The atheist landed in Medina. It all began sinking in for Joshua as he advanced forward in Ala’s wake. The pushiness of the crowds was overwhelming, a slow-moving river of humanity flowing towards the floodgate of Saudi customs officials.
The crowds were worse than Cairo, if that could be believed. Josh was mashed inside a sweaty mass of diversely dressed men. Some already donned their snow-white ihram robes while others dressed as Joshua did in slacks and a button down. Others still wore t-shirts and jeans. Joshua spotted Indonesians and Indians and Sudanese. There were people from across the globe, but they were all Muslims. And while Josh had a piece of paper that said he was too, the truth in his heart made him feel uneasy. He was the lone unbeliever in a horde of piety. And it felt like they were all staring. They were, in fact, all staring, but that was likely because Josh stood a foot taller than most everyone else. Joshua kept his hand on his wallet, having read about Saudi’s problem with pickpockets. People save their whole lives for these trips and the amount of cash pilgrims carry on their person can be considerable. Not everyone in the world has bank accounts or ATM cards. When it comes down to it, there is quite an incentive to steal in the holy land even with the specter of being behanded if caught. Eventually, it was Joshua’s turn at the front of the not-line. A young Saudi immigration official in a thawb greeted Josh with a warm marhaba, that is hello. Josh responded with the Arabic for two hellos, marhabtein. The man smiled and it seemed that Joshua’s Western look and American passport had heartened him. Or perhaps he was simply amused. Josh wasn’t sure. If there was one thing Josh provided to world, it was entertainment. Strangely, just being a person that looked and acted differently seemed to bring joy to most people. Joshua’s documents were all in order, but his heart still pounded in anxiety. Would they know him to be a fraud? How could they? They couldn’t. Could they? The official gave Joshua’s passport and visa a cursory glance, peered back up to Josh and bid him farewell with a second smile and a mabrook -- congratulations. It was a relief. Still, that congratulations said something. Joshua was not seen as a person who was born a Muslim. He would likely not pass as a Turk or a Bosnian and blend in with the masses. He was perceived a Western convert, an anomaly. A towering, pale abnormality that invited closer inspection. It was troubling for Joshua. After immigration, Ala slapped Joshua on the back and lifted his bushy mustache into a wide grin. “We are here,” Ala announced in his thick Egyptian accent. “The thirteenth of March. When we came to Medina. Remember this day.” “March thirteenth,” Josh said, mustering up a smile. “Got it.” Ala laughed triumphantly and messed up Joshua’s hair. Ala had no hair to mess up, so Joshua settled for shaking his shoulder. After getting their bags, Ala went to the cash machine to try to take out riyals. One never knows if a foreign cash machine will work, so Joshua stood in line for the money exchange. He scratched the beard he had grown out and then checked a P spot between his pointer and ring finger. It was blood red; he was stressed of course. Josh breathed in deep and exhaled in a feeble attempt to calm himself. In front of Joshua were four Indonesians in matching shirts that almost looked Hawaiian and behind him soon stood a man in a kufi and a galabaya. The man’s grey beard was trimmed short and neat, his eyes friendly. Yet, still, something was off about him. He was too well put together. “So, where are you from?” the man asked in an accent that wasn’t American, but desperately wanted to sound American. Joshua hesitated. “Washington, D.C.” he finally said, as coolly as possible. “Oh, I’m from Connecticut,” the man said back cheerfully. Except he didn’t say Connecticut; he said ‘connect-icut.’ No American, not even an immigrant who had spent an hour in Connecticut, would ever make that mistake. “So, you’ve embraced Islam?” Josh’s face was stone. “Yeah,” he said curtly. He waited a few long second and then left the line to find Ala, paranoia aflame. Luckily, Ala had been successful in getting money from the ATM. “Let’s get out of here,” Joshua said. “I think we should probably go shopping and get me a galabaya. I need to blend in more.” “Okay,” said Ala, his brow furrowed in concern. “Let’s check into the hotel first.” Outside the two found a cab and Ala negotiated with the Pakistani taxi driver. Ala bargained like an Egyptian, that is to say brutally. Soon, the two were off for downtown Medina. Medina’s medina, Josh thought, as the rickety taxi raced away from the airport. The name Medina was actually short for al-Medina al-Munawwarah, the brilliant city. The word medina itself, though, just meant ‘city’ and often people used the term to mean the old downtown of any Middle Eastern city. So, by heading downtown, they were heading to the city’s city. It was night, but still sweltering. Joshua could see a beam of light shooting into the sky off in the distance. Towards its origin the taxi drove, racing first past empty desert and then a spattering of remarkably humble homes. Apparently not every Saudi was rich, or else their wealth was on the inside of their homes rather than the outside. The residences were simply cubes of brownish cement, sometimes with an upper level left half unfinished. Joshua had seen that in other Middle Eastern countries as well. He had heard they were left unfinished for tax purposes, that a half-completed home was taxed less than a completed one. He had no way of knowing if that were actually true. As they headed towards the core of the city, the homes transitioned to apartment buildings and then the apartments to hotels. Highway became city streets and the loneliness of the desert was replaced by crowds of pilgrims and shoppers. And then cab turned left. A wall of radiance struck Joshua’s eyes and he squinted. Clearly, this was the source of the beam he had seen from a distance. For a moment it reminded him of that one crazy house at Christmastime that puts up way too many lights. Or perhaps Las Vegas, though Joshua had never been and only knew it from movies. Before he knew exactly what he was looking at, the cab had turned right and a hotel obscured his view. Joshua waited a block and looked to the left, then waited another block and looked again. The massive illuminated structure went on for blocks and blocks. The Prophet’s Mosque, Joshua knew. The taxi stopped at their hotel, an unassuming three-star, and Ala and Joshua made their way inside. The two walked up a pair of marble steps slowly, enjoying the air conditioning. By the time, the two had made it to the reception, the men were cold. Joshua hung back a couple steps from Ala and let Ala do all the talking. The young man behind the desk was dressed in white thawb with a scraggly beard and no mustache. It was a common way for men to look devout, as it was supposedly how Muhammad wore his facial hair. Joshua, though, couldn’t help but think that the reception’s unkempt beard looked like pubic hair. The hotel had, of course, lost their reservation. Ala was angry and a bit disquieted, but on this issue Joshua was not bothered. He knew that this was still the Middle East. Half the time, it seemed, something goes awry with a booking. Eventually, everything always works out after a little waiting. Or a lot of waiting. Still, one cannot panic at every incompetency. As expected, the hotel eventually found the reservation. But then Joshua began to worry. The receptionist leafed through Joshua’s passport and said “Only Muslims can do Umrah.” There was a long pause and then Egyptian fury entered Ala’s eyes. “Do you think the Saudi consulate would give him an Umrah visa if he wasn’t a Muslim? Of course, he’s a Muslim! Who are you to say he is not a Muslim?” The receptionist went pale. He apologized meekly and soon two key cards appeared before Josh and Ala. The two men rode the elevator in silence. Once in the room, Ala dumped his bag and turned to Joshua. “Let’s go get you a galabia.” *** “I don’t think I can make to the top,” said the Kickapoo woman “Yeah, she was feeling sick yesterday,” added her husband. “We thought it might get better, but this morning she’s feeling even worse.” Fuck, thought Kee, the rest of the trip is going to be awkward. And lonely. And maybe even a bit dangerous. When Kee had signed up to climb the mountain back in Moshi, they had told her that she would be climbing with two other Indians. With them gone, it would be just her heading up along with the guide, the cook and the porters. They were all Tanzanian and only the guide really spoke Cree. More importantly, they were all men. She certainly didn’t want to be raped on Kilimanjaro. That would not be a great story. “It’s only the second day,” offered Kee. “I read it doesn’t even get steep until day five.” The husband smirked while his wife let out a nervous chuckle. “I thought yesterday was pretty steep.” She’s not sick, Kee thought, she’s just out of shape. The hike had been mostly through farmland and woods on the first day. Still, there was no use arguing the point. The Kickapoos were heading back, which means she had to make a decision: go back with them and forfeit valuable time and money or continue on with a bunch of random men, of which only one she can communicate with. Would anything likely happen? Probably not. They were professionals, sort of. She then thought back to the pathetically basic office back in Moshi and the disorganized owner. She had sought the cheapest tour company, and that is certainly what she got. The tents were pretty ragged and would most certainly leak. Their dinner last night was nothing more than some basic rice and vegetables. And her guide and porters were practically kids, the eldest being at most twenty. They wouldn’t dare try anything. Would they? She knew where they worked and what their names were. Actually, she didn’t know their names, but she could find out she supposed. If they harmed her, they would probably be executed. Or something. She wasn’t sure about the laws of Tanzania or how good their courts were. Kee wanted to scream out of frustration. Why does rape have to be such a limiting factor for women? Kee counted to ten and thought things through. There was no other group at their current campsite, but there would certainly be more people as they went up the mountain as the trails converged. Perhaps there would even be more people to talk to. It was decided then. She would risk it alone. Kee told her guide that she would continue on and, with that, half the party descended while the other began its ascent. As they headed up the mountain, the trees transitioned to shrubs and then the shrubs to grass. Mud became rock and the loneliness of the wilderness was replaced by jagged peaks frosted with snow. And then is began to rain. Kee walked alone beneath a rain poncho. The porters were well behind her and the guide thirty meters ahead. She wouldn’t have had much to say to them anyway, she supposed. And so Kee was left with her thoughts for hours on end. This glorious climb of Kilimanjaro was certainly not as she had imagined. She envisioned adventure, but this felt so isolating, even boring. Is all adventure like this? Secretly lonely? She had dreamed of Kili and the ghost back in Egypt, but that was the last of him. She had bid goodbye to Nuna in Cairo and after that she slept normally. She dreamed, of course, but of standard slumbering chaos. Her dreams were old TV shows and missing exams, being naked in public and long-forgotten acquaintances. She dreamed of Michigan and skiing, sex and losing teeth. Those were simply the memorable ones as she naturally forgot nearly all of the dreams within minutes of waking. She had actually feared she was forgetting the ghost, so she put a pen and paper next to her while she slept. When she woke she would write, but on review, all of it was gibberish and none of it contained the pale face or his green eyes. After a few hours, the guide eventually allowed Kee to catch up. Timothy was his name, Kee remembered. He was supposedly eighteen, but looked more like fifteen. “How are you?” he asked from beneath his hood. “Feeling tired?” Kee hadn’t really thought about it. Her thoughts were largely on how bitterly cold it was and how wet her feet were. She imaged them wrinkled prunes. “I’m good. Cold, but good.” Timothy looked cold as well. His black lips had a purple tint to them. “Are you happy to be here?” An odd question to ask in the freezing rain, Kee thought, and so she responded with another in kind. “Is anyone ever happy?” Timothy’s brow lowered in puzzlement. “I think so. Children playing are happy,” he offered. “People are happy holding babies.” Was that a crack at me? Does he think I ought to be popping out kids? “But climbing this mountain is painful. Why do people do it?” “I climb Kili because it’s my job.” “Why do you think the others do it?” “Kili is the tallest mountain in Africa.” Timothy said as if Kee didn’t already know that. “I think it makes them feel like they have conquered something.” “I think you’re right,” Kee said. “And I’ll be happy when that something is conquered.” * * * “The fifteenth of March. When we prayed at the Prophet’s tomb. Remember this day.” “The Ides of March. That’s easy.” Ala gave a confused look, but quickly let it go. Somehow they had found themselves in front of the Prophet’s tomb just minutes before Isha, the night prayer. A crowd vied for space before the barrier while the security that guarded the tomb tried with futility to get them to move on. Some men further out were singing. Others were weeping with joy. Joshua simply felt puzzlement. Other than the euphoria of men, there was not actually much to see at the tomb. Elaborate metal gates blocked most of the view of what was behind it. Joshua could perhaps make out a green sheet in the darkness beyond. He had read that the bodies of Mohammed, Omar and Abu Bakr were there. Sir Richard Frances Burton claimed there was an empty tomb reserved from Jesus as well. At one time, the bones of Mohammed’s daughter, Fatima, was back there too. In fact, the mosque began as Fatima’s house. But, at some point, she went missing. Where are you Fatima? For some reason, Joshua remembered little fish. Egyptain bargaining skills had gotten them inside and this close to Mohammed. The mosque was absolutely full, which was saying a lot considering it is the second largest mosque in the world. It supposedly had a capacity of half a million, though Josh wasn’t sure if that included the outside areas. Whatever the case, the front was a mass of bodies, making the way inaccessible. Shunning the entrance, Ala and Joshua had headed to the back door, an exit near the Prophet’s tomb, beneath the great green dome. The Egyptian had explained to the guard that he was teaching and guiding this new Muslim and it would mean everything if he would let them in. The guard had taken at look at Joshua, then back to Ala, then back to Joshua and finally nodded. Call to prayer blasted from the speakers and the men got into line with the others, shoulder to shoulder. Despite reviewing the prayer packet earlier, Joshua could not remember the words to the prayer or how many rakats one needed to take. It made little difference, though - he simply mumbled when everyone else spoke, bowed when they bowed, and prostrated when they prostrated. This time was a bit different to other times he had prayed, though. Because of the crowd, the shoulders of other pressed against Joshua’s tight. And the line of pilgrims ahead and behind him were much closer. Too close. Sure enough, when Joshua went to his knees, someone’s feet were where his forehead should go. And Joshua was certain his feet must be irking the man behind him. Joshua contorted and compressed and somehow finished the first rakat. It was on the second rakat that Joshua was smited. A shock of pain went through his body and he knew at once that a muscle had been pulled. But there was no escape at this point. He had to continue. Through the third and the fourth iteration, Josh prayed for the ending of prayer. Eventually, the ending did come with everyone wishing peace upon the angels on their shoulders. The crowd then sat to listen to the sermon. The words coming from the speaker were gibberish to Joshua, though, other than a bismillah here and an alhamduliah there. He had learned a few words of Moroccan and Egyptian Arabic, but the Imam spoke something else. Modern Standard Arabic? Gulfi Arabic? Here did not know. Josh looked about at the thousands of pilgrims as Ala listened intently to the preaching. Ala had lived in Saudi for a time and seemed to understand the speech. Could it be like Spanish to Italian for the different Arabics? Joshua wondered. “A girl died today on Umrah,” Ala said, translating the Iman’s words. “Twelve years old. She’s going to be buried tonight at Baqi.” The Garden of Baqi was a an enormous cemetery near the Prophet’s mosque, the most holy to Muslims, according to Ala. “In Baqi?” asked Joshua. “Why is she being buried there? Is she special?” “Only that she died on Umrah. Anyone who dies while on a pilgrimage gets to be buried there. Some dying people actually come on Umrah in hopes of being buried there.” The sermon ended and countless thousands started shuffling out of the mosque, though the area around the Prophet’s tomb remained crowded. Josh and Ala took some pictures before making their way make outside. The night air was still sweltering as Ala led a limping Joshua across the courtyard to stairs leading up to Baqi. There a guard stood. And once again, Ala performed his new Muslim routine and once again the guard let the two pilgrims pass. The Garden of Baqi had no greenery; it was a flat a desert. A century back the tombs and graves were bulldozed by the Wahabis who believed that ornate tombs were idol worship. Joshua had seen pictures of old Baqi. Some of the tombs were stunning with one as large as a palace. Now, there was simply sand. That and thousands of square stones the size of his fist to mark the graves. The markers bore no writing. For the first time since arriving, Joshua felt cold. About a hundred feet into the cemetery and blinding flood light illuminated a crowd of a couple hundred men. Ala and Joshua approached and could see an Arab man dressed in a white thawb and red checkered keffiyeh wailing. Not fifteen feet from him, two dozen others in identical outfits were furious digging a grave. A plume of sand had engulfed the diggers and the dust danced before the light. A hundred or so encircled the excavation and Josh and Ala blended into the crowd. It wasn’t long before the grave was dug and, from somewhere, a small body wrapped in cloth was brought forth. It was placed in the hole and, like that, the dozen men filled the grave. A prayer was said, but it was brief and soon the men lined up and shook hands as if it was the end of children’s soccer match. Though there was some kissing as well. It was over quite abruptly and the crowd made their way towards to the gates of the cemetery. The weeping man went last, escorted and held by two others. Joshua and Ala were left behind, as were three Pakistanis. The men all exchanged looks, realizing that the funeral crashers were the only ones still at the site. And without a word, the five men began to leave. * * A light snow was falling on the Indian as she crossed the tundra. The porters were ahead of her, half shrouded in mist, two of them with a massive sack of supplies on their heads and one with a basket. They were the only things around that made Kee think it was Africa. The fog grew denser up the mountain with the summit itself completely hidden by clouds today. Behind her was clearer and she could see patchy grass, black dirt and a light dusting of snow for miles back the way they had come. With each step forward, her surroundings grew a bit more eery and obscured by the fog. She had always thought of blindness being dark, but today it was a dense white cloak. Into the unknown, Kee thought. She had been alone for the past couple days, or at least, she felt alone. Yes, the porters were there and Timothy, her guide, made polite conversation