by Ronald Smith
******
By the end of that autumn, only the farmhouse, the Mill and the hall remained to be done, so I rewarded myself with a long dreamt-of trip to Egypt, before the all-out effort to complete the buildings. A flight to Cairo was booked, and I was off, leaving Mairi in charge. Bob was still working away, and Jamie had returned, to work off the money he owed her.
In London, the night before departure, I went into the tube to Hampstead down a long narrow corridor, where I found myself having to step over four struggling bodies – two skinheads and two Pakistanis. One pair of combatants was rolling about, wrestling for control of a big iron bar.
Like everyone else had done, I walked past; then I reached the platform and glanced around at the rows of indifferent commuters, and disgust rose in my throat.
I returned to the fight and assumed my best Glasgow accent: “Right, ya cunts, if yur gonnae fight, fuckin dae it proper,” I lectured them, ‘Either ye dae it or ye dinnae. Gies that iron bar.”
They stopped. The two on the floor got up and gave me the bar. When I finished my harangue, they returned to scrapping, but half-heartedly.
I snarled at them, “Why don’t ya really get stuck in and fuckin kill each other? Here, take this,” and I presented them with the iron bar. But the two skinheads disengaged themselves and retreated down the corridor, shouting defiantly “ Fuckin Paki basterds!” with me following until they were gone.
Having brushed themselves off, the two Pakistanis resumed their roles as ticket collectors, and waved my through the barrier, taking no money.
I arrived in Egypt at 5 a.m. and checked into a hotel in Cairo’s equivalent of Piccadilly Circus, and afterwards headed straight for the Egyptian Museum. Inside, five thousand years of Egyptian society had been piled into heaps: mummies, statues, paintings, all covered with dust and shoved without order into a musty old building. I came out with a terrible headache.
That evening I needed a drink, and went looking for a bar. But my purple quilted hippie’s jacket wasn’t quite right for Cairo; as soon as I went into the bar of my choice, I felt a really hostile atmosphere one could cut with a knife. Naturally, I was drawn like a magnet to the most hostile person there and sat facing him, directly across his table. He was drinking brandy.
I ordered a beer. Alcohol is very expensive in Muslim Egypt, about ten times as much as a meal on the street which cost only ten pence. At least it was a big bottle, nearly a pint. But I wanted only half of it, so I left the rest in the bottle and rose to leave, indicating to the Egyptian that he should finish it.
He accepted and immediately waved the barman over and ordered two brandies. Each glass had about three inches of spirit in it.’
‘Oh Christ, here we go’ I thought, ‘I want out of this bloody bar but I’ll have to buy him a drink first, a big one, on top of this.’
I knocked the brandy straight back – he did as well – and waved for another round. It came within seconds. I gulped it down, and leapt from my chair for a getaway, but he already had his hand up for a third round, which appeared at once.
This went on until I was reeling. ‘I can’t take any more’ I confessed, gesticulating my defeat, and rose unsteadily, the antagonism transformed into a cordial glow of fraternity, as I lurched towards the door.
There is a background of hatred for western people because many Egyptians are dissatisfied; having been educated but unable to get jobs, they see the affluence of the West projected through the media and they hate it, fiercely and neurotically.
I was in a bazaar and entered a packed restaurant. Noticing three empty seats in a row, I sat down in the middle one. Then two fat Egyptians came in, one of them was very large and oily; they seemed to me like villains, hoods perhaps, and I sensed they were powerful, that they perhaps owned the bazaar. I moved respectfully to one side so they could sit together. The large fat one called over the waiter and made him clean the seat where I had been sitting. The muscles in my stomach tightened in frustrated anger at the insult; I could only glare back with rigid hateur.
Next, I climbed one of the pyramids, which is forbidden. I had made friends with a guy, and we set off together. From the bus, we could see the pyramids looming up; they seemed close, but oddly, we were a long way off. The receding point at the top distorts the perspective. When we got there, at first we were thrown off by an armed guard who angrily refused the baksheesh I offered him. When he moved away, we made a run at it, to get too far up for him to call us back. We had to scramble up each stone, one at a time.
