Countdown in Cairo

by Noel Hynd

  “Like it?”

  “France or the horses?”

  “Either,” he asked.

  “Both.”

  “Good,” he said. “You might be on the back of a camel tomorrow. It’s similar, just hurts more if you fall because you’re higher up. And God help you if you get kicked with a hoof.”

  “You’re serious about this camel thing?”

  “Completely. It goes with my cover. I’m a local businessman. I invite friends and business associates from all over the world and take them out to the tourist places. Wide open air. We can talk in complete freedom. Many of my guests are beautiful single women, so even if we are observed, nothing raises an eyebrow.”

  “Got it,” she said.

  “Now, tell me a bit more about yourself,” Voltaire said.

  “There’s very little reason to,” she said. “You obviously know a lot about me or you wouldn’t have come here to meet me.”

  “True enough,” he said. “But tell me things anyway.”

  “Such as?”

  “Tell me something I might not know,” he said, “something that might have escaped your official file or record. And don’t bore me with any of that Canadian nonsense, I know exactly who you are.”

  She thought for a moment. She sipped the chilled tea that accompanied the meal.

  “All right, here’s something,” she said. “I got into this line of work almost by chance. I never had any desire to do it. I was at a desk in Washington working on internet financial frauds. Next thing I know, they put me out in the field on a mission to Nigeria. That was a group effort. But thereafter, I got hooked into a trip to Ukraine. They needed someone who spoke Russian, so they tapped me.”

  “You never thought there might have been an ulterior reason?” he asked.

  “For what?” she asked, slightly surprised.

  “For sending you. Specifically you, to Ukraine.”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “It never occurred to you?” “Not until now.”

  “Always consider something like that,” he said. “That’s a word of good advice for the evening, free of charge.”

  She pondered the point.

  “I’m enjoying this dialogue. Keep talking,” he said.

  “About?”

  “How you never sought your current métier. But like greatness in anything, rather than seeking it or attaining it, you had it thrust upon you.”

  Plates of food arrived. Suddenly, Alex was very hungry. She dug in, and they retreated to small talk for several minutes.

  “Here’s something else, since you asked,” she said at length. “I tend to take code names very seriously,” she said. “The more one examines them, the more they reveal something about the person who has taken them.”

  “Do tell,” said Voltaire.

  “The desk-bound intellectual who yearns for action takes the name of ‘Fireman.’ The outlaw takes the name of ‘Sheriff.’ The atheist takes the name of ‘Priest.’ Somehow your code name expresses something about you. A reference to French parentage perhaps instead of the Nazi cover story that you tried to sell me. A coy allusion to the Enlightenment in Europe. You’re obviously well educated, I suspect perhaps even in the French language, as you speak it with no accent that I can pick up and with excellent diction and grammar. Or you have a yearning again to be what you’re not, vis-à-vis, French. I may never know, but somewhere the name is a key.”

  “Very, very clever,” he said. “Maybe as a reward, I should tell you part of it.”

  “Maybe you should. If you chose to, I’d listen.”

  “Consider it an expression of opposites. It’s an expression of personal philosophy as opposed to anything of action, strategy, or import. You’re a rather educated little imp, yourself,” he said. “My guess is that you’ve studied French extensively and probably read it on a university level. So if you read French literature of any sort, you probably read Candide.”

  “I did. And I once saw a production of the musical in New York.”

  “And what was the key phrase of Dr. Pangloss? Of what was the real Voltaire mocking so bitterly?”

  “The concept that this is the best of all possible worlds,” she answered.

  “Exactly,” he said. “And that is exactly the opposite of what I’m making fun of, what I’m alluding to. This world that we live in is, in my benighted opinion, often the worst of all possible worlds.”

  “Hence your code name fits you completely and gives away a large part of you,” she said. “Because that was absolutely the feeling of the real Voltaire.”

  He laughed. “You’re the first person I’ve ever met who cut right through to the core of that,” he said.

  “I might be the first person who cared enough to,” she said.

