Ulysses in Old Cairo
Bruce Douglas Reeves
They missed the massacre at the Valley of the Queens by a single day. Blood flowed under that flawless sky, but not theirs. Twenty-four hours earlier they'd walked among the scarred stones of Luxor, but when the shots brought down sixty screaming tourists on the three thousand year-old steps of Hatshepsut's temple, they were chugging up the Nile to Aswan. Later, they were astonished that they hadn't added to the scarlet puddles staining the porous limestone. Armed guards, vigilant and mute as the soldiers on ancient friezes, accompanied them for the rest of the trip.
"This is no way to see a country," Donald told Deborah, sitting on the bus, gazing at the dry landscape. "From behind a pair of kids with automatic rifles."
"You want to die?" Her graying hair was cropped short, boyish, showing her ears. Her profile was still firm, handsome. She was a good-looking woman, not yet fifty. "I'm glad we're going back to Cairo. I want to buy some Egyptian cloth -- linen.."
"I want to mingle, talk with people, show them I'm not afraid. I want...."
"You always do." She turned away from him. "I think I'll make a dress with some of the linen. A summer dress would be nice."
Despite the shooting at Luxor, Donald promised himself that back in Cairo he'd escape the guards, get to know the real city and the people who lived there. Impatient with censored experiences, he longed to be overwhelmed with unscripted, unexpected life. It's better to crash on the rocks than to never venture from protected shores. He believed this.
Over the years, he'd traveled to Moslem, Hindu, Catholic, and Protestant countries, to lands that embraced Judaism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shintoism. He was willing to accept all, though he believed in none, and eager to mingle with these true believers who, it seemed, had little in common with him.
Don''t be afraid, the city whispered to him. Come, walk among the glowing braziers and half-hidden alleys, gaze upon my brown-skinned children, admire the refined and haughty profiles of my women and the graceful flutter of their robes. Come, listen to the whisperings of your heart.
The others in their group thought he was too curious, too outspoken, too eager to take risks. He made them nervous. Why couldn't he just snap his picture postcard shots to share back home? To them Arabic calligraphy was pretty, even graceful and picturesque, although they couldn't understand a word of it, but they didn't see the mysterious shadings, the ancient conundrums, the riddles of lives lived and lost that bewitched Donald when he gazed on the elegant curves and dots on the market stalls, tiled mosque walls, and doorways. They didn't feel the charm of wandering among streets so narrow that the medieval buildings leaning over them nearly touched. They didn't understand why he'd intentionally get lost among the variegated crowds of a city so dense that a foreigner might vanish forever.
Even Deborah didn't appreciate his obsession, as she put it, with the squalid and sordid. He had no reply, but believed that wonders might surprise, if he let them. How could he discover the secrets lurking in this scarcely known place? A beautiful chaos grew like flowers in these narrow streets and alleys, waiting to be found, known, experienced.
He stared at the back of her neck. It's no use, he decided. She doesn't want to understand.
Egypt was more complex than he'd expected, filled with dusty colors and unidentifiable smells. The days were hot and dry. So were the nights. He seemed always to be awake when the early morning call to prayer reached his ears. To him, it was more than a summons to the faithful; it also was a call urging him to get out and explore. Discover. Experience.
Deborah turned back to him with a fierce jerk of her head.
"We promised the Baxters to have dinner with them tonight," she announced. "In the hotel. You haven't forgotten?"
He loved hiking along back streets, up swank boulevards, between the layered shadows of twisting alleys. If he lost his way, all the better. He loved the elbowing crowds, the smells of food and spices and roaming livestock, and the strangled calls of street vendors. The unpredictable beckoned.
"I haven't forgotten," he lied.
Deborah had no patience with his restlessness. Someday, she'd said, it'd get him into trouble, but the only worry he had was the traffic. They'd been warned that in Egypt traffic lights and stop signs were only "decorations." Wild drivers and dented vehicles had turned Cairo into an endless Bumper Cars game, with pedestrians moving targets for extra points, but local folks waded into the mad rush of speeding vehicles, expecting drivers to swerve around them, so why couldn't he?