when meals of chicken and rice were served, but those interactions were few and far between. And they didn’t amount to much in terms of content. Timothy would ask if she was tired and she would reply, “I’m okay.” Then the two would eat mostly in silence. Afterwards, she would retire to her tent to read until it became dark and then she would attempt to slumber. The sleep hadn’t been coming easy, though. Her sleeping bag was not very warm and her sleeping pad was much too thin. She could feel the cold creep up from the earth as she lay there, chilling her body. To make up for this, Kee slept in her coat and hat. She also folded her sleeping pad in half to double its thickness, which improved the insulation, but also left her legs exposed to the ground. And so she would prop her legs up on her pack to get them off the frigid ground. On top of this, it had rained each night so far and the tent leaked water into four small puddles at each corner of floor. If she rolled over, as she had the second night, she would end up in the icy water. She had managed a few hours of sleep each night, waking repeatedly to violent shivering. Kee powered up the mountain despite being only half-awake. Her sleepiness had made her angry and her anger had motivated her to walk fast. The fury of her pace along with her indignation warmed her inside her coat. The porters would usually be far ahead, trying to make it to the next camp as quickly as possible. Only Timothy, about fifty meters back, felt obligated to hike at Kee’s pace. The fact that she could see the porters meant she was making good time. There was nowhere to be, really - they would simply arrive at camp earlier, she knew. Still, Kee marched forward. In the cold fog, she could make out another group ahead of perhaps six or so tourists and a pair of guides. Over time, they drew closer until Kee began to overtake them. They were a loud group and from afar she could tell they were Indians. Charuan, Kee knew, such a stilted, ugly language. Eventually, she began to walk beside the trailing woman of the group. “Good morning,” Kee greeted the Charuan, hoping she spoke High Cree. “Good morning to you,” she replied in a spritely tone. “How’s the mountain been treating you?” Kee shrugged. “Alright, I suppose. The terrain is easier than I thought, but the weather has been shit.” “Really?” asked the woman. “Our route has been pretty clear until today.” Kee felt a sense of relief that she was finally speaking to someone beside Timothy. She wanted to rant about the rain and her leaky tent and her loneliness and her fear of being alone around five strange men, but she held back. She didn’t want to seem insane. “Which way did you come?” “From the north, the Rongai route.” “That’s odd. You’d think the weather wouldn’t be that different.” “Yin and yang, I suppose.” Kee wasn’t sure what she was talking about. She knew the yin-yang symbol mainly as a cheesy design that hippies wore. She assumed that it was synonymous with zen or the abstract concept of universal peace or something loopy. Still, she bit. “I’m sorry, yin and yang?” “The cloudy and the sunny sides of the mountain. That’s what yin and yang actually mean.” “Oh,” said Kee. “I thought they were associated with some sort of inner harmony.” “They can be,” said the Charuan as she readjusted her backpack. “In a way. It’s more about how the positive and the negative are always together and always in balance.” “Always? I mean, these past few days, I’ve gotten mostly rain and you mostly sun, but that’s got to be the exception to the rule. Mountains can be completely sunny.” “Yes, but you wouldn’t even know what sunny would be without knowing what cloudy is. And you wouldn’t know what cloudy would be without knowing what sunny is. They are defined by each other’s existence. High and low, good and evil, male and female.” “If we killed all men, women would disappear too?” Kee said, laughing. “As a concept they would. Women’s existence depends of women’s nonexistence in men. Existence and nonexistence produce each other. Without the lows of the Dead Sea, there would be no height to Kilimanjaro. At least, according to the Old Master, the founder of Wayism.” “If women and men define each other, what about hermaphrodites?” Kee teased. The Charuan smirked. “The mountain was both sunny and cloudy. Being both of something doesn’t spoil the yin and yang. ” Kee considered that a moment. “What about being dead? There’s no duality in that. It’s all non-existence, forever.” “Is that the way of it?” The woman smiled wide like she was expecting that question. “The yin and yang are a white dot on a black field and a black dot on the white field. You couldn’t see the white dot if the field behind it was white, likewise with the black. You need one for the other. You need nonexistence for existence and existence for nonexistence. If you didn’t die, life would have no meaning. It couldn’t be defined. It wouldn’t even exist.” Kee thought of the ghost. A dead man, she thought, is he some sort of yin to my yang? If I died, would he start living again? That didn’t make any sense. She pushed him from her mind. Ideas about her own life and death were perplexing enough. She certainly didn’t need to confuse things with her crazy dreams. “Okay, I get the existence and nonexistence thing,” said Kee. “We are white dots of existence floating in a black sea of nonexistence. And we need that nonexistence to highlight our lives. But, eventually we will die. We will become that sea of death, all by itself. Black on black. Nothingness and more nothingness.” “It’s not just nothingness. The white is still there, entangled with the black. Remember, that black sea is what makes the white exist. We become the larger background to everything in the universe, helping define what is there. We become the nonexistence that creates existence.” Kee began to feel cold. Slowing down to the woman’s pace had allowed a chill to get to her. She could feel the sweat on her lower back become clammy. “It’s still scary,” said Kee. The Charuan nodded her head in understanding. “Perhaps, but there’s no need for anxiety. Life and death are one. They are opposites, but still fundamentally the same.” Kee looked ahead into the pale mist. It had grown thick and she could no longer see her porters or the other Charuans. “So, if we are heading up to the summit, we are, in fact, heading downward.” “Yes, deep below sea level, I suppose,” the woman said, chuckling. “We’re heading into the Dead Sea.” * * “When you drink the Zamzam water after the Umrah,” explained Ala ,“One hundred percent your wish will come true.” “If that were case,” said Joshua, “the Palestinians would have a homeland.” Josh said it as a joke, but Ala didn’t smile. Joshua didn’t believe in wishes, but as long he could remember he made the same one every time just in case. Whether a birthday cake, a shooting star or a wishbone, he always asked for his P spots to go away forever. Of course, wishes were fantasy, so his affliction endured. The Zamzam well was likely the reason Mecca existed. It was a water source in the middle of the desert, a caravan stop from traders between Damascus and Yemen. That was not what the Muslims believed, of course. They believed Adam built his house, the Kaaba, in Mecca and later Ibrahim (Abraham) rebuilt the house there. At some point, Ibrahim left his wife Hajar (Hagar) and baby Ismail (Ishmael) in the desert. Hagar became panicked and ran between the hills of as-Sawa and al-Marwa. Meanwhile baby Ismail hit the ground with his foot and the Zamzam spring erupted. The story was ridiculous, a story a small child would question. Nonetheless, today, Joshua was to going to pretend it was true. To complete an Umrah, one must walk around the house of Adam and Ibrahim seven times, run between the hills as Hajar did and drink water from the Zamzam. This is usually followed up with the pilgrim getting his head shaved as an act of humility. “What will you wish for?” Joshua asked. Ala thought on that. After some time of silence, his eyes became shiny. “Only forgiveness,” he said with a lump in his throat. Josh didn’t know what to say, so the two men sat across from each other wordless a few long minutes. Eventually, Ala stood and adjusted the ihram he was wearing. Joshua followed suit, though he couldn’t quite get the robe to wrap around his torso correctly. The white towel-like fabric went over his left shoulder, but seemed to dip a little low as it wrapped around his right side. His nipple was showing, which seemed like it ought to be sacrilege or something. Ala assured him he looked fine. Joshua thought they looked like two men heading to the sauna. He two men put on their sandals and left their room, making their way to the elevators and then the hotel lobby. The hotel let out into a mall, of all places. And of all places, the mall was in a skyscraper towering over the Great Mosque. Joshua had laughed when he saw the view from the food court. One could eat an American cheeseburger and fries while gazing over the the holiest mosque in the world. Ala led the way as the navigated through the mall crowds, down the escalator to the mall entrance. And from there, it just a shockingly short walk to the mosque. And the mosque entrance, they slipped off their sandals and carried them in their hands. It was a Thursday in the late afternoon and the mosque was near full. The central floor was still open, to Ala’s relief. They had entered earlier to find red velvet ropes and guards preventing any more worshipers from getting to the floor. For now, it seemed, the could get to the middle. Joshua’s eyes went to the Kabaa as it had during their first visit. It reminded him of an Indian lying on a wooden floor. It was an impressive sight, the Kabaa, with its circling mass of humanity. It was striking even, perhaps because it was so iconic. But do I feel anything? Joshua didn’t think so the first time he saw it. Perhaps I need to touch it. The men places their sandals in a cubby hole and made their way towards the main floor. The mosque’s layout was much like a baseball stadium. It was roofed on its periphery, but opened up in its center to the sky. Marble floored the field area that was open to the elements, which felt a bit warm to Joshua’s soles at this time of day. Large brown coolers and stacks of tiny plastic cups were on the edges of the marble area with pilgrims lined up to get water like athletes during breaks from the exhausting game. Zamzam, Joshua knew. Inward from the coolers, Joshua and Ala stood with resting worshipers. Just beyond them, inward still, was a rolling circle of the elderly in wheelchairs, youthful pushers behind them, barreling them forward. Past the rollers was the main pack of walkers, mashed together like fans at a rock concert who want to be near the stage. And in the middle was the imposing house of Adam, covered by black curtains. Ala and Joshua took breaths and stepped into the traffic of the wheelchairs, trying their best to avoid a collision. Metal swiped Joshua’s leg a couple times and he was met by a shock of pain when his big toe was run over by a wheel, but the men made to the other side alive. Into the circling mass of worship, the men then merged. It was horrible. Behind Josh, young pilgrims pushed him, making each of his steps a stagger. But, there was no going faster, as ahead of him, there was simply a wall of men. Sandwiched between believers, he could feel the heavy sweat of a dozen strangers. It suddenly occurred to Joshua why the ihram was so similar to a towel. Joshua and Ala were able to stay near each other as they cycled once around. Near one corner, it looked like a massive fight has broken out. Arms flailed, men were climbing over each other, hand were pushed into faces. A guard standing on a ledge of Kaaba brutally ripped men from the area and pushed them on. Joshua was aghast at the site, but to his relief the flow of worshipers went wide to avoid the skirmish. “The Black Stone.” Ala yelled to him. The meteorite, Joshua thought. He had read that a mysterious cosmic stone had been fastened to the eastern corner of the house. No one actually knew if the rock was extraterrestrial in truth. It wasn’t like geologists had ever check. It could be basalt or glass or anything else. Is it really black? Joshua wondered. Perhaps its a dark blue. There was no way he could near it. The third time around the house, Joshua lost Ala, but he was able to get to the inside of the circle, to the Kaaba itself. Worshippers pressed their hands against its bricks while others kissed it. Joshua inspected the giant stiff black curtain before finding a space for his hands above the head of a weeping woman. The kept him hands there for waited. Nothing. The fifth time around he heard girls singing. “Allahu akhar,” the voices chirped. “Alhamdulilliah.” To his right he spied a group of six Indonesian girls, each no older than sixteen, clinging to each other in the mass. A older Pakistani was furiously waving his hands trying to get them to stop. The seventh time around he found Ala again. He was gazing up at the giant clocktower, watching. “This is perfect,” the Egyptian said. “This is perfect.” Call to prayer rang out and the circle stopped. Josh and Ala turned with everyone else to face the Kaaba. The two men were at its front, before a golden door. Ala wore a beaming grin. “The seventeenth of March. When we prayed before the Kaaba at the bab al-tawbah. Remember this day.” The door of repentance. “Okay, I’ll remember.” It was maghrib prayer and the sky was a striking pink. It was beautiful, Josh conceded. The men prayed. When it was finished, Ala and Joshua made their way towards the wing of the mosque where the hills of as-Safa and al-Marwa rested. When Ala had first mentioned running between them, Josh figured these hills would be outside in desert. He had pictured Hagar ascending high to gaze off into the distance in her desperate search for water. In fact, Ala had actually called them “mountains” and so Josh envisioned hundreds pilgrims scrambling up rocky peaks. What Joshua found was more like a hallway between airport terminals. The air-conditioned passageway was a good five-hundred yards long and, although there was no moving walkways, waist-high barriers divided the corridor into three lanes. Pilgrims ran down towards as-Safa in the right hand passage and back towards al-Marwa in the left. The center was reserved for those in wheelchairs and their pushers. Adorning the ceiling above were tubes of neon lights, glowing green. The illumination designated the areas that Hagar supposedly ran, and so most pilgrims did the same during those stretches of the journey. The children seemed to be running the whole way though, while the older and out of shape opted to always walk or be rolled. Ala and Joshua joined the pilgrims heading towards as-Safa, walking when they were supposed to and running when they were supposed to. Josh thought whole exercise fun, the running and the walking in large groups. A friend once told him that the best game at a casino was craps as everyone wins together and loses together. At the end of the hallway, the way ramped upward perhaps twenty feet to a plateau where pilgrims rested as prayed. Jutting from the marble floor behind glass was an outcropping of rock, perhaps another twenty feet high. This was the peak that Hagar gazed out from, Joshua noted. She wouldn’t have been able to see very far. No wonder she couldn’t find water. Josh and Ala admired the golden interior of an ornate dome above them for a moment, but they did not linger long atop the “mountain.” The men still needed to head to al-Marwa and then repeat the trip six more times. The whole journey was supposed to be a couple miles. At the bottom of of marble hill, Joshua felt a tap on his arm. “Muhammad,” a voice said. “Muhammad, Muhammad.” Someone was trying to get his attention. Joshua looked down and saw what looked to be a black ghost. It was a woman, Joshua guessed, dressed in a jet abaya. Her head covering, though, had no opening. There was no niqab or hole for eyes or even a screen like on an Afghan burka. It was just black fabric over her head. Can she see in that? Josh wondered. Out from the curtain of the dark phantom, a human hand emerged and pointed to a old woman in a wheelchair. She was ancient and dressed in a cream-colored abaya and a bright-blue hijab. She could be Hagar herself, Josh mused. He quickly realized that they wanted his help, so he got behind the wheelchair and began pushing the woman into the center lane. Ala smirked and veered right onto the thoroughfare of the able bodied. And so, on to al-Marwa Joshua marched, a wheelchaired woman in front of him and a black sheet to his side. The three walked in silence, occasionally running in silence before walking in silence again. The wheelchair flowed easily on the smooth marble. Only when the they approached the other hill was it a bit of a challenge, but Josh put his back into it and brought the woman to the top of al-Marwa. Al-Marwa was a mirror image of as-Safa. It was, again, a slightly elevated area with a rock behind glass. An identical dome graced the ceiling and men clad in ihrams were pausing them before their next pass. With nothing to see, Joshua wheeled the woman around carefully. He switched to pulling on the chair as he felt gravity bring them back towards the bottom of the hill. Please don’t let me kill this woman, he prayed to someone. He could handle the weight, just barely, but the chair slowed and they made in back in the lane safely. Six more times Joshua made the trip down the hallway to one hill and back up the hallway to the other. The repetition was uneventful. He spotted Ala a few times and he would give him a wave. Once Ala took his picture, amused at Josh’s situation. Sometime around the third iteration, the woman who donned the black sheet disappeared without Josh knowing where she went. When Joshua finally climbed al-Marwa for the seventh time, he found Ala waiting for him. Joshua waved to woman in her chair and tried to give her a warm smile as he departed. She simply nodded. Ala and Joshua made their way to a brown cooler next to the entryway. From there, Joshua could see pilgrims circling the Kabba beneath a night sky. “You did it,” said Ala with a wide grin. “Mabrook, Hajji Ibrahim!” Joshua replied. “Mabrook, Hajji Aladin.” Josh took a plastic cup from the dispenser on the cooler’s side and placed it beneath the spout at the bottom of the giant thermos. He pressed the white button and the cup filled with Zamzam water. He drank, making a wish for smooth skin, and gazed at the Kabaa. Joshua felt nothing. * * * She woke at midnight for the final ascent. Kee had already been sleeping in her hat, gloves and all of the layers she brought, so she was set to go fairly quickly. She found Timothy not far from her tent chatting with the porters. None of them had gone to bed it seemed. After shoveling down some chicken and rice, Kee put up her hood and pulled the draw strings, transforming herself into an eskimo. Timothy took out his ski mask, put it over his head, and placed his reflective shades over his eyes. All signs that he was African were gone. Kee and Tim nodded to each other and then walked away from camp together past a sign that made note that they were at four-thousand seven-hundred meters. They headed towards the ridge, crunching across a field of snow and frozen mud. In the distance, Kee could see a trail of lights switching back and forth up the mountain to what looked like a plateau. Timothy had explained earlier that the cliff before them was not yet the summit, but it was the most difficult part of their climb. It would be three or four hours of rocky steps that went steeply up eight-hundred or nine-hundred meters. After that, was an easier, flatter trek of three or four hours for the remaining three-hundred or so meters to the summit. The two soon the two found themselves with hundreds of other hikers in a line trudging upwards. The many paths up Kilimanjaro had all converged on the last camp and now there was but a single path to the top of Africa. Her days of isolation were now replaced with meandering stream of humanity flowing upward. Despite the cold, the trail of lights reminded Kee of lava flowing from a volcano, in