Eternal in the Sand

‘Why do you want to become an archeologist?’ was the question I got from friends and family most often, and I asked the same of my fellow students, and later colleagues. Most of them said they loved history, and that they wanted to uncover secrets of the past. And that was where our aspirations differed: I wanted to unlock immortality.

I remember when this quest started, the night in fact, when it all began. I had been sitting at the table, sitting through the obligatory awkward singing of Happy Birthday, my mom training a Kodak camera on me, waiting to capture the perfect shot of me blowing out the candles on my cake. It had been blue, my favorite color, and it spelled out Happy Birthday Leigh! in green icing. I blew out the candles shaped like an eleven, and after eating the messy slices I opened presents. But rather than a good night’s sleep to end the day, I could only stare up at the ceiling. And think about death.

I don’t know why that night my mind decided to spiral, but once it started all I could think of was ever expanding space and stardust. Existence was vast, and we were grains of sand only here for a short while, before death or a gust of dry wind blew us away. I had learned about death a year ago, when the family dog Maxie stopped getting up, and a week later my dad took him to the vet, and Maxie didn’t come home. They had explained it like he had gone on to a better place, like a sunlit wheat field to bound through with other long gone dogs. Considering that I was given that positive image of what happened after dying, I don’t know why my eleven year old brain landed on such a dark view of what awaited me.

What I do know is that that following Monday, I walked to the library after school and checked out a book about the bible and theology. And another on the Torah, and another on reincarnation within Hinduism; a full stack on the topic of religion, the afterlife, and death. And it was among that stack that I had grabbed a book on the funeral practices of Egypt. While I wasn’t exactly enchanted with the idea of being mummified, I did like the idea of everlasting life after passing. And while other kids were getting into Greek mythology, I found their stories to be far richer. From a lion headed vampiress to hearts being weighed on scales, the tales of a time lost to the sands helped carry me to sleep most nights.

What started as interest grew into passion, and when it came time to consider my future, it grew into obsession. My parents weren’t thrilled when I told them what I would be going to college for, but they weren’t the ones who paid for my classes, so I didn’t care all that much. And the time flew by, semester by semester till one day I was crossing that stage in a cap and gown, and I was given a piece of paper that read:

University of Southern California

Leigh H. Emisand

The Degree Of

Doctor of Archeology

And I didn’t waste any time once I had it in my hands, the slip of paper the only barrier between me and what I truly sought out. I had been spooning bits of my plans to my professor as we approached the end of the semester, and he had been kind enough to point me in the right direction, the right people to contact who would listen as soon as I had the title Dr. attached to my name. Before long, I had gathered a small group of my peers, as well as an anthropologist, and chartered a plane to take us from one sunbathed coast in a drought to another.

And it was on that plane that I was asked that oh so infamous question, but updated, given my new doctoral status; ‘Why did you want to become an archeologist?’

And so I told my friends what I had never told anyone else, the real reason why I had become enraptured by the land of sands and ancient magic. I didn’t want to merely uncover what had been hidden, but find out what allowed the Egyptians, or at least their royalty, to live on even after death. I told them I wanted to be like the pharaohs and queens, though perhaps without the whole removal of organs and replacing my eyes with gems.

And then a beautiful and sickly light struck the plane, and we were falling, falling … fell out of the sky. I was on my back, staring up at the sky, and I slowly pulled myself up despite the pain that laced down my limbs. I could see the wreckage, and the bodies, and in the distance I could see a high point made out of a sandy looking stone, crested by the setting sun.

I screamed. A violent release of air from my lungs as I realized that they were right there, my dream since I was a little girl in my sights. But based on what I felt when I tried to stand up, I wouldn’t be walking anytime soon. And that I wouldn’t be making it out of this desert.

Perhaps this was a sign from them, the gods that once ruled this land. I had never shared my true goals, so perhaps finally admitting them allowed clued the deities in on what I intended, on what I wanted to take from their descendants.

So I lay myself back down, and cried until I was dry. Engulfed in the desert's parched silence, I was nothing but another grain of sand in the wind.