I have a PHP-based web app that I'm trying to apply Apache's mod_rewrite to.

Original URLs are of the form:
http://example.com/index.php?page=home&x=5

And I'd like to transform these into:
http://example.com/home?x=5

Note that while rewriting the page name, I'm also effectively "moving" the question mark. When I try to do this, Apache happily performs this translation:

RewriteRule ^/([a-z]+)\?(.+)$ /index.php?page=$1&$2  [NC,L]

But it messes up the $_GET variables in PHP. For example, a call to http://example.com/home?x=88 yields only one $_GET variable (page => home). Where did x => 88 go? However, when I change my rule to use an ampersand rather than a question mark:

RewriteRule ^/([a-z]+)&(.+)$ /index.php?page=$1&$2  [NC,L]

a call like http://example.com/home&x=88 will work just as I'd expect it to (i.e. both the page and x $_GET variables are set appropriately).

The difference is minimal I know, but I'd like my URL variables to "start" with a question mark, if it's possible. I'm sure this reflects my own misunderstanding of how mod_rewrite redirects interact with PHP, but it seems like I should be able to do this (one way or another).

Thanks in advance!
Cheers,
-Chris