  “That too,” he admitted. “Impressive. It’s rare enough to find an American who has read Candide.”

  “I’m Canadian,” she said.

  “Good catch.”

  “Nice try.”

  A waiter came by and cleared their table. They ordered a final mint tea.

  The conversation drifted back to Voltaire’s long residence in, and expertise about, the city of Cairo. From there he rambled into local politics as he smoked again. Alex found it wise to listen.

  “The people of Cairo don’t believe their rulers, but they give credibility to every halfwit political rumor that goes around, no matter how stupid and ill-founded. Did you know that Coptic Christians were waging a secret war by going around spray painting crosses onto the clothing of Muslims? Did you know Israel had hired and sent to Egypt one thousand AIDS-infected prostitutes to infect young Muslim men? Did you know that radical Muslim extremists were planning to dump poison into the vats at the Stella brewery? You keep your ear to the ground in this city and you’ll hear just about anything,” Voltaire said. “Unless you trust your source beyond any question, you believe nothing that you hear and maybe ten percent of what you see.” He paused. “Want to experience an example of it for yourself?” he asked Alex. “Right now?”

  “Where? How?” she asked.

  “There’s a little group in a café near here that I join every now and then. People talk. Often in English. I drop by and listen and do some give and take. It helps to keep an ear to the ground.”

  He glanced at his watch. Alex glanced at hers at the same time. It was 10:45.

  “And they don’t know who they’re talking to?” Alex asked.

  “They don’t know and they don’t care,” Voltaire said. “My cover is this: I’m a Monsieur Maurice Lamara, an importer of air-conditioning units from France and Italy. I run a midsized company here. I have a dozen employees and I treat them well. I never go near the embassy, and I collect a nice payment every month from the Americans who put an electronic transfer into a bank in Europe for me every month. Cairenes voice a lot of noisy opinions, but they know better than to ask many questions because they might get a visit from the police. You’ll see what I mean.”

  “Who will you say I am?”

  “My femme du jour,” he said with a trace of lechery in his eyes. “They’re used to seeing me with beautiful Western women, one after another. I bring women by, just to show them off. They rather admire me for it in their swinish Arab way. If you’re game, I’ll take you there.”

  “I’m your squeeze of the night, huh?”

  “So to speak.”

  “I didn’t travel four thousand miles to go home early,” she said.

  “That’s the spirit.”

  “Am I dressed okay? For wherever we’re going.”

  “You’re fine. Keep the headscarf. We’ll have some high-artillery backup, anyway. I don’t go anywhere without it.”

  “I noticed. You have at least six.”

  “There are more than that, but I’m not giving away numbers.”

  “Eight then? The two Persian women have guns?”

  “Now you have it.”

  “I never for a moment thought you were stupid,” she said. �
�Let’s go.”

  Voltaire turned and gestured to a burley man seated two tables away. The man stood. As his body straightened up to standing position, Alex realized he was even larger than she had guessed. He stood maybe six-four. He wore a white robe and an Islamic skull cap. He came to the table and a grin spread across his face. He had the torso of a Kodiak bear and the face of a cherub with a stubbly beard.

  “This is Abdul,” Voltaire said. “Abdul and I have known each other for twenty years. He’s one of my bodyguards and he’ll lead the way.”

  Abdul held out a hand to Alex.

  “Charmed,” he said.

  “My pleasure, I’m sure,” Alex said. Abdul’s hand was like a catcher’s mitt.

  Abdul nodded.

  “Where are you from in America?” he asked.

  “I’m from the Toronto area,” she said. “I’m Canadian. What about you? You’re a native of Cairo?”

  “I’m Iraqi,” Abdul said. “I grew up in Detroit. I was in the US Army for six years. Fort Hood, Texas. Fort Benning, Georgia, stateside, one tour in Afghanistan.”

  “Surprising place, isn’t it?” Voltaire asked. “I assume you have a weapon. Check that it’s functioning in case there’s trouble.”

  “Expecting any?”

  “I never expect any. And I always prepare for it.”

  “My weapon is fine,” she said. It was where it always was, on her right hip, accessible, the safety catch on.

