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Two Terms - Chapter 1

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ARCHAEOLOGISTS IN THE WESTERN DESERT
In the western desert, after midnight, a team of six archaeologists were asleep in their tents in a valley with high hills of sand on both sides.

FOUR MEN MOVING STEALTHILY
Two Land Cruisers were moving slowly down the hill towards the tents. They were making no engine noise and with no lights. They stopped 200 metres from the tents. Four foreigners got out and walked 50 metres. Then they climbed down into a big underground passage. There, they switched on their torches and saw paintings on the walls.

WHO THE FOUR MEN ARE
The four men were robbers. The oldest man was their leader. He was followed by a small thin man with glasses carrying a machine. Two other men were strong-looking. The taller was carrying a computer while the other was carrying a large bag.

SEARCHING FOR ROOMS NOT DISCOVERED YET
The four men walked into an underground room where they found five mummies. Then, they moved to an empty room. The oldest man said the two rooms were discovered by the archaeologists the week before. The treasures in the second room had been sent to the Museum in Cairo the day before. He also added that he believed there were other rooms which were not discovered yet. He was planning to find them that night and take the treasures in them. Thus, they would become rich.

GPR DETECTS A ROOM
They had got the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR). It could transmit radio waves that would penetrate the wall. When they hit something, they would be sent back. The computer attached to it would change them into pictures. The small man connected a wire between the GPR and the computer. Using the GPR, they saw a dark shape on the screen which meant a room on the other side of the wall.

THE MEN REACH THE ROOM
The big man broke through the wall with a pickaxe and a hammer. He destroyed the ancient paintings on it. A doorway appeared filled with stones. Knocking the stones away, they went through a hole to another passage. Spiders' webs were hanging from the ceiling. At the end of the passage, there were two gold doors which they broke down.

THE TREASURES IN THE ROOM
The oldest man was the first to enter. A huge spider's web covered his face and body. He broke through it to get inside. The room's walls were covered with paintings and writing. They found boxes, pots, large gold objects and two mummies with gold masks. They took the treasures out into the passage.

THE ATTACK OF THE SPIDERS
Near the door, the big man cried with pain when he was attacked by spiders and was bitten by their long fangs. The tall man took off his jacket and hit the spiders. Another spider bit the small man three times before he could kill it. Seeing spiders all around them, they hurried out with the treasures to their cars. By the time they drove away, the four men had been bitten by the spiders.

THE SPIDERS' BITES
The oldest man said that the bites were not dangerous as the Egyptian spiders are not deadly. The small man said they might be an unknown species like the fish which was found in an underground lake in South America. However, they felt pain and seated heavily. They were thirsty though they drank all the water they had. Then, their limbs and face muscles made sudden violent movements. They could no longer drive. In the early morning, the big man saw four spiders on the boxes in the back of the car. The tall man couldn't move and fell beside the car. The four men died.

A HELICOPTER FINDS THE DEAD MEN
At midday, a helicopter was on its way to a transmitter that needed repair. It was carrying a telecom engineer and a technician. The pilot saw the two vehicles and the tall man's body on the sand. He brought the helicopter down and the three men ran carrying bottles of water for help. When they found the four men dead, the pilot believed they died of thirst when they lost their way.

A NARROW ESCAPE
The three men did not see the spiders. The pilot's hands were getting nearer toward the spiders. He escaped death when he moved to the helicopter as the engineer asked him to get on the radio.

THE BIGGEST SPIDER ALIVE
The police arrived in a few hours. The great heat of the sun had killed the small spiders in the cars. The two Land Cruisers were taken to a new town south-west of Cairo called Hamdayya. The biggest spider was still alive in one of them.

موضوع: Two Terms - Chapter 2 الأحد مارس 01, 2009 8:31 pm

Two Terms - Chapter 2
THE DEADLY SPIDER ESCAPES
Later, when a police officer discovered the treasures in the cars, he ran to tell his superior. Meanwhile, the deadly spider at the back of the car found its way out and escaped. It looked for a dark and safe place.

AYMAN'S FAMILY
The Hassan Family lived in the house next to the police station. Ayman was the eldest brother. He was 20. His brother, Mohamed, was 16. His two sisters were Lamia, 12 and Najat, 10

AYMAN'S COMPUTER AND INTERNET FRIENDS
Ayman's room was on the top floor. When his uncle bought a new computer, he gave his old one to him. Ayman's hobby was the internet. He used it both for his university studies and for making internet friends from different countries. On the screen, conversations including more than two people could be read.

A CONVERSATION ABOUT GETTING JOBS
That day, Ayman had a conversation with his two Internet friends Ed and Jill about getting jobs after graduation. Finding a good job was a problem. Jill believed they would be flexible as any job was better than none.