As I came to the topmost level, I was taken aback to see a naked bum going up and down. It was a guy buggering another effeminate-looking bloke. I tried to ignore them and concentrated on photographing the view. Then my friend clambered up.The guy finished, pulled up his trousers, and came over to us. “Hey,” he said to me, “I like your friend. Why don’t you take mine and I’ll take yours?”
The inside of the pyramid had been desecrated by the piss of centuries; it stinks of the urine of the thousands of tourists who go in there and relieve themselves, and it has never been washed since it opened. Piss, buggery, and bats’ droppings – it seemed an appropriate counterpoint to one of the most mysterious and mystical buildings on earth.
In the Great Pyramid, there are thousands of tourists, each waiting for his turn to go up a narrow step into the King’s Chamber. Wishing to be in there alone, I arrived at the entrance between two tours. As I was waiting for the first group to clear the chamber, an American woman stepped over and said, “Gee, don’t be disappointed, there’s really NOTHING in there.”
‘That’s it’ flashed through my mind, ’That’s it!’
“Lady, you’re so right,” I replied gratefully, as a whole series of connecting images cascaded into consciousness: this huge pile of stone, this empty room with no carvings, the bare slabs of rock – why?
It was a geometric statement of Nothing. This was why mystics and cranks have always found it so easy to project crazy idea onto the pyramids. Could it be the best sensory-deprivation chamber ever made? Literally nothing gets in there: no light, no sound, very little radiation.
In one chamber, I switched off all the lights, but some illumination was filtering in from the corridor. I wished the light outside would go out – and abruptly it did! The intense, mind-blowing shock of absolute darkness, the total blackout, took me completely by surprise.
I imagined a drugged, somnolent Pharoah being carried in and laid in the sarcophagus as preparation for an out-of-body experience in which he might travel anywhere, even to faraway stars, and return with strange revelations…my own mind began to drift; then with another shock the lights came back on.
After the pyramids, I went directly to Luxor and Thebes. On the train, my eye was caught by an Egyptian who radiated self-control and repose. He seemed outstandingly in control of himself and those around him. Throughout the journey I continued to steal glances at him and wonder who he was.
I arrived in Luxor in the evening, and the place was packed with tourists. There was the usual crowd of Egyptian hustlers offering to find the passengers accommodation as they disembarked. Normally, I would avoid such types and find my own place to stay, but this time I gave in when accosted by a delightful young chap called Ali and agreed, “OK, you find me a room.”
He led me past endless rows of identical mud-brick houses and found me lodgings with a christian family, which I thought was unusual and would be easy to find later.So I left my bag, gave Ali some cash, and suggested we have a meal together.
Ali said he had been to America, and described Chicago to me in an American accent. But the truth was that he had never left Luxor in his life, he travelled only in his imagination.
‘Do you want a guide for tomorrow?” he asked. Captivated by his eager charm, I said yes and agreed to meet him.
“I can’t remember where exactly the house is,” I said as we separated.
“Don’t worry,” he reassured me, “Just go down that street, turn
left, and there it is.”
The houses were hopelessly unfamiliar; all I could recollect was that some roadworks were beside the door. I knocked at a house, but the doorway filled with unfamiliar Egyptian faces and I retreated apologetically. Eleven o’clock had come, everyone was going to bed, and the streets were becoming more and more deserted.
Anxiously I tried several other doors, disturbing sleepy families. No one was now in the street except several mean-looking Arabs, eyeing me up. My passport and suitcase were in one of these indistinguishable houses, while all of Egypt was closing its shutters for the night. I returned again and again to the roadworks, looking for a clue.
An Egyptian Priest came along the street with another man. ‘The family is Christian,’ I recalled, ‘He is bound to know where they live.’
“Can you help me , Father?”
“Oh yes, certainly, I will help you.”
“I’m staying with a Christian family but I’ve forgotten which house they live in.”
“Was it up there?”
