Thirteen in the Medina Page 17

  Ann was scuttling around picking up bowls and plates, Karen was inspecting soap dishes and Diane, of course, was trying to interest Larry in a large freestanding design. As the women shopped their husbands stood obediently waiting – presumably to pay and carry once the decisions had been made. Hugh and Nancy were admiring the large bathroom fixtures and the coffee tables and Carole, surprisingly enough was looking at the smaller items, such as you would buy as a souvenir for a child. It had never crossed my mind that she had any children.

  While Ann flustered and fluttered indecisively and Karen was consulted on her opinion as regards the best size of plate to purchase – dinner plate or serving platter or a selection of tea plates? - Graham appeared at my shoulder.

  ‘Are you buying?’ he enquired.

  ‘Oh yes!’ I confirmed, enthusiastically.

  ‘What will it be?’ He picked up the dish that I had just replaced on the shelf.

  ‘Knowing Carrie,’ interrupted Keith, ‘one of everything.’

  I grinned in agreement. ‘There is so much choice,’ I cried. ‘I don’t really know where to begin.’ I replaced the soap dish and picked up a platter. ‘It’s all so beautifully made.’ I ran my finger caressingly over the smooth, polished surface and then twisted the platter in the light to test for scratches.

  ‘And at good prices,’ put in Graham, ‘very reasonable.’

  I sighed. ‘I have to think what else I have bought, what room I have in my case, how heavy it’s going to be.’

  Keith raised his eyebrows and nodded at Graham. ‘Sounds like it’s going to be something big,’ he commented. ‘Which I could end up being asked to carry!’

  Graham laughed and moved on. Seconds later I heard him asking Ann, ‘Are you buying? Made a decision yet?’

  I glanced around the room to gauge how much time I had to make my own purchase decisions and noted that Abdul, who had silently followed us around during the talk, had disappeared. Likewise, Carole was nowhere to be seen. Then I spied Nancy emerging from a doorway at the far side of the room just behind the service counter, and a sign that read “toilets.”

  ‘I’m just going for a wee while I make my mind up,’ I told Keith, passing him my rucksack. ‘Just hold my bag for me a minute.’

  He rolled his eyes at me and muttered something about, ‘Three cups of tea at breakfast…’

  As ever I expected a queue in the ladies, but surprisingly enough there was no-one in there. Carole must have made her purchases and gone outside for some fresh air, I concluded.

  When I re-entered the sales area Bob was at the cash desk, a bulging bag on the counter; Graham was with Larry and Diane: ‘Are you buying anything? Made a decision yet?’

  Larry was indicating the free-standing sculpture-like objects and Diane was waving her arms about like Magnus Pike and I presumed she was describing furnishings in her home. As I stood there, still contemplating my own prospective purchases, Diane beckoned Keith over for his opinion on whether he preferred a two-stranded display or three.

  That left me a clear run at buying with no nagging or snide comments. The sales assistant was just wrapping my purchases when Keith re-appeared by my side, placing a trilobite on the counter. He approved my selection of a tea plate in earthy browns and a soap dish (which would probably never see any soap or grease) in greys and blacks. His fossil, he explained, would make a good paperweight.

  From somewhere behind me I heard Phil’s strident tones, ‘Come on Ann! Make a decision, please!’ and as he stormed off outside I wondered, not for the first time, if perhaps he had a hangover to account for his short temper, although as Ann joined the queue, giggling with Diane, then appeared to change her mind and go back to the display to swap items around, maybe not.

  From a side door Abdul appeared and with a raised digit started a head count. Those of us who had paid he ushered outside where Hugh and Nancy were waiting under the shelter of the veranda, as a steady drizzle was still falling. On the wall hung some posters illustrating the importance of microfossils in oil exploration. Bob appeared engrossed reading about how reports on possible new oil fields could affect share prices, and the lengths to which some people go to discover such information before it becomes general knowledge.

