Better irrigation and modern technology during the twentieth century had meant that the land could be used all year round with less reliance on seasonal flooding. However, the beginning of the twenty-first century had already seen a rapid change in climate, and for the past twenty years the desert had been steadily gaining ground.
On their left, the sand quickly turned to grass, which within ten yards had developed to a rich variety of trees and other plants, their green leaves a welcome break from the yellows and blues of the desert and sky to their right. George slowed down to give way to an oncoming van. The road was barely wide enough for both of them to fit, but the driver seemed unconcerned as he smiled at them and nodded his thanks. Since they had left the motorway fifteen minutes earlier, this was the first human they had seen. Gail was increasingly excited as she looked between the car’s satnav screen and the road, scanning the horizon for something familiar that she would recognise from the hours spent online looking at satellite images. They were less than three kilometres away from their destination, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before something familiar cropped up.
“There!” she exclaimed, moments later. “Over there, those houses!”
George had just taken the car around a blind corner, revealing a group of flat-roofed houses a hundred yards in front of them. It was almost dreamlike, the scene so typical of a postcard of Egypt that Gail laughed; a couple of children ran across the street chasing a football, a lone chicken stood proudly on a low stone wall. George let a large black sedan pass them, its rear windows obscured, the stone-faced driver barely nodding at them in return.
“Are you sure?” George said glancing at the satnav, which still claimed another two kilometres to go.
“Absolutely! Just past here on our left is a turning, which you take to cross the canal. Ignore the satnav, it’s wrong.” Gail bounced in her seat as they drove past the two children, who now appeared to be arguing about whether or not the street lamp was the goalpost or not. “Just after that house,” she was almost shouting now, and George couldn’t stop himself from grinning. “Now! Turn here!”
George indicated left and turned onto a small side street, sandwiched between two rows of houses; telephone and electricity wires criss-crossed the street, like the intertwined branches of trees meeting above an English country lane. “Are you sure? This looks like a bit of an alley-way.”
“Yes, I’m certain. Just keep going along this street, it widens out!” As the road did indeed widen she slapped George’s leg and held it firmly with her right hand. “See?”
The rows of houses on both sides ended abruptly, and the street gave onto the concrete banks of a canal. A few hundred yards to their right, a flat bridge crossed the calm black water ten feet below. Along its edge ran a series of short concrete blocks designed to stop cars falling whilst also letting water and debris pass unhindered over the bridge in times of flood. The precaution seemed very optimistic, as currently the water couldn’t be more than a few feet deep at most. There were a few cars and people on the roads, but Gail had expected to see many more. Indeed, this was far from the bustling small town full of activity that the satellite images had shown her.
“It’s not very busy,” she said with a disappointed tone.
George changed gear and brought the car to a halt at a traffic light. The left indicator flashed patiently as the engine ticked over, the fan from the air conditioning whining in the heat. “They’re probably all watching Indemnity,” he said. They had watched the dubbed American sitcom in amusement for half an hour in their hotel room the previous night. From the frequent commercial breaks, they guessed it must have been a very popular show in Egypt, too.
The light changed to green, missing amber completely. George had grown used to this by now, it seemed that the middle light was there purely as a spacer. He moved the car forward and turned onto the bridge across the canal.
“Where to now?” he asked.
“Carry on straight, we should be entering Beni Amran soon,” she looked up and pointed at a small sign in Arabic with an English translation written below. “There! Well, it says ‘Ben Imran’, but that’s close enough.”
Passing through the small, mostly deserted village, they could see memories of a more prosperous time; the sand was piled high in the doorways of houses and most shops lay empty, the paint from the signs peeling and faint. There were some cars and people, clearly the area was still inhabited, but dying. Gail’s ‘Idiot’s Guide to Egypt’, a tongue-in-cheek present from Ellie before they had left, did not cover the modern area of Amarna or its surrounding towns and villages, choosing instead to focus on the ancient Egyptians, but Professor al-Misri had already warned Gail that the location was not known for its amenities.
They would be spending their first night in the only hotel in Beni Amran, which had fifteen empty rooms and was run by an old man and his wife. They also provided all of the meals, as it was the only restaurant in the village. The tourist industry at Amarna had dissipated over the past thirty years, as visitors tended to go to the more famous and immediately impressive sites of Thebes and Memphis. The frequent cruises running along the Nile no longer came as far north as Tell el-Amarna, stopping instead over a hundred and eighty miles away at Dendera. In a world of package holidays to the north and south, Tell el-Amarna was in the no-man’s-land between.
“Amarna!” Gail exclaimed. Their car passed under a modern gateway in the form of an ancient Egyptian pylon. On it, barely visible in the cracked and faded paintwork, were the words ‘Welcome to Tell el-Amarna’. George grinned.
Beyond this gate, they were barely twenty yards from the Nile. But the road did not end on its bank, instead vanishing beneath the water down a gentle slope. A barrier had been lowered to stop people from driving any further, whilst a small sign advertising ferry times in both Arabic and English politely advised them to buy tickets in the hotel before boarding.
The hotel wasn’t hard to find, as it was right next to the slipway, its three stories rising high above the small flat-roofed homes, the elaborate writing on its fading sign hinting at a more successful past. George parked their car on the side of the road while Gail searched through the papers in her backpack for their reservations; she didn’t think that there would be much of a problem if she didn’t have the printout, but felt better for bringing it anyway.
The dusty heat of the early evening was in stark contrast to the cool controlled climate of the car, but nonetheless Gail was happy to be on her feet as she faced the river. She filled her lungs, throwing her chest out to catch as much of the atmosphere as possible.
Instead of the humid heat she had been expecting, she found herself breathing in fresh clean air, and for the first time since their arrival in Egypt she felt a cool breeze against her cheeks and bare arms. In front of her the width of the Nile stretched out over a hundred yards until it reached the opposite bank, beyond which she could see the cliffs that had once enclosed the city of Akhetaten.
“Come on George,” she turned and opened the boot of the car. “Let’s get our things inside and get ready. There’s a ferry across in half an hour, we can go and see the site before it gets dark, can’t we?”
“Is there anywhere we can eat on the other side?” George asked cautiously. “It’s been hours since our last stop, and I’m famished!”
In a service area earlier that afternoon they had enjoyed their first Egyptian fast food, couscous with spicy sausages, but they had not stopped since, and the smell of cooking emanating from the hotel beside them was obviously giving him ideas.