Cleopatra's Perfume. Jina Bacarr

Deir el-Bahri, each time “discovering” a statuette or mummy wearing a golden collar or mask. Once he’d arranged with the foreigner for the artifact to be smuggled out of Egypt for a high price, he replaced it with another artifact for the next unsuspecting modern-day robber.

      What the guide didn’t know was that he wasn’t the first to discover the hole in the side of the mountain covered with stones. At the end of the nineteenth century, a British occultist and Egyptologist named Edward Thorndike stumbled onto the cache of dead Egyptian kings hidden away by high priests thousands of years ago. A desperate man, besieged by grief at the loss of his young bride killed by marauding desert tribesmen, he was in possession of a great treasure, a gift to Cleopatra VII, queen of Egypt, from the High Priest of Emon, her personal emissary. And a man in love with her. A perfume said to transport the body of its wearer to the safety of a secret room in the queen’s chamber in the Great Pyramid at Giza, should an act of violence culminating in death be committed upon them. There they would remain until the danger passed. Cleopatra scoffed, dismissing the existence of such a perfume, though she indulged her passion for scents by having perfumes made in her own factory on the edge of the Dead Sea. To make certain the doomed young queen would wear the perfume and, knowing Cleopatra feared losing her powers of seduction, the high priest added a powerful aphrodisiac to the original ancient formula to give her an irresistible allure to men. One whiff, he assured her, and every man was her slave…

      According to the legend, Cleopatra was wearing the perfume when Octavian’s men tried to murder her. As the priest predicted, her body disappeared, never to be seen again. Some say she escaped to Greece, others to Turkey, where she lived the life of a common whore rather than return to Egypt and be killed. What happened to the perfume is uncertain. Did the priest destroy it? Or hide it?

      According to Ramzi, the mystical power of the perfume was whispered about in the most elite circles throughout the centuries, from the Byzantine empire to the palazzo of the de Medicis to the court of Versailles to Napoleon. How did the perfume survive? I wanted to know. The perfume box was of calcite, he said, sealed by the natural changes in temperature and moisture over the years, causing the salts to crystallize around the lid and form a hard, protective incrustation, thereby preserving the perfume. Every hundred years or so, the perfume would resurface somewhere in the world, only to go underground again.

      Thorndike was obsessed with the legend of Cleopatra’s perfume and spent his fortune following its trail to a monastery in the mountains of southern Italy, where a secret sect of monks recreated the perfume by following the ancient formula carved on the alabaster box and using the essential oils still fragrant in the container, including a godlike plant named cyperian grown only in the Himalayas.

      To secure the perfume for himself, Thorndike bewitched a local girl and enticed her with marriage to help him steal the fragrance from the monastery. With the scent in his possession and determined to pilfer more ancient antiquities, he traveled with his new bride deep into the Egyptian desert. He bade the young woman to wear the perfume for her safety. She found the scent too strong for her liking and refused. Soon after, she fell victim to a savage attack on their camp by feuding tribesmen and was killed. The British occultist was devastated by her death. He was convinced her life would have been saved had she been wearing Cleopatra’s perfume.

      I must pause here, dear reader, to get my bearings and prepare for landing. I feel great pressure in my ears, though the rollings of the aircraft have subsided. Raindrops and hail still strike my window, the insistent tapping keeping in rhythm with the steady strokes of my pen. I will arrive at our destination soon. Stockholm. There I will begin the final phase of my journey to Berlin where I shall fulfill my destiny.

      Before I do, I must finish recounting to you the story of the perfume. I’ve no doubt you have the urge to toss the diary across the room, cursing, ranting. You feel cheated, deceived, made a fool of, believing you’ve invested your time in reading a spicy novel, not a real diary, but I assure you it’s all true.

      I, too, questioned the validity of such wild imaginings until I recalled what Lord Marlowe told me about the Egyptian Book of the Dead, how the ancient papyrus purported that the priests of the Fourth Dynasty, more than two thousand years before Cleopatra’s reign, underwent a mystic ritual transforming them into gods. They would lie for three days and three nights in the pyramid while their ka, soul, left their bodies and traveled unseen through the spheres of space. Was it possible the story of Cleopatra’s perfume was true? I still wasn’t convinced.

      When I expounded upon my knowledge of Egyptology to Ramzi, he grinned, his dark eyes teasing me, but he wouldn’t recant his tale. Instead, he claimed one such priest, fearing his body would be violated while in the trance, formulated a perfume that would transport his human form as well as his mind through space. It was widely assumed the Egyptians were in possession of secret chemical formulas to embalm mummies, he said in an attempt to beguile me and gain my confidence. Why not a secret compound for a perfume that promised a form of immortality?

      I shivered. The words of the fortune-teller echoed in my mind. “You will meet a man within a fortnight and his fire will peel the skin from your bones, making you lose all control. With him you will find immortality.”

      I pray you’re still with me, dear reader, for the most extraordinary part of my story is yet to be revealed. First, touch the pages with your fingertips, then put them to your nostrils and inhale. Yes, breathe in deeply the perfume I smeared onto the pages to seduce your spirit so you will believe me, though I dare not waste too much of its magic essence.

      You can make more perfume, you say. No, the secret is lost. Thorndike, angry and grieving, broke off the piece of stone holding the final ingredient for immortality inscribed in the hieroglyphics on the alabaster box and smashed it to dust, thereby robbing the world of its power. He buried the box of perfume in the sacred tomb of the ancients along with the body of his wife, then he returned to England. He wrote about his experiences in Egypt and Cleopatra’s perfume and published his story privately for members of his occult society before dying a penniless and broken man. But the legend endured.

      When the dragoman discovered the sacred tomb in the side of the mountain, Cleopatra’s perfume was among the artifacts he retrieved. Recognizing the hieroglyphics for “Cleopatra” on the box, he inquired discreetly among his contacts about the existence of such a perfume. Slowly, he uncovered the story of its power and entreated his friend Ramzi to find a buyer for the perfume.

      “Why didn’t he keep it for himself?” I inquired.

      Ramzi shrugged. “Like so many of my people, he’s superstitious about keeping artifacts looted from the tombs. So he sells them.”

      “Then there is no expedition to the Valley of the Queens?” I asked him, my body cooling from the slow release of my passion, so involved was I listening to his story.

      He gave me a charming smile. “No. I sell the perfume—” He gestured with his hands. “I receive a commission. It’s all business.”

      “All business?” I had to ask, licking my lips with my tongue.

      He inhaled deeply, then lifted my chin. My face was so close to his I could feel the warmth of his breath on my lips.“No. You are pleasure.”

      “Then fuck me. Now.”

      “You tempt me, my English lady. You possess the famed beauty of an ikbal, harem favorite, and looking at you, holding you, sets my blood on fire. You make me lose my self-restraint. I want to strip you naked and run my hands all over your body.” He clenched his fists in frustration. “I act crazy when I’m with you, like when I reach kayf, the ecstasy that grips me when I smoke hashish.” He paused. “No, before I can find pleasure in your arms, we must first agree on a price for the perfume.”

      “I’m interested in you, Ramzi, not the perfume.” I refused to allow him to control me with his fabricated tale.

      Talking to me softly, he ran his fingers across my check. “Don’t dismiss the power of the perfume as quickly as if it were sand falling through your fingers,” he said. “You’re a beautiful woman and Port Said is a dangerous