The Breezes Whisper ▸ The Mummy

three ─ a father's worries.

CHAPTER THREE, A FATHER'S WORRIES.

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            THE FLAT OF MARA EL-MASRI was no different than other flats in the area. She seemed to have chosen a red and gold color scheme, unconsciously or not, and the first thing you were greeted with upon entering was a large ornate rug that covered the hardwood floor. Her curtains were of the same ruby color and they were tied with frayed golden rope. On the walls, she had hung Egyptian art, and in the corners of most of them was the name Jamil El-Masri in Arabic script. She had candles lined across her cabinets and tables and there were two bags of luggage by the door, and the couch looked slept on recently.

            "Baba?" Mara called out as she set her keys on a small turquoise tray that sat on the cabinet beside the door. Jonathan glanced around the inside of her flat as he closed the door behind him, while she went and checked the other rooms—her bedroom, the bathroom, and the kitchen—for her father. She came back with a frown, remarking, "He's not here. Strange. He told me he was coming straight back after our lunch."

            "I see it as a positive," Jonathan said. "This means I won't be interrogated by your father for being a strange man in his daughter's flat." She didn't respond with anything more than a tilted look at him as she went to the kitchen for the first aid kit. He instead turned to the cabinet by the door, picking up a bronze statuette that was on it. It was of the goddess Isis, her arms spread as wings. "Bring your work home with you?"

            Mara hummed in response as she returned from the kitchen, in her hands a heavy leather bag that would unroll on the table. She looked at him and he held the statue a little higher. "Oh, that's my father's," she informed, and he set it back down so quickly the sound as it hit the cabinet echoed throughout the flat. "It wasn't going to bite you. Sit down."

            Jonathan eyed the leather bag as she unrolled it. "That's..." The metal of the tools she had in it hit the table with a resounding thud through the leather. "...quite an extensive first aid kit." He sat across from her at the table. Gauze, scissors, needles, stitches. She could heal an entire military regiment with this kit. "Are you a nurse as well as an aspiring Egyptologist?"

            She chuckled quietly. "No. My brother used to get into fights all the time." As she spoke, she tapped each object inside, glancing back up to his nose to determine what, if anything, she needed. "He never wanted our parents to know so I became his nurse. I used to stitch him up, check for head injuries, bandage him up. Whenever I brought out the gauze," here, she picked up the gauze itself as an example, "he joked about wanting to be sure I didn't have any other tools in my kit that were used in mummification. Said he had nightmares about me mummifying him alive."

            He smiled and commented, "Sounds like a fine boy. Is he in Cairo?"

            Mara became still for a brief moment, hand hovering over a small bottle of isopropyl alcohol. She wished he had asked her a simpler question. For now, the only answer she could give was, "No. Stay still."