  Keith drifted over and indicated to me a section on microfossils and paleo-environmental reconstruction being important in investigating climate change. There was also an article on how this can be used in forensic work for police and he pointed out to me that such tests would have been carried out earlier in the summer following our discovery in a new friend’s garden.

  Soon we were only waiting for Carole and Graham; the latter wandered out muttering apologies and explaining about extra cups of tea at breakfast. Keith elbowed me in the ribs. As I felt this undeserved and my hands were full I aimed a kick at his ankles. Abdul looked at his watch. I wondered why it was that Carole always seemed to be the person for whom we waited.

  Diane offered to check the toilets but Abdul declined this, possibly due to past experience fearing that we could end up losing Diane as well for a time. He suggested we might like to start boarding the bus while he looked for Carole. He had opened the door back into the shop when she emerged from around the corner. Abdul urged her to hurry as I heard her say she had returned to watch the workmen extricating the fossils again.

  Back on the bus the excited chatter about the exhibits we had just seen, the workmen extracting the fossils and the items we had bought soon lapsed into silence as we settled back in our seats and resumed staring out the windows. The desert landscape continued, and every now and again we passed herds of camels that just seemed to be standing there, casually hanging around. There were no shrubs of any sort that they could graze on, just the reddish coloured earth.

  Then the scenery transformed with little oases of lush green vegetation, tall palm trees and bushes surrounding rectangular areas that looked like grass or meadows. In the distance I could see reddish brown buildings, much the same colour as the ground, but they were too far away to tell if they were inhabited or whether these were the remains of a ruined settlement.

  The persistent drizzle that had greeted us this morning suddenly turned into a downpour as we approached the Todgha Gorge, a canyon or wadi in the eastern part of the High Atlas Mountains, where we were due to stop for lunch in a restaurant nestling by the river at the foot of the steep sided range. With the rain splattering down, the road was covered in countless small frogs leaping about; there were hundreds of them hardly bigger than my thumbnail, like tiny rolling pebbles. Then, as quickly as the rain appeared, so it eased and the frogs disappeared, for which I was thankful as I did not want to have to walk down the path trying to avoid stepping on them.

  At lunch unsurprisingly, the discussion reverted to our recent shopping experience. Nancy turned out to be knowledgeable about folklore: did we know, she asked, that belemnites were once used as medicine to cure rheumatism and sore eyes in both humans and horses, by crushing them into dust? We shook our heads.

  ‘In Scandinavia they were thought to be elves’, pixies’ or gnomes’ candles,’ she continued, as we waited for the table to be cleared and the waiter to appear with our various drinks’ bills.

  ‘Fossils such as Echinoids, the round sea-urchins, were believed to come from the sky in thunderstorms, hence their name of “thunderstones,”’ added her husband as he made to rise from the table preparatory to leaving for his usual post meal cigarette.

  ‘While ammonites used to be called “snake stones” as it was believed that if an ammonite was split open it would reveal a snake curled up inside,’ Graham said, not to be outdone. I did think it a little odd, though, that for all his enthusiasm, as far as I was aware, Graham had not bought anything at the store earlier; presumably he had left it to Karen to select something, but I found it curious after he had been so keen to discover what other people were purchasing.

  Our hotel that evening on first glance did not have quite the charm of the previous one, and on a se
cond glance neither did it have the same comfort, despite being part of the same chain. However, it did raise several smiles that we tried unsuccessfully to hide, as there was a large rotary fan suspended from the ceiling in the foyer and as we entered the sudden blast of air whipped up Phil’s comb-over before, with a muttered curse, he quickly sidestepped out of its range.

  Where yesterday’s bathroom fixtures were gleaming, polished fossils today’s were slightly chipped and battered, however the beds were the same style complete with planks to slide into place to produce a double bed, and the “wardrobe” the same open framework with, this time, four clothes hangers – I counted them twice just to make sure. The ethnic curtains and bedspreads also looked to have come from the same catalogue.

  My room was rather small compared to what I had grown used to; twin beds with extremely small bedside tables only just big enough for the lamps (note: bedside lamps!) they held with no room to spare for my alarm clock; the framework shelves, and one odd chair (one chair in a twin room? A little stingy methinks).