reverse. Timothy and Kee were faster than most, passing climber after climber whenever the path switched back and the trail became a bit wider. Kee noted the faces of those she passed, the ones who had faces exposed to see. As expected, the hikers were almost all Indians with their guides being Tanzanian. Every once in while she saw some Japanese and Chinese, perhaps a Korean here and there. Some looked like mere teenagers, others in their sixties, perhaps seventies, even. Still, they were all unified by some driving desire to get to the top. The climb was anything but enjoyable. So, why go to the top? The challenge of it all? Bragging rights? Spirituality? Kee figured she was the lone hiker there driven by visions. The first hour was not so bad. Kee’s mind wandered and she considered the lives of those she passed back in Tokyo or Tenochtitlan or Beijing or wherever they were from. The pace had kept her warm enough, but Kee could feel her legs were definitely tiring. Timothy appeared unfazed. The second hour was worse. Each step up was a burning pain in the quad of lifting leg. She thought of only herself and what made her think it was a good idea to climb this mountain. She noted that she had slowed and was no longer passing anyone. The cold was creeping through her boots as well, another annoyance. Timothy appeared unfazed. The third hour was grueling. She just wanted it to end. Somehow she was both freezing and aflame. She made a deal with herself: ten steps and then rest. And so she would endure ten fires and then stand, legs numb, staring down the ridge towards the light of camp wondering how far she had left based on how far she had come. Timothy appeared unfazed. In the fourth hour, there seemed to be no Kee. Just pain. At some point, she reached the top of the ridge. It wasn’t an obvious event, but a gradual petering off of the incline. And so she was robbed of any moment to celebrate her accomplishment. Though the going became easier, Kee noted that her breaths remained heavy. The air is thin. There was not much to see on the top of the ridge. The rockiness of the ascent gave way to a snowier path and soon Kee could hear the sounds of creeks and crunches beneath her feet. Kee could no longer see the lights of the camp, but instead only darkness off to her right and left. The world became lonely. The distance between hikers had grown with many turning back. Timothy was behind her, she knew, but ahead of her was nothing but snow. She was lulled into a rhythm of breaths and her steps, the footsteps of those who were ahead of her guided her way. She walked. Kee wasn’t sure when exactly it happened, but the world began getting brighter. Was I sleep walking? Kee wondered. Suddenly alert, she saw that the darkness was giving way to a veil of grayness. Somewhere, past the thick clouds, the sun was rising. She could still only see about a hundred meters in front of her with dark rock and thin crust of snow being all that was to see. Perhaps there was something in the distance. Two hikers? Kee looked behind to check on Timothy. He was maybe forty meters back, stumbling a bit as he walked. Kee stopped and watched him, amused. His feet looked heavy and he teetered like a drunk man. Clearly the altitude was getting to him. Kee glanced back up the mountain. She could clearly see the silhouettes now. It was two hikers, heading towards her. They were on their descent, Kee figured, which meant they had made it to the top and were returning. The summit must close, she told herself. Encouraged, Kee hiked back down towards Timothy who had walked off the trail. She put her arm around him, grasping his shoulder and pulled him back toward the path. “Come on, Timmy, don’t fail me now,” she said. “Everything is better together.” Confused, he put his arm around her as well and the two hiked side-by-side. Kee felt a bond for camaraderie for about five minutes or so. And then Timothy said “I’m fine,” shrugged off Kee’s arm and pretended the incident never happened. As it turned out, the pair descending hikers that she had spotted was only the vanguard to many more. After the two had passed Kee and Tim, six more followed shortly after, then four more after that. When Kee counted a good three dozen coming down, she felt like she was arriving late the party. It wasn’t long until Kee saw it: a green sign, half encrusted with snow, sprouting from a pile of rocks. A couple was in front of the sign getting their picture taken by another couple. As she got closer, Kee could make out the words, written in once in Aztec and once in High Kree: CONGRATULATIONS YOU ARE NOW AT UHURU PEAK 5896 M.A.M.S.L. AFRICA’S HIGHEST MOUNTAIN WORLD’S HIGHEST FREE STANDING MOUNTAIN Kee waited for the second couple, some Incans, to get their picture taken, which seemed to take forever. It was freezing at the summit. After they were finished, Kee pulled out her camera the Incans took pictures of Kee and Timothy and, then, Kee alone in front of the sign. By the time they were finished, a group of four Koreans had arrived and Kee, with shaking hands, took photos for them. After that, there really wasn’t much to do on the summit. Kee hopped up and down to stay warm. She looked in each direction to see if she could make anything out. Perhaps some scenery or, baring that, a vision or a message or a purpose in life. All she really saw was fog. “You thirsty?” Timothy asked as he offered his bottle. Kee took a swig of the icy water. Kee gave a last look at the sign, hoping for a sign. “It’s cold.” Kee finally said. “Let’s go.” * * * Joshua stared upward immobile in bed. He had never felt so much an invalid. He could manage little else but to lie there inspecting and reinspecting the ceiling. There was a speaker directly over him that blasted the call to prayer every few hours and a matching one over Ala’s bed. And in the corner there was a small green plastic placard that read qibla with an arrow pointing to the mosque. Otherwise, the ceiling was bare. The day before Josh had pulled a back muscle for the second time. They had gone to the Mosque of the Two Directions, a mosque that was built to face Jerusalem, but later changed and redesigned to face Mecca. The first rakat of his prayer did it. It was a thousand times worse than in Medina. Ala had been gone most of the day, performing extra Umrahs. He said needed to do one for his late mother, father and uncle. And he said he wanted to do an extra couple for himself as well. Joshua was reminded of that fact that Mormons baptize by proxy and that someone had posthumously made Anna Frank, Elvis, Hitler and Gandhi all Mormons. All of their sins forgiven. Joshua, bedridden with nothing to do all day, had already masturbated three times. His soul had been soiled again after the cleansing of his Umrah. He was somehow behind Hitler in sins now. Josh brushed his hand over his scalp. Stubble was coming in after the shaving. He thought he looked ridiculous, but it felt wonderful. The P spots disappeared within a couple days of losing the hair. For the first time in years, his scalp was his again. The stubble on his head matched the stubble on his chest, his arms, his legs, his penis and everywhere else. It was beginning to itch around his scrotum, so he had been keeping it lotioned. Joshua’s ruined back reminded him of Malcom X, of all people. Josh had read the parts of his autobiography about his trip to Mecca. He complained of severe ankle pain when praying. But Mecca changed Malcom X, making him open to the equality of races, while transforming him into much more of a sexist. Joshua, though, didn’t feel like he had any epiphany. Muslim men would often tell the same tale of how they were wicked and sinful before coming to Mecca. The drinking, they would claim, the women. But after seeing the Kabaa, everything had changed for them. They became family men. Joshua doubted they ever had the wild adventures they spoke of. Or, at least, what they thought was an adventure did not compare to the Western idea. Still, they seemed sincere when they said they felt something when they gazed upon that black cube. Joshua felt destroyed physically, but spiritually felt exactly the same. He slept. He awoke to the sound of Ala snoring. He had returned while Joshua had slumbered. It was dark in the room save the mosque’s glow seeping through the curtains. Josh checked the clock and it read four in the morning. He knew that if there was any time to make his attempt, it would be now. He saw on the night stand that Ala had bought him another tube of muscle cream. With all of his will, he rolled over at grabbed it. He pushed out a handful of cream and put on his lower back. Joshua cringed from the coldness of the cream and his nose filled with the smell of menthol. But, in time, an icy burning numbed him and he felt a bit more mobile. Josh rolled over and grabbed his galabaya off the floor. He slipped in on over his head, not bothering with underwear. Now the difficult part. He put his feet on the ground and then stood. It was agony. Joshua let out a bit of yelp and the shock of pain passed through his body, but Ala didn’t wake. Moving as slow as a centenarian, Joshua shuffled to his sandals and slipped them on his feet. He found a hotel key on top of the TV, put in the in the galabaya pocket and made his way for the door. From there, he hobbled to the elevator, the lobby and into the mall. Josh creeped passed the perfume shops, the gold sellers and the fast food establishments, all with their metal gates rolled down. Josh stood on the escalator and allowed it to deliver him to the mall entrance. Not two hundred feet from the mall was from the holiest mosque in the world. The Great Mosque was open twenty-hours a day, shooting light into the night sky like an sports arena on game night. Unlike during the day, there were no lines to enter. Joshua kicked his sandals off into a pile of two dozen other. He couldn’t bare to bend over to pick them up to bring them anywhere else. Inside, the mosque was still alive with people. Still, it was perhaps only a quarter full now rather than packed as he had seen it last. Josh walked across the prickly carpet to the inner area onto the cold marble. He shambled as fast as he could through wheelchair circle, praying his toes would be spared. Once through, he merged into cycling crowd. He began on the periphery of the inner crowd. They still pushed at this late hour, but not nearly as intensely or rudely as during waking hours. Joshua went once around, scoping out his target. The silver bowl where the stone resided still had a several hundred men fighting near it. Josh spent his second cycle moving to the middle of inner crowd. He was once again mashed, chest to back with the pilgrims around him. On the far side of the kabaa, things were more peaceful, but on stone side, things became a violent again. On his third go around, he gave up on the idea of moving into the inner-most ring. Thirty men were still lined up against the kabaa wall, patiently waiting a turn that may never come, while scores and scores of pilgrims pushed and fought for chance to touch the rock. Joshua went a fourth time around. And then a fifth time around. On sixth round, Josh decided to make him move. With a a sudden and forceful jolt, Josh lunged towards the stone. Humanity blocked him way, so so pressed his feet hard into the marble and pushed like a linebacker. Him quads burned, his back burned, his arms burned, but he pushed. He fought against the other Hajji, ignoring their sweat and their pushing and their pulling. He ignored everything and simply muscled towards the stone with all of his will. But, the scrum pile didn’t move. Instead, hundreds of bodies were simply crushing him. The bodies pressed hard against him, pushing the air from his lungs. He couldn’t breath. He couldn’t think. For a moment, he caught a glimpse of stone, framed by the silver bowl. It wasn’t blue. That was a wrong. It was black. Jet black. A burst of energy came from somewhere deep inside and Joshua managed a deep breath. He pushed again, rather violently, towards the stone, reaching out his arm. I will touch it. I will touch it. I will. He was reaching. Reaching. Reaching. Reaching. Humanity was in the way, but he reaching. And he touched it. It was cold and disgusting. Sweat. “It’s wet!” Josh exclaimed aloud. “Gross!” Several men mashed around him cracked smiles. One began to laugh. Of course it’s wet, Joshua realized. It was a stone being grasped and kissed by thousands upon thousands of sweaty men all day every day. For centuries. As quickly as he had muscled himself in, Joshua was pulled out by the pilgrims around him. He had had his turn. Joshua went limp and allowed himself to drift in the current.
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“Sex, sex, sex!” the man screamed from the window of the passing car. “I want to fuck you!”
Kee looked over to Nuna. “Does that happen a lot?” she asked dryly. Nuna sighed. “Yeah, maybe once every couple of weeks.” She waved her hand dismissively. “It’s not a big deal. You get used to it.” “Really?” “No.” Kee chuckled as they turned off the main road. It was nicer in Maadi, Nuna’s area of town, though only relative to downtown Cairo. Compared to home, it was still a dive. She had to admit there was a sad romantic feel to the decay of the buildings, but that beautiful melancholy could still be seen by some as simply run down and destitute. Kee wasn’t quite sure why Nuna tolerated it all. There were plenty of places to teach in this great big world and yet she chose here. Yes, there are contracts that can trap a teacher at a school for a year or so, but Nuna renewed her gig for a second year and when that year was up, she went for a third. It was not what one would have expected from a small mousey girl like Nuna. Egypt was definitely not Kee’s cup of tea. The air was polluted, there was no place to walk, and it certainly didn’t seem all that safe for women. And yet Nuna stayed and endured. Was she even thriving? Kee had assumed Nuna was staying for some guy she had met, but Nuna said she was single and even complained about their being no quality men around. On top of that, she didn’t say the pay was that great either. What kept her here, then? Was it for adventure? Was she happy? What is happiness? Vanuatu? She has read that it was the happiest country in the world, for some reason. The Egyptians looked miserable. “So, what’s the weirdest thing that has happened to you here?” Kee inquired. “What do you mean?” “Like that back there,” Kee motioned her thumb behind them. “That was pretty weird, yeah?” “That?” Nuna smiled. “No, like I said, that’s pretty common. The weird stuff is some dark, dark shit.” “What?” Kee was intrigued. And since when did Nuna swear? She was the shy and proper one. “Okay, tell me something dark then.” “Last month, I was taking a taxi home and the driver pulled out his penis an started masturbating.” Kee stopped dead. “What? Really?” For effect, she bent over a bit in disgust and clutched her stomach. “I shit you not,” Nuna declared almost braggingly. “I got out the next time he stopped and ran away.” “What else?” Kee was intrigued. “Well, a few months back at the Eagle Club — that’s this foreigner club I hang out at — some Cree guy suddenly went nuts, broke a bottle and stabbed this snooty old Aztec in the neck.” Kee’s eyes widened. “Did you see it? Was he okay?” The two started walking again. “No, I wasn’t there that night, but I heard. The Aztec almost died but someone did this weird thing where you put a credit card over the wound and saved his life. It wasn’t even a fight. The Cree guy just snapped. I think he was in Afghanistan or something and it messed him up.” “Jesus.” And now Kee was beginning to see why Nuna was here. There were stories to tell. Nuna had always been the story teller. At least a story teller to Kee. When they were young, she would invent elaborate biographies for her stuffed animals or unofficial sequels for cartoons they saw. However, the minute Kee would finally get them straight, Nuna would start changing the tales. It was good to see Nuna again. After high school, they had communicated less and less, which she supposed was normal for people who left the area and absolutely abnormal for people who stayed. All of Kee and Nuna’s friends from home were married, it seemed. Half had children. Most were now obese. But, Kee and Nuna were different. They didn’t want the Cree dream with its two and a half kids. Well, maybe they did eventually, but only after seeing the world and living life a bit longer. Kee had been quite excited about visiting her old friend and finally seeing Egypt. She had read up quite a bit on the history of the old, fallen empire. She had read of Imhotep, the engineer, Khufu, the great and powerful, and, her favorite, Akhenaten, the eccentric sun worshiper. She had even started dreaming of pyramids and temples. There was the step pyramid of Saqqara and Isis’ temple at Philae and Ramses’ great underwater temple at Abu Simbel, near the border of Sudan. But what she really wanted to see was the desert. The endless golden dunes. Like the ones that haunted her. Nuna was the only one she had ever told about the ghost. He hadn’t appeared in a while. Not since Morocco really. She had never really understood him and now she couldn’t remember his face. Did she ever know his face? She had seen the world through his eyes, but he must have looked in a mirror occasionally, Kee figured. She must have seen him at some point. Otherwise, how did she know he was ghost? The jetlag was getting to Kee and she was happy they had made it back to Nuna’s apartment. They passed the elderly doorman in his grey gellabiya watching an old black-and-white Egyptian movie on a T.V. thirty years out of date. Kee spied the movie for a few seconds as they walked by. The woman on the screen was thin, uncovered and dressed in Indian clothing - a miniskirt, in fact. It was strikingly odd that the Egyptians were so nostalgic for the old days, but, at the same time, did everything they could today to reject the modern, Indian way of life. The elevator was permanently broken, so they walked up to the fifth floor. Nuna said it was good exercise. “You can’t run outside. Too much heat, harassment and pollution. So, every little bit helps.” Her apartment was surprisingly cool considering the temperature outside. Nuna explained the concrete walls were good for that. Still, Nuna turned on the air conditioner unit attached to the wall and each woman sprawled out on one of the two unmatching couches. They had seen the pyramids at Giza early that say and it was exhausting. Yes, the pyramids were incredible and iconic and all of that, but what a pain in the ass. It was one thing after another. First those men tried to get into their cab. And then those other ones pretended to be tour guides and wouldn’t leave them alone. And the people selling crap everywhere were unbearable. Not to mention the man with the camel who kept following them. Kee had lost her temper several times, which was too be expected. How could anyone keep it together in that mess and in that heat? Still, it was a shock to see Nuna. Kee had never seen her scream so viciously. A moment later she said it was an act and that was how you had to treat them. “So, what else did you want to see here?” asked Nuna. “Did you want to go down to Luxor and see the temples there? We can go diving and look at the flooded temples of Abu Simbel.” Kee considered that. She was a fan of scuba, but she also read the harassment down in the south was pretty intense. “What about the desert?” That seemed to surprise Nuna. “Oh, most people do Luxor or a boat trip down the Nile,” she explained. “But, yeah, we could do the desert. There are the White and Black Deserts. I actually haven’t been yet.” White and black? That puzzled Kee. She always pictured deserts as golden sand. Like the beaches of Lake Michigan. Or like in her dreams. “What are they like?” “The White Desert has all of these cool formations that look like chalk. And the Black Desert has these black cones that shoot from the ground.” Nuna did her best to make a cone shape with her hands. “It’s suppose to be stunning.” Kee thought about that. “I was really think about rolling dunes.” “Oh,” Nuna actually