Original headline: Soda truck foils dreams of finding seven kings' burial site
SIDON: A man who came to Sidon from Brazil four months ago recently stumbled across an underground passage that he thought would lead him to the graves of seven ancient kings.
Ahmed Ismail, in his 30s, almost got to the seven kings.
But his dreams of catching up with royalty were ruined when a truck carrying soft drinks demolished the tunnel on Friday.
After hearing stories about the kings told by some old-timers around Sidon, Ismail leased a shop space, telling people that he wanted to use it as a factory for bee-hives.
But one month after gaining access to the shop, Ismail asked for permission to dig in the ground in order to construct a water closet, but despite failing to secure the appropriate permission, he began to dig, as he told The Daily Star.
"But I was surprised to find a narrow tunnel 10 meters long and 1.5 meters high. So I decided not to tell anyone about it so I would not have to stop the work," he said.
So he continued to dig and to listen intently to stories from local residents that the area was full of royal burial sites.
"But I was unlucky and my scheme was uncovered," he said.
The excavation drew notice in the area, which is relatively well-populated.
Khaled Ismaili, 10, said he saw the tunnel being dug and "big stones being extracted."
Ismail's hopes came to an end when a soda truck drove over the excavations, and a part of the tunnel caved in.
Not surprisingly, news of the event reached the authorities, who came to the scene, and the work came to halt.
The Daily Star visited the shop and saw the bee-hives piled on top of one another, designed, it turns out, to deflect attention from the excavations.
A pile of dirt piled in one corner of the 20-meter-long shop is a reminder of Ismail's true purpose, as is a hole in the wall leading to a 10-meter-long tunnel into which the truck fell.
A judicial source familiar with the investigation said Ismail had heard about the tombs from a local resident, Ahmed Ibrahim, who is in his 70s.
Ibrahim, who has "books and important information" about the kings' tombs, had told some of his friends that he was confident that "something important remains underneath that site."
While judicial authorities have ordered the site sealed with red wax, the archeological authorities were recently allowed to inspect the dig.
What they found - the bottom part of a burial chamber and a historic stone wall - would seem to indicate that Ismail's quest, while far-fetched, was not entirely based on fiction.
