by Ronald Smith
******
Back in Cairo, on the night before I left Egypt, I decided to have a farewell drink, getting really high on a local spirit, I knew I had to be at the airport sometime after midnight, but the time of departure on my ticket was smudged. I couldn't make out whether it said 1.50 or 3.30 a.m. I had to go, so I rushed out and hailed a taxi,
"Quick, quick, the airport," I urged the driver, and he sped off, impelled by my fear of missing the flight.
He apparently took a shortcut and got lost, because we drove into an army encampment, I looked out and saw soldiers everywhere, Egyptian men with guns, looking at us with surprise. The nearest one waved us down.
"Diplomatique ! Diplomatique ! Airport! Fuck off !" I shouted, and he jumped back as if given an order; the cab sped past as others now called out to us. We narrowly avoided what could have been a three hour delay.
At the airport, I rushed through the passenger entrance and registered at the airport office, to find there was plenty of time, then went into the departure lounge. There were quite a few policemen about, who for some reason, looked at me with suspicion.
I had some Egyptian money which I meticulously spent, leaving myself with only a Scottish ten pound note. Then 1 sat down next to a man I seemed to recognise from a dream the night before, an airport policeman. He told me he was the only Christian working there and that the other cops gave him a hard time.
"You are my brother," he told me warmly.
"I'm not the same kind of Christian.”
"Does not matter - you are my brother."
I told him I was leaving on the flight to Britain, "Have you paid your airport tax?" he asked.
"What tax?"
"You must pay a tax. You cannot board the plane unless you pay it,"
"But I've just spent all my money," I protested with alarm,
"No matter, I shall give it to you,"
"How much is it?"
"Three pounds," He was offering me about a week's wage,
"No, I can't take that much from you; I have £10 in Scottish money, I'll change that."
But none of the banks even knew what it was, nor did the airlines. My Coptic friend had gone, so I went over to a couple of the other policemen.
"I'm stuck, I've spent all my Egyptian money and I can't change my foreign currency,"
They laughed in an evil, unsympathetic way.
"Why are you laughing? Do you think this is funny?"
"Yes," they gloated, "Ha, ha, ha, yes, very funny."
"Do you want to see me miss my plane?"
"Ah, ha, ha, ha, yes, yes ."
"You'd like to see me locked up, wouldn't you?" They abandoned themselves to unholy glee,
"You think I'm a nobody, don't you?" They nodded, smiling coldly.
"But you're making a big mistake. You don't know who I am." The smiles vanished.
"I could be anybody," I snapped my fingers. "Tomorrow, telex, more money than you earn in ten years. In my pocket," which I patted as if it contained a fat wad. Still they made no move to help, but watched me narrowly.
"My godfather is the British Ambassador to Egypt, Yes, it is true, and he has the ear of Sadat. Tomorrow," I made chopping gestures at my throat and pointed to them, "your heads will roll." I demonstrated with my hands, a head falling to the ground, and gave it a football kick for good measure.
They looked down and away, beaten at their own poker game, and walked to another part of the lounge.
I approached several tourists, but they were no more helpful than the banks. One offered me three Egyptian pounds for the tenner, which was worth seventeen,
'If that is the best I can do, I'll find my 'brother' and give it to him,' I decided.
When I located him, I said, "I've got to have the three pounds, so I'll give you this,"
"No, no, no, no," he, refused, taking out his wallet,
"You take it, I don't want that tourist to have my money," I insisted, stuffing the note in his shirt pocket.
Immediately the other two cops reappeared and clapped their hands on his shoulders, arresting him. In Egypt, it is illegal to change money, although in practice everybody does it, I had just got my friend into trouble; he would be fined and lose his job, all because he had helped me.
They began to drag him away, "Right" I shouted, "We're all going to the Airport Controller." A crowd of perhaps eight people had gathered and we marched off together.
In the office they directed a torrent of Arabic at the Controller of the airport, obviously painting a dark and criminal scene.
I cut in, trying to sound like indignant Royalty, naming myself resoundingly. "I am from Scotland, My godfather is the British Ambassador," I added. "This man here," I gestured towards the crestfallen Christian policeman, "is the finest man I've met in Egypt, the most honourable person. He offered to give me a week's wages so that I could pay your airport tax. In return I gave him the Scottish note." I handed it to the Controller. He looked at me.