smiled at that and her eyes widened. “For that we need to go out to this place near the Libyan border. There’s this place called Siwa.” “Siwa?” “It’s an oasis.” * * * “Forty pounds?” Joshua was incredulous. “Ten is good.” “Forty,” the boatman said calmly. He really wasn’t budging. Damn him. Josh hated to be cheated. It’s not that he couldn’t pay it, but it was the principle. At least, that’s what he told himself. Josh begrudgingly accepted the Nubian’s offer on behalf of the group. He, Barry and the Korean couple then boarded the man’s boat. On the forth pull of the engine’s cord, the motor started in a cloud of gasoline and they they were on their way to the temple. Josh slowly cooled from being livid to merely annoyed. The other three passengers did not seem to be concerned at all by the price gouging and were instead taking in the beauty of the lake. “You do know that by cheating people you are losing money?” Josh scolded the boatman. The boatman squinted. “How so?” “The tourists go home and they tell their friends that everyone in Egypt cheats you,” Joshua explained. “Then fewer tourists come the next year.” It was a weak warning, Joshua knew. While certainly that may happen, this boatman’s action was a drop in the bucket compared to everything else annoying about Egypt. His individual actions would not likely affect his apparent monopoly ferrying people back and forth to the Philae. It was like convincing people to vote — one vote never really makes the different. “In the long run, its better for you to give people a fair deal.” The Nubian considered it for a moment. “For me, there might not be a long run. I need money today.” Joshua thought about that and shrugged. It was honest answer. Joshua’s anger abated. Who was he to judge this man’s poverty? It made Josh feel a little better about being taken for some reason. This time. But all those other times… It went without saying that Egypt was a hassle. Well, the Egyptians were at least. Apparently, they had been that way for a long time. Josh had remembered reading Mark Twain’s journey and he had faced some of the same difficulties. Joshua wondered if it all went back to the time of pharaohs. Did they hassle the Greeks like this? Amazingly Egyptian features did resemble their painting of old - the skin tone, the shape of the nose, right down to the Egyptian proclivity for baldness. And as they headed south into Upper Egypt, the art switched to a Nubian look to match the people. Thousands of years had past and the art still imitated the life. Perhaps their personalities matched as well. Barry had stated that he was glad he came to Egypt, but said he’d likely never return. That was quite a condemnation really. Usually when people visit somewhere like, say, France, they rave about returning. They probably never will, but their honest desire is hard to dispute. With Egypt, though, tourists leave exhausted and disheartened, run down by the incessant touting and bargaining and harassment. It was shame, for not just the tourists, but for Egypt’s tourism industry and the people’s livelihood connected to it. The industry should really be bigger. After all, the sights of Egypt were second to none. They were out of a dream. They were out of Joshua’s dream. It wasn’t long before they had docked at Philae. Joshua checked some P spots on the inside of his forearm, noting they were a light pink. He then rolled the sleeves up on his t-shirt in order to get a bit more sun on his shoulders. It was impressively strong sun this far south. The heat of sun rays was relaxing to him, though he wondered if that was some sort of personal Pavlovian response. The four tourists left the boatman, and paused for a moment as they figured out the most efficient route for taking in the ancient, immeasurable beauty of the temple. “So, what’s the deal with this temple?” asked Barry. “This was the main temple for the Cult of Isis.” Joshua explained. “A cult?” Barry furrowed brow. He clearly hadn’t read anything in the guidebook. At least not the guidebook on Egypt. Barry had found a couple books on subsaharan Africa and had been reading those for most of the trip instead. “Didn’t everyone believe in Isis? Is there a temple for the Cult of Horas?” “No, Isis was different.” The men began to walk, leaving the Koreans behind. The couple was busy repacking their backpacks after pulling out sunblock. “The Egyptians who worshiped her were becoming more monotheistic. They started seeing her as the mother of the world and the gateway to the afterlife as well. This was a pilgrimage sight for her worshipers.” “Pilgrimage? Like Mecca?” The words struck Joshua. He vaguely remembered dreaming of the Indian and the blue stones. She had stood where he had stood back in Morocco, he was sure of it, but the stones hadn’t spoken to him. There was nothing special about those painted rocks in the end at all. His life, as it turned out, wasn’t some movie. And yet. For some reason, with that memory of blue stones came an image that made little sense. He now thought of a different Indian, one he did not know. The Indian was drunk on a hardwood floor in a room that was spinning. And there were people, dressed in white, circling that black box. Had he dreamed that? Had she dreamed that? Josh snapped out of it. “Yeah, even the foreigners got into Isis. It was in many ways them that kept the tradition alive. The Egyptians moved on to foreign gods and fusion gods like one named Serapis who was both Greek and Egyptian. Finally Christianity mostly took over. But Isis endured the longest of the old Egyptian gods and, in part, it was because Greeks and Romans started worshiping her as well.” “Like soap operas,” Barry said. Joshua grunted in confusion. “White people hardly watch them anymore,” Barry explained. “They’re only on because Mexicans like them. The foreign culture keeps them alive. Same with heavy metal. You have to go to Scandinavia for that.” The two men came to a massive carving of Isis. Or what used to be her. She stood twenty feet high and had long ago been vandalized. Her face and body had been picked away as if by some enormous woodpecker on soft pinewood. A cross had been carved in a pillar nearby. Deep and bold, it looked like it had been stamped into the stone. Joshua thought the destruction both deeply sad and fascinating. “It’s always the foreigners that are the most devout.” Barry stated as he pulled out his camera. Joshua did the same. “Yeah?” “Think about it. Who were the Crusaders?” Barry paused to take a picture of the destroyed goddess. “Dudes living thousands of miles away from where Christianity started who couldn’t even read Greek or Aramaic. Who are the craziest Muslims? The Afghans and Pakistanis. Guys who live thousands of miles from Mecca and can’t read Arabic.” Joshua took a near identical picture to Barry’s with his camera. “I would say the Saudis and pretty nuts too and they’re right there.” “Fair enough,” Barry conceded. “But I still think there’s something to the insecurity that the outsider feels. They have to be more royal than the king and more papal than the pope to make up for the fact that they feel inauthentic. Like those suburban white kid who are into karate and have to indulge in everything else Japanese as well.” “Don’t knock those kids.” Joshua grinned. “There probably wouldn’t be anyone left doing karate without them.” “No doubt.” Barry focused his camera at the cross. “It’s funny that cultures always start to fear foreigners. But it’s the foreigners who, in many ways, keep the traditions alive.” “Sometime the foreigners even help invent the traditions. You know, I read that belly dancing, which is supposedly such a Middle Eastern thing started with one foreigner stumbling upon some random family of Egyptian dancers. We have no idea who they were and they were probably more tumblers than dancers based on his account. Anyway, this foreigner went home and told people about dancers and then the next round of tourists showed up in Egypt demanded to see dancing. So, the locals kind of made up belly dancing to make money off of the tourists.” The men walked to the temple’s main doorway. “Is that what you think we’re doing here?” asked Barry. “Traveling thousands of miles from home to feel like we are absorbing the essence of the ‘other.’” Joshua shrugged. “Probably in part. I mean, people feel like they are eating foreign food when they eat a burrito or California rolls, but its not really foreign. It's all American.” “But those things do objectively taste different from, say, a burger.” “They do, but we still feel compelled to eat California rolls with chopsticks.” Barry was thoughtful. “I grant you that many differences are imagined. But many differences are real. They speak Arabic here. Most of them pray five times a day. The women all cover up. Those are real differences.” Joshua shrugged. “So, I suppose we are here to experience something that is part real and part imagined. I guess that’s not surprising. Everything is partly real and partly imagined.” Barry shook his head. “No, that’s not true,” he objected. “Science is real. We have empirical proof of real things.” Of course Barry would say that. He was a geologist. “But you have to admit that some of science is wrong,” Josh parried. “In five hundred years, some conclusions made will be found to be wrong. Science is, thus, partly imagined.” Barry squinted in skepticism. He wasn’t ready to concede the point. The two men wandered a bit more before running into the Koreans. The couple asked to have their picture taken in front of a carving of Isis with the wings of a bird. Barry and Josh had the Koreans do the same for them. “I was thinking about what you said in the boat,” the young man said as he gave back the camera. “Which part was that?” asked Joshua. “About the effects of one bad experience on a whole country.” The Korean’s English was good. He must have studied abroad somewhere. “The boat man did not think his contribution is significant, but some things in life are unstable equilibria.” The Korean’s English was very good. “Unstable equilibria?” Josh repeated. “Butterfly wing causing a tsunami,” Barry said. “It’s a physics term for things that get out of hand. A stable equilibrium is a like a marble in a valley. Hit it, and it rolls back to where it was. An unstable equilibrium is a like a marble on a hill. Hit it, and it rolls away faster and faster.” “Exactly,” said the Korean. “One bad experience can create an infinite number of bad stories. And then fewer people come to Egypt, so they have less money and the then there’s more civil unrest and so fewer people come to Egypt.” “So, the boatman is responsible for everything falling apart in Egypt after all?” Joshua joked. “So, you study physics?” “Engineering,” said the Korean. “That’s too bad. I had a physics question I wanted to know about.” “I’m interested in other parts of physics. You can try me. What is it?” “Well,” Joshua said. “It has to do with alternate universes.” * * * “I hate the hijab,” Kee stated in a bitter tone. “It’s disgusting.” Rania was furious at this point. “It’s their right to wear it!” she blurted. “How can you say that?” “You’re conflating what people have the right to do and what they should do. People have the right to tattoo 'I’m a moron’ on their forehead if they want. It’s still idiotic.” The Egyptian fumed. Kee found the Egyptians were an emotional bunch. Back home, keeping your cool was a virtue. But here the Egyptians seemed to exaggerate their emotions like they were performing on stage in a farce. What was odd about the whole argument was Rania didn’t even wear a hijab. She was Muslim, but didn’t feel the need to cover her long black hair. Kee, recalling the screaming man from the car and knew how difficult that choice must be for Rania every day. And yet here Rania was violently defending a choice that she, herself, doesn’t make. Perhaps she had a slew of friends who wore the headscarf. Or perhaps she was just argumentative. Perhaps she was like Kee. Kanen remained silent, staring at the road as he drove, occasionally shifting in his seat uncomfortably. It impressed Kee that he had not jumped into the middle of this dispute between Rania, his girlfriend, and Kee, his countryman. He had a calm demeanor and empathy might as well have been his reason to live. He was remarkably well suited for his position at the Cree Embassy in Cairo. To Kee’s right and behind Rania, Nuna was silent. Kee figured Nuna agreed with her, but she certainly wasn’t one to argue. Or at least she wasn’t one to make an ass of herself, Kee thought. Kee couldn’t help herself. She was always finding herself in the middle of an argument. She knew she wasn’t going to change any minds today, but she simply couldn’t help herself. “The hijab is a woman’s devotion to God,” Rania explained. “You have to respect someone’s religion.” Do I? Kee was simply baffled by Rania. Everything about Egypt was loud and in your face and nothing seemed to be about respect. Back in Cairo, Nuna had taken Kee to a wedding. The families had taken over a street and filled it with tables and chairs for the party, blocking out the traffic. Men sat around eating, drinking, smoking hash and watching a belly dancer until four or five in the morning. At one point a man even shot a gun in the air. Huge speakers blasted music so loud that her chair shook. Nuna’s words were naturally drowned out, and so without conversation, Kee could only people-watch that night. After examining each and every wedding guests, Kee’s gaze meandered upward to the balconies of the decaying buildings surrounding them. And there, overlooking the rowdy reception, was a poor Egyptian man and his young daughter peering down, looking so very tired. No one was respecting them. “I’ve read the Quran,” Kee said. “There’s nothing in there about wearing hijabs.” “In al-Azhab it says to,” Rania protested. Kee had had this argument before. Al-Azhab was a surah of the Quran that Muslims commonly pointed to to convince women to cover their heads, and sometimes their faces too. “Nope. That surah says to wear a jilbab,” Kee countered. “A jilbab is not a hijab.” In actuality, no one really knew what a ‘jilbab’ was. Islamic scholars argued about whether it was a loose dress, a hooded cloak, or a full face-covering niqab and abaya. They could never agree. And the fact that it was still argued about fourteen centuries later was extremely telling. “Then what is a jilbab?” Rania put back to Kee. “Whatever you want it to be. A top hat and a monocle, for all we know.” Rania scoffed, though Kee was fairly certain she didn’t know the word monocle. “Almost all of the scholars say that women should cover their head.” That was true. “Interesting that a parade of old men have come to that conclusion,” said Kee with biting sarcasm and a smirk. “Didn’t you say the hijab was all about a woman’s devotion to God? Strange that men are so intimately part of that.” “Isn’t there a hadith that says to wear the hijab?” Kanen asked. He had finally chimed in. Kee knew he had a breaking point. Criticize the patriarchy too much and even the most liberal-minded man will get defensive. “Hadith is ridiculous,” Kee said. “Its Chinese whispers.” The minute that came out her mouth, Kee knew she she had gone too far. Perhaps back in the Cree Lands among like-minded people she would have gotten away with insulting a religious text, but not in the Middle East. Kanen and Rania both fell silent in disapproval. Kee, of course, did believe hadith was ridiculous. It was a collection of hearsay chains on things Muhammed supposedly said and did — al-Bukhari writes that Abdullah said that Omar said that Muhammed said that lamb is tasty. Of course the message was going to get mixed up. Every child in the Cree Lands who had ever played Chinese whispers knew that. Kee did not understand how millions upon millions of people could be blind to this obvious flaw. Well, actually, she could understand. She went to CCD on Saturdays and remembered what they taught. They were the most ridiculous of stories — Noah living five centuries and building an ark for millions of animals, Jonah being swallowed by a the giant fish, Joshua circling the walls of Jericho seven times with the Ark of the Covenant before blowing them down. Even as children they doubted their veracity, but as the years went on, questioning made Kee more of an outcast among the other kids. When she was around eleven or twelve, one of the other girls told her after class that she was going to hell and so Kee begged her mother to not go anymore. Her mother agreed, thinking it would be a phase, but Kee never returned and eventually stopped going to church, much to the heartache of her grandmother. To please her mother and grandmother, she did make a trip to Carthage at eighteen, but she spent more time drinking at the hostel than reflecting on God. Uncomfortable silence lingered in the car for half an hour until Kanen decided they needed gas. While Kanen figured out the pump, the other three got out and shook feeling back into their legs and took turns using the bathroom. Behind the gas station was a great deal of nothing. Kee wandered to the parking lot’s edge to get a better look at the desert. A hot wind blew relentlessly at Kee and pushed her hair into face, making her wish she had a scrunchy handy. She tried haplessly to push all her hair behind her head to let the sun hit her face, but the wind kept pushing some of it forward. She knew sand was likely getting in there as well. Irony, she thought, a hijab would help. The desert at her feet was a mix of dirt and rock. And it stretched out flat as far as she could see. It was all wrong. There were no golden dunes. No oasis. Not even a mirage. Maybe it would change as they headed further west. Hopefully. Kee put her hands into her pockets and was reminded that she had finally dreamed of the ghost the night before. Of course, none of the dream made much sense. There was an Asian guy, maybe he was Chinese, talking about something to do with science. Whispering? She couldn’t understand any of it. In the morning, Kee found a pen a scrawled two words onto the back of the first piece of paper she could find, which happened to be her ticket stub to the pyramids. The dream had faded and she had forgotten all about it until now. Nuna appeared beside Kee, with her hair flapping in her face as well. She stood wordless staring at the same void that Kee was fixed on. “What do you see?” Kee asked over the sound of blowing wind. “Nothing,” Nuna said almost cheerfully. “It’s kind of calming.” “Is it?” “Absolutely. Cairo is so chaotic. Sometimes you just need to stare out into nothing to clear your head.” Kee did that for moment. Nuna was right; the horizon did calm her. It reminded her of Lake Michigan. “Isn’t it funny that this nothingness is so pacifying, but the nothing of death is so terrifying.” Nuna peered over to Kee and smirked at the grim transition. “Well, I find it calming. But, I imagine that most people find it terrifying. Some people say that’s why religious extremism comes from the Middle East. Too much desert to stare at. Too much nothingness to face.” “More like too much time on their hands.” “Maybe,” said Nuna with a grin. “You know, all of this is about agency.” Kee remembered someone using the term ‘agency’ repeatedly back in university, but she forgot who. A communist, maybe. “What do you mean?” “You’re right about the hijab,” Nuna explained. “It is sexist. Humans have various means to get by in this world and looks is one of them. Some people have skills, education, maybe connections. If you have none of those, you might be lucky and still have your looks. The hijab tries to take the last bit of agency from women here.” “Thank you—‘ “However,” Nuna stressed. “You have to remember that piety is a form of agency here. Men can go to mosque and mash their head into the ground until they get a scar on their forehead, but women are left with few options to prove they are holier than thou to the neighbors.” Kee thought about that for a moment. “Those are scars on the people’s foreheads? I though it was ash. Like on ash Wednesday.” Nuna laughed at that and the two stared a bit longer out at nothing. Kee pulled ticket stub out of her pocket and handed it to Nuna. Nuna, puzzled, read the scrawled