The next day, after their morning tour, during which Husayn, their unsmiling guide, pushed them through a cavernous mosque, stupefying Roman ruins, and the City of the Dead -- a cemetery the size of Berkeley sheltering thousands of homeless in its ancient mausoleums -- Donald abandoned the others, street map folded in his pocket.
"Don't get lost," Deborah ordered, before climbing back into the minibus, parked near the great bazaar of Khan el Khalili. "Don't get hit by a car. Don't get mugged. Don't die."
Donald had dressed in plain trousers and long-sleeved shirt and carried no camera. With his fading reddish hair, he didn't look Egyptian, but with luck he'd blend into local crowds, faceless, anonymous. Glancing back, he glimpsed Deborah's features through the dusty minibus window. A one-legged boy maneuvered up to the minibus, leaning on a hand-carved crutch, his naked foot hopping over the broken pavement, until he was shooed away by the driver. In a jeep nearby, two armed teenagers wearing camouflage uniforms watched from behind dark glasses.
Leaving behind the twisting, shadowed lanes of the covered bazaar, Donald roamed along narrow streets, among shops overflowing with carpets, brass and copper, gold and silver, leather, ivory and alabaster. Spices, perfumes, and the seductive aromas of mysterious meats and sauces assaulted his nostrils. Craftsmen hunkered in narrow shops and stalls, hammering at metal ware with wooden mallets, sanding ebony statuettes, carving scraps of bone. Keffieh-covered hucksters leaned from piebald shadows beneath blue glass "evil eyes," beckoning, their hands trying to reel him in as if he were a prize carp.
This was the great city portrayed by Naguib Mahfouz, where for decades he drank strong coffee in the Aly Baba café, chatted with friends, and composed his complicated tales in praise of the human spirit B and where he was stabbed by a Moslem fundamentalist protesting his worldly books. Crowded, littered streets collided at odd angles. In chairs clustered around tiny tables in front of tea shops, middle-aged men in white turbans and kaftan-like galabiyahs and youths in striped polo shirts and jeans passed the nargile water pipe. The weight of the city, its vastness, was intimidating, yet these men weren't frightening. Donald felt sure that if they bothered to acknowledge his existence they'd be more likely to slap him on the back than bloody his head.
Where would he find the adventure, the revelation, that waited in this ancient city? Down which street, around which corner, under which eaves, behind which weathered gate?
What memories would he take away? Would it be only images of fat-pawed vendors, grim young soldiers brandishing automatic rifles, begging children, and rusty taxis aiming for his vulnerable flesh? Americans aren't romantics. Everyone knows that. Americans care only about money and business and have no eyes for the strange or exotic. Yet here he was, searching for the opportunity to step outside himself into Ala Baba's caverns, into Shaherazade=s tales.
From an adolescent vendor at a small stand, he bought a glass of hot sweet tea that burned his lips and throat. He wished Deborah were sharing his adventure. He wished that she, too, hungered to discover, experience, and be amazed.
Leaving the souk behind, he penetrated narrow neighborhood streets. A burka-swathed woman sailed past him like a black galleon, face hidden behind a small screen. The woman in the iron mask, he thought, but this mask was lacy fabric. He watched her walk away, past buxom adolescent females in Western garb, the bottom of her garment gilded with dust.
He wandered into streets alive with working, socializing human beings with skin tones ranging from Nubian charcoal to the café au lait of the northern delta. Ashy-skinned youths with naked legs and arms struggled through the mob on donkey carts, collecting garbage. Robed men swept past like royalty and women toted bags of rice and piles of fabric on their heads. No one called or reached out to him, no one offered him joy, a full belly, a favorable currency exchange, or bargain merchandise. For perhaps the first time in this country, he felt like an ordinary piece of human debris washed along on the currents of these city streets.
Sometimes, his progress was blocked by youths with mobile phones at their ears or workmen drinking small glasses of hot tea, but they didn't even look up as he detoured around them. Did they ignore him because he was from the West, corrupt and immoral, a drinker of alcohol who worshiped false images? Could they see all this in him? Or were they truly blind to his existence? He wished he knew Arabic so he could join in their intense conversations.
