Chapter Five: The Slope That Does Not Rise

The car gradually veered off the main road, delving into a narrow dirt path – no signs, no travelers in sight.
It felt as though the city had closed its doors behind us, leaving us alone in the mountain’s embrace.
The tires groaned over the gravel, and the shaking grew stronger, as if the car itself hesitated between going forward… or turning back.
But it didn’t retreat.

When we reached a slightly elevated spot, Girgis slowed down, pulled over beside a large boulder, and stepped out.
He walked calmly around the vehicle, then opened the back door for us and said with quiet confidence:

• We’re here.

That word… “We’re here.”
He didn’t say, “This is the place,” or “We’re close.” He said it as if he knew exactly where we were going.
Strangely enough, he said it as if we were following a plan… when in truth, none of us really knew what we were looking for.

We got out, but my mother lingered for a moment. She held my little sister’s hand a bit too tightly and whispered to my father:

• Are you sure about this man? The place is completely deserted.

My father answered in a reassuring voice:

• Girgis is an official hotel driver. Our trip is logged in the itinerary.

My mother closed her eyes for a moment and sighed, as if remembering there was, in fact, a paper confirming it… but worry still hovered behind her expression.
Trying to convince herself, she forced a smile. My father responded playfully:

• Do you really think all those hours I spent at the gym would go to waste if our driver decided to rob us?

She gave him a mock glare and replied:

• That was a one-time visit… just one day, and I spent a week in bed with cramps.

They laughed. I laughed too. My sister didn’t get the joke, but she laughed with us anyway.

We followed Girgis along a sloping path that wove between pale rocks.
We weren’t at the top of the mountain yet, but close – about a hundred and twenty meters high, in a fairly elevated spot.
The mountains were still. The air was still… Everything around us seemed to breathe in a heavy hush.

Then Girgis stopped. He bent down and picked up an old wooden stick that had been lying on the ground. After brushing off the dust, he pointed it at a section of the stone wall:

• This part collapsed back in 1960, twenty-eight years ago. No one really cares about this area, but I wanted to show it to you first.

We drew closer. I saw a cracked stone wall – but it wasn’t just any crack.
The split looked deliberate. Not random fractures, but a sharp, clean angle… precise.

Girgis ran the tip of his stick along the edge and said:

• Look here… these aren’t natural erosions. These are strikes. Someone seems to have done some light excavation here, in secret… maybe years ago. Looks like axe marks – but finer.

My father crouched before the wall, examining the angle intently.
Then he pulled a small notebook from his bag, tore out a sheet, and began moving it along the wall, sometimes anchoring it with stones, sometimes asking us to hold it steady in different spots.
He measured the slope at three separate points along the rocky line, like a man searching for a mathematical pattern he wasn’t sure existed.

After a minute of silence, he said:

• The slope is clear… around 30 degrees.

Then he hesitated, as if a thought were forming:

• If there is a structure here, this slope suggests it gets wider as it rises. Meaning, it’s broader at the top than at the bottom…

He stepped back, stared at the wall, and added:

• If we assume this edge runs from the tip of some buried structure to this height… its length would be about 150 meters.

My mother raised an eyebrow:

• And what does that mean?

He replied, slower now, as if sketching the shape in his mind:

• It means the tip could be buried deep within the mountain… and we’re now standing at the edge of a wide base.

He then immersed himself in calculations – drawing lines on his notebook, measuring angles with his fingers, comparing distance and elevation – before murmuring:

• The full width of the base would be around 190 meters… if this is really the edge of some kind of structure.

Then he slowly looked around and said:

• At this level of the mountain… a buried base this size could easily be hidden – if it exists.

And then… Girgis’s voice came from behind us. Soft, but dry as stone:

• The inverted pyramid.

The moment froze.
Time stopped.
My breath halted.
It wasn’t a word – it was a blade, driven into the stillness of the place.
Something inside me shuddered.

My father turned to him, his eyes narrowing, and asked in a sharp, low voice:

• What did you say?

Girgis didn’t answer right away. It was as if he realized he’d said something he shouldn’t have.
He looked at us, then at the wall, then at nothing at all.

• Sorry… maybe just a myth.

My father stepped closer:

• What myth?

Girgis inhaled slowly.

• My grandfather was a simple man. He worked with a British expedition here in the early 1940s. He was a carpenter, making crates for their tools. He told me once… they spoke of an inverted pyramid.
  They said it was built in a time no one could trace, by people no one knew…
  They whispered that its existence was essential for everything else to exist.
  As if they believed: without that pyramid, civilization itself would not stand – nothing built upon it would make sense.
  My grandfather didn’t understand a word. He said they always spoke in riddles…
  But they were afraid. Though they never said why.
• Afraid of what?
• I don’t know. He never finished the story. He just said they would whisper late into the night, arguing over a hidden drawing… a buried foundation.
  And he kept repeating: “Not everything built was seen… and not everything buried was lost.”

