Demon Box Page 12

  He laughs darkly. "Who could better know?" he asks, pulling me after him along the sidewalk. "But first, come, both of you; for refreshment."

  Jacky follows but he isn't to be so easily distracted. "Then you've heard of this place, doctor? This hidden temple?"

  "Dr. Ragar? - Archaeologist, Shriner? -- hear of the Hidden Temple of Records?" He laughs again. Like that flag from Portland, there is in his laugh a dark insinuation that keeps you guessing. "Everybody hear of the Hidden Temple. Hear this, hear that... but The Truth? Who knows The Truth?"

  He stops and holds his Masonic ring out for me to see, not Jacky. "We of the Brotherhood know The Truth, which we cannot by oath tell the uninitiated. But you, my brother son-of-a-brother, to you I can maybe show a little light not allowed others, eh?"

  I nod, and he nods back, tugging me on a few steps more to a narrow doorfront.

  "First here we are at my factory with excellent spice tea... white sugar - none for me, I must apologize; this holy fast - then we talk. Ibrahim!" he shouts, unlocking the heavy door. "Tea for my friends from America!"

  We enter a smaller, fancier version of the other shop. It is hung clear to the ceiling fan with old rugs and tapestry. This muffles the noise of downtown Cairo to a medium squawl. But good Christ, is it stuffy. Doctor turns on the fan but it can barely budge the swaddled air.

  "So. While we wait my cousin bring the tea you will smell the true essence of the Nile lotus which no woman can resist."

  Jacky ends up buying $50 worth of perfume for the girls back at Rolling Stone. All I get from the wise doctor, besides my free scarab, is the use of his telephone to call the American University of Cairo. I leave a message for Mr. Muldoon Greggor to please contact me at the Hotel Omar Khayyam. After an afternoon in the essence factory I can tell that if you want some straight information here in Cairo, you're going to have to see an American.

  Walking back to our hotel we pass a street display of the '73 war, the campaign when Egypt crossed the Suez and kicked Jew ass and got away with it. In the center of the display is a two-story cement foot about to crunch down on a Star of David. I want to shoot a picture of it, but everybody watching makes me nervous about this damn big negative-print Polaroid.

  An intense young vet of that war leads us personally through the exhibit, pointing out strategic battle zones and fortifications in the big sand model he has built. He is passionately patriotic. He points to a bazooka shell propped against the sand that depicts the Bar-Lev, the Israeli version of the Maginot line.

  "That missile? Made in America. These captured guns? Also American."

  His eyes are hard when he says these things to me, but there is no animosity. Even when he speaks of the Jews (pointing out their faces in the photographs so I can tell the bedraggled Israeli captives from the dust-ridden Egyptian captors), his voice holds no blame. He talks of the Israeli soldiers the way a player from one team speaks of his rivals across the river, with respect. And such close rivals, I realize, looking at the way Fate and the United Nations have placed Cairo and Jerusalem within a jet's moment from each other. No wonder the military show on every street.

  Returning over the bridge I see again our little soldier standing shabbily at guard beside his tent and his haphazard pile of sandbags. We salute and I march toward the hotel, feeling a new familiarity with the political situation.

  October 15, Tuesday. Still unable to begin my article. Lots of walking in town. There are some hard sights, putting my put-down of our pampered lifestyle to the test: childworn wives leading patched families past the fruit stands to the mildewed piles of cheaper foods in the rear; a dog peeled to the bone with terminal mange, gnawing on a Kotex; a cryptic black lump in the middle of the sidewalk, about the size of a seven-year-old, all balled up with a black blanket pulled tight over everything except the upturned palm stuck on the end of a withered stick; whole families living in gutted shells of Packards and Buicks and Cadillacs biodegrading against the curbs...

  "Jacky, what this town needs is some New York tow-away cops. Keep the riffraff on the run."

  And always the smell of urine, and the unhealthy stools half-hidden everywhere. As Cairo has a distinctive and subtle recipe of sound all its own, so it has its odor.

  All in all, it's awful to behold. I carry the special Polaroid I bought in New York with me everywhere, but as yet I'm too squeamish to point it at this hard privation. I remember an argument I had with Annie Liebovitz: "Listen, Annie. I don't want any pictures of me shaving, shitting, or strung out!" Neither would I want any shots of my teeth rotted away, or my eyes gummed over with yellow growths, or my limbs twisted and tortured.

