a thing in 13 photos in 2008
museum
He motioned for me to follow him to a doorway, which led to an empty hallway and then told me "Now you must wait here with me." Even though I was in the midst of assuming the worst, I knew that no matter what happened, I'd definitely have time to take the mummy memory card, chew it up and swallow it if I had to. And then I realized that being "detained" in the hallway didn't seem to make much sense so I decided to "go for it."
By going for it, I mean that I decided to do the Internation hand sign for "How about a nice big bribe and we can forget all about this?" by rubbing my thumb and my two forefingers together whilst simultaneously raising and lowering my eyebrows rapidly. He immediately recognized my gesture and countered with a gesture that I easily interpreted as "Sure, but it had better be a good one because I know you've probably got mummy photos on you."
I tried to venture a peek in my pocket without letting him see what I had (no easy task when you're dealing with money you've never seen before!). I quickly realized that I only had two bills on me! The first bill was a 25 Egyptian Pound note (about $4.50 USD) the other bill was twenty dollar bill! I decided it was better to be safe than sorry, folded up the twenty, and slipped it into his hand.
He tried to hide his smile and tried his best to play-off my subtle hand off with that look that everyone gets when they're like "Holy moly, this is just like a secret agent movie!" Just before he slipped the bill in his pocket, he couldn't resist a peek and glanced down at the bill. His eyes instantly got huge and he did a what looked like a vaudeville double-take. For a split second I thought I'd totally messed up, but then I realized that I just dropped a MONSTER bribe on him and he was intent on hustling me out of there before someone else got wind of the major jackpot he'd just hit. Hahahaha.
We quickly parted ways. I half-jogged my way to the exit smiling. I knew right then and there that me and Egypt were going to get along just fine.
As I bought my ticket to see the mummies, it became clear the relatively laissez faire approach to security in the rest of the museum did not apply to the ROYAL MUMMIES section. Security was TIGHT inside...