  The chair was not particularly comfortable so I sat on the bed to write up my diary and also a postcard to Colin. There was no TV, which I thought was somewhat unusual; not that I particularly wanted one, but I thought that such amenities were standard fare these days.

  The bathroom was like a little attached cubicle containing a shower unit, loo and sink. It all looked clean but not particularly modern. The air conditioning seemed to be blowing out warm air so I switched it off and opened the window noting the view out the front of the hotel over the car park. I quickly washed and changed for dinner; there was nothing about the bathroom to inspire me to take my time and so I headed off to the bar.

  The bar was surprisingly large and already quite full with other tourists, presumably as equally enamoured with their rooms as I was with mine. After a few self-conscious minutes peering into alcoves and nooks and finding complete strangers staring back at me, I spied Bob seated in a corner with Graham, so I ambled across. Graham raised his glass of beer to me in salute. He seemed to have come alive today, obviously fossils must be his thing and sure enough, as I took my seat, I noted that the conversation was about these relics.

  ‘Graham’s been telling me about fossils,’ Bob confirmed. ‘Did you know,’ he asked me, ‘that there is a big market in producing fake fossils?’

  ‘One way to tell is by using UV light,’ Graham explained, ‘it shows up the resin filler in specimens, which are not as complete as their owner may claim them to be.’ He giggled and leaned towards us conspiratorially. ‘If there is a disco here we could use the same process on Diane’s jewellery,’ the men guffawed, ‘and see if that’s fake.’ They obviously were not impressed by Diane’s ostentatious accessories. I was a little surprised by such a catty remark coming from a conversation basically between two men but I smiled. ‘The majority of diamonds give a blue glow whereas a cubic zirconia glows a mustard yellow under UV light. Important to note when you get that certain ring on your finger.’ He waved his left hand in my direction and seemed more confident of this eventuality than I am.

  Just to side track them a little I asked, ‘Is that the same lighting that makes all the white fluff show up when I am trying to look my best in a little black dress?’

  Graham nodded. ‘Resin reflects light, whereas a fossil should not, so filler shows as being different to its background. Also, there could be little air bubbles in resin so have a good look, and also feel a fossil. There are other ways to test if a fossil is genuine,’ he continued, enthusiastically. ‘Try scratching a small corner with pin or a needle and if the colour comes off then it’s not the real McCoy.’

  I wondered if I should try this test on the slither of stegosaurus bone I had bought over the internet earlier in the summer.

  ‘Dyes are used to make a specimen appear older, in the same way as I expect you used cold tea at school to age a letter in history class, or something,’ Graham said and I nodded, yep, done that. ‘Of course, with most things have a good look at it first. It’s very rare to find a perfect specimen. And if you do, you could be onto a gold mine.’

  Luckily at this point, as we seemed dangerously near to straying into jewellery areas again and it was bad enough fencing away enquiries from the female members of our group concerning the relationship between me and Keith than to have to face questions from their husbands, Keith himself entered the bar to inform us that people were taking their seats for dinner. I did not need any further urging.

  The dining room was huge. The serving tables were ranged down the centre in a block, with the tables for the diners situated around the circumference of the room. These were all decent sized, round tables seating about six or eight people comfortably. I guessed that the hotel must be Tardis-like; appreciably bigger on the inside than it appeared from the outside. Many of the other diners appeared to be French or German with a smattering of American tourists. We seemed to be the only English party.

  Keith had spied the tables which had been allocated to our group, situated in the far corner, and was soon studying the wine list. As I sat beside him, he proudly showed me his choice. I silently wondered how long it had taken him to choose seeing as though it was the same wine we had had last night, and thankfully, the same low price. We agreed, though, on having just our normal (normal!) consumption of one bottle shared between the two of us.