  “Then let’s go,” he said.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Abdul left the room for several seconds, then came back and gestured that they should follow. They took off. Alex stayed close to Voltaire. They were back in the alley but now headed in a different direction. It was close to 11:00 in the evening, and Voltaire led her into an alley between shops. It was so dark that she couldn’t see and so narrow that they had to pass one at a time.

  “You’re a brave woman, coming here by yourself, Josephine,” Voltaire said softly and affably. “You’re well educated and attractive. There must be easier ways for you to make a living. Safer too. Why do you do it?”

  “Sometimes I ask myself the same question,” Alex said.

  He snorted a little in reaction. “We all do,” he said. “What is it? The adrenaline? The danger of hanging out with disreputable people? The feeling that we’re on the side of the angels? A sense of justice? Must be some reason why we kick through back alleys and put our lives on the line. My question is rhetorical, really. I don’t know the answer and I suspect you don’t, either.”

  “When I figure it out, I’ll let you know,” she said.

  “I promise you I’ll do the same.”

  They came to an even narrower passage between buildings. No more than two feet in width, jagged nails sticking out from bricks, plus some electrical wires. For a moment, Voltaire took her hand to steady her. “This is tricky here,” he said. He eased Alex through sideways for twenty feet until they emerged into a wider alley.

  “Tu parles français, n’est-ce pas?” he asked.

  “Je parle français, oui,” she answered.

  For good measure, even though there was still noise from the city in the background, he suggested switching into French. Less chance of being overheard and understood. Alex concurred and agreed. While French was not uncommon in Egypt, it was nowhere nearly understood as much as a second language as English.

  “I’ll give you thirty years of history in six minutes as we walk,” Voltaire said, still in low tones. “And my history lesson will tell you where we are today. Anwar Sadat, who succeeded Nasser in 1970, was assassinated by his own soldiers in 1981. Several of the soldiers who shot him had had family or close friends who had been displaced by one of his urban renewal projects. Sadat was liked and respected outside of Egypt, but here the poor and the Islamic militants hated him. It was a matter of time before his own people murdered him. And he misplayed his most basic politics at home. He quietly funded some Islamic radical groups, figuring they would combat the leftists who Sadat actually feared. His plan backfired. Some of those who conspired to kill him had been radicalized by the same groups that Sadat had founded. Other leaders of the assassins were people whom Sadat had himself freed from Nasser’s jails. They weren’t grateful, they were bitter. They hated the government no matter who was running it. They felt the government had betrayed Islam. It was their theory that if someone had betrayed Islam, it is the duty of the individual as a Muslim to right that wrong. So they righted the wrong by murdering the president of their country. Quite a place, huh? Egyptian politics as usual. That’s how it’s been for centuries. It will never change.”

  The alley widened.

  Abdul was about fifty feet up ahead, and Alex realized one reason he wore white. He was more visible that way. There were no overhead lights, just reflected lights from the windows of the back entrances of the stores and the houses that they passed.

  “Were you in Egypt at the time?” Alex asked. “When Sadat was assassinated?”

  “I was a young lad,” he said. “I was a student at the American University in Cairo. Beautiful place until it got trashed by the unwashed Islamic masses.”

  They wound their way down several more alleys, each one more serpentine than the previous. Alex realized they were in a different district now. The omnipresent stench of backed-up plumbing was everywhere, as was the scent of stale cigarettes. In the better locations there was a mélange of cooking smells, mostly spices she didn’t recognize as well as onions and garlic frying.

  “Hosni Mubarak was Sadat’s successor. Mubarak was on the reviewing stand when Sadat was assassinated,” Voltaire said. “While Sadat turned and glared at his assassins, Mubarak had the good sense to duck when the shooting started. His reward? He became president of the country. Then he did some other smart things too. A quarter of a century ago Cairo was a mess. A million cars. Pollution so thick you could chew on it. Sewage overflowed into the streets. Skyscrapers were overpopulated and poorly constructed. The blight spread practically all the way out to the Sphinx’s testicles, and, ironically, the desert was spreading right into Cairo. Sand covered the streets. Sand and garbage. And on top of the sand and garbage, more sand and garbage and the bodies of people who had died overnight, natural or otherwise. The whole place, the whole population, was festering. Work into that the fact that this was one of the most overpopulated cities in the world and you begin to get the picture.”