words. “Quantum entanglement?” * * * Three statues to the king stood while a fourth lay toppled. They were majestic to say the least, standing about forty feet high. Actually not standing; sitting on giant thrones. The faces gazed out to the Nile calmly, majestically and with the faintest of smiles. Joshua thought of a poem from grade school — Ozmandius. The author was wrong. It had been decades, but he remembered the gist of the poem. Joshua must have been eleven or so when the class had read it together. There were statue legs in the desert, if he recalled correctly, and an inscription to look upon Ramses’ works even though they were all gone. The teacher had asked the students the meaning and a few had managed the “correct” answer. The empires of yesterday are the dust of today just as the empires of today will be the dust of tomorrow. Even the acts of greatest of men are nothing against the brutal adversary of time. And yet the legs still stood, Joshua had protested that day, and even if they didn’t, Ozmandius is, in fact, still remembered. Even in the writing of the very poem, Ramses was the author’s muse. Josh often questioned what his teachers had said. He remembered once questioning, quite wrongly, the same teacher’s statement that the United States was the most powerful country in the world. “Is it really the most powerful country in the world or are you just saying that because we live here?” Despite the error, Joshua quite liked the memory. He was critical, even back them. Abu Simbel was impressive. Not just in that the Egyptians built it three thousand years ago, but also because it had been moved to higher ground when the Egyptians built the Aswan dam to save it from the flooding. Piece by piece, the archaeologists and engineers recreated the scene from below. Even the toppled fourth king was placed in his new home as ruined as he was. Joshua slipped off his backpack to find his camera. As he took out the camera and bottle of water, he noticed something shiny on bottom of pack. He reached down and pushed aside an unopened bottle of sunblock to find that the object was a lighter. Joris’ lighter. How did that get there? Joshua puzzled at it a moment before placing it in his back pocket. Barry and Joshua passed between the kings to the inside of the temple. As expected, the interior was immaculately carved and adorned with the two-dimensional Egyptian characters that every other temple had. There was a Horus here; an Isis there. And, of course, Ramses everywhere. After a while, the images all blended together, though these carvings were noticeably of a higher quality than most. A tour group crowded in a corner to the right, all gazing at a relief as their guide explained its inner meaning. Or what the guide simply made up. They would never know. Joshua, as inconspicuously as he could manage, strolled by them slowly in hopes of listening in and stealing some of the tour guide’s knowledge or myth. Italian, Joshua realized after hearing a few words, Italians loved their tour groups. Joshua had studied Spanish and had always maintained that he could understand Italian as the two languages were so similar. However, as he listened in, the comprehension did not come as easily as he hoped. Have I forgotten that much? Did I never know that much to begin with? Ramses, he heard. Vittoria, he caught. Gente di mare. The group moved on leaving Josh staring at the wall alone. It was of Ramses, if the guide was to be believed, though the king was gigantic compared to the figures around him. Ramses donned the typical Egyptian hat, the one that looked like a bowling pin. In Ramses’ left hand he held the hair of a dozen men. The men, dwarfed by the size of the king, hung from his clenched fist like a bag of fruit. In Ramses’ right hand looked to be a large wooden spoon, though, in truth, it was probably meant to be a mace or some other weapon. The weapons was drawn back by Ramses and ready to finish of his foes. Barry soon found Joshua, still transfixed on the relief. “Who is the dude off the left? I see his image everywhere.” Joshua looked. On the other side of the soon-to-be smited men stood a figure nearly as tall Ramses, but not quite. His hat was two tall pillars. “That’s Amun-Ra,” Joshua said. “The king of the gods.” “Ramses is taller than their main god? A bold artistic choice.” “Does your book say anything about the Sea Peoples and this temple?” Barry leafed through the pages. “Yeah, it says here there is something called the Bulletin here written by Ramses the second describing his defeat of the Hittites at the battle of Kadesh.” Barry read “Among the Hitties’ allies were the Sea Peoples who would grow increasingly troublesome for eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age societies.” Joshua thought about that. “So, the carving is a lie. Ramses never really defeated them.” “Well, first off, we’re not sure if those people there are the Sea Peoples. But, second, technically speaking, its accurate. He hasn’t killed them yet. Look, he’s about to defeat them.” Barry pointed to the wooden spoon. “But, he hasn’t done it yet.” “Ramses is just going to stop and let those guys live?” “You never know,” Barry said. “I head an article that, in fact, stopping an action is the real mystery of universe. It’s the thing makes us truly great.” Joshua didn’t understand. “I’m sorry, explain that to me.” “So, consciousness is this huge mystery, right? We are here in our heads and aware of ourselves for some reason and we don’t really know why. The religious simply say God bestowed us souls or some crap, but scientifically, why did we evolve to become self-aware. Well, many believe the reason consciousness exists is free will - the ability to choose.” “Okay,” Josh said cautiously. “I follow, I guess.” “But, we don’t actually have free will; free will is an illusion. Brain scans show that we make decisions before we are aware we have made decisions.” Josh furrowed his brow in disbelief. “What? How is that possible?” “They hooked some people up to an MRI or something and told them to randomly look to the left or look to the right. That is, to make a choice. And the instant the subject makes the decision, they are to press a button signaling the choice is made.” “Okay, and?” “Well, he brain scans showed that the neurons were firing for either looking right or left before people pressed the buttons. And it wasn’t even close. There was like a six second disparity. The brains had made the decision before the mind was consciously aware it made the decision.” “Really? Wait, you’re saying the machine would know I would look left before I knew I was going to look left?” “Apparently. Your consciousness doesn’t make the decision, your subconscious does and then tricks your consciousness into thinking you made a decision.” “If there’s no free will, why consciousness?” “Because of free won’t.” “Free won’t?” “There’s this six second or so delay, right? That’s huge. Enough time for your conscious mind to tell you whether something is a bad idea or not. The ‘wait,’ the ‘change course’, the ‘hold on, new plan.’ Don’t eat that cookie. Don’t rape that hot woman. Don’t murder that guy.” “So, you’re saying that me, this conscious being floating inside my head is simply some mechanism to keep by id in check.” “Or your subconscious or whatever. All the parts of your brain that can’t stop themselves. Consciousness is the buzzkill.” “Consciousness is kind of a buzzkill,” Joshua laughed. “Still, looking right or left are the simplest and most sudden of choices. We have larger decisions in our lives that we contemplate. Ones that take longer than few seconds to resolve where he weigh the complicated pros and cons. Who is to say when we choose to between two things like, say, go to the grocery store or stay home, that the decision we ultimately make is the first subconscious choice or your free won’t kicking in?” “I don’t know,” admitted Barry. “A mystery of life. I’ve always wanted to climb Kilimanjaro, but have never gotten around to it. Is my subconscious wanting to do it, but my free won’t is stopping me, telling me its too difficult? Or did my free won’t put the idea in my head in order to stop my subconscious’ pursuit of a regular boring life? Or maybe both are going on in a big contradictory battle.” Joshua thought of crazy decision and looked up at Ramses with his would-be victims and the spoon. He stood in indecision. Joshua let six seconds pass. * * * “Alexander came here,” Kanen said, his head buried in the guidebook. Kee looked at around at the walls of the ruin. “Why?” “I don’t know, but the oracle here supposedly confirmed him as divine, the son of Ammon-Zeus, and proper pharaoh of Egypt.” “And the greatest ghost who ever lived,” added Nuna spritely. The name Zeus rang a bell for a Kee. He was the old king of the gods for the Greeks and Romans before Hannibal Barca defeated them with his elephants. After that the ghosts started worshiping the Carthaginian god Baal for a bit, though it wasn’t long until Christianity came along. “Who was Ammon?” Nuna asked. “Amun-Ra,” Kee explained. “The king of the Egyptian gods.” Kee wasn’t sure why she had the answer so readily. “Oh, right,” Nuna said, sounding bit embarrassed for not making the connection between Amun and Ammon. “I think Alexander merged his god, Zeus, with the Egyptian god, Amun.” said Kanen. Kee found the whole story odd. “So, this conquerer ghost takes the Nile where all the people and wealth were and then chooses to come out here. To Siwi, this tiny isolated oasis, for seemingly no reason other than to take this oracle.” “Maybe he had a sign from God?” said Rania. “You mean, Ammon-Zeus,” corrected Kanen. “Maybe he had a prophetic dream,” Nuna said with a knowing smirk for Kee. “Or maybe he just chose to march off in a random direction for the adventure of it all.” “Seems off.” Kee declared. “I mean, our drive out here was a pain enough. He was marching an enormous army through the desert. To what end?” “My theory is it was political,” said Kanen. “He probably needed the religious leaders to agree with this god merger and to declare him divine to help subjugate the Egyptian masses along the Nile.” “All for a merger?” Kee said. “Humanity spend all of this time to get away from each other and then just ends up merging back.” “It’s pretty common for religions to join ideas,” said Kanen. “It makes conversion easier. Amun-Ra was already a merger of two gods, Amun and Ra. Why not do it again with this Zeus?” “I suppose,” said Kee. “It’s just...you know the story of Isaac and Ishmael?” “Abraham’s sons,” said Nuna. “I remember Sunday school.” “Right, except Christians and Jews believe that Abraham tried to sacrifice Isaac and that Isaac was given the holy land. Muslims believe it was Ishmael.” “It’s true,” said Rania. “Ibrahim tried to sacrifice Ismael, not Isaac.” “Here’s the thing, though,” explained Kee. “I read that Ishmael and Isaac were probably the same character at one time. It was just a translation issue. One text said Isaac, another Ishmael. There was a split. And later someone stumbled upon the two stories and tried to reconcile the texts. But that was no conversion going on to bring people together. If anything it codified the other tribes as enemies.” “Maybe it not about merging,” pondered Nuna. “Maybe it more like you said - a reconciliation of ideas. The story of Jesus doesn’t make sense either. The Old Testiment said that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, but Jesus was from Nazareth. They needed to reconcile the stories. And so we have this ridiculous notion of a census putting Joseph back in Bethlehem.” “Why is that ridiculous?” asked Kanen. “The whole point of census is to count current residents for the allocation of resources. Sending people away to their home city for counting serves no function whatsoever.” “So you’re saying, what, Alexander came to Siwa to reconcile stories?” “Alexander was claiming to be the son of the king of the Gods, Zeus. But, here in Egypt, the king of the gods was Amun-Ra. If he was going to keep the masses in line, something needed to be reconciled.” With that, the party of four had finished with the oracle. There was little at the ruin there save empty rooms, after all. So, the group returned to the jeep, let the hot air escape it for a few seconds and climbed in to continue their tour of the area. Kanen next drove the vehicle west. Within a couple minutes, the paved road became a dirt one as they reached the edge of town. Buildings transitioned to farms, doing their best to eke out crops in baking heat. The farmland then gave way to a desert of rocky dirt and the road vanished. The jeep shook from side to side as it crunched over stones. A few shot up to hit on the underside of the car, each ding causing its owner, Kanen, to cringe. And then the sand began. The jeep seemed to float as it ascended the gilded mountain of silk. It was a steed racing though the desert, Kee imagined. Racing towards…what was it? At the dune’s summit, Kee caught a glimpse of the sun. It glowed a yellowish-orange, not white. That’s wrong. There were no arches and no domes. Nonetheless, it was stunning. An endless ocean of golden oblivion. And then. “An oasis!” Kee yelped as she saw the green in the distance. In unison, Nuna, Kanen and Rania all looked at Kee as if she were in insane. “That’s where we’re heading,” Kanen explained calmly. “It’s a swimming hole.” After the jeep conquered a few more dunes, they were there. Although, there was no fig tree. That’s also wrong. Reeds and tall grass surrounded the small lake. Wrong, wrong. The jeep circled the lake, searching for the best place to approach the water and finally settling on a clearing where other car tracks lay. The four adventurers exited the car and took in the scenery for a moment, listening to wind whip across the desert and rustle the reeds. Nuna was the first to take off her shirt. She stripped down to her underwear and tip-toed towards the lake. Kanen followed suit with Rania. Kee was last to remove her shoes, pants and shirt. Somehow the Muslim beat me. Inside her shorts, she placed her money belt. Despite being alone in the middle of desert, it still felt odd to take it off. The beach of the lake was muddy and cold. It mushed between Kee's toes and she approached the water and made a suction sound every time she lifted her foot. She broke the surface of the lake with her mud-covered big toe, sending a ripple out. It was nice, cool. She walked out. Under the water, the earth became a soft mush. With every step, clouds would erupt on the lake’s floor obscuring her feet. It was nothing like the beaches of Lake Michigan. Kee didn’t like the feel of the bottom so when the water became deep enough, she fell forward into a swim. To the middle of the lake she paddled. At the water hole’s center, Kee rolled over to her back and stared at the cloudless violet sky. It was gorgeous. She relaxed and urinated. The water went from cool to warn to cool again. She listened to the splashes and laughs of Rania, Kanen and Nuna off in the distance. They were ecstatic. There was a tickling at Kee’s feet. And at her elbow. And at the back of thigh. She bobbed upright for a moment and held still, gazing down into the water. She could see them beneath the surface. They were tiny fish, smaller than minnows, hovering around her like a hundred little hummingbirds. They nipped at the dead surface of her skin. She tried to catch one but it was too fast. Not Fatima. Kee wondered how all the little fishies got to this tiny little pond in the middle of the desert hundreds of kilometers from an ocean or river or stream. A bird, she supposed. Some left over survivors hidden in the mouth of a pelican or something. She pictured some horrific journey for them. Nearly eaten, flown hundreds of kilometers and dropped from the sky. Mistakes that somehow thrived alone and isolated. The Indian lay back and let them feast. Kee floated, unhappy. * * * “They say you do not have a Muslim last name, so you need to convert.” Ala said outside the tourist agency. “You need a shahada before they'll sell you a ticket.” “What’s that?” Joshua asked. “A declaration of faith. I think they give you a document one when you officially convert.” Barry gave a Joshua a worried look. That made Joshua smirk. “Okay,” Joshua said. “Let’s go get me converted to Islam.” Joshua and Barry got back into the Egyptian’s double parked car and they drove to al-Azhar university, which apparently was where one went to become Muslim if one wasn't born that way. Ala insisted the school was very famous, world renowned, a major center for religious thought and scholarship for a millennia. Neither Josh nor Barry had ever heard of the place. At the campus, across from a mosque was an administration building and within they found a small green placard in English that read Embracing Islam Office. The office turnout to be quite large on the inside, containing a desk, a half dozen black faux-leather couches and two bored Egyptians. The two men sat smoking, each on their own sofa barely noticing that Joshua, Barry and Ala had entered. One played with a plastic lighter in his left hand, while holding his cigarette in his right. The other played on his phone. Posted on all four walls were computer printed signs that read Converting to Islam is Free. The same signs were beneath the glass of several coffee tables throughout the office. After a long moment, Joshua found his courage and approached one of the men. “A salam alayakum. I would like to convert to Islam.” Joshua had expected the man to be surprised or puzzled or intrigued, but he remained disinterested. The man with the lighter put out his cigarette, got up from his couch, and walked over to the desk. He placed his lighter down, grabbed a pen from a cup and retrieved a form from the drawer of the desk. “Fill this out,” he said, handing the paper to Joshua. He next turned to Barry, “you too?” “No, I’m good,” Barry said, waving his hand. Barry found a couch and pulled out of the guidebooks he had found in the hostel from side pocket of his cargo shorts. The book had a snowy peak on it beneath its title, Tanzania. Joshua sat on a fourth couch next to Ala. He wondered why he was not a spectacle to the men. “Do you think they a lot of converts?” Josh asked Ala. “With marriage it happens a lot. If a Christian man wants to marry a Muslim woman, he has to convert.” “Do Muslims ever convert to Christianity?” Ala chuckled. “No, that’s illegal.” Joshua examined the form. Name: Passport Number: Former Religion: Sect: New Name: Joshua wrote in his name and passport number. Figuring that they wouldn’t understand ‘atheist,’ Josh put down ‘Christianity’ and ‘Protestant.’ “What Muslim name should I choose?” Joshua asked Ala. “I don’t know. Who is your favorite of the Prophet’s companions?” Joshua thought for a moment. “Bilal?” Bilal was a slave who was one of the first converts. His master put stones on his chest in an attempt to make Bilal forsake Muhammed. He refused and was eventually freed. “Bilal is fairly unusual,” said Ala. “I don’t know any. I think you should pick something more common.” “Ibrahim?” “Ibrahim.” After handing the form to one of the men, the two men sat down with him. “Repeat after me,” one of the men said. “La” “La,” Joshua echoed. “E.” “E.” “La” “La” “Ha” “Ha” “E.” “E.” “La” “La” “Ah” “Ah” “Lah” “Lah” “Mo” “Mo” “Ha” “Ha” “Med” “Med” “Ra” “Ra” “Sool” “Sool” “Ah.” “Ah.” “Lah.” “Lah.” “Very good,” said the man. “Mabrook.” Joshua didn’t feel any different. He didn’t really expect to. The second man went to a file drawer and retrieved a glossy booklet and a packet of paper and brought them over to the table. The booklet was entitled A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam. Beneath the title, it had a picture of the Quran orbiting the earth. “Now, that you are a Muslim,” the second man said, “let us tell you about Islam. We have five pillars.” This was basic knowledge for Joshua and he couldn’t stop himself from smiling. He hoped the men only took it as polite. “You have completed the first pillar of shahada,” the second man continued. “But there is also salat. We pray five times a day. This will show you how.” He pointed to the stapled packet. Joshua leafed through the pages. The sheets had diagrams of men praying with instructions. “There is also zakat. You give charity to the poor. Also, there is sawm. We fast during the month of Ramadan.” Joshua pursued the glossy booklet for a moment. He oddly saw a picture of a piece of chewed gum next to a picture of an embryo. At the top of the page: the Quran and the embryonic development. “Finally,” the man continued. Joshua looked up. “At some point in your life, you must complete the fifth pillar.” “Yes, I know.” Hajj. * * * The Cree stood over the Nile at dusk, beer in hand. Kee knew drinking in public was a bit brazen, even for Egypt. But she felt like having one, Egypt be damned. Some part of her was tell her to stop, but the rest of her said to stop being boring. She had dreamed of the ghost the night before. Usually when she saw him, she could understand him. She knew he wasn’t speaking High Cree, but she could feel the meaning of his words anyway, somehow. She couldn’t really explain why that was. Then again, dreams always make sense at the time, so maybe she was imagining comprehension. Still, last night was different. The ghost was speaking gibberish. “Ra ra, sool, sool, ah, ah.” Nonsense. But vivid nonsense. From the east, could see Nuna walking towards her, coming from Tahrir Square. As she approached, Nuna spotted the Stella in Kee’s hand and gave her a dark look. “Really?” Nuna scolded. “Right here in public?” Nuna’s chastisement only lasted a brief moment. “Give me a sip.” In the hand that didn’t grab Kee’s beer, Nuna had a brown paper bag with a large grease stain on the side that made it a bit translucent. “What’s that?” asked Kee. “Tamiya.” “Good, I’m starved.” The two women ate their chickpea patties gazing out over the Nile and did their best to ignore the passing stares from the shebab and their harassing “hellos.” When they finished, they headed back along the bridge the way Nuna had come, towards Tahrir Square again. The way was crowded, as it ever was, day or night. Party boats lined the bank of the river beneath the bridge, blasting music from their on-board stereos. Cars honked incessantly for seemingly no reason at all. In Tahrir, stalls sold Egyptian flags and lacrosse jerseys. A few offered miniatures of the pyramids and hieroglyphics painting on banana leaves that were meant to resemble papyrus. A man hauled a steaming industrial-looking cart for cooking sweet potatoes. Across the square, they found their destination - Horaya, which meant freedom, according to Nuna’s knowledge of Arabic. Inside was a florescent lit hall with a score of tables and twice as many Egyptian men smoking and drinking Stella. A couple tables were filled with hip young Indians, among them the only women in the bar. Nuna waved to a young balding man with black rimmed glasses in the corner, drinking and smoking alone. He was dressed like an Indian, but Kee never knew an Indian who lost his hair, so something was different about him. Nuna and Kee walked over to sit with him. “Kee, Rami,” Nuna said as her introduction. “Rami, Kee.” “Nice meet you,” he said in a perfect Cree accent. A second generation, Kee realized. Two more beers appeared in front of the women almost magically. “Where about in the Cree Lands are you from?” asked Kee. “Cuyahoga,” he said. “What about you?” “Chicago area.” “Lakes pride,” he joked, as if that were a thing. Kee smiled. “I take it your parents are from Egypt?” “They are. They’re Christian though.” Something around ten percent of Egypt was Christian, Kee knew and most of them were an Egyptian denomination that everyone referred to as Copts. That word, though, simply meant Egyptian, making the term a rather imprecise description what they were. “Ah, good,” Kee said. “You’re the first Egyptian Christian I’ve met. I have a question for you: why did the Coptic Church break away from Carthage?” Rami laughed. “So,” he said before pausing to take a final drag of his cigarette and then putting it out. “You know how Catholics believe in a Trinity?” “Sure, I was raised Catholic.” Kee said, taking a drink. “Well, as you know, Catholics believe that God is three things: father, son and spirit. And they believe Jesus is both mortal and divine, distinctly.” “And Copts?” “They believe that Jesus is divine and mortal, simultaneously.” Kee checked Rami’s face to make sure he was serious. “I think that may be the dumbest thing to argue about in the history of mankind.” “Tell me about it,” Rami had a pack of cigarettes and a plastic lighter on the table before him. He removed a new cigarette from pack and proceeded to light it. “It all a bit like arguing about the nature of light and quantum mechanics. Is it a wave or is it a particle, but in this case, the light doesn’t exist at all.” Kee smiled at that. “So you’re an atheist? How do the Egyptians take that?” “They don’t really understand it and so I don’t tell anyone. A cabbie once asked me my religion and, as a joke, I said Bahai. He dropped me on the side of the highway, then and there.” Nuna gasped. “Really, what did you do?” “It turned out not to be so bad,” Rami said. “Another cab stopped like thirty seconds later.” Kee felt emboldened by the talk of the risqué. “Rami, what do you do?” “I’m a reporter. Or least, I’m trying to be one.” “And how long have you been living here?” “Three years, off and on.” “So, you’ve been with an Egyptian woman?” The switch from religion to sex took him off guard for a second. “Yes,” he said cautiously. “I have…” “What’s the deal with the female genital mutilation? Is that really a thing?” Rami put his non-smoking hand over his face. Nuna shot a perplexed look to Kee. Kee ignored her. Eventually, Rami said “yeah, female circumcision is definitely a thing. I mean the statistics say its like ninety percent of the population. But, keep in mind, I hang with mostly upper-class Egyptians. They don’t do it very much.” Kee turned to Nuna. “Do you think Rania has a clit?” she asked. “Rania has a clit,” Nuna said. “Kanen would have said something.” “There was this one time…” Rami began. That grabbed Kee and Nuna’s attention. “I did once meet a girl, a hostess at a restaurant. And, yeah, she was cut. No clit and her labia was gone too. I could kind of feel the scars as we had sex. This is the weird part…” Rami paused to put out his cigarette down on the ash tray’s rim. “She moaned louder than most women.” “She’s gotta a be a faker,” concluded Kee, laughing. Rami shrugged. “I don’t know,” said Nuna. “I’ve heard some women get enjoyment from the internal.” “Yeah, there’s a name for those women,” said Kee. “They’re called liars.” Rami just grinned and shook at head at Kee’s bluntness. “Do you think you will ever go home?” Kee asked Rami. “Not anytime soon. It’s pretty interesting here, but the Egyptians may eventually kick me out. They’re not really so keen on this free press thing.” “What about you?” Kee asked Nuna. Nuna shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve discovered I’m a wandering orangutan.” “An orangutan?” “Some apes live collectively,” Nuna explained. “They have families with the clan. The inbreeders.” “And other apes?” “There’s the wanderers. The outbreeders. They live their life mostly alone, going from place to place. Occasionally having sex with an exotic orangutan from far away.” “Kinky foreign orangutan techniques?” “Exactly. Without the outbreeders, the orangutans would become too inbred and die off. Without the inbreeders, there’d be no orangutans to raise the children and keep the society going. They need each other, the local and foreigner.” “The traditionalist and the revolutionary.” Nuna nodded. Rami looked to Kee. “What are your plans?” asked Rami. “Staying long?” “Why, just today, I bought a ticket out of here.” Kee said with excitement. “To where?” “I’ve had a man and beer on this continent,” Kee said as she lifted her Stella. “This wandering orangutan has a date with a mountain.” “Every country in the world?” the Dutchman asked. He was half amused and half disbelieving. “How many is that?” Joshua shrugged. “Depends how you count. The U.N. recognizes a hundred-ninety-something, but there are another ten or so pseudo-states. Taiwan, Northern Cyprus, Transnistria. Places like that.” “Transnistria? I have no idea where that is.” The Dutchman grabbed for his pack of cigarettes on the table. “Do you mind?” “No. Go for it.” Joshua said, though, of course, he minded. But the Dutchman was the only company he had had in a past couple days and he hadn't seen any other Westerners in Agadir. Joshua certainly wasn’t about to be difficult. Plus, everyone else was a chimney in this country, he told himself. What’s a little more smoke at this point? Josh had hopped a bus west to windy Essaouira with its fortress walls, and then followed the coast down to Agadir, passing by groves and groves of trees with goats them. Yes, goats. His guidebook had said they eat the tree nuts, crap them out half-digested and then the nuts are made into some sort of expensive cosmetic oil. Joshua thought that immensely disappointing for some reason. The trees, the goats and their shepherds had been so puzzling and queerly beautiful. Almost mystical really. And yet the end is so…pedestrian, Joshua had thought. Was that the right word? Agadir was a beach town and Joshua did love the beach. He had always found gazing out at the horizon immensely calming. Not to mention, he could catch some rays and perhaps clear up his P spots. The ones on his arm were pink today. Not bad. I must be relaxed. And his scalp didn’t itch too much. It must be the sweat moisturizing it, Josh thought. He had actually read that the goat nut oil was supposed to help, but it was far too expensive. The city turned out not to really be for Westerners. It was instead Saudis who littered the seaside, mostly fully clothed. Some men were bold enough to strip down to shorts, revealing their hairy chest and equally hairy backs. A few women swam in track suits, heads covered by their hijabs. It looked incredibly impractical — like swimming with weights on. One or two women even took dips cloaked in black abayas, their faces hidden by niqab. Salt stains were left rippled on them as they left the water. Joshua had laid out for a bit earlier, but didn’t feel very comfortable around so many piously clothed, so he had cut his tanning session short. Plus, Agadir still proved windy, leaving him covered in sand with every gust, though it was not anywhere close to as bad as Essaouira. In the end, he opted for walking the city the rest of the day. “Transnistria broke away from Moldova in the nineties.” Joshua told the Dutchman. “They actually have their own money, elect their own president, have their own army. You even have to go through a border crossing when you enter.” “Moldova?” the Dutchman puzzled. Joris. His name was Joris, Joshua remembered. He was horrible with names. That’s right. It sounded like ‘your ass.’ That wasn’t really a fair mnemonic device. Joshua thought Joris was a perfectly fine human being. His name just didn’t work well in English. “Moldova,” Josh repeated. “You know, in eastern Europe. Was part of the Soviet Union.” “Oh, Moldavië. Of course. Yes, I know it. So, tell me, what’s in this Transnistria to see?” “Not much, I suppose. It’s still communist, so I think there’s a bunch of statues of Lenin. Maybe some old tanks. Ugly Soviet buildings. Things like that.” “But you want to visit there?” Joshua grinned. “Well, yeah, that’s the goal. To see every country before I die. And to have adventures.” The Dutchman finally lit his cigarette and then set his lighter down on top of the pack in the center of the table. He nodded his head towards something behind Joshua. Josh turned and saw her. It was a woman. A stunning woman, in fact, around his age. She walked - no, glided - along the boardwalk in a white abaya embroidered with gold thread along the collar and sleeves. Jewels seemed to sparkle on her slim body like a starry night as thin fabric trailed her like the proud banner of a lost sultanate. She kept her eyes, rich with mascara, staring at to the ground as she seemed to float by. But, then, for a brief moment, a very brief moment, they flicked over to Joshua. Her gaze was piercing. And Joshua found himself someplace else. He imagined for a moment he was riding a steed across endless, endless dunes of gold, baking beneath a white sun. An oasis appeared in the distance, complete with palm trees, impossibly green and impossibly lush against the barren sands. And then the palace was there, with a dozen bulbed domes and countless Arabian arches ornately carved. Beneath a fig tree, she stood. Fatima was waiting for him. Fatima, yes, that must be her name. Joshua, for a moment, thought of the Indian. He blinked long and hard to push away the thought and turned back to the Dutchman. “So, what exactly defines a country?” Joris asked. Joshua had had this conversation before, though he didn’t mind repeating it, especially with a European. They seemed to understand the quest better. Americans would usually ask “why?” and furrow their brows in confusion. Joshua supposed it was because they thought the world was as dangerous as their news claimed. Or perhaps the thought had just never occurred to them to see the world. Or perhaps they took the quest as a challenge to their own life goals or a challenge to their lack of them. Europeans were different. They always acted like Josh’s desire to visit every country in the world was quite normal and logical. They were amused, even encouraged by it. But, both Americans and Europeans and everyone really, no matter where they were from, were always curious about what made a nation a nation. “That’s a tough one to answer.” Joshua explained. “One could say the U.N., but after spending time in Taiwan and the West Bank, I could never morally use that definition. The Catalans and Basques of Spain would say that countries should be defined by language and culture, but as an American, I find that idea ridiculous. You can’t use currency because some countries share money or don’t have their own. Honestly, the best definition may be if a country has a standing army.” Joris raised an eyebrow. “So, every resistance group is country?” “No definition is perfect.” Josh conceded. “In the end, I’m essentially using the U.N. list, plus a bunch of others. Transnistria, Taiwan, Northern Cyprus.” Josh counted on his fingers. “Palestine, Western Sahara, Somaliland, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh.” “You made those last few up, didn’t you?" Joris said, chuckling. "Those are just random sounds.” The waiter came around for their orders. Joris asked for a coffee and Josh a kiwi-lime juice. The cafe had no beer and no argilla even, but it was outside and offered a cool breeze and a good spot to sit and watch the tourists as they strolled by on the boardwalk. Arabs loved to people-watch as well and so the cafe was packed with Saudi tourists enjoying fruity drinks, spying on each other. “So why are you here?” Joshua asked. “I am trying to make a decision on something in my life.” Joris replied. That was a statement of maximum ambiguity, Joshua mused. “New job?” Josh asked. “New kid.” the Dutchman corrected. “Maybe. I have to decide if I want to be a father.” “You’re thinking about having a baby?” “No, my girlfriend is. Well, she's my sort-of girlfriend. She'e the one who wants the kid. And I have to decide whether I want to be part of that. I needed time by myself, away from my life in Rotterdam, to put it all in perspective.” “How old is she?” “Forty.” “Ah, bio clock.” “What’s that?” “Biological clock. You know, she’s at the age where she has to have one now before she can’t.” “Well, she actually already has one from before she met me. But, that’s fine. She wants another and I have to decide if I want to pay for that burden. My job pays enough for me to live , but I’m not so sure about another person.” “Do you want to have children?” “No, not really.” “Do you want to be with her?” “We’ve been together for five years, but we have our problems. We're not exactly yin and yang. We’ve broken up a few times. She’s kind of crazy and can’t really hold down a job. She’s been diagnosed as bipolar.” “I see.” Joshua didn’t actually understand. His parents, with all of their faults, really liked each other, got along swimmingly and had both wanted children. And all those T.V. shows and movies had always told him that you wait until you find “the one.” You wait for that incredible person who will bowl you over and they will be just perfect for you and you'll just know it's right. How could there ever be a disagreement that big between people that are meant for each other? A decision like whether or not to have a child should be a no-brainer, shouldn’t it? Wouldn’t someone want to combine themselves with the person they love most to form a new body of vicarious opportunities? Then again, the one? That’s ridiculous. Why would the universe, in all of its complexity care about the romantic well-being of humans? Why would a higher-power or fate itself care about romance while dolling out bone cancer to children? It was laughable. Even the major religions, with all of their idiocy, didn’t think their gods concerned themselves with that. No, people are imperfect, horribly selfish and have annoying idiosyncrasies. And, frankly, most people seem to be batshit insane. The idea that any two people can spend years together let alone their whole life is astounding. Don’t they get bored of each other? Joshua certainly had of his past relationships. Or they had of him. And that had been only after only a couple months. Joshua decided he very much liked Joris. The Dutchman was real and a honest. He’d never had anyone paint his life to him so modestly, flaws and all. Most people stare you in the face and tell you their life is great and they are happy. Life had given Joris lemons and he was calling them lemons. It did strike Josh as odd that the Dutchman had really only said bad things about his girlfriend. He supposed an ‘I love her’ was tacit. It had to be, didn’t it? Or is that the movies invading ideas again? The drinks had arrived and Joshua took a deep swig of his juice. The Arabs knew how to make juice, he’d give them that. Or were they Berbers here? Joris put out his cigarette and sipped his coffee. “Have you decided yet?” Josh asked. “No,” Joris shrugged. “Not yet. I don’t know. It’s not a dream situation.” He looked out on the boardwalk, thoughtful. “Though it all has to be better that these people’s lives. Arranged marriages with cousins. Living a life under a sheet.” Joris suddenly looked quite sad. “Well, dreams are paradoxes anyway.” The Dutchman snapped out of it. “How’s that?” “Dreams. We know dreams are memories, things in the past, jumbled up. But we talk about them like they are the future. We dream of tomorrow, but its all based on ideas of the past. Some people even think dreams are prophetic — that they will come to pass. The more you think about the whole thing, the less sense it makes. Dreams are supposed to be liberating ideas, but for some dreams lock people in. People go and believe in foregone conclusions. The past as the future, affecting our choices in the present. Shit, Shakespeare wrote a whole play on it. Othello.” “Well, to be fair the future is often just a rehash of the past.” Joris said as he looked about the table for his lighter, moving glasses. “I don’t know.” Joshua waved his hand towards the covered Saudis on the boardwalk. “This all seems pretty different from anything in my past. I’ve never dreamed of this. Sitting by the beach with a Dutchman in Morocco surrounded by Saudis. Life can be pretty unexpected.” “Yeah, but honestly most people don’t dream of tomorrow or yesterday. They dream of what should be or what might have been.” Joris' passion rose a little. “Their dreams are regrets and what ifs. They dream of how they might have been a football star. Or they dream of the life they could have had, the girlfriend who got away, the dad they never made peace with. That shit. They invent this other world in their head and they live there.” That silenced Joshua. It occurred to him that any of those hypotheticals could be Joris’ life in actually. Probably not the football part, but possibly some of the other stuff. Josh thought it best to change the subject. “Well, you know