Shooting the Sphinx (5 page)

The fruit seller held up a soft orange and yellow mango with little black spots on the skin, so ripe it was almost rotten. “
Mangojus
?”

“Yes, mango juice. One.” Ari pointed at himself.

“Mr. Ari, the glass is not clean.” Hamed had appeared right beside him, full of worry. “Rinsed only.”

Ari pointed at the cheerful old man's white beard, which had a circle of yellow in the middle. “Ah,” gasped the old man, refreshed.

“If he can do it,” replied Ari, “so can I.”

“This man drinks from the Nile,” countered Hamed. “That you cannot do.”

“I've shot in India, Haiti, Vietnam. I can take it.”

But the fruit seller had already snatched up a knife, slit the bottom of the mango, and tossed the fruit into an ancient rubber press. He simultaneously pulled a lever and reached for a glass sitting upside down on an ornate copper drying rack holding six other glasses. As the first drop of mango juice fell, he caught it; then the deluge of fruit and pulp dropped in, filling the glass to the brim. In seconds the fruit had been crushed and was under Ari's nose. The seller proudly smiled at his own sleight of hand. He knew he was as much a showman as a fruit man.

Ari drank an explosion of taste just shy of the fine line between ripe and rotten, something the homogenized, pasteurized world of aluminum cans and plastic bottles could never deliver. Ari gulped down the whole glass.

“One more.” Before he could see how, his glass was full again. The white-bearded man was grinning at him with mango-yellowy teeth. Ari thought, I'm finally here, and the Egyptians love me. Everything's going to work out. The camera will get out of customs, the Ministry of Defense will give me a new date, and whatever else they throw at me, I'll deal. Cairo is sweet, just like this glass of
mangojus
!

Then, to his delight, Ari heard music and singing. He couldn't help but sway slightly. He wanted to sing along, but didn't know the Arabic words. A gaggle of about twenty young people came around the corner, a handsome guitar player in their midst. They were cool. They were students. They sailed along on a deep certainty that they were right and you would naturally agree with them if they could just get you to join in.

The fruit seller tossed pieces of fruit to several protesters as they marched by. Strumming and singing in Arabic, the guitar player walked straight toward Ari. The song was a call and response. Ari couldn't understand the call, but the response was simply, “Ha, ha, ha.” Ari found himself chanting that word with everyone else, as did the fruit seller and the man with yellow mango circle in his white beard. The guitar player was wearing a golden T-shirt that had a cartoon of the Sphinx with the singer's own head on it and the name R
AMI
in English letters above.

Rami stopped in front of Ari and strummed a final chord, ending the song. “Hey, man, are you a journalist?” he asked in English.

“No.” Ari shook his head. “I'm a filmmaker.”

“Are you here to film the revolution?” asked Rami, with a lick on his guitar.

“What revolution?” asked Ari bewildered. The gang of singing Egyptians clustered around him.

“You don't know about the revolution, man?” asked one of them.

“Come with us. We'll show you,” said a tall one with a harmonica.

Who were these crazy kids on a street corner in Cairo, with long hair, speaking English, wearing funny T-shirts, and singing along with a guitar? “I can't,” said Ari, though he felt the tug of temptation. “I've got to get to bed.”

“The revolution comes while America sleeps.” Half of the kids laughed, and then translated for the other half, who also laughed. Rami clucked his tongue with a shake of his head. He strummed his guitar and moved on. The pack of hip would-be revolutionaries followed him off down the street. A guy with a Red Sox baseball cap brought up the rear.

“Hope and change?” asked the Egyptian Red Sox fan.

“Hope and change,” agreed Ari.

“Go Red Sox!
Inshallah!
” added the Boston fan.

It didn't seem like the right moment for Ari to mention he was from New York.

A phalanx of thirty tough-looking men in leather jackets, along with a couple of police in uniform holding walkie-talkies, came around the corner slowly shuffling along after the kids. The police looked sullen and self-conscious, a marked contrast to the joy of the moments before.

“There are more police than protesters,” noticed Ari uneasily.