  As they continued, Alex could overhear heated conversations from open but barred windows, music from radios, the drone of televisions, and at least one violent argument between a man and a woman. The noise, like a steady irritating disco beat, just kept on going.

  The argument descended into physical fighting. Alex and Voltaire kept on walking. Husband and wife? Alex wondered. Prostitute and customer? Mother and son?

  It could have been any.

  “Mubarak saw what had happened to his predecessor, getting shot down by his own people, so he was smart enough to attack all the things that were wrong. And he had some success, which is why he stayed in power so long. Mubarak got money from foreign powers for acting as the regional peace broker. He planted trees, built roads and sewers, and gave the main thoroughfares a facelift. He got the Chinese to build a new conference center, got the Japanese to build an opera house, induced the French to build a subway line, and got the Americans to give him just enough military clout so that he could stay in power but not enough military power to attack Israel again. So what happens? All the middle-class Egyptians who had moved to Europe and America started moving back. The doctors. The engineers. The middle-class émigrés. Cairo didn’t become Paris, but it was no longer a slum surrounded by sand and camel dung. You’d think that would be a good thing, right?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” Alex answered.

  Alex did a double-take. They passed an establishment that was wide open from the back. It was obviously a brothel, with several half-naked women hanging out in the doorway and in the windows, dark-haired, sul
len, and tattooed.

  They smiled at Voltaire as he passed. He waved and they waved back. They probably know him, Alex thought. The girls looked disapprovingly at Alex, as if she was infringing on their business. One of them said something to her in Arabic and the others laughed.

  “The pseudo-prosperity created its own problems,” Voltaire said, continuing in French. “The people in the slums, the people who were in those overcrowded high-rises, and even the working-class people of the city, the people who drove taxis or cleaned the streets or worked in the hospitals, the ‘new affluence’ never trickled down to them. It was grabbed off by the émigrés who had moved back. And so the poor and uneducated got even angrier. You’d think they would have tried to embrace the new order, run their lives a little differently, try to Westernize their lives the way the successful returned émigrés had. No. Know what they did instead?”

  “My guess is that they clung to their own traditions all the more fervently,” Alex said. “And that would mean an even more tenacious embrace of Islam.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Voltaire said. “The fundamentalist Islamic preachers used the mosques and the television to convince this great struggling mass of people that they weren’t doing anything wrong. The problem was the Egyptians who had become Westernized and fallen away from Islam faith, the mullahs said. The people who had returned with wealth and Western wives and cars and credit cards, they were the big problem in society. You’d see graffiti all over the city that said, ‘Islam is the Solution.’ And as an example of proof of Islam being the solution, they held up Saudi Arabia.”

  “Why Saudi Arabia?”

  “Saudi Arabia is one of the most piously conservative countries in the Arab world. Never mind the hypocrisy. Ignore the fact that all the ne’er-do-well Saudi princes go on debauched trips to Europe and America and dissipate themselves in the nightclubs and the whorehouses. We’re talking about official Saudi policy and society. It is a tenet of Islam that Allah will take care of the truly devout. Well, the Saudi sheiks from the bloody House of Saud park their camels and their Rolls-Royces right on top of the world’s greatest petroleum reserves. What better proof is there of Allah’s favor than that? So if you were a traditional young Egyptian, you were impressed by your devout friends who went, not to Europe and got corrupted, but to work in the Gulf in the oil business. They’d do it for three to five years and then come back with a car, gold jewelry, a fat bankroll, and a veiled teenage wife that to all intents and purposes they owned, some poor girl not destined to get an education or a breath of free air in her entire life. But that’s just my opinion. Not a bad reward in this life for keeping the faith, is it?”