THE SPIDER'S JOURNEY IN HAMDAYYA
When the deadly spider escaped, it went to Hassan's house. Their mother called the two sisters and they were leaving the room. Najat's foot landed near the spider. Her foot moved away when the spider was about to attack her. Thus Najat was saved. The house was full of light and noise, so the spider left it. It climbed out of the window and went to the garden.

AYMAN WITNESSES THE SPIDER
Ayman was going to the shops when he saw the deadly spider. He got interested in it. It was black and had two yellow lines on its back. The spider was big in the size of a small apple. It had eight eyes, two of them were about a centimetre each. The eight legs were like a pencil in length. When it opened its mouth, he saw two long fangs 1 cm each. The spider ran away and disappeared.

A ZOOLOGY STUDENT CONSULTS A SPIDER'S BOOK
Ayman phoned a zoology student and described the spider he had seen to him. The student consulted a book about Spiders of North Africa. He didn't find the big black spiders with two yellow lines in that book.

AYMAN RESORTS TO THE INTERNET
Ayman resorted to his computer. He turned to the World Wide Web the internet. The communication lines between thousands of computers would provide any information he needed. So, he typed "Spider black and yellow" in the search box and clicked on the "Search Button". He got information and pictures about thin small spiders in different parts of the world but nothing about the spider he saw.

THE TRANSLATION OF AN OLD EGYPTIAN TEXT
A page with no pictures appeared on the screen. It was an English translation of an Egyptian text. The translation was made by Dr Shereen Fakhry who worked on the Department of Egyptology, Oxford University. It told the story of hundreds of people killed by black and yellow spiders in an Egyptian town. To get rid of these dangerous deadly spiders, the people burnt down the town for six days and nights. Nothing remained in that town and they wanted to rebuild it. However, many spiders found their way into underground tombs and passages. Those tombs were unknown to the townspeople as their dead were buried for a thousand years. The spiders were safe in them and the people had to leave the town.

AN E-MAIL TO DR SHEREEN
Ayman sent an e-mail to Dr Shereen asking if the story about the black and yellow spiders in the Egyptian text was true. He had seen a big black and yellow spider himself and could not identify it.

DR SHEREEN'S REPLY
Ayman received Dr Shereen's reply. She believed the town was real. No one knew its place as many towns and villages in Egypt disappeared because of the dry climate 2000 years ago. However, the story might be just a story.

THE DEADLY SPIDER LAYS ITS EGGS
The big Spider succeeded in finding a home in a secret place in the house next to Hassan's. It was a safe place with nobody to disturb it and with plenty of food. The Spider was a female. It laid 2000 eggs and enclosed them in sacs of white silk. It began its long wait.

موضوع: Two Terms - Chapter 3 الأحد مارس 01, 2009 8:33 pm

Two Terms - Chapter 3
A DEADLY SPIDER IN ANCIENT EGYPT
A week after receiving Ayman's e-mail, Dr Shereen had an e-mail message from an archaeologist in Egypt. In reply to her request about deadly spiders in ancient Egypt, he sent a very old picture that was found in a tomb near Bawiti. The picture was of a black and yellow spider like the one in her text. She had a shiver of fear when she remembered Ayman's description of the spider he saw. She forwarded that message to Ayman. A minute later, she received a chat request from Ayman.

A CHAT ABOUT THE SPIDER
In their conversation, Ayman said the picture of the spider was the same as the one he had seen. Dr Shereen mentioned the spider might have come from Bawiti. Ayman believed the spider might have come to their town in the boxes brought from the archaeological site to the police station. As there were no killer spiders in modern Egypt, he thought it was not possible to have killer spiders. She hoped he was right and advised him to tell the police and to photograph the spider if he saw it again.

THE SPIDER IN A MEDICAL ANCIENT EGYPTIAN TEXT
Dr Shereen received an e-mail from a German Egyptologist stating that he had translated a 2000 year old text about an ancient Egyptian medicine for the bite of the black and yellow spider that killed. It was made from the root of a certain plant. This meant that the spiders were real as they were mentioned in a medical text.

MEETING A ZOOLOGIST
The next morning Dr Shereen went to a friend who was a zoologist. Her name was Susan Bennett. She could not identify the spider in the picture of the ancient Egyptian text. Susan tried to find that spider on the database. Into her computer she put a CD that contained a list of all the known species of spider in the world. She said there were thirty thousand ones and the number went up as new species were discovered. Six names and pictures came onto the screen but didn't match the description of the spider they wanted. Susan decided to discuss the matter with the Head of their department, Professor Malcolm Jones.

