Travellers in Magic

by Lisa Goldstein

  “Oh, Harold,” his wife said. “Harold wants to climb every tower in the country.”

  “No, man, for ruins you gotta go to Zabla,” the hitchhiker said. “But the buses don’t go there—you gotta rent a car. It’s way the hell out in the desert, unspoiled, untouched. If your car breaks down you’re dead—ain’t nobody passing through that way for days.”

  Harold’s wife shuddered in the heat. “I just want to do some shopping before we go home,” she said. “I heard you can pick up bargains in leather in Qarnatl.”

  “All we saw in Qarnatl were natives trying to sell us decks of cards,” Jean said. She turned to Millie. “Remember? I don’t know why they thought Americans would be interested in their playing cards. They weren’t even the same as ours.”

  Charles sipped his margarita, listening to the exotic names flow around him. What if he told them the names meant nothing to him, nothing at all? But he was too embarrassed. There were appearances to keep up after all, the appearance of being a seasoned traveller, of knowing the ropes. He would find out soon enough, anyway.

  The day wore on. Charles had a margarita, then another. When the group around the pool broke up it seemed the most natural thing in the world to follow them into the hotel restaurant and order a steak, medium-rare. He was running low on cash, he noticed—he’d have to cash another traveller’s check in the morning.

  But in the morning when he awoke, cold sober, he knew immediately what he’d done. He reached for his wallet on the nightstand, fingers trembling a little. There was only a five with its bleak little picture of a shrub left. Well, he thought, feeling a little shaky. Maybe someone’s going to the airport today. Probably. The guys in the office aren’t going to believe this one.

  He packed up his two suitcases, leaving Debbie’s overnight bag for her in case she came back. Downstairs he headed automatically for the coffee shop before he remembered. Abruptly he felt his hunger grow worse. “Excuse me,” he said to the man at the desk. “How much—Do you know how much the taxi to the airport is?”

  “No speak English, sor,” the man said. He was small and dark, like most of the natives. His teeth were stained red.

  “You don’t—” Charles said, disgusted. “Why in God’s name would they hire someone who doesn’t speak English? How much,” he said slowly. “Taxi. Airport.” He heard his voice grow louder; apparently Debbie was right.

  The man shrugged. Another man joined them. Charles turned on him with relief. “How much is the taxi to the airport?”

  “Oh, taxi,” the man said, as though the matter were not very important. “Not so much, sor. Eight, nine. Maybe fifteen.”

  “Fifteen?” Charles said. He tried to remember the airport, remember how he’d gotten here. “Not five?” He held up five fingers.

  The second man laughed. “Oh no sor,” he said. “Fifteen. Twenty.” He shrugged.

  Charles looked around in desperation. Hotel Tours, said the sign behind the front desk. Ruins. Free. “The ruins,” he said, pointing to the sign, wondering if either of the men could read. “Are they near the airport?” He could go to the ruins, maybe get a ride.…

  “Near?” the second man said. He shrugged again. “Maybe. Yes, I think so.”

  “How near?” Charles said.

  “Near,” the second man said. “Yes. Near enough.”

  Charles picked up the two suitcases and followed the line of tourists to the bus stop. See, he thought. Nothing to worry about, and you’re even getting a free ride to the airport. Those taxi drivers are thieves anyway.

  It was awkward maneuvering the suitcases up the stairs of the bus. “I’m going on to the airport,” Charles said to the driver, feeling the need to explain.

  “Of course, sor,” the driver said, shrugging as if to say that an American’s suitcases were no business of his. He added a word that Charles didn’t catch. Perhaps it was in another language.

  The bus set off down the new two-lane highway fronting the hotels. Soon they left the hotels behind, passed a cluster of run-down shacks and were heading into the desert. The air conditioning hummed loudly. Waves of heat travelled across the sands.

  After nearly an hour the bus stopped. “We have one hour,” the driver said in bad English. He opened the door. “These are the temple of Marmaz. Very old. One hour.” The tourists filed out. A few were adjusting cameras or pointing lenses.