"I have been to Scotland, I have played golf at Gleneagles," he said, smiling kindly. He began commending my friend profusely in Arabic. Then he turned to the other two, his voice becoming a whip, a rod, a bastinado, beneath which they cowered and flinched.
"I insist that the airport pay your tax," he said to me, proudly.
"And I insist that he take this," I replied, giving the policeman my ten pound note.
And so I was able to leave Egypt wth honour.
But the plane stopped all over Europe - Athens, Bucharest, Budapest, Vienna and Copenhagen -before depositing me, limp, travelworn and broke, back in Britain.
I stopped off in Edinburgh, where I went to visit a legal friend I’ve known for years, who had long sung my praises as an artist; he thought I was the greatest artist in Scotland. It happened that he was going to a Knights' Templar Ball in the Surgeons' Hall, and he invited me to go with him.
I'll do anything, so 1 went to the Ball, wearing red velvet trousers. I met a guy there who was eighty-eight years old, and became friendly with him, talking about pyramids and Egyptian hieroglyphics.
He got onto the subject of leylines and told me he used his knowledge of them to cure people. He specialised in helping people who came to him because they were dying of a mysterious cause which doctors couldn't identify. He related their sickness to their 'type' and to where they lived - they might be living in a magnetic current on the earth which they were allergic to. He told me. he could tell just from the map if an area can cause sickness.
So I told him the story about my encounter with the old man and the crow, the Devil Stone, and the dreams about the Dog. He listened intently, then said the stone must have been magnetite, and that I had been doing instinctively what Freemasonry teaches.
Scottish Freemasonry, I learned from him, is centred on a secret relating to Edinburgh; they apparently believe Edinburgh is actually Jerusalem.
Personally, I thought this was a load of bullshit, just right-wing madness, but I listened.
The story went back to the Emperor Constantine who adopted Christianity and Christianised the Eastern Empire as a defence against the Barbarian Hordes pressing in on all sides. He had a British wife who went searching for the new Jerusalem in Germany and in Gaul, but failed to find it; what she was looking for was a city inhabited by the Gnostics, which had been razed to the ground when the Gnostics were suppressed. There was supposed to be a seventeen-foot-high statue of an Emperor on the spot, but the location of this city had been lost.
He told me about a book called 'Edinburgh is Jerusalem' by someone named Comyns Beaumont. It predicts that Edinburgh will be wiped out when Halley's Comet passes by, that the Comet is actually the Wandering Jew. He also revealed that he was honorary president of the USA Beaumont Society, which is backed by the CIA, because they want to prepare people for Planetary disaster.
This story caused me to recall my encounter with the CID after giving a gnome to Queen Juliana, 'They're into these occult ideas, too,' I realised; 'maybe the enti
re top echelon of the country thinks like this. And they say I'm mad!'
The old freemason confided to me, with the air of a great secret being revealed, that a part of a stone leg, seven feet from the foot to the knee, had been found near St, Giles Cathedral,
The Freemasons shoot people for revealing secrets like this, I recalled hearing somewhere.
"Come and stay with me," he invited with disconcerting candour, "and I'll teach you, I'll instruct you in the craft."
"I couldn't keep a secret," I demurred with a smile, "I won't be bound by an oath, I'd tell other people."
"I'm a member of the Alchemists' Lodge. We can arrange for you to join without the oaths."
"I don't know," I stalled. "I'll have to think about it."
Then he said, "I know the area where you are staying. There's a quarry next to you, isn't there?"
I nodded, surprised, looking at him quizzically and with a quickened interest.
"I used to be an engineer. My theory about people works on machines, too. They get arthritis and rheumatism in their ball bearings. I can predict when a machine will break down. I supplied a couple of machines to the manager of that quarry, a Mr, Nibblet. I predicted to him that one of those machines would break down in five years, four months and six days, at 10 a.m. Mr. Nibblet laughed, but 1 noted the date in my diary. Five years, four months and six days later, I phoned him at the quarry, "Has that machine broken down yet?"
"Actually," he replied, "it broke down yesterday at the end of the shift."