The youngest one squealed again and pretended to be rent by bullets, staggering in circles, before collapsing. My oldest son groaned. I think he must have felt that he was past the age when he should have to play with his younger siblings, but then, surprisingly, he jumped up and ran to get his swim trunks. Perhaps he thought that Yasmin was going to swim with us, but she had come to our hotel room empty handed. The ancient Egyptians painted images of their dead both full face and from the side at once so that they would enter the next world intact.
Civilizations move toward complexity before they perish.
But I would like to sit in the sun. The pool was empty because of the conference still in Cairo and the fear of young men with Kalashnikovs. A few lounge chairs, stained and faded, lay open along each side. The boys jumped in as if escaping a fire. Yasmin watched from a chair near the ladder, her face shaded by an umbrella protruding from the center of a table.