From that moment on, Girgis no longer seemed like a hotel driver…
He looked more like an archaeologist by accident – a man who knew more than he let on, as if fate had brought us together for a reason we didn’t yet understand.
I sat on a small rock, thinking about the strange coincidence that had brought us here… and whether it was a coincidence at all.
He stood there, holding his stick like it was an extension of an old memory, staring at the stones the way we did… but differently.
As if he had entered the story the moment he heard that one sentence from his grandfather –
As if the place itself remembered him.

And for no clear reason, I remembered the old man at Ramses Station.
I wanted to ask my father about him – who he was, how he had appeared…
But something held my tongue.

My father sat on a low rock, sketching something in his notebook.
I asked him as I stared at the surrounding rocks:

• Can something exist… before the mountain itself?

He looked up:

• This mountain, here in Mokattam, was formed from the sediments of an ancient sea – Tethys Sea. It covered this region millions of years ago, then receded.

My mother asked:

• And how long ago was that?

He said:

• Roughly 50 to 60 million years.

Girgis shook his head in astonishment:

• My God… were there even humans that long ago?

My father hesitated before answering:

• According to current science… no.
  The oldest known Homo sapiens lived about 100,000 years ago.
  Though more primitive traces – simple tools, scattered stones – date back nearly two million years…
  But not a civilization. No buildings. Just fragments.

My mother, looking at the sharp angle, said:

• And if this really is part of an inverted pyramid… then it doesn’t just mean a structure existed –
  It means someone designed it, built it… thought it through.

My father replied, half-muttering:

• If there was a civilization that ancient, buried beneath a sea for millions of years, and layers piled over it, forming this mountain…
  Then nothing would remain visible on the surface.

He looked at me:

• Everything they did… would be buried. Just like this.

Girgis, still staring at the rocks, asked:

• But… what if the mountain didn’t actually form at the bottom of the sea? Are you sure of that?

My father answered with calm certainty:

• According to geologists, Mokattam’s layers are full of marine fossils.
  Limestone crusts, alternating bands of limestone and shale… All point to a shallow sea environment that once covered this place, 50 or 60 million years ago.
  There’s hardly any serious scientific view that denies the mountain formed under an ancient sea.

Then my mother, as if recalling something she once read, said:

• But what about the ancient rains? I remember some researchers mentioned North Africa may have been greener thousands of years ago…
  Could that have caused a similar effect?

My father thought for a moment before replying:

• Heavy rains did leave their mark on some surface formations, yes…
  But they weren’t enough to carve or deposit sedimentary layers this deep and compact.

Then he added, like someone opening the door to a new possibility:

• But… if this structure wasn’t here before the sea, but came after it… maybe it wasn’t buried at all. Maybe it was hidden.

My mother looked at him in surprise:

• What do you mean?
• The mountain itself has natural caves, internal fractures formed over millions of years…
  Some deep enough to conceal an entire structure.

Girgis stepped closer and said:

• As if they didn’t build it beneath the mountain…
  But inside it.

My father nodded:

• Exactly. Maybe they found the geological voids and expanded them quietly…
  The mountain became a natural shell. A shell that hides everything –
  And reveals nothing… unless by accident.

I stepped closer to one of the protruding corners and ran my hand along the line.
I said to myself, tracing it like I was reading a map I couldn’t see:
Wait… are we really believing this?
A single line on an old, cracked wall… some hand-drawn slope calculations…
And suddenly we’re talking about an inverted pyramid buried under a mountain?
How insane is this?

Is it possible? All this talk of buried structures, hidden pyramids… and we’re just looking at a crack. One sharp corner.
It could be completely natural.

But something inside me whispered…
This wasn’t just stone.
It felt like a scar – an old wound.
Something here… didn’t want to be forgotten.
But it didn’t want to be uncovered either.
As if the rocks were waiting for someone who could understand them, not just dig through them.

Then, from behind the silence of our thoughts, a faint sound emerged…
Soft, like the wind brushing something hollow.
Girgis looked around slowly, then said in a low voice:

• Strange… it feels like someone’s been here before me.

He didn’t explain. We didn’t respond.
It was as if the mountain had wanted to speak… then thought better of it.

I looked at the wall again and reached toward the corner.
The texture felt slightly different in this spot… smoother, like someone had touched it many times.
Then my mother leaned forward and whispered:

• Did you hear that?

No one answered.
But I felt it…
As if something – or someone – was listening to us from within.

They were trying to uncover the heart of it all using math and chisels and sketchpads…
But maybe – just maybe – there was something here that didn’t need to be measured.
Only noticed.
Not proven… but felt.
As if I had known this place…
Long before I ever arrived.