  Because of the suitcases Charles was the last out. He squinted against the sun. The temple was a solid wall of white marble against the sand. Curious in spite of himself he crossed the parking lot, avoiding the native who was trying to show him something. “Pure silver,” the small man said, calling after him. “Special price just for you.”

  In front of the temple was a cracked marble pool, now dry. Who were these people who had carried water into the desert, who had imprisoned the moon in pale marble? But then how much had he known about the other tourist spots he had visited, the Greeks who had built the Parthenon, the Mayans who had built the pyramids? He followed the line of tourists into the temple, feeling the coolness fall over him like a blessing.

  He went from room to room, delighted, barely feeling the weight of the suitcases. He saw crumbling mosaics of reds and blues and greens, fragments of tapestries, domes, fountains, towers, a white dining hall that could seat a hundred. In one small room a native was explaining a piece of marble sculpture to a dozen Americans.

  “This, he is the god of the sun,” the native said. “And in the next room, the goddess of the moon. Moon, yes? We will go see her after. Once a year, at the end of the year, the two statues—statues, yes?—go outside. The priests take outside. They get married. Her baby is the new year.”

  “What nonsense,” a woman standing near Charles said quietly. She was holding a guidebook. “That’s the fourth king. He built the temple. God of the sun.” She laughed scornfully.

  “Can I—Can I see that book for a minute?” Charles said. The cover had flipped forward tantalizingly, almost revealing the name of the country.

  The woman looked briefly at her watch. “Got to go,” she said. “The bus is leaving in a minute and I’ve got to find my husband. Sorry.”

  Charles’ bus was gone by the time he left the temple. It was much cooler now but heat still rose from the desert sands. He was very hungry, nearly tempted to buy a cool drink and a sandwich at the refreshment stand near the parking lot. “Cards?” someone said to him.

  Charles turned. The small native said something that sounded like “Tiraz!” It was the same word the bus driver had said to him in the morning. Then, “Cards?” he said again.

  “What?” Charles said impatiently, looking for a taxi.

  “Ancient playing set,” the native said. “Very holy.” He took out a deck of playing cards from an embroidered bag and spread them for Charles. The colors were very bright. “Souvenir,” the native said. He grinned, showing red-stained teeth. “Souvenir of your trip.”

  “No, thank you,” Charles said. All around the parking lot, it seemed, little natives were trying to sell tourists rings and pipes and blouses and, for some reason, packs of playing cards. “Taxi?” he said. “Is there a taxi here?”

  The native shrugged and moved on to the next tourist.

  It was getting late. Charles went toward the nearest tour bus. The driver was leaning against the bus, smoking a small cigarette wrapped in a brown leaf. “Where can I find a taxi?” Charles asked him.

  “No taxis,” the driver said.

  “No—Why not?” Charles said. This country was impossible. He couldn’t wait to get out, to be on a plane drinking a margarita and heading back to the good old U.S.A. This was the worst vacation he’d ever had. “Can I make a phone call? I have to get to the airport.”

  A woman about to get on the bus heard him and stopped. “The airport?” she said. “The airport’s fifty miles from here. At least. You’ll never find a taxi to take you that far.”

  “Fifty miles?” Charles said. “They told me—At the hotel they t
old me it was fairly close.” For a moment his confidence left him. What do I do now? he thought. He sagged against the suitcases.

  “Listen,” the woman said. She turned to the bus driver. “We’ve got room. Can’t we take him back to the city with us? I think we’re the last bus to leave.”

  The driver shrugged. “For the tiraz, of course. Anything is possible.”

  If Charles hadn’t been so relieved at the ride he would have been annoyed. What did this word tiraz mean? Imbecile? Man with two suitcases? He followed the woman onto the bus.

  “I can’t believe you thought this was close to the airport,” the woman said. He sat across the aisle from her. “This is way out in the desert. There’s nothing here. No one would come out here if it wasn’t for the ruins.”

