“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.”
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