When the Fayoumis had read their chromatograms across the chemical network, again and again, a yellow band appeared at the top of the paper, radioactive radon gas, but nowhere was it more vivid than in Naqlun, from the sample crushed by the base of the tower. Elsewhere, the unveiling of chemical agency had set a path for remediation, but in Naqlun, the pungency of the yellow stain was different, the residue of occupation was bending time itself beyond what anyone could imagine. This was not a question of remediation, but of protection, of shielding, of waiting.
Returning 20 years later, 15km from the monastery's gates, the army built a tower to tap into the oil in the desert’s surface permitted of course by the park’s regulations. Even when the tower was decommissioned, its metal structure still radiated and turned the air sour.
And so, when the army eventually left, they waited for a few years and then they began, from all over Fayoum they came to help disassemble the tower, panel by panel, throwing them down onto the sand, where the exposed radiation travelled on the winds for miles. Quickly, they knew that the only solution was to bury the remains.
Every 75 years, an interval which marks the median time between the lifespan of a rhazya plant and the cycle of major dune shifts, their descendants would return to the burial site, and with each generation they would attempt to replant the markers to warn future generations. In areas where the formation and collapse of the dune had broken the radius, they planted in patches across it to bar any entry. Over the centuries, the cyclical nature of desert forming fractured the original radii, and yet they continued to generate the warning. In the areas where the original circles could still be read, they planted rhazya thicker than ever before, to ensure that the original logic of the signal would not be lost, that half-life would remain accounted for.
They buried the remains in the desert, using old fencing panels from the park to demarcate the interior. In successive rings from the centre, they planted rhazya in circles. Native to the Sahara, rhazya is a highly poisonous plant. The gardeners warned the Fayoumis that rhazya marked danger and to stay away. Over the centuries, the original story of the remains was lost, but the myth stuck. Some people spread that rhazya marked a scorpion’s nest, whereas others rumoured that it marked an old archaeological site where the British had awoken an ancient curse.
For the next one thousand years, they continued to take chromatograms of the outer rings, and as the yellow stain began to dissolve, they left the outer rings unplanted, working their way inwards, being cautious to always leave the interior protected. The disfiguring and removal of rings changed how people inhabited the desert. Those who would come out to plant the new generations of rhazya, would now camp out in the desert for a few nights. They would tell stories and gaze at the stars nestled between the blurred figures of their ancestors’ signals.