Archive of Our Own ^beta

Antiquated Things

June 30^th.  Dr. Claire Jackson marked off the date on the calendar hung from a nail hammered into a tent pole.

Half the year gone in the blink of an eye.  She flipped through the pages of the remaining six months, stopping twice; once to make a check mark on July 8, then a large X on December 25^th. 

Birthdays were important.  Christmas had never been a big deal in Egypt, but they’d never been to NYC, and anyone who knew anything about anything knew that December in New York City was a child’s wonderland.  She wondered what Daniel’s reaction might be to the famed Macy’s windows, the reportedly skyscraper tall tree at the Rockefeller Center skating rink.  What kind of impact FAO Schwartz might have on their desert child?

Her little archeologist had never been to a toy store in his life.  His entire shopping experience was the Aladdin cave of treasures that was the Khan El-Kahlili Souk in Old Cairo.  Though modern Cairo in the early seventies was the playground of the powerful elite of the globe and a hotbed of business opportunities with one of the fastest growing economies in the world. 

Claire and Melburn had watched the city evolve into a world-renowned center of art, fashion, and innovation, though they had never been enticed to mingle with any of the country’s socialites.  She was curious, however, to see how New York measured up to its Arab cousin.

The calendar pages ruffled against her fingers as she let go, then carefully tore off June and laid it on the cot.  Her soon-to-be-eight-going-on-eighty-year-old son liked to make hieroglyphic notes about each day’s finds on the communal family calendar. 

Bending, Clair rifled under the bed for the small, carved wooden box she kept her personal journal in.  Her fingers found the smooth edges and pulled it out. 

Daniel and Mel would be back soon.  She’d left them at the well, finishing the job of cleaning off the last of the day’s artifacts, but she had a few minutes more. 

Daniel was the most meticulous cleaner out of the entire dig staff.  He’d brought a small toothbrush back from one of their infrequent sojourns to their favorite Cairo hotel, Shepeards, where the staff was historically famous for catering to the whims of their guests.  Their hall porter had somehow gotten wind of the fact that Daniel’s mother had forgotten to pack his toothbrush and presented him with one that had fit perfectly in his always-grubby-then-five-year-old-hands.  It had become his most valuable piece of equipment.  She must be sure to collect it when he came back and make certain it got packed with the other archaeological tools. 

Today was their last day of work.  Tomorrow they would pack their few personal possessions into the beat-up old trunks she and Mel had rescued from among her famous father’s castoffs and send them off to join the individually crated pieces of the ancient tomb already on their way to the Port of Cairo. 

And hadn’t that been a job and a half.

It had taken two weeks to build a ramp so each of the stones could be rolled into padded crates on wagons drawn by teams of mules that would haul the parts to the Nile where they would go by barge to Cairo.  One did not drive a flatbed with cranes across the desert sand to do the heavy lifting.  No, the herculean task had been accomplished in much the same way the Great Pyramids had been built - with sledges, rollers and levers.  At least in Cairo there would be modern equipment to load the crated stones into the ship’s hold.

Clair flicked away her momentary diversion and opened the latch on the box, upending the stained and battered journal onto her hand.  Six months of handling had turned the leather butter-soft and she ran a hand over the cover just for the comfort of it.  The old army cot shifted beneath her as she sat down and picked up the June calendar sheet, glancing over Daniel’s meticulous notes. 

Some of the small squares were blank, others crammed with tiny, exquisite hieroglyphs.  Their son wasn’t even eight yet and his drawings were already nearly as good as his parents’.  They were raising a prodigy and had the good fortune to recognize it. 

As she creased and folded the calendar sheet in half, then quarters, and stowed it between the middle of her June musings, Clair let her mind wander again.  To a day in the distant future when perhaps she and Mel had become old and grey, their son middle-aged.  She let the picture grow in her mind’s eye of the three of them, perhaps with Daniel’s wife and children peering over their shoulders, squinting at these very calendar pages, reliving their youthful enthusiasm for hardship and deprivation.  She wondered if Daniel’s future wife would enjoy a helping of sand with everything she undertook, and decided - of course she would - for her son would never choose to wed someone who did not love sand as much as he did. 

Claire decided she liked her future daughter-in-law quite a lot, sight unseen.    

She pulled her thoughts back to the present.  What would the second half of the year hold?  A frission of something … something she could not name, raised the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck; chased along her spine.  The linguist hopped to the fore, attempting to identify the sensation with language but could not find words to annotate the momentary dual sensation of mingled pleasure and fear.  So she shrugged it off and busied herself restoring the journal to its box and putting it back in its spot under the cot. 