Long ago elegant houses bowed over the street toward one another with old world courtesy; others leaned against each other like arthritic pensioners to keep from falling down, Shedding bits of themselves, they sighed and groaned with the torments of the aged. The shops on their unsteady ground floors spilled merchandise and memories onto the broken pavement. Look at us, these untidy old citizens called, pay attention, we=ve seen more than you=ll ever know.
As he hesitated on a curb, unsure which direction to take, two young Egyptians in polo shirts and imitation Levis confronted him, shy smiles on their lean faces.
"Welcome to Egypt," leered the first, head tilted forward on his skinny neck.
Donald stepped back, then saw that the youth=s peculiar expression was caused by a squint in one eye.
"Yes," said his friend, the taller and more handsome of the two. "We are peace-loving people. Most Egyptians do not like what those men did -- at the Valley of the Queens."
"We...happy you...here," added the first boy with the squint. His English was more uncertain. Perhaps he was younger.
Pleased by the unexpected contact, Donald tried to talk with them, scratching at their awkward reticence with his own eagerness. He learned that they were university students, but found them unwilling or afraid to reveal more about themselves. The younger had a large mole on his cheek, the taller boy wore a gold chain around his left wrist.
"How about coffee?" Donald suggested. He gestured vaguely down the street, toward where he'd noticed men sitting on short stools around tiny tables sipping tea and smoking B always smoking. "Or tea?"
Maybe they'd like to know about California. Certainly, he wanted to hear about life in Egypt. Not tourist Egypt, not monuments and history, but here and now, people like them existing and surviving day-to-day, their experience of the world and their aspirations. A girl in a patterned scarf on the balcony above seemed to be following their conversation, but when he looked up she vanished into the shadows.
"Tea?" he asked again.
Their embarrassed, almost panicked, smiles as they backed away confused him. He saw them exchange glances, but had no idea what they were thinking. Their cheap polyester shirts were loose and their jeans baggy. He'd heard that Moslems thought tight clothing was immodest, even on males. A warm breeze sent dust and traffic exhaust into their faces.
"I'd like to know about your studies," Donald tried again. "I'm very interested."
"We are late," said the taller young man. "You are kind, but...we are late."
An old man in white galabiyah, skull cap, and felt slippers shuffled past, forcing Donald to step off the broken curb. The old man didn't look at him, but his arm brushed heavily against him. The students made room for the old man, then shook Donald's hand and fled into the crowd.
That was strange, Donald thought. I'll have to tell Deborah about it.
"Idiot," she'd say, if she said anything. And she'd show him her purchases. Her linen, a bargain, the best quality, of course.
Shops poured their wares onto narrow sidewalks like cargo ships ripped open by rocks on a stormy beach. In one block it was pots and pans and kitchenware, but around the corner shoppers picked through bins of shoes. Storekeepers sat cross-legged on low benches or on plastic chairs, smoking and gossiping with friends while they waited for customers. He passed boys toting baskets from which peeked loaves of flat bread, then a man tugging a gaudily painted handcart over a shattered patch of pavement.
Turning his unfolded map in circles, he tried to figure out where he was, but when he located the battered remains of a street sign on a crumbling wall, the words were, of course, in Arabic. A man sitting on an empty metal drum behind him leaned against the mottled stucco, asleep. Flies crawled across his bearded face and over his brown galabiyah.
I've penetrated many an unchartered territory -- even if only in my mind. Like Cortez after gold and Balboa looking for an ocean. Like Ponce de Leon pursuing eternal youth, like Stanley and Livingston, hoping to find the source of the Nile. Or like Ulysses, anxious to return to his own bed?
Gazing up at a decaying Ottoman facade, he nearly stepped into the black cavern of an open basement. He imagined himself lying in the dark hole with two broken legs, while Deborah grew distraught back in their hotel room.
What were those aromas? Cardamon? Garlic? Cumin? Or spices he=d never before smelled or tasted?
Miniature cafes and sidewalk food stalls offered sizzling meatballs, beans in tomato sauce, grilled pigeons, and something like a thin pizza rolled around cooked meat. Sidewalk vendors roasted corn on the cob on small braziers, peddling it for pennies. Donald bought some leaves stuffed with minced meat and dipped in yoghurt. He had no idea what kind of animal had ended its days in the meat grinder B an aged camel, perhaps? B but the vendor seemed pleased to sell to him, although they had no language in common. Food, after all, was the great bond between all people, along with death.