“Let them come.” The Red Sox fan turned to go. “We laugh at them.” The fan caught up with the rest of his merry comrades down the street, who were already chanting out their fearless refrain:

“Ha, ha, ha!”

 

PART TWO

It makes the heart to tremble when you open an undiscovered tomb.

—Dr. Zahi Hawass, leader of the Supreme Council of Antiquities

 

Chapter 9

As the concierge is very proud to tell you, the Mena House Hotel, built in 1869 next to the pyramids, was first a hunting lodge for the Egyptian King Ismai'l Pasha. The chandelier in the old lodge is so tall that it rises up through the second floor, through a gallery of balconies especially designed for beholding it. Ari couldn't help but gaze upward as he passed beneath the unique lamp, staring up at a white glass globe with an Arabic pattern etched in gold overlay. His eyes were so tired from his twenty-hour journey that he could hardly focus them. The chandelier seemed to spin over Ari, although it could not move.

“This way Mr. Basher.”

The porter took Ari up one flight by elevator, then out onto the balcony around the chandelier. Its forty columns of suspended turquoise stones and glass refracted the white globe light at their center. His eyes saw with the hazy glare of sheer exhaustion. He felt as though he had stepped inside a kaleidoscope, all the glass bits of color suspended in midair. His voyage had finally become a hallucination. He staggered toward the pillow that he knew awaited him down the corridor.

Once inside his suite, Ari was about to tip the porter, but he noticed a pyramid that somehow seemed to be sitting on the balcony outside the room. He knew this was some sort of optical illusion. He had seen the massive pyramids from Hamed's car, and his conscious mind understood that the closest pyramid was at least half a mile away from the hotel. This one seemed close enough for him to touch.

“It is the pyramid of Khufu,” said the porter with a proud little bow.

“Yes.” Ari tipped him. “I must get some sleep.”

Alone, Ari kicked off his white tennis shoes and began to peel off the rank clothes he'd worn for the past thirty-six hours.

“Laptop,” he reminded himself. He slid it out of his backpack and set it to recharge on an old Moorish carved wooden desk. An Ethernet cable sat at the ready like a coiled snake that could lunge out and strike him in the night. He plugged the cable in and turned on the machine.

He craved a shower, but the bed loomed before him, immense, larger than king size, he thought. A giant bronze headboard shaped like a scallop shell etched with finely detailed filigree patterns, eight feet in diameter, hung on the wall. Ari could see his golden face reflected, and like Narcissus, he fell toward himself, with a bounce onto the bed. As his head settled deep into a crisp white pillow, his computer rang.

“Uuggghhhh.” Ari arose, imitating a mummy in a monster movie, and staggered toward the ringing knowing that Beth was the only person it could be.

Ari pasted on a smile and hit accept. “Hey, babe!”

Beth's face popped up on his screen. “Darling!” She sat at her desk, holding a cup of coffee, daylight streaming across her face. “How was your flight?”

“Eleven hours in coach,” he mumbled, wondering how he should tell her about the SpaceCam.

“Coach?” she asked with a slight hint of suspicion.

“I had to switch flights.”

“Why? Did we make a mistake with your booking?”

“No mistake. But I got a whole row, four seats. I could stretch out.”

“Wow, lucky you.”

“I wouldn't go that far.” Ari decided that now was the moment. “They took the camera in customs,” he confessed.

“What?” The warm glow dropped off of Beth's face. A poised catlike energy took its place. “The whole SpaceCam?”

“Everything.” Ari waited for her reaction.

“Oh my god! You're supposed to fly on Monday. What are we going to do?” He could see her mind whirr into action.

“You know me. I'll put on my smile, go back down to the airport, and charm their pants off.” Ari tried to seem relaxed about all of it. “Like I did to you.”

Beth's nostrils flared. She was both angered and grudgingly amused at what she knew was more than a joke. “Are they women?”

“Uh, no.”

“Did you tell anyone at the studio?”

“No, Beth.” Ari had to quash this idea fast. “Let's not freak anybody out. Let's tell them all on Monday morning when they've got other things to think about.”

Beth shook her head. “I don't work that way.”

