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The date came and went without so much as a word. Dad was so focused on his upcoming archaeological dig that I think he forgot about our deal. Lately all he wanted to talk about was bones and dirt and pickaxes. And you thought your parents were weird!

The dig was scheduled for the first three weeks of November. I had mixed feelings about leaving for so long, but Dad didn’t give me much choice. When I tried to suggest staying here in Jerusalem with Marla and her family, I got the same old “we’re going to stick together, damn it” speech that I got in Toronto, so I knew it was hopeless.

And I couldn’t even use school as an excuse. Wielding his professor status, Dad pulled some strings and arranged for me to get an academic credit for helping on the excavation.

“You’ll see, Mack — you’ll love it,” he promised. But seriously, I had my doubts.

Early the next Sunday morning, we took a bus north to Tiberias. The first part of the drive was through the Judean desert. The sand was everywhere. And the road was dusty and dry; my throat was parched just looking at it. I kept my eyes glued to the window, watching the sand — the vastness of it was mesmerizing. All I could think about was how easy it would be for a person to just disappear out here in this desert wasteland and be lost forever.

When we arrived, we settled into the hotel and met the rest of the group. I hadn’t realized what a big deal this dig was. In addition to the students from the university, volunteers from all around the world had come to help out. There were backpackers from Australia and New Zealand, a middle-aged husband and wife from England, a group of friends from Italy, a father and son from the US, and a tour group of twentysomethings from Montreal.

There was even one grandmotherly woman from Iceland who said it had been her lifelong dream to be here. And a newly married couple from South Africa who had come here for their honeymoon.

A lifelong dream to dig in the dirt? Honeymooning with a shovel and bucket? Seriously?

Needless to say, they were all gung-ho about getting to work. But I have to admit that it took me a few days to wrap my head around this place … and even longer to get used to the early hours.

Every day we were woken up at five o’clock in the morning, given a light meal of coffee and cake, and bused to the site. Digging usually ended each day by two in the afternoon.

Now, I’m not normally the kind of girl to pull a princess trip, but I mean, come on — five o’clock in the morning? Can you imagine? I don’t care if it was the best way to avoid the heat. Plus, the work we had to do was really hard! We toiled away in pits of dirt, digging, scooping, sifting, and brushing. Everyone wore hats and sunblock and thick gloves that reminded me of Mom’s old gardening gloves. Except unlike Mom’s prize-winning roses, the only things growing in this garden were bones and dust.

Man, the air was unbearably dry and dusty. By the end of each day, my muscles were tired and sore and I felt like I’d taken a bath in dirt and sweat.

But the worst thing of all had to be the toilet. Scratch that — it wasn’t even a toilet: it was a dingy, smelly porta-potty that was totally gross. The first time I saw it I wanted to cry. I swear to God, it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since Biblical times. The floor was caked with dirt, the toilet seat crusted with dried urine, and the stench that emanated from that dark, dank hole was practically prehistoric. I swore up and down that I wouldn’t use it.

“Ew! I’d rather hold it in all day than sit there!” I complained to Dad, giving him my best “yuck” face.

“Okay, suit yourself,” he said with a funny smirk, like he didn’t believe me.

But you know the saying — “when you gotta go, you gotta go.” Short of relieving myself on Biblical remains, I didn’t have any other choice. I quickly learned to hold my breath and pee like lightning.

I could tell Einstein wasn’t too thrilled with my attitude. On one of the very first days I unknowingly committed a cardinal sin of archaeology: I picked up a rock. I remember turning it over in my hand, wondering how long it had been lying there. Definitely centuries — maybe even millenniums.

This would be a cool souvenir for Marla, I thought, and I dropped it into my pocket.

A second later, he was at my side.

“Hey Mack, what are you doing? Put that back.”

“Why?” I frowned. “It’s just a rock.”

He sighed and shook his head. “Honey that might look like a regular old rock, but it’s not. Everything here is a valuable piece of evidence from the past. That rock might be part of an ancient wall, or it could have writing on it with information and names.”

I took it out and looked at it again. It looked just the same as any ordinary stone you’d find in a public park or in someone’s backyard.

“Yeah, okay Dad — whatever,” I said, letting it fall back down to the ground with a loud plop. He sighed and walked away. I knew he was frustrated with me, but I didn’t care. After all, it was his big idea to drag me out here in the first place. I’d much rather be back home hanging out with Marla and buying gum from Nasir than digging through piles of old sand.

But everything changed the day I made my first big discovery. It was about a week into the trip and I was sifting through what must have been my hundredth pile of dirt when I felt something hard between my fingers.

“I found something!” I gasped, pulling it from the dirt and dusting it off with my brush.

A surge of excitement shot through me as I realized what it was. A pottery shard. But not just any old regular one: this was a large, fully intact piece. I held it gingerly in my hand like an egg, marvelling at the idea that I was the first person to touch this thing in two thousand years. After we washed it, we found that it had writing on it, too. Apparently, that was a pretty big deal.

“Great job, Mack!” cheered Dad. “Somebody get this girl an ice cream!”

I could see the pride in his eyes. You know, the look parents get like “one day you’re going to grow up and be just like me.” I have to admit, I was proud of myself, too. I walked around feeling like the Queen of Archaeology for a while. But the very next day, somebody else had an even bigger find and knocked me off the throne. It was a stash of ancient silver coins found wedged under a loose stone in one of the floors. News of the find buzzed through the site as Dad gathered everyone around to have a look.

“A stash of coins hidden under the floor. Can anybody imagine what they were doing there?”

We all took a moment to consider the possibilities, but nobody spoke up.

“Well,” he continued, “if it was just one coin, we would conclude that it was dropped accidentally and forgotten. However, an entire hoard of coins suggests that somebody put them there deliberately. The question is, who? Does anybody want to put forth a theory?”

He paused again while we all looked at each other nervously, wondering who was going to speak first.

“Don’t worry, there’s no wrong answer,” he laughed. “Which is exactly what I find so fascinating about archaeology: it’s all a big puzzle. Our task here is to rebuild lost civilizations. How do we do that? By using these ancient fragments from the earth, a bit of history, and a dash of imagination.”

Dad’s eyes sparkled as he spoke. I don’t think I’d seen him this alive since before Mom’s accident.

“So, how did these coins get here?” he asked again, holding one up for inspection. “Let’s take ourselves back to Biblical times when this dirt beneath our feet was a thriving metropolis. Maybe a slave was secretly pilfering them from his master. Or perhaps a desperate merchant hid his savings from the menace of an approaching army. Or maybe a housewife was hoarding money to keep it safe from her gambling husband. Whoever it was, they hid it here not knowing they would never see it again. Not knowing they’d hidden it so well, their stash wouldn’t be found until thousands of years later — by us.”

It was incredible. For a split second I felt transported back in time. And I wasn’t the only one. I could tell that the others were feeling the magic of Dad’s vision, too.

“You see, the people who lived here were just like you and me,” he went on. “Mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, students, teachers, and tradesmen. They worked under this same hot sun every day and gazed up into the same starry sky as you do every night. And this site is the time capsule they’ve left behind. Everything we find is a clue to decoding the details of their lives.”

Cool! In that moment, the whole archaeology thing finally started to make sense for me. I began to understand why a couple would honeymoon here instead of Hawaii. And why a sixty-five-year-old woman would spend her life’s savings to be here. It was probably the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. There were ancient cities buried under our feet. I remember thinking that a person could get lost forever out here in the desert.

After that day, I knew it was true.