the pharaoh, Akhenaten,” the dark-haired tour guide said in his monotonous voice. His sun-weathered face barely cracked as he spoke; his deep wrinkles sagged in the heat like a withered weed.

For others, all of this may be interesting, but when you visit Egypt several times a year, going on several tours each time, repetitive becomes an understatement.

My family does this just for Grandma who wants to visit her friends and have “get-togethers,” but is incapable to do so by by herself.

It is rather expensive to go back and forth from Arizona, USA to Cairo, Egypt so many times, but when your mother is a lawyer and your father is a neurosurgeon, it’s considerably more possible.

Every time I ask them if I can stay home by myself or with a friend, but the answer is always the same--no. “Grandma is getting old,” they’d say. “She needs to be watched and cared for.”  They’re reluctant to refuse her anything should it disrupt her not-so-delicate health.

Plus, they don’t trust me to be home alone for any extended period of time, or to stay at a friend’s.

*  *  *

“Quit your dawdling and keep up with the group, or is this too boring for you?” Grandma snapped from my side.

Despite her rock-solid tone, I knew she didn’t mean it. She’d been grumpy all day -probably from the heat-, whipping her sharp tongue at everyone who said something “unnecessary.” Normally she would have asked what I’d been thinking and then give me some philosophical advice.

In contrast to what everyone else thought, Grandma never seemed like a day over fifty to me, except for her grey hair and the creases that surrounded the sides of her mouth. Though lined, her dark blue eyes were razor sharp - enough to puncture any soul. They assessed the  world and everyone in it with a surprising intelligence. On calm days when she was quiet and thoughtful, they seemed to reflect the knowledge of the entire world.

From the pictures I’ve seen of Grandma in her prime time, her hair had once been a long, lustrous black, her eyes beautiful and exotic. Even now, though lined with multiple wrinkles over the decades, they had not lost an ounce their potency. If you ever so much as dared to look close enough, you would see a shadow of something more, hidden within their depths. Her mind still retained its astuteness, her tongue as unforgiving as ever. And yet for some reason, everyone believed that she was forgoing her sanity. Just because she’ll occasionally spew a random string of words that made absolutely no sense to anyone nearby, didn’t mean that they held no meaning. I firmly believed this despite never understanding what she said myself. Grandma simply ran on a whole other set of train tracks when it came to thinking.