  Tuesday night or Wednesday morn. Today is the last day of the Ramadan fast. Christmas in Cairo. Like New York, the power of this city is overwhelming, a presence too frightful to face. Unlike New York, though, the power of Cairo is generated by more than the daily flow of liquid assets through economic turbines. Cairo's main current streams from its past, out of a wealth that flows toward something yet-to-be - a power of impending power. This is a city of influence since before New York was a land mass, a place of ancient records since before the Old Testament was in rough draft. Somewhere between the brittle no-magic nationalism of the young patriot in the park and the shopworn mysticism of the Illuminoid in serge, this larval account is swelling.

  Even now the cannon fires - the signal for the last day of Ramadan. The caterwaul of traffic politely drops so the amplified chants can be heard from the minarets on this night of nights.

  It gets quiet. You can hear the responses of the faithful in the scattered Moslem night, the prayers rising from the mosques and sidewalks. This afternoon I saw a streetsweeper prostrate himself alongside the pile of dirt he was herding, answering the call from Mecca with cabs swerving all around him.

  Ye gods, listen! It spirals louder yet. Let me out of this moldering room! I'll take my pen and camera and face this thing while it's still damp with dawn.

  I hurry past third-rate Theseus and his plaster legions, through the lofty lobby where chandeliers hang from ceilings infested with gilt cupids, around the praying gateman outside up the sidewalk to the belly-high cement wall that runs along the steep bank of the Nile.

  I put my notebook on the wall. The prayer is still going on but the city's business has stopped holding still for it. Engines sing; brakes cry; horns tootle; head-and taillights blink off and on. Long strings of colored lights go looping along the streets, past elaborate cafe neons and simple firepots cooking kebobs on the curb. In the minarets the chant leaders are vying with the city and each other in amplified earnest, as thousands upon thousands of lesser voices try their best to keep up.

  It's windy, the historic wind that blows against the current so the Nile boatmen of eons can sail south upstream and then drift back downstream north. A dog in the back of a passing pickup barks. The soldier comes out of his tent and sees me at the wall writing in my notebook. He turns up the collar of his long overcoat and comes toward me with a flashlight. He carries it with his hand over the lighted end so it is like a little lamp glow between us. We smile and nod at each other. This close I notice the bayonet on his shouldered carbine is rusty and bent.

  The din across the river jumps even higher in response to the chanting dawn. We turn back toward the city just in time to see first the fluorescent tubes across the bridge, then the landing lamps on the opposite bank, then every light in Cairo blow out - zam! Allah be praised! We turn to each other again, eyebrows uplifted. He whistles a low note of applause to the occasion: "Ya latif!" I nod agreement.

  The amplifiers have been silenced by the power overload, but the chanting in the streets hasn't stopped. In fact, it is rising to the challenge of the phenomenon. Wireless worship. A voice spun from fibers strong as the fabled Egyptian cotton - longest staples in the world! - spindling out of millions of throats, into threads, cords, twining east toward that dark meteorite that draws all strands of this faith together like the eye of a needle, or a black hol
e.

  The soldier watches me write, kindly leaking a little light onto my notebook. "Tisma, ya khawaga," he says. "Een-glees?"

  I tell him no, not English. "American."

  "Good." He nods. "Merican."

  My throat is dry from the wind and the moment. I take my canteen from my shoulder and drink. I offer it to the soldier. After a polite sip he whistles a comment on the quality of such a canteen.

  "Merican army, yes?"

  "Yeah. Army surplus." Ex-marine friend Frank Dobbs had helped me pick it out, along with my desert boots and pith helmet. "United States Army surplus."

  He hands back the canteen and salutes. I salute him back. He gestures toward my notebooks, questioning. I point to the sound from across the river, cup my ear. I lift my nose and smell the Nile wind, then scribble some words. Finally I make a circle with my hand, taking in the river, the sky, the holy night. He nods, excited, and lays his closed fist on his heart.

  "Egypt?" he asks.

  "Yes," I affirm, duplicating his gesture with my fist. "Egypt."