Her remarkable son would be eight in eight days’ time.  They would need to do something spectacular to celebrate his last birthday in Egypt since on his actual birthday they would be traveling on the cargo ship to the states.  Escorting their excavated tomb to New York where it was to be the center piece of a new exhibition of loaned artifacts.  She’d already made arrangements with the ship’s cook for a small family party. 

This was a three-year commitment brokered between the New York Museum of Art and the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, with Doctors Claire and Melburn Jackson as curators of the exhibition.  Neither Claire, nor Mel, had been wildly enthusiastic about the project when the New York Museum of Art had initially contacted them shortly after their find had been academically identified and documented.  They were archeologists, not museum curators.  They were diggers sporting ragged fingernails and rivers of sand in their clothing; not black-tie, ball-gowned, champagne-swigging, small-talk-making party people. 

On one hand, their find had rocketed them to archeological stardom.  In New York they would have backers begging to fund their next dig, wherever in the world they chose to go.  The Egyptian Department of Antiquities had already indicated their willingness to approve any concession the Jackson’s might care to apply for.

And on the hand, it was an archeologist’s dream to be invited to set up a display in a reputable museum.  The tomb was a living piece of ancient history - disinterred from its own burial grounds - that spoke to the cunningness of Egyptian architecture, shone a light upon a way of life gone from the earth for more than 5,000 years and a living testament to preservation and conservation. 

They would prefer, the Doctors Jackson had observed to one another during their many, many discussions of the pros and cons of accepting this new challenge, to continue as diggers.  But how could they turn down this opportunity of a lifetime?

The deciding factor, finally, had been their small genius.  He really should be in school, learning socialization skills right along with expanding his already prodigious intellectual capacity.  It was sometimes hard to remember he was only seven. 

 Claire scooted to the end of the cot and flopped back on the rough wool of the army blankets swaddling the primitive bed.  She would miss Egypt like a prematurely lost family member when they returned to the states. 

Their son would be eight in eight days, she thought again, her mind summersaulting her back into the past once more. 

She’d met Melburn, spent their last semester falling truly, madly, deeply in love and married him a week before they’d both graduated with PhD’s from the University of Chicago’s prestigious Oriental Institute.  With a world-renowned father opening doors that might otherwise have remained firmly closed to young archaeologists, they’d found themselves with a prize concession, beginning married life on a houseboat on the Nile, working on their own dig financed by none other than Nick Ballard as a wedding present. 

Unlike her globe-trotting father, Claire and her new husband had fallen head-over-heels in love with their new home, though Claire had admitted, if only to herself in those early days, the initial finds they’d unearthed had been so revelatory and so enticing, neither she nor her husband had had any desire to move along to something new.  The dig had been propitious within a matter of months and continued intriguing through the ten seasons they’d kept it open. 

When they’d discovered they were expecting, Mel had insisted they needed a permanent home.  One not on the water, since any child of their creation would be an intrepid explorer and their extended honeymoon houseboat would be safe for perhaps another year at most.  So they’d built a house modeled on the design of the famed 1880s archeologists, Professor Radcliffe Emerson and his wife, Amelia Peabody.  A four-square footprint, set on the land such that the large windows caught the slightest of breezes, the airy rooms encompassing an open courtyard, complete with the requisite fountain to cool the air and burble soothingly at night. 

Daniel had arrived early, a squalling bundle of joy who at two weeks old had been wrapped in a turquoise scarf gifted to Claire by her Egyptian mid-wife, tied to her chest, and borne off to the excavation site.  Where Claire had taken over the job of sifting the rubble pile beneath an open canvas tent erected to give mother and baby some protection from the broiling son. 

Before he could toddle, Little Daniel had learned to sift rubble.  By the time he was walking, he had his own set of tiny archeological tools.  And by the time he began reading the diaries of Amelia Peabody (with a little assistance) at the age of four, he had his own miniature Peabody tool belt, though Claire drew the line at letting him carry a pistol on his small person, despite his lisping requests to be able to defend himself against slithering serpents and wild jackals. 

He'd grown out of the lisp way too soon for Claire.  How could it be that her baby would soon be eight years old?  Yes, they had wonderful discoveries to show for their years of labor, and memories so precious she would preserve them in amber if she could, but it felt as if time was spinning at the speed of a rewinding reel to reel projector. 

If she was going to miss Egypt like a lost loved one, how much more would their young son, who knew nothing else, miss it?  She had been consoling herself for the last couple of months with the fact that Daniel was a gregarious, open-hearted child, ready to make friends with everyone and anyone.  That was fine on a remote Egyptian archeological site.  She rather doubted New York City would offer any similarities of environment. 