  Bob and Graham had accompanied me from the bar still carrying on their conversation; Karen arrived about the same time as Keith. Ann and Phil appeared a few minutes later, the latter seeming a little unsteady on his feet, as he tripped over a chair leg, and it again crossed my mind that he had been drinking in his room. I thought he was going to make one of his snide comments about who had left a dining chair there, or a slippery patch on the floor but Ann managed to smooth things by saying casually, ‘Are you alright dear? Did you get a bit tangled up in the table cloth?’ Turning to Karen she added, ‘It’s normally me that’s clumsy. I’m the sort that would trip and drag the whole tablecloth off, just like they do in the movies.’

  Karen dutifully laughed and the two ladies made a show of tucking non-existent excess material safely out of the way.

  Again, there was a massive selection of food – but then there needed to be for the number of people gathered to eat. I had eaten my healthy salad starter and was enjoying what was possibly some sort of beef (I hoped, and not camel) casserole, with rice and sliced green beans plus a side helping of chicken breast when Bob and Graham reverted to their topic of conversation from the bar.

  I overheard them discussing the problem regarding some Chinese museums, which were reported to contain a lot of fakes and Graham, who seemed to have visited there, was explaining how many of the museums operate like shops, buying and selling specimens, while their staff have very little specialised scientific training.

  It reminded me of a programme I had seen on television about a fossil, which had been faked in China that had turned out to be comprised of two specimens, one of which had been previously unknown.

  ‘Ah yes,’ agreed Graham earnestly, waving his fork in the air. ‘Archaeoraptor. In fact, I think it was comprised of several different fossils, head and body from one, the tail from another and the legs and feet from a third, all assembled together to create a missing link between animals and flying feathered birds. Not to be confused with archaeopteryx, which is of course’ he added, ‘a genuine early transitional fossil between feathered dinosaurs and modern birds.’ He popped some meat in his mouth, masticated then said almost as an afterthought, ‘I did once hear of a man who claimed all dinosaurs were faked.’

  While we all digested this information, he ate some more of his dinner before continuing, ‘There was a further furore when it was claimed that Archaeoraptor had been illegally exported out of China to America. And that’s another big area of concern, fossil smuggling.’

  At this point, while there was a lull in the conversation, Keith decided to show that he was not just a pretty face and adde
d, ‘Of course fossil forgeries are not new things, or exclusive to China.’ Graham and Bob both nodded sagaciously while they chewed. ‘What about Piltdown Man?’ It might have been more impressive if Keith could have come with something a bit more obscure than what, as every school boy – and girl – knows, is possibly the greatest hoax in history, the supposed missing link between apes and humans, although I am sure that in my youth I dated one or two more likely suspects.

  ‘Many museums and freak shows of the eighteen century contained mermaids,’ I made my contribution. ‘Skeletons often comprised of things like bits of monkey and fish. Didn’t Barnum exhibit one?’

  ‘A particularly ugly one, I think you’ll find,’ agreed Bob. ‘I don’t think any of the side show specimens were anything like the popular conception of a seductress.’ A thought which prompted various smiles and titters of laughter around the table. ‘But how on earth,’ he turned to Graham, waving his cutlery for emphasis, ‘do you smuggle a large fossil? Something like a dinosaur? I mean, you read about it in the papers but they don’t exactly explain how it has been done. I mean, it is not something you can just hide in your suitcase.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Graham, ‘but large fossils do get smuggled and it does not involve sleight of hand or magic conjuring tricks. It is normally all done in the paperwork; misrepresentation of the shipping contents of cargo, using vague and misleading labels. Something described as “rough” or “unprepared” fossil bones may, in fact, be a complete skeleton. Or they may change the country of origin to one that permits export of such items. In the UK, as in the States, for example, fossils are classed as minerals and so belong to whoever owns the mineral rights to that land.’

  I sighed and decided it was time for dessert, leaving them arguing over how you could smuggle a complete fossil excavated from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, a country which prohibits the export of all such items, reminding me that the Sahara Desert we had briefly visited just yesterday, had also once been an area underwater and thus presumably contained fossils of ancient sea creatures.