Except for the two students, no one else spoke to Donald or made a gesture toward him as he wandered through the neighborhoods between the bazaar and the river. No one harangued him with their political or religious beliefs, no one wanted to practice English on him. Either they were too involved with their own lives to notice a solitary Californian or were too afraid. If they risked a friendly gesture toward a red-haired Westerner would they face reprisal from unseen but vigilant forces? How could he leap the gap, connect?
Two robed women, faces and hands decorated with henna tattoos, moved past, eyes focused downward, one of them dragging a small child. His feet and legs ached from the broken pavements and sweat trickled beneath his shirt and under his glasses. Cairo, city of a thousand minarets, was going to be the death of him. The relentless energy of the city was exhausting. He would've enjoyed a cold beer, but alcohol was hard to come by in this Moslem city.
When he returned to the hotel, Deborah and the others would ask where he'd been, what had happened, who he'd met.
"Did you have your adventure?" she'd ask. "Are you satisfied?"
But if he tried to explain or describe, she'd tell him about bargaining in the shops their guide took her to, about carpets she admired, jewelry someone else bought, the buffet hotel luncheon.
A middle-aged man needing a shave pushed past Donald, followed by a woman in a long skirt, bulky sweater, and kerchief. The man was thick-bodied, a collection of tree trunks, solid, pock-marked. The woman seemed frail, despite her round, puffy figure. She carried a large, heavy bundle on her back, and -- Donald realized as she passed him -- was silently sobbing. Then they were lost in the human flood.
She reminded him of someone. Somebody he once knew or dreamed about? The woman who lived down the block when he was a boy, the one whose husband was said to beat her?
Donald peered at deeply shadowed doorways and metal-banded wooden gates. He dodged motorbikes and glanced down alleys. Then, abruptly, he found himself confronting the elevated skyway that slashed through this part of old Cairo. Traffic hurtled on the concrete road above, raining down fumes, smoke, and filth.
Next to the skyway, in a wide building open at the sides and covering most of a block, he discovered a vast indoor market in which gory carcasses and hunks of meat hung on hooks and were draped across blood-dripping counters surrounded by bargaining, arguing shoppers of both sexes. Depressions in the concrete floor sloshed with rusty red liquid. Among the heavily draped old women and bulky middle-aged men, a trio of young Egyptian women in black Levis and designer tee shirts were examining hideous, bulgy-eyed fish heaped across a slimy table.
One of the women turned, revealing a picture of a leering sea monster on the back of her shirt. Beneath the snaggle-toothed creature was printed in English: "You know you're too deep when strange-looking fish offer you candy."
The taller of the women, with strong, handsome features, noticed him and whispered to the others. They peered over their shoulders at him. One of them puffed on a cigarette, another touched her hennaed hair. More whispers, smiles, raised eyebrows: either they didn't think much of him or they were trying to be provocative. He moved around the wide counters, treading carefully over the slimy, wet concrete -- then, impetuously, approached the young women.
"Can you help me?" he asked. They stared at him with surprise, but didn't seem hostile. The tall woman, her glossy black hair loose around her shoulders, considered him with a tolerant expression. AI have to buy a fish, to take to a friend's house for dinner," he ad-libbed. "I don't know what to buy."
He gestured at the vast array of glossy wet lumps, fins, and tails.
The woman with the witty tee shirt eyed him. "An Egyptian friend?"
She waited for his reply with a small smile playing on her dark red lips.
"Oh, yes," he said. "Egyptian."
"How many people for dinner?" She spoke perfect, lightly accented English.
"Oh, a lot. Six, I think."
The women laughed. "That's not a lot to us," said the younger, shorter, prettiest of them. "A large party here is thirty or forty-- or sixty."
The three women conferred, gestured, shaking their heads, then motioned to Donald.
"This one," said the woman in the humorous tee shirt. She pointed to a fat gray and pink-scaled fish about a foot and a half long. "Your Egyptian friends will know how to cook it."