“What to do for Daniel’s last birthday in Egypt,” she murmured, opening her eyes as the tent flap was drawn up, briefly illuminating the gloomy interior of their home away from home.   

“Ahhhh old friend, I’m going to miss the hell out of you,” Mel declared, tossing his pith helmet toward the low, square table specifically assigned for the collection of personal gear.  Spreading his arms, he turned a slow circle in the center of the tent then sank down on the ancient Persian carpet they’d bought years ago, second-hand, in the bazaar, for the specific purpose of flooring a tent.

“You’ll miss the carpet?”

“The carpet?  Ha!  Not a chance,” Mel laughed, then frowned.  “On second thought, we did make a lot of memories on this carpet, including our son, so maybe I will miss our magical, old carpet.”  He leaned to kiss his other half.  “What were you muttering about said son when I came in?” 

Claire shoved at his shoulder and he leaned to the side so she could sit up and swing her feet over the edge of the cot.  “I thought he was coming back with you?”

“He stayed with Ibrahim to finish sifting the last of the dump site.  They were nearly done; he should be along shortly.”

“Shortly for Daniel could means hours yet, especially …” Claire let the thought trail off.  “Mel,” she patted the side of the bed, inviting him to join her, “we’re doing the right thing, aren’t we?  Egypt is all he’s ever –“

“Babe,” Mel sighed, pushing up to gingerly take a seat beside her on the cot.  The creaky things were as ancient as the pyramids, or perhaps only the Civil War.  Refugees from Nick’s junk pile as well, but they’d held up for the last ten years and would probably sleep the next ten generations of archeologists that followed in the Jacksons sandy footsteps.  It required some finessing for two to sit together on one of them.  He turned his head to kiss her forehead and slid an arm around shoulders still as slender as a girl’s.  “We’ve talked this through dozens of times, always coming to the same conclusion.  Daniel adapts to any situation as if he’s native to it.  He is a precocious little boy who is better educated than most children twice his age.  He’s like a chameleon, he’ll adapt to any situation that arises in America, though if they refuse to put him in a grade that challenges him, we could have a rebellion on our hands.” 

Claire had been home-schooling Daniel from the time he could talk.  He’d begun to read at three, by seven he’d been doing the equivalent of senior high math.  He could converse fluently in all fifteen languages represented on their dig and a few more besides.  Yannis, a young linguist from Greece who had turned up every summer for the last five years, had taught Daniel to read and write Greek and Latin and there was no one better at translating them than their still seven-year-old son.  Not even Claire, whose doctoral thesis had been on dead languages.

“I’m worried any school we put him in won’t be able to keep up with him.”

“We’ve already agreed that we won’t place him until we’ve vetted as many educational institutions as needed.  Though I still believe we should locate somewhere near a good Montessori school.”  Mel squeezed his wife’s tense shoulders.  “Daniel doesn’t know what a stranger is, he’ll be fine, Babe, we need to stop worrying.”

“I know, I know.  I just can’t shake this ominous feeling-“

“Ummi!  Baba!”  The tent flaps belched as a miniature whirling dervish thrust through them at a dead run, sliding to a halt on bare, sandy knees.  “I can stay!  I can stay!  Rumi says I can stay with him, Ummi, when you and baba go to America with the tomb for the museum!  Isn’t that the best news ever?”

The future Dr. Daniel Jackson popped to his feet, threw his hands up over his head and performed a scintillating belly dance he’d learned from watching the American students taking lessons.  He was far better at it than the girls. 

Finishing to his parents’ laughing applause, he grinned and plopped himself in his mother’s lap, completely forgetting the diabolical cots in his ecstasy at having solved his problem.

“Heave ho!” Mel shouted, grabbing his son as the cot tipped their trio onto the carpet.  “Everyone okay?” he inquired, as they untangled hands and feet and arms and legs from their ungainly octopus-like sprawl. 

Daniel giggled as he rubbed his forehead.  “I think we banged heads.”  He leaned towards his mother in expectation of a kiss to make it all better. 

Claire obliged, then pulled her small-for-his-age-almost-eight-year-old onto her lap.  “Oh but, if you stay here while dad and I go to New York, you’ll be too big for snuggles by the time we return, Baboo.  And we would miss you unbearably.”

“I’ll miss you, too, but probably not unbearably.” Their precocious child snuggled under his mother’s chin and wrapped skinny arms around her waist.  “There’s so much work to do here yet, I will be so busy that three years will be gone just like …” he snapped thumb and middle fingers triumphantly, “that!  Which likely means I won’t miss you at all.  But I hope you have a good time in New York,” he added, tilting his head to beam up at his mother. 