“Look, if I send an e-mail now, the damned SpaceCam'll be all they'll think about all weekend long. I'll get a million calls. There will be stress. And stress where it can't do me, or you, any good. Wait till I get back to the airport tomorrow and figure out what's really going on. Look here, girlfriend.” Ari picked up the computer and carried it to the balcony. “What do you see?”

“I'm not keeping secrets, Ari.” He aimed the computer outside. “Surprises give you cancer … Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! Is that a pyramid outside?”

“Yes, the great pyramid of Khufu!” He had successfully diverted her, for the moment.

“You lucky bum! You have pyramids in your backyard.” Then her producer face came back on. “How much is that hotel room costing?”

“You approved it.”

“I did?” She was dumbfounded.

“Yes. Back when you thought you might come along. I noticed you didn't mark up that line item. Look at the bed: Pharaoh size. The sheets are like … to die for. If you roll over here, you can even see the Sphinx from in bed.”

“Don't torture me.”

“Why don't you jump on a plane and come over and join me?” he teased.

“Very funny.” She made a face. “You're not the center of the universe. One of us has to finish this film. I still have movie stars to babysit on the set in New York.”

“Look, Beth.” Ari grew serious. “How much cash do you have on hand in the safe right now?”

“Why?”

“Do you have twenty thousand?”

“I might.” She became still, poker-faced. “What happened to the ten grand I gave you?”

“I still have it. See?” Ari reached into the waistband of his pants and unzipped a hidden pocket. He pulled out the bundle of one-hundred-dollar bills she had given him. He rifled the money like a deck of cards before the camera on the laptop. “Can you get another twenty grand to the SpaceCam guys to give to me?”

“Ugh. On a Saturday morning?” She groaned. “Everything's always last minute with you. It's illegal to carry more than ten thousand, cash, on your person out of the country.”

“Oy vey. So split it in half. Give ten to Don and ten to Charley Foster. They'll give it to me when they see me.”

“Why don't you get it from your fixer?”

“Things happen fast in the field. Look, I probably won't need it, but I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not—”

“Don't bribe anybody, Ari.”

“C'mon, Beth.”

“It's against the law. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Feds're cracking down on all the studios now.”

“I'm a big boy. You don't have to tell me how the game is played.”

“I didn't hear that.” Beth put her hands over her ears as her cell phone buzzed. “Shit.” She moved her coffee mug and looked at the phone incredulously.

“Who?” asked Ari.

“Brad Pitt's manager is calling me.”

“On Saturday morning at … what the hell time is it over there?”

Beth didn't even notice Ari's question. She was completely focused on the phone.

“Darling?” asked Ari, trying to woo her attention back.

“What?” Beth was annoyed by the distraction.

“I love you.” Ari felt a pain deep in his gut and a powerful contraction in his stomach.

Beth looked back into the camera in disbelief. “What did you just say?”

“That wasn't the first time.”

“Almost.”

He breathed through his teeth to relax his insides. “Don't forget the money.”

“Don't play with me, Ari.” She shook her head, fondly disappointed. “'Bye, you bum.” She had reached over to shut off the conversation, but stopped when Ari doubled over in pain. “What is it? What's wrong?”

“Ugh!” Ari jumped up, unbuckled his pants, and ran for the bathroom.

“Ari? Are you okay?”

Ari yelled from the bathroom. “I had some bad mango juice!”

“La, la, la! Too much information!” Beth yelled to him in a sort of singsong way as she reached for her computer keyboard and the screen went blank.

 

Chapter 10

Holding an empty plate, Ari moved through the sumptuous breakfast buffet at his hotel. Except for the absence of bacon, Ari could have been in any five-star hotel in the world. He passed a sous chef cooking omelets, another making crepes and waffles and pancakes. Ari hovered near a row of chafing dishes holding Middle-Eastern food.

“Would you like some eggplant?” asked a server.

“No thank you.” Ari shook his head at a steaming ragout.

“Some beans?”

“Oh no.” Ari shook his head again. “I'll just take some of that plain white rice there. No, no, just a spoonful. Less than that.” The mystified server doled out a small pile of rice. The two of them stepped over to a station of fruit juices. Ari spotted his nemesis.