There's a little outdoor restaurant at the edge of the aouda where I sipped Turkish coffee and watched the pyramid change colors until the lights went out and the Sphinx shut up, then I paid my tab and left. I had waited nearly an hour. He had said twenty minutes. But I knew the rules, they're internationaclass="underline" whether you're in Tangiers or Tijuana, North Beach or Novato, you don't get up off the bread till you see the score. Twenty minutes… in the season of the apricots.
But just as I came out of the restaurant I saw a little blue figure come whisking around up the shadowy trail from the village. Panting and sweating, he slipped five little packages into my hand, each about the size of a.45 cartridge and wrapped in paper tape. I started digging at one with my thumbnail.
"I had to go more far than I think," he apologized. "Eh? Is good? Five pieces, five pounds?"
I realized he was telling me that the score had cost him exactly what I had put out, none left over for his efforts. His face sparkled up at me. Reaching again for my wallet, I also realized that he could have packaged five goat turds.
He saw my hesitation. "As you wish." He shrugged. I gave him two American bucks, worth about a pound and a half on the black market. After examining the two greenbacks he grinned to let me know he appreciated my logic if not my generosity.
"Any night, this corner. Ask for Marag. Everybody know where to find Marag." Reaching out, he sifted his hand again through mine, his eyes glittering. "And your name?"
I told him, somewhat suspicious stilclass="underline" was he going to burn me, bust me, or both, as the dealers were known to do in Tijuana?
"D'bree? D'bree?" Trying the accent at each end amused him. "Good night to you, Mr. D'bree."
Then was whisked back into the shadows.
Back in the hotel room I found the little packets were bound so tight I had to use my Buck knife. I finally shelled out a tiny brown cartridge ball of the softest, smoothest, sweetest hash I had ever tasted, or maybe ever will, the way Lebanon's going crazy.
It is at this point my journal resumes:
October 17, Thursday. First day at the Mena House. Great place. After a huge breakfast and lots of strong coffee we head up the hill. The holiday crowd has arrived and are mounting the great hill from all sides like a gaudy herd of homecoming ants. But not all the way to the top. They climb a few courses and sit among the stones and eat pickled fish and fruit, or mill around the aouda below, eyes eager for action. They are drawn to Jacky and me as though we were sweating honey.
Impossible to take a photo and damn near as hard to write. They love to watch me with my notebook, watch my hand drag the pen across the page whereas their hands push the script, gouging the calligraphy from right to left as into a tablet of clay.
Jacky and I climb to a niche about twenty-five courses high and watch the multitudes throng kaleidoscopic up the hill.
"I was here after Ramadan ten years ago," Jacky marvels, "and it was nothing like this. It's the victory last year against the Israelis. They feel proud enough to come face this thing."
A cop in a white uniform comes clambering up the stones, belt in his hand. He lays into the kids who have been climbing up to observe us. They flee screeching with delight. He stops, breathing hard. Jacky asks him why such a fuss about the kids. He explains in Arabic, then heads off after another batch of climbing kids, leather belt twirling.
"He says a kid fell yesterday and died. Today they got ten cops patrolling each face."
"I can't see that it's that dangerous. Some kid just horsing around, probably."
"No. He said there has been a kid killed on the pyramid on Ramadan feast every year for thirty years. That last year there were nine killed. He respectfully requests that we move down or go inside before we lure any others to their doom."
At the hole the tickets are 50 piastres apiece. This is the tunnel known as El-Mamoun's. We move in as far as the granite plugs and wait while the stairs empty of sweat-soaked pilgrims streaming down wild-eyed. You must remember: these are all Egyptians, not tourists, and it is probably 90° outside compared to the famous constant 68° you know it to be inside. Nobody outside was sweating.
You also know from your research that the ascending passage is 26° 17', up a tunnel about four foot square. But you have no notion how steep this is, or how small, until halfway up another stream coming down has to push past you. No wonder the sweat and wild eyes. It's too small a place for this many people! Not enough oxygen and nobody in charge and everybody knows it, just like those early rock shows – nobody in control.
Pushing hysteria upward, you break at last into the lofty relief of the Grand Gallery. The crowd behind goes gasping on up. You know, though, that you only have to continue on horizontally through the spur tunnel to the Queen's Chamber to find fresh air. None of the natives seem so researched.
"Ahhh," breathes Jacky. "Unbelievable. And none of the other pyramids have ventilation like this?"
"Nope. That's why this one is considered to be maybe something other than a tomb!"
"Right. The dead don't need ventilation."
"I think it was another Howard-Vyse breakthrough. He figured because there were vents at these points in the King's Chamber above, maybe there was something similar here in the Queen's Chamber. So he calculated where they ought to be, gave a good knock, and there they were, within inches of coming all the way through."
"Weird."
"Not the weirdest, though. Look here…" I run my hand over the wall, like I'm showing a classmate around the family attic. "This stuff on the walls and ceiling? It's salt, and only in the Queen's Chamber and passages – crystallized sea salt."
"How do the Egyptologists explain that?"
"They don't. There's no way to explain it except that this whole chamber was once filled with seawater… by some ancient plumber for some unknown reason, or by a tidal wave."
"Let's go." Jacky has had enough. "Let's get outta here back to the hotel for a sensible beer."
"One more stop," I reassure him, ducking back into the passage out of the Queen's Chamber.
We reach the Grand Gallery and resume our climb, still as steep, but there is nothing oppressive in this vaulted room. More than ever I am assured that these were initiatory walkways; when lit by torches instead of these fluorescent tubes, the Grand Gallery would appear to lift eternally above one's head.