Claire hugged her boy close, beaming a ‘you deal with this’ look at her husband. 

Mel scooted around to face his wife and young son and leaned back on his hands.  He did not realize the action was accompanied by a fulsome sigh.

Daniel did, and correctly interpreted it as a warning that he did not want to hear what was about to be said.  He yanked his arms back and smacked both hands over his ears.  “No, no, no, noooooooooooooooooooooo. I don’t want to go to America.  I don’t want to go to New York.  I don’t care if I never meet Grandpa Nick.  I want to stay here with Rumi and Dalia and Jomana.  I’ll be good!  I promise!”  All delivered at the top of one small set of lungs.  “You can’t make me go!” Followed by a demonic howl that must surely have pierced the veil between the here and the hereafter. 

Claire laid her cheek against the small head.  “Baboo, my sweet, hush now and listen to ummi.”  She stroked back the fringe of white-gold bangs to plant a line of kisses across his forehead.  “Hush now, baby.” 

Their golden child had never once, in the first seven and a half years of his life, thrown a tantrum.  This new bewildering behavior – for both child and parents – had only begun since the announcement they were closing the dig and returning to the US for at least the next three years. 

Daniel had been plotting ways to be left behind - accidentally or on purpose – from about two seconds after the news had been imparted. 

“Baboo,” Claire repeated quietly, as the keening wail began to fade and tears gush from beneath tightly squeezed eyelids, “we are a family.  What do families do?”

“Stay together,” her small son hitched through his sobs.  “Families stay together.  No one gets left behind,” he mumbled miserably.  “But ummi, I don’t want to go.” 

He had been born her very own tiny Thoth.  He had looked so much like the god’s baboon incarnation at his birth, Claire had instantly begun calling the baby, Baboo.  Though Mel had been less than complimentary about the nickname, it had stuck, much to his disgruntlement. 

“I don’t want to go.  I wanna stay here, with all our friends, where everyone knows us, and we know everyone.”

“But what about all the new friends you’ll make in New York?  You love meeting new people and finding all about their lives and their habits and their cultures.”

“But … but,” Daniel sniffed and dragged a grimy arm across his snotty nose, “I like meeting them when they come here where I already … have friends … and know everybody.”

Claire lifted her gaze to her husband, who cocked the usual eyebrow in response to their prodigy’s pronouncement. 

“He gets that from you, Babe.  And your father, I suppose.”  Their son had been born with the ancient god’s innate wisdom as well as his features.  Mel was eternally grateful the baby had outgrown his baboon looks, if not the nickname.    

“What?” Daniel immediately wanted to know.  “What do I get from ummi and Grandpa Nick?”

“Your precociousness,” his father informed him, reaching out a long arm to ruffle Daniel’s hair.  “And before you ask, precocious means far more mentally developed than most children your age.” 

“Mentally developed?”

“Your father means you understand things that sometimes even old people, like us, don’t understand.”

“Are you old, Ummi?  Baba?” Daniel uncurled to lean back against his mother’s arm, looking up at her with a frown.  He turned his head to study his father’s amused face.  “Akbar is old.  His wrinkles have wrinkles and his beard is white as moonlit sand.  He told me he’s nearly as ancient as Egypt, that he remembers when the pyramids were young, and King Tut’s tomb hadn’t even been carved out yet.”

“I suspect Akbar may be exaggerating a bit to impress you with his sagacity.”

“What is sag-ass-city, Baba?”

“Akbar is very smart because he’s lived a long time, though perhaps not since before King Tut.  You, my son,” Mel rolled effortlessly to his knees, “were born smart.” He poked wriggly fingers into Daniel’s small ribs, turning the sniffles into giggles.  “You will not need years of experience and living to understand your fellow man.  Understanding and acceptance are gifts you were born with Daniel Jackson; don’t ever let anyone try to strip you of those gifts.  Now, my little man,” he rose and dusted sand from his behind before plucking Daniel from his mother’s lap, “let’s go see what cook has fixed for dinner and discuss how we’re going to celebrate birthday number eight.  What do you say?”

“I say everyone needs to wash up before going to dinner,” Claire stated emphatically.

“Do as your mother says.”  Mel set Daniel down before the child-sized washstand and handed him a washcloth, then poured water from a jug into the smaller basin before filling the adult-sized one as well. 

The washing up included much splashing of water, but did not take long and shortly, the Jackson men emerged from the tent and set out for the dining area across the camp.  Claire said she would be along shortly. 