  “They told me at the hotel,” Charles said. He didn’t really want to discuss it. He was no longer the seasoned traveller, the man who had regaled the people around the pool with stories of Mexico, Greece, Hawaii. He would have to confess, have to go back to the hotel and tell someone the whole story. Maybe they would bring in the police to find Debbie. A day wasted and he had only gone around in a circle, back to where he started. He felt tired and very hungry.

  But when the bus stopped it was not at the brightly lit row of hotels. He strained to see in the oncoming dusk. “I thought you said—” He turned to the woman, hating to sound foolish again. “I thought we were going to the city.”

  “This is—” the woman said. Then she nodded in understanding. “You want the new city, the tourist city. That’s up the road about ten miles. Any cab’ll take you there.”

  Charles was the last off the bus again, slowed this time not so much by the suitcases as by the new idea. People actually stayed in the same cities that the natives lived. He had heard of it being done but he had thought only young people did it, students and drifters and hitchhikers like the one back at the hotel. This woman was not young and she had been fairly pleasant. He wished he had remembered to thank her.

  The first cab driver laughed when Charles showed him the five note and asked to be taken to the new city. The driver was not impressed by the traveller’s checks. The second and third drivers turned him down flat. The city smelled of motor oil and rancid fish. It was getting late, even a little chilly, and Charles began to feel nervous about being out so late. The two suitcases were an obvious target for some thief. And where would he go? What would he do?

  The panic that he had suppressed for so long took over now and he began to run. He dove deeper into the twisting maze of the city, not caring where he went so long as he was moving. Everything was closed, and there were few street-lamps. He heard the sounds of his footfalls echo off the shuttered buildings. A cat jumped out of his way, eyes flashing gold.

  After a long time of running he began to slow. “Tiraz!” someone whispered to him from an abandoned building. His heart pounded. He did not look back. Ahead was a lit storefront, a store filled with clutter. The door was open. A pawn shop.

  He went in with relief. He cleared a space for himself among the old magazines and rusty baking pans and child’s beads. The man behind the counter watched but made no comment. He took out everything from the two suitcases, sorted out what he needed and repacked it and gave the other suitcase to the man behind the counter. The man went to a small desk, unlocked a drawer and took out a steel box. He counted out some money and offered it to Charles. Charles accepted it wordlessly, not even bothering to count it.

  The money bought a meal tasting of sawdust and sesame oil, and a sagging bed in an old hotel. The overhead fan turned all night because Charles could not figure out how to turn it off. A cockroach watched impassively from the corner.

  The city looked different in daylight. Women in shawls and silver bracelets, men in clothes fashionable fifty years ago walked past the hotel as Charles looked out in the morning. The sun was shining. His heart rose. This was going to be the day he made it to the airport.

  He walked along the streets almost jauntily, ignoring the ache in his arms. His beard itched because last night, in a moment of panic, he had thrown his electric razor into the suitcase to be sold. He shrugged. There were still things he could sell. Today he would find a better pawn shop.

  He walked, passing run-down houses and outdoor markets, beggars and children, automobile garages and dim restaurants smelling of frying fish. “Excuse me,” he said to a man leaning against a horse-drawn carriage. “Do you know where I can find a pawn shop?”

  The man and horse both looked up. “Ride, yes?” the man said enthusiastically. “Famous monuments. Very cheap.”

  “No,” Charles said. “A pawn shop. Do you understand?”

  The man shrugged, pulled the horse’s mane. “No speak English,” he said finally.

  Another man had come up behind Charles. “Pawn shop?” he said.

  Charles turned quickly, relieved. “Yes,” he said. “Do you know—”

  “Two blocks down,” the man said. “Turn left, go five blocks. Across the hospital.”

  “What street is that?” Charles asked.

  “Street?” the man said. He frowned. “Two blocks down and turn left.”

  “The name,” Charles said. “The name of the street.”

  To Charles’s astonishment the man burst out laughing. The carriage driver laughed too, though he could not have possibly known what they were talking about. “Name?” the man said. “You tourists name your streets as though they were little children, yes?” He laughed again, wiping his eyes, and said something to the carriage-driver in another language, speaking rapidly.