“No, near here.”
“All the people here are Christians, many thousands of Christians live here. And do you believe in the Lord?” he asked, taking a pastoral interest in me.
“Well, yes, I’m a sort of Christian, but…”
“And do you take Christ Jesus into your heart?” He continued as if he sensed my soul needed salvation and quite forgetting my need for a place to sleep.
“I’m just trying to find my house, Father.”
“You are lost, my son, and I am a Christian. I must help you to be found again. For if a man loses one of his sheep, does he not go looking for the missing one?”
The other man interrupted. “Why don’t you come along with me? I’m going to my hotel. They may put you up there.”
‘Great,’ I thought with relief; it’s difficult to get into a hotel at night as they are in walled enclosures which are locked against thieves.
As we entered the hotel compound, dogs barked. Inside, the Lebanese owner was having an argument with an American from The Bronx with whom he was playing cards. The American, a nervous, highly-strung youth with huge, bulging eyes and pin-point pupils had just arrived in Egypt on his first trip out of the States, and craved acceptance from these people. But the Lebanese suddenly snarled at him aggressively, “I don’t like your eyes!”
“What’s wrong wid my eyes?” the American cried with pained alarm; “Why doan you like my eyes? I can’t help my eyes!” He retreated to his room, raving “What’s wrong wid my eyes?’
“Don’t worry, I’ll fix you up, you can sleep here,” the owner assured me. “You can sleep in this room with him, he added, pointing into a room where a fat, poofy-looking Egyptian was rolling out a mattress.
‘Yes, you can sleep with me,” the guy said, too invitingly for my liking. ‘What am I letting myself in for, ‘ I wondered, knowing the reputation of Egyptians for sodomy.‘Well, I’m as big as he is, and I need a place to sleep, so I’ll just have to chance it. What can he do? I’ll just punch him and tell him to get off if he tries anything.’
I hate to sleep in my clothes, so I took off my trousers and got into bed; then he climbed in with his clothes still on. I tried to keep a distance between us, but he kept moving closer. ‘What’s going on?’ I moved away and he edged up nearer, and this went on for what seemed liked hours, as he insinuated himself into my body space, until I had recoiled against the wall.
Tense and watchful, I waited for the unmistakable signs of intimacy which would be my signal to say ‘Get off’ but they never came. Eventually I fell asleep.
Later, I heard from Ali that this fat man thought it most peculiar of me to remove my trousers on the coldest night of the year and that he was trying to keep us both warm by sleeping close to me, but I kept edging away. Each of us had misread the other’s intention.
The next morning I returned to the roadworks and found the door of my lodgings right there beside them.
Ali was waiting at our rendezvous with three Americans, two men and a girl, to whom he was effusively demonstrating his most bewitching manners. Coming over to me, he explained, "I said I would show you around, but I can make more money if I take these people too. It's up to you, but if they come along it'll cost you less and they will pay for the taxi," It was my first day and I didn't mind, "Yeah, OK, why not," I replied.
The first tomb we entered contained a wall painting which, unbelievably, was the same scene that had decorated wall curtains in my room when I was a kid, figures I had grown up with and now recognised like old friends; I felt at home.
The Americans were doing a tomb every ten minutes, while I wished to linger and absorb the atmosphere. One of them seemed to know all about the markings, explaining from the guide books what everything meant, as he moved briskly along.
As I listened to him prattling on in a self-satisfied, know-it-all tone, a great anger rose in me. My intuition told me what the hieroglyphics meant; I knew they were intelligible even to the least educated Egyptian of that era because they were a visual language of familiar images, but they also had additional layers of meaning through geometrical and mathematical dimensions, I realised why I had worked so long with music, paintings and drawings together, to express a single idea; I was trying to evolve a similar language.
"That is NOT what these pictures mean," 1 interjected with quiet intensity. "The guy who had these painted is expressing that he loves his wife and his family," It was like the Egyptian of the tomb was speaking through me, brushing aside the superficial interpretations of these deluded foreigners