what I dream of?" Joshua asked. "I mean literally. At night, what I dream of.” The Dutchman paused, intrigued. “What?” “An Indian.” The Dutchman studied Joshua, sipped his coffee and then smirked. “Feather or dot?” “Neither.” * * * She had dreamed of the ghost again. Pale. Funny looking. Pedantic. He certainly wasn’t like in the stories. They were supposed be proud builders and poets, warrior and musicians. Confident and inspired. Her ghost was whiney, directionless and completely unsure of himself. Not that she knew what she was doing with her life, but she was just a Cree, not a dead man. The dream faded quickly and soon she could barely recall what it was about. She remembered the dream was here in Morocco, but at the same time not Morocco. Morocco wasn’t filled with Muslims after all. Kee arose from her hostel bed and padded over the floor of cold tiles to the sink. Her mouth oddly tasted of kiwi. Did I drink a vodka-kiwi juice last night? She couldn’t remember. She turned on the sink, put her head under the faucet and rinsed her mouth out, taking care not to swallow any of the water. She didn't want to get sick. She needed to pee badly and probably more, but the room only had a sink. Annoyingly, the toilet was down the hall. That meant she would have to awkwardly find her money belt. Kee couldn’t exactly leave it in the room with him. Her life was in there. The irony that she could sleep with a man, but not trust him with her things was not lost on her. The Incan surfer snored softly as his muscled back rose and fell. His long hair, lightened by months in the sun, covered most of his face. The rest of him was completely naked save for a tangle of sheets starting at his knees. And somewhere in those sheets was her shorts. And in those shorts was her money belt. Okay, this won’t be so awkward, she thought. If he wakes up, she will just claim she’s looking for her shorts. Yes, another pair was clearly strewn across the chair, but he would be too groggy to put that all together. Still, if he wakes up, that means she would have to talk to him. She walked over the bed slowly and silently, suddenly imagining herself a ninja. At the foot of the bed, she started her search. There was her bra…and one of her socks…and…damn, sure enough, he stirred. The surfer said something in Quechua before switching to High Cree. “What time is it?” “I’m just looking for my clothes.” Kee whispered. “Go back to sleep.” He rubbed his eyes, flipped over onto his back and sat up with no concern for his nakedness. Damn, that was quick, Kee thought. Who gets up that quickly? Back home, Kee would usually hit the snooze button two or three times. Even when traveling, it took a few minutes to shake the ghosts out of her head before she made any attempt at leaving a bed. “What are your plans today?” he said in his thick Incan accent. Last night she had found it sexy. Now it just sounded stupid and grating. The last thing she wanted was to spend the day with him. What was his name? Khuno? She fumbled through the sheets as she tried to come up with an excuse. She actually wanted to do nothing except lie on the beach and get over her hangover, but that answer would be too easy for him to say “me too” to. And then she’d be stuck having awkward conversation with him all day. There wasn’t much else to do in the town except surf, but obviously surfing is exactly what he would want to do. She couldn’t even surf that well, so he would then fall into the teacher role and that would just be horrible. “Uh,” Kee said as she still dug around haplessly. Then, it came to her. “I have catch a bus back in Tiznit and then head to this town called Tafroute.” Yes, she remembered seeing that in her guide book. “Tafroute? What’s there?” She found her shorts. “Blue stones,” she announced proudly with a grin. The grin was secretly for the shorts, not the stones. “What?” Khuno scratched his scalp beneath his mop of hair. “Really?” “Well, they’re painted.” she said as she dressed. As the shorts rose to her waist, the money belt touched against her belly made her feel whole again. “This Aztec artist went out into hills north of the town and painted these big boulders. They’re kind of a pain to get to. After the bus, you have rent a bicycle and ride out there.” “Huh, what’s the draw? I mean they are just painted rocks, right?” “It’s a spiritual pilgrimage,” Kee lied “Finding oneself. Finding God. You know, like Carthage or Mecca. I’ll probably never get to Mecca, so I figure Tafroute instead. Who knows? Maybe I’ll have a vision. And without all that fasting.” Khuno looked thoroughly puzzled by what Kee had said as she made her way to the door. “I gotta pee,” Kee blurted somewhat playfully as she left the room. She scampered down the hall to the bathroom and found her relief there. She was quite pleased with herself over the creativity of her ruse. Hopefully, he would think her a New Age loon and be turned off. Not that her story needed to be elaborate, just believable enough for her to shake his company. A bit of Khuno’s life came back to her as she urinated. She remembered Khuno had wasted six months on the beaches here surfing and smoking hash. It’s not like he’s going anywhere. Still, Kee had no idea why she had made it all sound so important. They really were just painted rocks and she had absolutely no desire to waste a day going out to seeing them and a day coming back. As she sat on the toilet, she began to consider her real travel plans. Once she made it to Tiznit, she would likely catch a bus back to Essaouira and then Marrakesh. She had a sudden desire to see sand dunes for some reason. Yes, endless, endless sand dunes, roasting under a white sun. That would be beautiful. She had read there were tours where they take you out to the desert near the Morrocan-Berberian border and you ride camels out into the ocean of sand until sun sets. You camp out there and get a chance to feel the cool desert breeze. And before it gets too cold, the guides build a campfire and everyone sits around telling travel stories. Yes, she decided, that would be it. But Khuno, the surfer, had no need to know all of that. At the bar last night, the surfer had been iffy on her until she had told him of her quest. "A beer, a man and a mountain peak on every continent," she had explained for the millionth time. And like clockwork he had asked “even Antarctica and the Ghost Lands?” She had given a confident nod and just like that, she was irresistible. It’s not that men are too difficult to get to bed, but the thought of being immortalized in someone’s grand adventure made them putty in her hands. And like putty, boring within an hour. After the her trip to the bathroom, Kee felt reenergized. Her thoughts were still of the desert as she entered the room. Khuno was inside fully clothed reading the guidebook she had left on the night stand. “You know, Tafroute, seems pretty cool,” he said while turning a page. “Spiritual rocks — why not? You only live once.” Kee tried to come up with an excuse, but this time, nothing came. “We better get going,” said the surfer. “The bus leaves in a couple hours.” * * * Somewhere on the road to Tafroute, the bus driver had stopped to pray. And Joshua took the opportunity to empty his bladder. He rose, stretched his legs and exited the bus, leaving a napping Joris behind. A hot dusty breeze caressed Josh as he walked up the rocky hill. He checked a P spot on his wrist, noting that is was bit bigger today. Joshua sighed, unzipped his fly and began to water the shrub before him. He quite liked urinating outside. It always reminded him of the hummingbird. It had been at least a decade ago. Josh was hiking near Banff and took a break to relieve himself in a sunny clearing. And there it appeared, hovering near his penis as the stream of urine came forth. Its feathers were an almost metallic green that shone in the sunlight. Joshua was entranced by its beauty and time seemed to slow. Eventually, though, the stream sputtered out, and with that, the bird vanished. It must have smelled something in his urine, he had thought looking back, though it could have certainly been taken as a spirit animal by a hippie. Or perhaps by an Indian. They believed in spirit animals, didn’t they? Joshua wasn’t certain. Movies were filled with so many lies. Unlike the forests around Banff, the rocky hills of the Anti-Atlas seemed fairly barren of life. Joshua’s gaze left his shrub to find nothing but dirt, rocks and more shrubs about him. He soon found himself peering down the road to what looked like a shiny pool of water back the way they had come. A mirage, Joshua knew. Light refraction, not reflection, he remembered from grade school science class. Though, down the road, walking towards the bus there was also a man. That was odd. They were miles past Ait Baha. Where was he coming from? Then, again, Josh had seen this sort of thing all over the world. From the window of a bus or a shared taxi he would often see people walking in what looked to be the middle of nowhere. There must be some village off the road or a farm house. Or maybe that guy just really likes walking. Joshua had finished his business and returned to the road by the time the man had come upon them. “Alhamdulillah?” said the walking man with a grin. Praise be to God, Joshua remembered. It’s usually the first Arabic word that a foreigner learns. Josh supposed the man was referring to the joy of urination. “Alhamduliliah,” Josh replied. “American?” “Quite.” Josh had always heard stories about Americans lying and saying they were Canadians in order to get friendlier treatment, but in that he had never partook. People were generally very friendly to him wherever he was in the world. He chalked it up to the foreigner being generally seen as entertainment or a chance to practice English or an opportunity to sell something. Every once in while, he had gotten negative treatment, but those instances were few and far between. And when they did happen, they were usually from fellow Westerners angry about American foreign policy or the spread of American commercial culture. Some poorly thought out notion of imperialism was usually the complaint. However, Joshua had never come across an Arab that held being American against him. Or at least not to his face. Perhaps it was because they could hardly defend their own governments. Or perhaps it was as simple as them just being more friendly. In Josh’s opinion, Arabs were some of kindest and most forgiving people he had ever met. However, the walking man didn’t sound like an Arab. Certainly not Moroccan. Yes, he was olive-skinned with short curly hair dusted by sand, but something was off about his accent. Joshua had read a bit about accents, as it happened. He knew that humans can quickly extract information from them to determine who a person is. With only a few words, we can know their nation, their social standing and their education. At least on a general stereotypical level. It was a left-over relic from when we were tribes and needed to identify the outsider threat. And it was a more powerful cue than race even, leaving black Americans disadvantaged because people didn’t think they spoke “correctly.” Or at least that was the theory. “You’re not praying with your driver,” observed the man in perfect English, though clearly not in American English. His speech was not British or Australian or South African or any English that Joshua knew, so he searched for some other clues. The walking man wore dirty brown slacks and a short-sleeved plaid button-down. It certainly wasn’t atypical for Morocco, but still, he could be from anywhere. “I’m not a religious man,” Joshua replied. Josh had learned not say that to an Arab or a Berber, but Josh concluded this man wasn’t a local. In the Middle East, Josh had learned, a person was either a Christian or a Muslim. When Josh first arrived, he had revealed himself to be an atheist to a couple of locals and was met with a confused reaction by one and an angry reaction by the other. And so, for the rest of his trip when asked about his faith, he had simply said he was Christian,. This was usually then met with an attempt to convert him to Islam. He supposed that proselytizing was better that than anger, though. The man who had been walking tilted his head. “Don’t you want to go to paradise?” Is he joking with me or is he serious? “That seems a bit scary,” Joshua said. “Don’t you think?” “How so?” Joshua had no idea why he was talking religion with this mysterious man. It seemed so random, but such was life. There were hummingbirds and Indians. Why not debate the universe? Joshua was emboldened. “I was in an airport once, in Buenos Aires,” Josh began. All of Joshu’a most interesting memories began being somewhere else far away, but back in America he knew that speaking of them made him look like a braggart, so he would mostly leave his tales untold. Josh felt traveling was refreshing in that he could be a storyteller again. “A family of Hassidic Jews happened to pass me in the Terminal,” he continued. “The man strode well ahead of his his wife, which is something I heard they do. The wife meanwhile walked hand-in-hand with the children. Except they weren’t really children; they were full grown men with bushy pious beards. But still, they were children in a way. You see, the men were pin-heads. I forgot the proper medical word for it. Micro-something. It’s a condition where one’s brain doesn’t fully develop, leaving one both physically deformed and mentally retarded. These men's heads were too small and their noses too big, both them rather short and they waddled beside their mother instead of walking. I’m assuming the father married his cousin and that the family was inbred generations before that. I don’t know. Maybe I’m horribly stereotyping, but probably not. “Anyway, as I walked by, one of the men cried out ‘daddy!’ in the same high-pitched panicked way a toddler might if his father had walked too far ahead of him. It was years ago, but I can still recall the sound of it, the cry, like it was yesterday. It was haunting, really. “At the time, I felt ill and so I sat down in some plastic airport seats and, just like that, I started weeping. I suppose I was crying for a bunch of reason. Those two souls were the offspring of supposedly the most spiritually-minded of God’s chosen people. And I felt horrible for the pain and suffering that that family must endure. But what saddened me the most was the thought of what happens next? When the pinheads died, would they be like that for an eternity in the afterlife? Or would their god fix them and forever they would they know what their god did to them in life?” “Some would say God did not do that to them,” the walking man offered. “It was the parents’ mistake.” “That may make it worse.” Josh’s voice became higher and impassioned. “For those poor men to learn that the people they loved most in the world did that to them? For an eternity they must live with the parents who made them freaks. Or they at least have to live with the memory of those parents. God, I read about a girl who was imprisoned and raped by her father in basement for years. Does she have to remember that forever?” Joshua paused. “No, the only thing scarier than death is eternal life.” That made the walking man smile. “Some say turtles have eternal life,” said the man coolly. “Lobsters, hydras, clams. Their lives don’t seem so bad and their parents made them even stupider than these pinheads.” Josh didn’t expect that. He wasn’t really sure what point the man was making. It was just perplexing. Still, hummingbirds and Indians. “Turtles die,” Joshua said. “I thought they just didn’t age.” “That’s right,” the walking man looked over to the bus driver who had long finished praying and was now finishing a cigarette. It was time to go. “But it must be nice to not have the march of time’s hot breath on the back of the neck. Turtles feel no need to pray or weep in airports. Maybe if we are very, very lucky, we will return to this earth as turtles. They simply swim and enjoy their lives.” Joshua could see the driver boarding the bus, so he walked towards the door. “And then get eaten by sharks,” he called back playfully. “And then get eaten by shark,” the walking man affirmed. Though, not so playfully. * * * “You know what the problem is with you Cree?” asked Khuno. “You think you own the world.” Kee rolled her eyes as she untangled the bicycle chain. She had had this conversation a million times. “We’re not the ones who colonized half the world,” she shot back. “Your country did that.” Talking like this made her feel like a dark-neck. She loathed everything about those fucking conservatives back home waving their flags with their oversized “proud to be Cree” t-shirts that barely covered their obesity. She promised herself she wouldn’t tell the Incan that the Cree saved their asses in the wars. “They would all be speaking Charruan without us!” one of those knuckle-draggers would say. There was some truth in that, no doubt, but it was still massively simplistic and took credit for the actions of different generation. Damn this chain. The man who rented them the bicycles back in Tafroute had given them a repair kit. Kee had though that odd at the time, but now she understood. The bicycles were shit and this was the third time her chain had come off. It would be a quick fix. Khuno’s flat tire earlier had been much more time-consuming. She had no idea bicycle tires even had inner tubes. When Khuno had pulled his tire apart, it took her back. Her grandfather had had a home on Lake Michigan and the family would go every summer. She and her sister would pull giant black inner tubes from that old shed and race down the wooden steps to the lake. On calm days they would lounge lazily in them until they became blisteringly hot from the sun. Then, they would flip them to the cool wet side and see how long it took for the tubes to get unbearable again. On rough days, it was different. The two girls would share a single tube and brave the crashing waves like two sailors in a dinghy, trapped in a sudden storm. She had never really thought about the fact that those “inner tubes” were the inner tubes of large truck tire until now. Cars don’t have them, but trucks and bicycles do apparently. It made her feel stupid. Her whole life she had been using the term “inner tube” and never thought about the meaning. Little kids would ride colorful ones behind speedboats and down snow hills that were certainly never meant for truck tires. She had called those inner tubes as well. Did other people call them that or just “tubes”? She’s couldn’t remember. “The Incas have made their mistakes,” the surfer conceded. He lounged on a rock behind her in the sun, working on his already dark tan. “But that was in the past. Now, we are much more focused on aid, not dominance.” Kee thought that a dubious claim. The Incas would give aid to their former colonies, but the likely motivation was to create market for their exports. Not to mention, “aid” in general was about paying a foreigner hundreds of thousands of wampums to teach a local about micro-credit loans for a few hundred wampums. It all seemed ridiculous. “Look, Cree dominance is mostly a factor of the market,” she explained as she placed her chain along the crankset. “If people want to buy buffalo burgers and fry bread, who are we to tell them otherwise? Back home we have diversity in products. Other countries just want the same.” “So, you see no problem with your fast food restaurants and hypermarkets driving all the locals out of business and destroying the local culture?” That was rich, coming from an Incan. MachuMart was one of the biggest companies in the world. “When we don’t sell to a country, people scream at us about the cruelty of sanctions,” Kee pointed out. “When we do, its called imperialism or some other nebulous term.” “It is cultural genocide in a way. The diversity of the world is being overtaken by a huge Cree-centered commercial monolith.” Kee rolled her eyes. “It isn’t like killing endangered species and reducing biodiversity. Old culture dies and new culture is born continuously all the time. You talk as if foreign cultures are these static things that been around for thousand of years. That’s bullshit. They aren’t. People