THE OPINION OF THE HEAD OF THE ZOOLOGY DEPARTMENT
Susan took Dr Fakhry and met Professor Malcolm Jones. He welcomed the two women. Then, he had a telephone call in another room that angered him. He had to cancel the trip he was going to make to South America the next day. The aim of that trip was to find unknown species of arachnids there. He noticed that Dr Fakhry was not keen on spiders. He believed they are useful because they eat insects.

PROFESSOR JONES IS INTERESTED IN THE SPIDER'S STORY
When the Professor was told about the Spider seen by Ayman, he got interested. He became sure Ayman described the spider before seeing that picture. Dr Fakhry wondered why nobody else saw any of these spiders. He said they possibly lived in cool places in the hot desert. When people disturbed them, they came into our world. They lived under the desert for thousands of years. They were the only survivors when the climate changed two thousand years ago.

THAT SPIDER IS A GREAT DANGER
That spider was a great danger to Ayman and his family. Dr Fakhry said hospitals could treat spider bites. The professor agreed that a doctor could give an antivenom to treat their bites. However, there was no antivenom for that species of spider because it was unknown and a new antivenom would take years to be a safe one. The Hamdayya was also in danger. The whole country was in danger. Egypt is the meeting point of three continents, so they were in danger. The spider was a female. So its family would develop quickly. Within a few weeks, there would be millions of them.

THE PROFESSOR'S DICISION TO GO TO EGYPT
The professor decided to go to Egypt and find that unknown species of the spider. He travelled by plane the next morning. He wrote an e-mail to Ayman which he forgot to send.

موضوع: Two Terms - Chapter 4 الأحد مارس 01, 2009 8:35 pm

Two Terms - Chapter 4

THE SPIDER AND ITS YOUNG ONES
The spider was in its secret place. It was guarding its young ones.

A CHAT
Ayman was chatting with an internet friend. He told the friend about his uncle who was a successful businessman.

A PROFESSOR ON HIS WAY TO HAMDAYYA
Ayman noticed an e-mail sent the evening before. It was from Dr Fakhry in Oxford. She said she had discussed the Spider's affair with Professor Malcolm Jones, a well-known arachnologist. He was interested in the matter and believed the spider was an unknown species and might be dangerous. He was on his way to Hamdayya and would arrive there the next morning. Thus, he was about to arrive at any moment. He printed out the e-mail and hurried downstairs.

SHOULD AYMAN TELL THE POLICE?
Ayman went downstairs and met his Uncle Walid. He heard the story of the spider and that Dr Shereen wanted Ayman to tell the police. He looked serious and said he had better not tell the police if he was not completely sure of the matter. It was no good for business in the town. Hotels, restaurants, food products would lose money as this story would worry people. He advised Ayman not to tell anyone outside the family.

AYMAN'S REGRET
Ayman understood his uncle's point of view. He regretted what he had done. However, it was too late. A professor was about to arrive. The spider's story would get into newspapers and business would be harmed. He believed he was a fool.

THE ARRIVAL OF THE PROFESSOR
Ayman showed his family Dr Fakhry's e-mail. They were shocked. At that moment the Professor arrived. They welcomed him. Ayman didn't know what to do.

A SUDDEN CHANGE
Two lorries carrying ten armed police officers in each stopped near the police station. Mohamed came out from the police station and told the family that the two lorries were going to an archaeological site in the desert to stop anyone going near it. It was a dangerous place as the archaeologists at the site were killed by spiders early that morning.

A PHONE TO THE POLICE HEAD
Uncle Walid phoned his friend, Colonel Mikhail, the police chief and became sure of the news. He told the Colonel that there might be danger in their town. He asked him to listen to Ayman who told him everything about the spider. An expert from Oxford University was with him. The Colonel asked to meet Ayman and the expert in his office at the police station.

PROTECTION CLOTHING
The police got protection clothing from the Fire Department. They were used when firemen fought chemical fires. The police would wear them to keep out spiders until the right antivenom could be found.

MEETING THE COLONEL
An officer took Ayman and the Professor to the Colonel's office. With his quick intelligent eyes, the Colonel was judging the usefulness of the two men. He asked if the professor could try to find one of these spiders and identify it, as sending for an expert would take time. The Colonel asked Ayman to go with them to tell if the spider the Professor would find was the same as the one he had seen. They would leave in thirty minutes.

GOING TO THE SITE
When Ayman went home, he found an e-mail from Dr Shereen. As he was in a hurry, he printed it out and took it with him. Three vehicles left the town and were on their way to the archaeological site. Ayman, the Professor, Captain Ahmed and another officer were in the first car. Behind it were the two lorries carrying twenty officers each. Captain Ahmed asked the Professor to tell him everything about spiders.