  “Thank you,” Charles said. He walked the two blocks, turned left and went five blocks more. There was no hospital where the man had said there would be, and no pawn shop. A man who spoke a little English said something about a great fire, but whether it had been last week or several years ago Charles was unable to find out.

  He started back toward the man who had given him directions. In a few minutes he was hopelessly lost. The streets became dingier, and once he saw a rat run from a pile of newspapers. The fire had swept through this part of the city leaving buildings charred and water-damaged, open to the passersby like museum exhibits. Two dirty children ran toward him, shouting, “Money, please, sor! Money for food!” He turned down a sidestreet to lose them.

  Ahead of him were three young men in grease-stained clothes. One of them hissed something at him, the words rushing by like a fork of lightning. Another held a length of chain which he played back and forth, whispering, between his hands. “I don’t speak—” Charles said, but it was too late. They were on him.

  One tore the suitcase from his hand, shouting “El amak! El amak!” Another knocked him down with a punch to his stomach that forced the wind out of him. The third was going through his pockets, taking his wallet and the little folder of traveller’s checks. Charles tried feebly to rise, and the second one thrust him back, hitting him once more in the stomach. The first one yelled something and they ran quickly down the street. Charles lay where they left him, gasping for breath.

  The two dirty children passed him, and an old woman balancing a basket of clothes on her head. After a few minutes he rolled over and sat up, leaning against a rusty car up on blocks. His pants were torn, he noticed dully, torn and smeared with oil. And his suitcase with the rest of his clothes was gone.

  He would go to the police, go and tell them that his suitcase was gone. He knew the word for suitcase because the young thief had shouted it. Amak. El amak. And suddenly he realized something that knocked the breath out of him as surely as a punch to the stomach. Every word in English, every word that he knew, had a corresponding word in this strange foreign language. Everything you could think of—hand, love, table, hot—was conveyed to these natives by another word, a word not English. Debbie had known that, and that was why she was good at languages. He hadn’t. He had expected everyone he met to drop this ridiculous charade and start speaking like normal people.

  He stood
up gingerly, breathing shallowly to make the pain in his stomach go away. After a while he began walking again, following the maze of the city in deeper. At last he found a small park and sat on a bench to rest.

  A native came up to him almost immediately. “Cards?” the native said. “Look.” He opened his embroidered bag.

  Charles sighed. He was too tired to walk away. “I don’t want any cards,” he said. “I don’t have any money.”

  “Of course not,” the native said. “Look. They are beautiful, no?” He spread the brightly colored cards on the grass. Charles saw a baseball player, a fortune teller, a student, some designs he didn’t recognize. “Look,” the native said again and turned over the next card. “The tourist.”

  Charles had to laugh, looking at the card of the man carrying suitcases. These people had been visited by tourists for so long that the tourist had become an archetype, a part of everyone’s reality like kings and jokers. He looked closer at the card. Those suitcases were familiar. And the tourist—He jerked back as though shocked. It was him.

  He stood quickly and began to run, ignoring the pain in his stomach. The native did not follow.

  He noticed the card sellers on every corner after that. They called to him even if he crossed the street to avoid them. “Tiraz, tiraz!” they called after him. He knew what it meant now. Tourist.

  As the sun set he became ravenously hungry. He walked around a beggarwoman squatting in the street and saw, too late, a card seller waiting on the corner. The card seller held out something to him, some kind of pastry, and Charles took it, too hungry to refuse.

  The pastry was filled with meat and very good. As though that were the signal the other card sellers he passed began to give him things—a skin of wine, a piece of fish wrapped in paper. One of them handed him money, far more money than a deck of cards would cost. It was growing dark. He took a room for the night with the money.

  A card seller was waiting for him at the corner the next day. “All right,” Charles said to him. Some of the belligerence had been knocked out of him. “I give up. What the hell’s going on around here?”