“Will we ever come back here, Baba?”  As soon they were out, Mel swung Daniel up on his shoulders. 

“Maybe not precisely here, to this dig, again.   But we’ll always come back to Egypt.  There is an old proverb that says once you have the sand of a place in your shoes, you can never stay away.  It calls you back again and again and you’re powerless to ignore the summons. I believe that’s true of the Jackson family and Egypt.  This will always be home, Daniel, we’ll only be visiting when we go off to other places on the planet.”

“Oh!” Daniel expostulated, then repeated it wonderingly.  “Ohhhhhh…that doesn’t sound so bad then.  Wait, Baba, ummi is coming too.”  He twisted to wave at his mother, then cupped his hands around his mouth to shout, “We’re waiting for you to catch up, Ummi!”

Claire, a few strides behind, cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted back – softly – “Thank you, you are both all consideration.”

A flurry of greetings in different languages greeted their arrival.  Daniel, with his plate of falafel, tzatziki, cucumbers, and hummus was deposited between Jomana and Rumi at one of the sturdy picnic tables. 

The communal dining area was beneath a long, tent-poled stretch of heavy canvas  rigged with strings of bare bulbs for light when the temperamental generator was running, ringed around with large bonfire pits as back up for when the temperamental generator was playing possum. 

Their foreman waved Mel and Claire over to one of the adult tables where the talk was all about having gotten the tomb on its way and the eminent departure of the Jacksons. 

It was their last Saturday night on site, they were leaving for their home in Giza on Tuesday, to finish the packing there.  Then on to Cairo on Thursday to board the ship for their Friday departure.  Sunday would be Daniel’s eighth birthday somewhere out at sea.  They expected to dock in New York on the 30^th.  In a month their lives would be dramatically different from the one celebrated out in the open desert tonight. 

The usual Saturday night let-your-hair-down atmosphere was a touch subdued as the actualization of the Jackson’s departure crept closer.  There was more chatter and less dancing as the evening drifted closer to the reality of tomorrow.  Stateside addresses were exchanged, farewell words and gifts were shared, and many many hugs and kisses given and received.  It was an evening filled to the brim with equal parts joy and mourning for there were exciting new paths to be struck out on, while at the same time friends would soon be parted, perhaps for forever. 

“Fess up, Ummi.” Mel commanded in an effort to lighten the mood as they walked back to their tent beneath the scant light of a new moon.  In the distance, a jackal howled, and another responded in kind.  “You’re looking forward to having bathing facilities in the same room as your bed in the very near future, aren’t you?” Everyone on site called his wife ummi, even Mel in a playful mood.  

Claire laughed.  “Oh, you may gouge a confession out of me, but I know good and well you’re looking forward to it just as much as I am.  What about you, Daniel, what are you looking forward to most about New York?”

“Not looking forward to New York,” Daniel replied, a touch sullenly, then screeched, “On three!  One, two, three!” And picked up his feet so he swung from his parent’s hands.  “One, two, three, wheee!  One two three, wheeee!  But I’ve decided what I want for my birthday,” he announced, swinging gleefully. 

“Are you going to share, or do we have to guess?” Claire asked, lifting her arm higher as the slight weight of their son kicked up sand on his upswing. 

“Guess!” Daniel decided.

“A monkey,” Mel suggested.

“Melburn Jackson, do not be putting ideas in his head!  We already have a monkey in the family, we don’t need two!”

“Okay then, no monkeys.”

“Pfftt, monkeys are filthy and noisy.  I don’t want a monkey and besides, it wouldn’t be fair for a wild animal to have to live in a cage when we go to America.  Nope,” Daniel kicked backwards, “I want to go to the bazar in Cairo and then go to dinner at that big hotel where Amelia Peabody used to stay when they came to Egypt.” 

“You want to go to Shepeards?” Claire and Mel asked simultaneously. 

“I know it’s our favorite hotel, but maybe you’d like to go somewhere new this time?”  Claire glanced down at the child she and Mel had made between them.  “It’s so …”

“Antiquated?” Mel suggested.

“Yes, antiquated,” Claire agreed.

Daniel stopped swinging and planted his feet.  “Well, yes, isn’t that the whole point of our existence?  We love antiquated things!” 

Over his head, his parents shared another of those semi-anxious, semi-proud, semi-exasperated looks. 

“Wheeee!”  Daniel pulled up his feet again and recommenced swinging. 

~*~

This story is a sort of prequel to a little drabble written for a birthday challenge back when this fandom was still young.  It should probably come with a tissue warning. It can be read here if you've made it this far and you're moved to do so:  https://archiveofourown.org/works/3098921