will kill their old practices and create new ones regardless of big bad globalization.” Khuno stewed on that. “I don’t know, I still think Cree dominance sounds horrific.” “I think you have way too much Indian guilt.” Kee spun the gears of her bike. They flowed well enough. “Shouldn’t we feel guilty?” Khuno was now good and angry. “For slavery and colonialism? For killing a continent of people?” He was talking about the ghosts. That gave her a shiver. “You’re conflating a whole bunch of issues.” Kee picked up the bike and flipped it over. “Yes, the Cree Lands should feel horrible for slavery, but that has to do with the black people we have at home, not the ones here in Africa. And we hardly participated in colonialism at all. As I said, you south-continent people are responsible for that. As for Columbus, I’m not going to feel bad about a sickly dumbass from six hundred years ago.” That was the weakest of Khuno’s arguments. The Indians didn’t mean to kill off the ghosts. Christopher Columbus had taken those Indians back to Europe on his own volition. Some even say they were prisoners. They were shown off by Columbus in his homeland as proof of his discovery — exotic foreigners to trade with. And then people started dying. It started with a few dozen, then hundreds followed and then thousands. Queen Isabella, the Last Queen, had thought it was a curse at the time, so she sent her “guests” back with an apology and a fleet of ships filled with gifts. Books, swords, gun powder, horses. She had no idea that she had seeded a dozen new empires. Today we know what happened — it was a virus, almost certainly. The ghost people must have had immune systems that weren’t used to Indian disease. But it was centuries before anyone had really figured that out. At the time, it was seen as God’s retribution and it was simply chaos. As the virus spread across the Ghost Lands, everything fell apart. The ghost people were unwelcome in Africa and Asia and were usually slaughtered when they arrived. Their pale skin was a dead give away of where they came from. And there’s the famous stories of Suleiman the Magnificent holding the Bosphorus and saving the Ottoman Empire and perhaps the world from doom. Oh, a few ghost people made it out safely, thousands actually. But over the centuries they bred with the locals. To find a person today who is truly pale to the level of the ghost in her dreams was near impossible. As for the Ghost Lands, superstition kept people out of area of the world for centuries. Trade had boomed for the Indians as did technological progress. The term ”Indian” was adopted to put fear in the heart of enemies, until nearly everyone on the twin continents was calling themselves an Indian. And then the Indians started looking outward to the world, conquering and sometimes enslaving. It must have been odd when the Tairona conquered South Asia. Indians conquering Other-India. “Well, I feel bad about it,” Khuno said. “It’s karma. Somehow, somewhere, we will have to pay for our crimes.” “Karma?” Kee grinned as she mounted her bike. “I would have never taken you as a Hindu Indian.” * * * “Aren’t you’re supposed to call them Native Americans?” asked the Dutchman. “I’m sure people have their personal preference,” explained Josh. “But, I read that the last survey had American Indian beating out Native American. So, that’s what I use. But, I’ll call people whatever they want to be called.” Joris pulled out the kickstand of his bike and left it to balance. “Can you call me ‘your highness,’ then?” Josh laughed. “Of course.” “So, this is it. The blue stones of your visions. A bit...anticlamactic” The two men stared at the boulders. The blue paint covered several dozen of them. Some were faded. Others looked as if they had been painted more recently. The largest stone, which very may well have been part of the bedrock, for all he could tell, went up a good forty feet. The artwork was certainly unique and must have taken a good deal of time to create. They were in the middle of nowhere, so the artist had to bring gallon upon gallon of blue paint out here along with ladders. Josh supposed he could appreciate the effort. But, sadly, and damningly, the piece wasn’t beautiful. The naturally beauty of the area dwarfed the art in every respect. The earthy colors, the majestic rock shapes, even the spattering of shrubs made the painted rocks look absolutely junky by comparison. Well, the Mona Lisa might look plain out here as well. Josh sighed. “I agree with you that these rocks are rather disappointing. The artist seems to have made everything worse.” “Humans usually do,” said Joris. “But, I’ll grant him this: we wouldn’t have ridden out here and seen this incredible scenery without the mission to see these stupid rocks. So, thank you, artist. What’s his name?” “I don’t know. Something Belgian.” “Thank you, Belgian artist, and thank you, Indian girl. What’s her name again?” “I don’t know,” Josh admitted. “I told you she doesn’t speak English and I usually forget most of the dreams anyway.” “Right.” Joshua hadn’t asked the Dutchman to come along. Still, Josh was a little embarrassed by how underwhelming it all was for him. Back in Agadir, he had for some reason told Joris about the Indian girl and the blue stones. It was all he could remember about the dream and he saw the passage in his guidebook about the artwork outside of Tafroute, he figured it was some sort of sign. Someone was telling him something important. But now, there they stood and there was nothing but some blue painted rocks. Joshus gazed at the landscape, scratching some P on his scalp. There was certainly no Indian girl there to tell him about the deeper meaning of the universe. There was no clue. No riddle to decipher. No quest to save the multiverse. “Do you feel anything?” asked Josh. “Like what?” “Like an epiphany.” “Should I be feeling one?” “Maybe. Have you decided that you will now go home and marry your girlfriend and have beautiful 10-foot Dutch babies with wooden shoes?” Joris let out a laugh. “Oh, yes, the universe would be so very interested in my love life. First of all, I never said anything about marriage. Marriage is pointless.” “Oh, I don’t know about that.” Joshua put his hand on one of the blue boulders, hoping it would make a difference. It was warm from the sun, but, otherwise, unexceptional. “What, you believe in holy matrimony and all of that? I didn’t take you for a religious man.” “No, no. Nothing like that. But, marriage has a function. It’s an exercise in self-command. Like putting an alarm clock on the other side of the room or throwing away a pack of cigarettes so you wont smoke them later.” Josh hoisted himself up on the blue rock he had be touching and sat atop it. “That reminds me, I’d like to smoke.” Joris had lost his lighter in Agadir and took it as a sign to stop smoking. He had had five since the declaration, borrowing lights from other people. “But, self-command. Tell me about this.” “Well, marriage is present-you trying to control the actions of future-you. Present-you wants to stay together with someone, but he know future-you might be a dumbass and fuck it up. So present-you sabotages future-you. Marriage entangles people legally, financially and socially so its exceedingly difficult and embarrassing to break up with the other person.” “You make it sound so romantic.” “I’m just saying marriage has a function.” “Well, not for me. If I want to be with someone, I’ll be with some one. I don't need marriage. And why would I want to hinder future me in any way? Future-me will be smarter and wiser than present-me, right? Shouldn’t I trust him?” Joshua nodded. That was a good point. The two men paused and enjoyed the calm for a minute, listening to the wind. Then, Joris offered, “So, Joshua, I was thinking of an explanation for all of this. Perhaps you read the guidebook section on these blue stones, but forgot you had. But it was all still in your subconscious and then you dreamed of it. And then later when you re-read it, you assumed the book was matching your dreams.” Joshua nodded again. The Dutchman was almost certainly correct. “Iago and Othello,” Joshua mumbled. “Do you remember anything else? I mean, besides the Indian girl and the blue stones?” Joshua closed his eyes and thought. The breeze rustled past his ears and, for moment, he thought of crashing waves on the shores of Lake Michigan. “I don’t know.” Joshua shrugged. “Maybe surfing?” * * * “So, who painted this?” Khuno asked. “Some Aztec guy.” Kee pulled her guidebook from her backpack and looked it up. “Tezcacoatl Barca.” The boulders were a mix of blue hues. Some as pale as the sky, faded by the sun over time. Others, painted more recently were deeper and darker. Kee could not imagine what inspired someone to come out to the middle of nowhere and ruin nature. “I guess I like it,” Khuno walked over to a boulder and put his hands against it. “Well, it’s no Mecca after all,” Kee observed. “Now, that place must be must be intensely spiritual.” The Incan leaped up on top of the rock with some impressive athleticism. “You know, I have a this weird desire to go there.” “You know you have to be a Muslim to go, right?” Kee scoffed. “Yeah, I know, but I’ll never forget the first time I saw that black cube thing. It was back in university and I had just stumbled home from some party, insanely wasted. Probably high too, I don’t know. I was practically falling over and quite out of it. I stumbled into my apartment and, for some reason, I went to the front room to turn on the T.V. I don’t know why I did it either. It must have been two or three in the morning. I should have headed straight to bed. “And there is was. It must have been the news channel reporting on Hajj. Thousands of people dressed in white circling. I had no idea what I was looking at at the time. I must have watched for a good thirty minutes. Them circling and my world spinning. I feel asleep right there on the floor.” “So, the circling of Kabaa on T.V. was the lava lamp of your high, drunken stupor?” Khuno let the insult go. “The universe works in mysterious ways. Look, I get that Muslims don’t drink and I’m an infidel and all of that. But that’s what the religion says. That’s what people say. But what does the universe say? What does fate say? What does God say? Mecca was a spiritual hub long before Islam came about. There’s something there that calls people to it.” “And then that mystic force shot up into the T.V. camera and beamed itself to your unversity apartment? If a god exists, she is busy making quasars or aligning neutrinos. Why would she care about calling out to a drunk Incan to get him to come to a desert filled with malls?” Khuno smiled. “Maybe a god doesn’t care. But I felt something.” He leapt down from his rock at that moment to add emphasis. “Aren’t you the one that wanted to come out here?” No, not really. “Look, I’ve been to Carthage and stood in St. Peter’s square like every good Catholic girl should. And you know what I felt there? Nothing. Meanwhile the people around me were weeping. I’m fully convinced it was all in their heads. They felt what they wanted to feel.” “I wanted to be called to Mecca?” “Not specifically, but, look, you had gotten drunk and high that night. Really drunk and really high, you said. Could it be because you were feeling particularly unhappy that day? Could it be because you were feeling especially lost in the universe? Alone? Depressed? You tried to shake that feeling with booze and weed. And I’m sure you had tried to shake that feeling with sex, but were unlucky that night as you came home alone. In the end, you just tried to use spirituality to fill the hole inside you before passing out.” Khuno picked up a rock about the size of his fist and tossed it as far as he could off into the distance. It landed with the sound of a high click. “You’re a real buzzkill,” the Incan said. Kee knew she was. She had always been that way. Thinking too much, being a bit too logical, playing devil’s advocate. It didn’t really win her friends, but at the same time, she didn’t know how to stop. Sometimes she would work herself up into an argument with someone for seemingly no reason. A piece of her would look on in horror screaming “stop!” but she couldn’t. She was on automatic. And later she would berate herself for being so difficult. This was one of those times. Who cares if Khuno tries to use Hinduism or Islam or surfing to make himself feel happier? We all feel the pain of being alone. We all fear the notion of dying and blinking out of existence. We all feel the shame that we are somehow wasting our lives. Can I blame him for not wanting to miserable for moment? The two said nothing for a while, until Kee said, “It is beautiful out here,” to break the silence. Just as she said it, a gust of wind blew sands in her eye. She turned away from the wind, and waited for the tears. * * * “Come to my shop and have a look,” urged the carpet salesman. This was a fifth time he had assaulted Joshua, wanting him to come inside. The first time was when he and Joris had arrived in Tafroute and he followed up when they went to get dinner. The salesman had tried before they had rented their bicycles and, again, when they returned. And here he was again this morning. Joshua, of course, knew better. Getting tricked into looking at carpets was something that all foreigners fall for once, but rarely for a second time. One enters just wanting to browse, but then suddenly a seat appears along with heavily sweetened tea. Now one is trapped by the hospitality. To reject tea is fairly rude no matter what the culture. So, the foreigner sits. How long can tea take to drink? Awhile actually, as one must wait for it cool first. And so while the tea is still scalding, the shop owner unpacks every carpet he has with speed and fury. Dozens upon dozens of carpets are dumped before the foreigner as they sip the tea at the quickest socially acceptable rate, feeling intensely awkward the whole time. Guilt is, of course, the goal. After the tea and all of the trouble the shop keeper has taking to unpack every carpet he owns, the foreigner is left feelings like he or she owes something. The shop owner asks which carpet they like, but the carpets have no prices. After seeing so many carpets, it would seem illogical to say they didn’t like any. So, the polite foreigner points to one with a pretty design. And then suddenly “to like” is understood as “to want” and the bargaining begins, something the foreigner, if a Westerner, has little to no experience in. More oft than not, a carpet isn’t actually sold. Carpets can be expensive and the salesman often overestimates the wealth of foreigners. But the foreigner rarely escapes without things descending into an argument. Best case scenario, they have wasted an hour feeling awkward in exchange for some cheep sugary tea. “My friend,” said Joshua, deciding he would be honest and direct. “There is no way I am ever coming into your shop to buy a carpet. I am sorry.” “But I’ll give you a good price.” “Perhaps, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m never coming in. I do not want a carpet.” The salesman frowned, looking a bit broken. Joshua almost felt bad. Almost. “I do not understand why you foreigners never buy carpets from me. Don’t you understand that Morocco is a poor country. If you don’t buy things, thinks will never get better.” There was a twisted logic to what the salesman was saying, but Josh was too much of a capitalist to think that he was somehow obligated to buy a product he didn’t want. Even if he did pity the man and thought to give him aid, buying a carpet would just encourage him to harass more tourists and produce even more useless carpets that would go unsold. Really the answer was for him to do something else. “I’ll tell a big secret about the West,” explained Josh. “We hate, absolutely hate, not having prices written next to the product.” The salesman furrowed his brow. “Why? I give good prices.” “Maybe,” said Joshua, scratching some P patch on his elbow. “But Westerners don’t know that. They don’t want to be cheated and they hate feeling stupid.” “But I would not cheat them,” the salesman protested. “But, they are afraid you will. Look, we have carpets in at home. What you’re selling is not carpet. You’re selling a memory or Morocco. No one wants to buy something if every time they look at it, they are reminded of how they were harassed, cheated and made to feel stupid.” The salesman looked at Josh skeptically. “You know what I would do?” asked Josh. “I would put the prices right on the carpet. You would be the only shop in town with them so everyone would come to you. And I would write a little explanation of each carpet. Who made it? Is it Arab or Berber? How long did it take? What style is it in? Write a story and that way when people buy the carpet, they will feel connected to it and to Morocco. ‘This carpet was made by Fatima from Fez in the style of her city and took her a hundred hours’ — that sort of thing.” The salesman thought for a moment. “No, that wouldn’t work. If I put a price on a carpet, people would just go next door and ask for the same carpet but for ten dirham less.” He was not wrong; that was the nature of competition. Joshua would have likely continued on pointlessly, but he spotted something in the corner of his eyes. Something plaid. He looked behind him, but saw nothing. My imagination? He thanked the shop owner and began to head towards the market. He had actually been on a trip to get food for the bus trip north to Taroudant before getting sidetracked by the carpet salesman. Joshua figured that if he saw what he thought he saw, there was a good chance he would be at the market as well. Wednesday was market day and the square that was normally barren dirt field was now bustling with commerce. All Moroccan markets were hectic, but Tafraoute was a smaller and simpler place. There were no smokey, narrow alleys like in Marakesh or Fez. Instead, the market was simply a hundred merchant and a hundred blankets with their colorful items for piled high. Ramshackle canopies had been erected over the blankets to shield the merchants for the scorching sun. Joshua scanned the market and sure enough, there he was, examining a plate piled high with some red powdery spice. He wore the same thing that he had worn days ago: slacks, brown covered with dirt, and that plaid button-down. It was the walking man. Joshua walked up beside him. “You made it your destination? That was a long walk.” The walking man glanced over and smiled. “I have walked longer,” he said. “I never asked. You have an interesting accent. Where are you from? Morocco?” “Morocco?” He shook him head. “No, no, no. I am person of the sea.” Josh furrowed his brow. He was fucking with him again. “Like the turtle?” The walking man was straight-faced. “No, like a person of the sea. The world feared us once, but now, not so much at all.” “You’re a merman?” “I’m not riddling you. I told you what I am.” He seemed very serious. “And I’ve lived long enough to know what you are. You are a dreamer.” That struck Joshua. What did mean by that? For once, Joshua didn’t know what to say. “You should listen to your dreams.” the walking man said. He patted Joshua on the shoulder and walked away. Feeling very confused and a bit dizzy, Joshua made it back to the hostel. He had forgotten to buy any food. It wasn’t that important, he supposed. When he entered the room, Joris was there packing his backpack. He looked up from clothes to Joshua’s pale face and knew something was off. “What happened?” asked the Dutchman. “Some weird man in the streets told me to listen to my dreams.” Joris pressed his lips together and pondered that. “I once had homeless man yell that he saw me masturbating. The thing was, I did in fact jerk off right before leaving my flat like thirty minutes before. It really freaked me out.” Josh should have laughed, but didn’t. “Look,” Joris said “It’s probably nothing. Inspirational people say follow your dreams all the time. Besides, we already went to the blue stones. There was nothing there.” “I dreamed again last night.” “Of what?” “I don’t know,” Joshua said. “I’ve forgotten mostly. But I think I want to sneak into Mecca.” |
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