One of the blood-splattered men working in the market weighed the beast and announced the price, which one of the women translated for Donald. He paid, the fish was wrapped, and he thanked the women for their assistance.
"Our pleasure," said the third woman. "Enjoy your party."
"And your fish," laughed the illustrated tee shirt.
Grinning stupidly, his bulky, damp parcel in his arms, Donald backed toward one of the exits. As he left the market, he had to wait on the dusty concrete step for a herd of shaggy brown and white sheep to pass.
Which direction, now? And he was stuck with the damn fish. He felt sure the young women were watching him, laughing behind his back. He wanted to turn and look at them again, see what they were doing, but resisted the temptation.
Deborah had wanted to go to Paris, but reluctantly had yielded to his pleas for a more exotic destination.
"You're not a child," she told him. "Or a Jules Verne character."
He tried to remember what he had replied. Nothing clever, he was sure. He never was able to make a snappy comeback with Deborah. Sometimes, he just moved his lips silently, like one of those fish, before giving up. She was never at a loss for words. Usually, the final word.
When a child stopped to stare at him, he almost gave her the fish, but a bearded man careening past on an old bicycle nearly ran into him. Donald jumped back, clutching his fish, the man swerved, hollering out something, and the little girl ran away.
A few blocks along, he discovered half-a-dozen young machine gun-bearing soldiers, weapons in front of their skinny chests, guarding a fire station. Two not very new engines were visible through the doors. For some reason, this disturbed Donald more than the military guards outside the national Antiquities Museum, television stations, and tourist hotels -- more even than the jeep that followed their minivan on the highway and around the city. The young soldiers looked bored, but stood straight, guns ready. He considered offering one of them the fish, but feared it might seem provoking.
The open-air bus station across the street was busy with stinking, antiquated coaches pulling under or out from beneath the rusty corrugated tin roofs that covered the long concrete platforms. With a terrible grinding noise under its projecting hood, a wolf-nosed bus struggled into the street, so over-loaded that he doubted it'd ever reach its destination.
He was tempted to crowd in among the sweaty men and women bursting from the bus's doors, but instead walked up to a small kerchiefed woman, silently offering her his package. At first she looked alarmed, then peered up at him as she smelled the wrapped fish. He motioned that it was for her, a present. She considered his offer for a moment, then quickly accepted the fish, weighing it in her hands. How many would it feed and for how long, he wondered? He offered a smile, but she no longer was looking at him so he walked away, wondering how she'd explain the fish to her husband.
The bus station, he decided, might be the landmark he needed. With his handkerchief, he smeared the grime from his glasses and studied his map. Nothing in this city was where it was supposed to be, including the Nile; no lines were straight, no streets took you where you expected. Landmarks played a perverse game of hide and seek. He could imagine wandering these streets and alleys for days, weeks.
Gray dust powdered the map, catching in its creases. He shook it before folding and stuffing it back into his pocket, then looked around him. Sinking toward the horizon, the sun turned the mucky brown sky beyond the jigsaw puzzle rooftops an unhealthy shade of orange.
A handful of choices radiated from this intersection, most of which would take him far from where he hoped to end up. He decided to risk a sharp left turn. This might lead toward a commercial area, perhaps to the river, where he'd be able to orient himself. Many of the cars and buses had shrugged off their mufflers so that they brayed like disgruntled donkeys as they pushed through the crowded streets. When he wiped his face with his handkerchief, it came back streaked as if with charcoal. The traffic at the next corner was held up by a herd of scrawny camels shuffling on their final walk to a Aprocessing plant.@
The sun is setting, but will there be stars? How could their feeble glow penetrate this muck? The pharaohs saw stars. The ceilings of their tombs and temples are painted with stars, celebrating the sacred night time skies familiar to them, but visible no longer. City lights, city filth: the whole city is coughing, gasping, straining to breathe.
Voices around him indicated life behind these uneven, unsteady walls, yet he remained a stranger among strangers. Gradually, the little stores and shops along the street evolved into more prosperous establishments, their windows filled with vaguely up-to-date merchandise, some of it not covered with dust. Capitalism in action. However, he thought, if this were a true capitalist society, there=d be a bar on the corner, where a man could get a cold, stimulating drink. They=d had plenty of booze as they were sailing on the Nile. Whoever ran that cruise ship was a good capitalist, putting the weaknesses of their guests above religious scruples. The waiters may not have approved of bikinis on the sundeck or alcoholic beverages, but they knew non-judgmental eyes brought bigger tips.
