‘Mr. Carter! Mr. Carter!’ all the correspondents shouted in unison.
‘A few words!’ I shouted to him as he climbed the staircase and approached my position.
As Howard Carter came over, I put down my camera and took out my notebook from my coat pocket.
‘Tell me, Mr. Carter, what was the most difficult part of the whole expedition?’
‘The hardest part was finding the tomb,’ he joked.
Everyone laughed out loud.
‘Seriously though,’ he added, ‘the hardest thing was to maintain the intense search over a number of years.’
‘Thank you, Mr. Carter.’
Carter and his companion then approached the Prime Minister, the Director of the British Museum, and other dignitaries who were waiting to shake his hand.
During the visit, he explained to all those present how the discovery of the chamber that housed Tutankhamun's tomb had come about. They were able to admire photographs and some of the smaller pieces from the burial chamber, while most of the larger pieces remained in Egypt.
Afterwards, Carter and the rest of the dignitaries went off to a cocktail party they were throwing at one of the city's most fashionable restaurants. Meanwhile, we were able to examine the photographs taken inside the burial chamber of the incredible discovery that Carter had made. Judging by the photographs, the objects within the chamber appeared to be in perfect condition. It was a true miracle that grave robbers had not desecrated such an incredible treasure throughout the centuries.
That night I went back to the newsroom to prepare the article that would appear on the front page, trying to give it a personal touch so as to differentiate it from those of my fellow professionals.
The next morning, I returned early to the newspaper offices housed in a modernist five-story building constructed at the turn of the century. I went up its wide staircase to the second floor and found, as ever, an incessant movement of people who were all coming and going. I crossed the hall filled with the deafening noise of typewriters, the sound of telephones ringing nonstop, the continuous shouts of correspondents and a strong smell of tobacco that had made the atmosphere almost unbreathable.
I opened the door and entered the chief editor's office, a sixty-year-old Scotsman with an aquiline nose, thick sideburns and a lean face. On that morning he had assembled several reporters.
‘Come in and close the door,’ he said sulkily. ‘Since I’ve stopped smoking, I can't bear the smell of tobacco.’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Sarah, the feature writer.
She had overdone it with her French perfume that day.
‘We’ve got a lot of work on this morning. Sales of the newspaper’s Sunday Edition have dropped alarmingly in the past two months,’ he said banging his fist on the table. ‘If we continue like this, the Sunday Edition will collapse. We need something new to boost sales.’
‘We could add a police story,’ said one reporter who had recently come over from a rival newspaper.
‘Too hackneyed,’ said the Scotsman. ‘That’s already been tried at other newspapers and it has been a failure. All the writers think they’re the next Arthur Conan-Doyle.’
A young correspondent who had started work the week before took out his pipe, filled it with tobacco and lit a match. The Scotsman went over to him and took the pipe out of his mouth.
‘Weren’t you listening before?’
The boy turned pale and we all held back our chuckles. He didn't know who he was messing with.
‘Any other ideas?’ he growled.
‘Maybe a gardening section,’ Sarah added.
‘Everyone in this country is a gardener,’ he replied with a dismissive gesture. ‘If you’ve got nothing worth saying, keep your mouth shut,’ he added with a threatening look. ‘We need something innovative.’
They all fell silent for a few minutes without knowing what to say. I went to the teapot and poured myself a cup of tea. I had had an idea the night before, but I was uncertain about saying it out loud. Finally, I plucked up the courage.
‘I may have something interesting,’ I announced as I put the teacup down on the table.
‘Let’s hear it!’
‘Carter's discovery in Egypt could turn out to be a gold mine. It has made people forget about the horrors of the war.’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘People have an insatiable appetite for reading about the stories of our great explorers.’
‘Chronicles of those expeditions can be found in any public library.’
‘That’s true, but we could surprise them with some little-known accounts. There must be thousands of interesting stories just waiting to be published.’
‘Hmmm. I’m not sure,’ he replied as a look of doubt crossed his face. ‘And where do you plan to unearth these little gems?’
‘We could start with the British Museum Library,’ I suggested.
He was silent for a few moments, pondering the idea, after which he added:
‘Well, if nobody has a better idea, see what you can come up with over the next few days.’
The meeting was adjourned and we left the office to get on with our normal daily work.
The next morning when I awoke, the window was covered in a white blanket of snow. It was the first snow of winter and the streets were full of children throwing snowballs at each other. As I made my way to the British Museum, I saw a couple of passers-by slip on the treacherous surface; the ice had made several streets impassable and workmen had already begun to scatter rock salt on the ground.
Despite this, the museum's library was crowded as usual. An endless stream of people were coming and going through its doors: students, readers, tourists and researchers, all of whom would spend hours within its walls.
I climbed the front steps carefully so as not to slip, then crossed the main hall and arrived at the atrium: a large circular reading room with space for more than a thousand people. Some of the oldest volumes in the country could be found there.
I had to wait in the queue at the reception desk until a pretty librarian with medium-length blonde hair and wearing a navy blue suit pointed out where I could start my search.
‘We have three types of inventory,’ she explained, peering above her tiny pebble glasses with her pretty eyes, ‘topographical, chronological, and business.’
‘I’m searching for any journals detailing archaeological expeditions from the last fifty years.’
The librarian sighed and said:
‘You can start your search by looking under “SUBJECT”. Then, you could proceed by looking up “CARTOGRAPHICAL STUDIES”. From there, you could refine your search chronologically. In other words, to the period of time that you wish to investigate.’
‘Does that mean I have to search through more than one whole classification or section?’
She nodded with a half-smile.
This was going to take more time than I had bargained for.