  And all the lights of Cairo come back on.

  We lift our eyebrows to each other again, as the amplifiers skirl back up, and the lights and the traffic join again in noisy battle. When the soldier and I unclench our fists there's maybe even tears. I fancy that I see the face of Egypt's rebirth, charged both with a new pride and the old magic, silhouetted innocent and wise against that skyline of historic minarets and modern highrises - the whole puzzle. I must get a picture! I'm trying to dig the Polaroid out of the bag when I notice the light in my face.

  "No." He is wagging the light from side to side. "No photo." I figure it must be some religious taboo, like certain natives guarding their souls, like me with Annie Liebovitz.

  "I can dig it. I'll just snap a shot of that skyline dawn across the Nile."

  "No photo!"

  "Hey, I wasn't aiming anywhere near you." I start to stomp away, down the wall. "I'll shoot from somewhere else if you're so -"

  "No photo!"

  Slowly I take my eye from the viewfinder. The flashlight has been put aside on the wall to leave both hands available for the carbine. Too late I realize that it is the bridge he is guarding, not his soul.

  I put the camera away, apologizing. He stands looking at me, suspicious and insulted. There is nothing more for us to say, even if we could understand each other. Finally, to regain a more customary relationship, he puts two fingers to his lips and asks, "Seegrat?"

  I tell him I don't smoke. He thinks I'm lying, sore about the picture. There is nothing to say. I sigh. The puzzle of Cairo shuffles off to stand in token attention on the abutment, his collar up and his back turned stiffly toward me.

  The light is coming fast through the mist. The wind dies away for a moment and a sharp reek fogs up around me. Looking down I see I have stomped into a puddle of piss.

  October 16. The Ramadan holiday. Erstwhile Egyptologist Muldoon Greggor calls, tells us to come over to his place; he'll go with us to the pyramid tonight after his classes.

  "Check out of that morgue right now!" he shouts through the phone static. "I've reserved rooms at the Mena House!"

  So it's outta that rundown Rudyard Kipling pipedream through the surging holiday streets up seven floors to the address Greggor gives us. A shy girl lets us in a ghetto penthouse. Jacky and I spend the rest of the afternoon drinking the man's cold Stella beers, watching the multitudes below parade past in their gayest Ramadan gladrags. The shadows have stretched out long before Muldoon Greggor comes rushing in with a load of books. We barely shake hands before he hustles us down to catch a cab.

  "Mena House, Pyramid Road! We want to get there before dark."

  So it is at dusty sundown that I see it at last: first from the window of the cab; then closer, from the hotel turnaround; then through the date palms walking up the hill; then - Great God in Heaven Whatever Your Name or Names! - here it is before me: mankind's mightiest wedge, sliced perfect from a starblue sky - the Great Pyramid of Giza.

  III: INSIDE THE THRONE

  Imagine the usual tourist approaching for his first hit: relieved to be finally off the plane and out of that airport, a bit anxious on the tour bus through that crazy Cairo traffic but still adequately protected by the reinforced steel of the modern machine, laughing and pointing with his fellow tour members at the incongruous panorama of the Giza outskirts - donkeys drawing broken-down Fiats, mud huts stuck like dirt-dauber nests to the sides of the most modern condominiums - "Pathetic, but you gotta admit, Cynthia: very picturesque" - fiddling with his camera, tilting back in his seat a little sleepy from the sun; when, suddenly, the air brakes grab and the door hisses open and he is ejected from his climatized shell into the merciless maw of the parking lot at the bottom of Pyramid Hill.

  A hungry swarm of his first real Egyptians comes clamoring after him: buggy drivers and camel hasselers and purveyors of the finest Arabian saddle steeds. And guides? Lord, the guides! of every conceit and canon:

  "Wel-come, mister, wel-come; you are fine, yes?"

  The handshake, the twinkle, the ravenous cumin-winded come-on:

  "You like Cairo, yes? You like Egypt? You like Egyptian people? You like to see authentic hidden mummy the late King Koo-Foo? I am a guide!"

  Or, even worse, the Not-Guides:

  "Oh, pardon sir if I cannot help but notice you are being bothered by these phony fellaheen. Understand please; I am not a guide, being official watchman, in employ the Department of Antiquities in Cairo. You come with me. I keep these nuisances away from your holiday. I am Not-Guide!"