So many thoughts: blood flowing over a temple=s broad steps, gunshots aimed at cruise ships, trucks of armed soldiers, monuments watching indifferently, Crusaders battling for religious might and plunder, merchants in stained robes desperate for tourist dollars. Where was the sacred Truth in any of this? To find out what they think and feel about all of it B that could make the difference, if only I could talk with them. Yes, searching can become an addiction, as Deborah warned, but is that so bad?
Streets widened, traffic increased, and the cacophony of horns and brakes grew louder. Pairs and trios of robed, kerchiefed women with large cloth shopping bags slung over their shoulders studied store windows. In front of a bank, a young soldier held a rifle by his chest, its bayonet bisecting his face.
At one corner, Donald crossed the busy boulevard at the same time as two young Egyptian workmen carrying a sheet of plate glass. One of them was wearing a faded AMaterial Blonde@ tee shirt. When they noticed him, they stopped in the middle of the intersection, antique Citroens and vintage Volgas and Skodas buzzing around them, and one of them asked: AYou from America? You know Michael Jordan?@
Flinching, as a smoking bus hurtled past them, he shouted: AYes! No!@
They arrived at the far curb with bodies and dusty plate glass intact and the two grinning men continued down the block with their precarious burden.
Don=t fear me, the city told him in its song of screeches and sirens and bleating horns and grinding brakes. Don=t be alarmed if you can=t understand my music or the meaning of my song. Trust me, after these thousands of years I can assure you that it doesn=t matter. Nothing matters.
The recorded call to prayer sang out from the minaret of a nearby mosque, then seconds later another followed. Men stopped on the sidewalk and in shops to drop small prayer rugs for their devotions. From the facade of the huge Qasr el Nil Cinema, dark-browed and mustachioed movie heroes gazed down at men kneeling in prayer as the chaotic traffic roared past.
When Donald reached the vast Liberation Square, a gray island circled by traffic resembling the Ben Hur chariot races, every driver another Messala, he knew he was getting near his hotel. Of course, no intelligent human being with an interest in survival would try to navigate that torrent, but what else could he do?
A grubby adolescent with a shoeshine kit came up to him, speaking in Arabic peppered with words and phrases from English, German, French and perhaps even Russian as he pointed to Donald's dusty shoes. A young woman in tight jeans and tee shirt appeared behind the boy, explaining that he wanted to polish Donald's loafers. Donald shook his head, wondering if this woman, who wasn't as young as she at first seemed, also was hoping to peddle her own services. All he wanted, now, was get to the other side of the concrete sea in front of him.
Fumes boiled beneath the rusty sky as he gazed out at the wide, poisonous obstacle in front of him. It was like some mythological punishment, a curse visited down on the guilty population, but why should he be punished? He felt like one of the hapless souls in Dore's terrifying illustrations of Hell, about to wade among gesticulating arms and open screaming mouths. Those blotchy dirty vehicles weren=t automobiles; they were the chariots of Satan=s hordes, mowing down the damned.
Donald watched a cluster of Japanese tourists hovering on the sidewalk, obviously afraid that if they stepped into the traffic they'd end up as flat as a piece of papyrus, but he wasn=t going to let this absurd, frantic spectacle defeat him. Ulysses eventually made it back to Ithaca and he was going to get across this chaotic sea and back to Deborah -- and a tall gin and tonic.
Striding out from the curb to cross the dizzying avenue leading to the great whirl pool of the Midan Tahrir, he evaded a tuk-tuk and jumped past a crowded taxi, but then he side-stepped into a battered truck transporting several pouting camels and felt a twisted front bumper lift him off the pavement. The force propelled him over several frenetic lanes until he landed in front of a smog-spewing bus.
He'd told Deborah that he was on a voyage of discovery, that before he was finished he'd see and learn and understand, but in the end what had he learned? What had he understood? And upon whose shield would he now rest?