  Our poor pilgrim fights his way through the swarm up the curving walk to the aouda (a big limestone lot in front of the northern base of the pyramid, swarming with more of the same), presses on to the monstrous stack of stone blocks which are perched all over with more damned guides and Not-Guides grinning like gargoyles... pays his piastres for the tickets that allow him and his nose-wrinkled wife to crawl up a cramped and airless torture chamber to a stone room about the size of the men's room of the bus terminal back home - and smellier! - then hightails it back to the relief of the bus:

  "But tell me the truth, Cyn, wasn't that thing unbelievable big like nothing you ever saw in your life? I can't wait to see these shots projected on the screen at the lodge."

  Unbelievable big doesn't come close. It is inconceivably big, incomprehensibly big, brutal against the very heavens it's so big. If you come after the rush hour and are allowed to stroll unsolicited to it, you witness a phenomenon as striking as its size. As you cross the limestone lot the huge triangle begins to elongate into your peripheries - to flatten. The base line stretches, the sloping sides lengthen, and those sharpening corners - the northwest corner in the corner of your right eye; the northeast corner in your left - begin to wrap around you!

  Consequently the vertex is getting shorter, the summit angle flatter; when you finally reach the bottom course of base stones and raise your eyes up its fifty-degree face even the two-dimensional triangle has disappeared! The plane of it diminishes away with such perfection that it is difficult to conceive of it as a plane. When it was still dressed smooth in its original casing stones the effect must have been beyond the senses' ability to resist; it must have turned into a seamless white line - a phenomenon of the first dimension.

  Even in its present peeled condition, the illusion still disorients you. You tell your senses, "Look maybe I ain't seen the other sides but I did see this one so it's gotta be at least a plane." But planes are something we know, like airfields and shopping center parking lots, hence horizontal. This makes it seem that you could walk right out on it if you just lean back enough to get on the perpendicular. Ooog. It makes you stumble and reel...

  To calm my stomach I leaned against one of the casing stones. It was smooth to my cheek; it made me feel cool, and a little melancholy.

  "It's sad, isn't it?" Muldoon said. "Seeing the old place so rundown and stripped."

  Muldoon Greggor wasn't the twe
edy old Egyptologist we had expected. He was a little past twenty, wearing patched Levi's and a T-shirt, and a look in his eyes that still smoldered from some psychedelic scorcher that had made him swear off forever.

  "It's eroded more in the six centuries since the Arabs stripped it than it did in the forty centuries before - if you accept the view of the accepted Egyptologists - or in the hundred and seventy centuries - if you go for the Cayce readings."

  "Sad," I agreed. "How could they do it?"

  "They figured they needed it." Jacky came to the defense of those long-gone Arabs. "For Allah."

  "More than just sad," I kept on. "It's insulting... to whoever composed this postcard in stone, and took the trouble to send it to us.

  "The Arabs needed the stones to rebuild Cairo. Remember Nasser's construction of the High Dam?"

  Jacky was talking about Nasser's flooding of architectural treasures with the construction of a hydroelectric dam. For the sake of the power-poor millions I had seen in Cairo, I was forced to admit that I would have done the same.

  "Removing the casing stones is different," Muldoon said. "It's like a goal-tending foul committed before the rule was enacted. Now we don't know; was the shot going to go through or not? Those whoevers that built this thing were trying to transmit information important to everybody, for all time. Like how to square the circle or find the Golden Rectangle. None of the other pyramids convey any of this. Their message is pretty ego-involved, saying essentially: 'Attention, Future: Just a line to remind you that King Whatnuton was the Alltime Greatest Leader, Warrior, Thinker, and Effecter of Stupendous Accomplishments, a few of which are depicted on the surrounding walls. His wife wasn't half bad either.' There's none of that around the Great Pyramid. No bragging hieroglyphs. A much more universal message is suggested."

  "Maybe," Jacky said, "it isn't obliterated at all. Maybe in the intervening eons since they sent it we have simply forgotten how to read."

  "Or maybe this was just a decoy," I said, "for the Arabs. Maybe the message was never in there in the first place."

  I can maybe with anybody.