The booming voice carries on, more fatuous by the second. Angela leans over Sandy to whisper heavily to them all, “I am the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz,” and with the vocal style of the narrator pegged they can’t restrain themselves, they get more hysterical at every sentence, and they’re attracting a lot of irritated looks from the reverent tourists seated around them. Well, to be obnoxious is un-Californian, so they sit up rigidly and nod their heads in approval at each new absurdity, only giggling in little pressure breakthroughs. But on the drive back they simply roll on the seats and howl. Their guide is mystified.
But that night—that night, after the others have retired—that night, Jim McPherson wanders down to the hotel bar. He feels unsettled, dissatisfied. They aren’t doing the Old World justice, he knows that. Going to see the Pyramids turned into bad pop video; that isn’t the way to do it.
The hotel bar is closed. The clerk recommends McDonald’s, then when she better understands Jim’s desires, the Cairo Sheraton, just a few blocks away. It’s simple to get there, she says, and Jim walks out into the dry, warm night air without a map.
There’s a desert wind blowing. Smell of dust, static cling. Neon scrawls of Arabic script flicker over green pools of light that spill out into the dark streets. A few pedestrians, hardly any cars. From one shop comes the pungent smell of roasting spiced lamb, from another the quarter-tone ululations of a radio singer. Men in caftans are out doing the night business. Hardly anyone glances at Jim, he feels curiously accepted, part of the scene. It’s peaceful in a way, the bustle is half-paced and relaxed. Men sit in open cafes over games that look a bit like dominos, smoking from giant hookahs whose bowls seem to contain chunks of glowing red charcoal. What are they smoking? Sandy would want to inquire, analyze a chunk for chemical clues; Humphrey would want to buy a bushel just in case. Jim just looks and passes on, feeling a ghost. The wailing music is eerie. Arab voices in the street are musical too, especially when relaxed like this. A cab driver plays the fanfare from “Finlandia” on his horn; all the cabbies here use that rhythm.
It occurs to Jim that he should have reached the Sheraton by now. It’s on the Nile and shouldn’t be that hard to find. But where, exactly, is the Nile? He turns toward it and walks on. Auto mechanics work on a car jacked up right in the street. Policemen stay in pairs, carry submachine guns. Jim seems to have gotten into a poorer neighborhood, somehow. Has he gotten his orientation off by ninety degrees, perhaps? He turns again.
The neighborhood gets poorer yet. Down one alley he can see the tower of the Sheraton, so he is no longer lost and all at once he pays real attention to what lies around him.
The street is flanked by four-story concrete tenements.
Doors are open to the night breeze.
Inside, oil lamps flicker over mattresses on the floor.
A stove.
Each family or clan has one room.
Ten faces in a doorway, eyes bright.
Other families sleep on the sidewalks outside.
Their clothing is sand-colored. A torn caftan hood.
You live here, too.
A man in a cardboard box lifts a little girl for Jim’s inspection.
Jim retreats. He thinks again, returns, hands the man a five-pound note. Five pounds. And he retreats. Off into the narrow alleys, he’s lost sight of the Sheraton and can’t recall where it was. Arms are extended out of piles of darkness, the cupped palms light in the gloom, the eyeballs part of the walls. It’s all palpably real, and he is there, he is right there in it. He picks up the pace, hurries past with his head held up, past the hands, all the hands.
He makes it to the Sheraton. But past the guards, in the big lobby, which could be the lobby of any luxury hotel anywhere, he experiences a shiver of revulsion. The opulence is dropped on the neighborhood like a spaceship on an anthill. “There are people out there,” he says to no one. With a shock he recalls the title of Fugard’s play: People Are Living Here. So that’s what he meant.…
He leaves, forces himself to return to the street of beggars. He forces himself to look at the people there. This, he thinks. This man, this woman, this infant. This is the world. This is the real world. He scuffs hard at the sidewalk, feels his breath go ragged. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling; he’s never felt it before. He just watches.
Faces in the open doors, people sitting on the floor. Looking back at him.
This moment seems never to end—this moment does not end—but has its existence afterward inside Jim, in a little pattern of neurons, synapses, axons. Strange how that works.
Next morning he says, “Let’s leave. I don’t like it here.”
45
So they fly to Crete, another of Jim’s ideas. “We’ll give you one more chance, Jimbo.…” They land at Heraklion, eat at Jack-in-the-Box, rent a Nissan at the Avis counter. Off to Knossos, a gaily painted reconstruction of a Minoan palace. It’s quite crowded, and just the slightest bit reminiscent of the Pyramids.
Jim is disappointed, frustrated. “Damn it,” he says, “give me that map.”
Sandy hands him the Avis map of the island. Minoan ruins are marked by a double axe, Greek ruins by a broken column. Jim looks for broken columns, understanding already that on this island Minoan ruins are first-class ruins, Greek ruins are second-class ruins. Find one away from towns, at the end of a secondary road, on the sea if possible. “Whoah.” Several fit all the criteria. His mood lifts a bit. He picks one at random. “Humphrey, drive us to the very end of the island.”
“Right ho. Gas is expensive here, remember.”
“Drive!”
“Right ho. Where are we headed?”
“Itanos.”
Sandy laughs. “World famous, eh Jim?”
“Exactly not. The Pyramids are world famous. Knossos is world famous. Red Square is world famous.”
“Point taken. Itanos it is. What’s there?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea.”
So they drive east, along the northern coast of Crete.
It strikes them all at the same time that the land looks just like southern California—to the extent that they know what southern California looks like, that is. Like the middle section of Camp Pendleton. Rocky dry scrubland, rising out of a fine blue sea. Dry riverbeds. Bare bouldery hilltops. Some tall mountains inland. “The first wave of American settlers always called southern California Mediterranean, when they tried to tell the people back east what it was like,” Jim says slowly, staring out the window. “You can see why.”
It’s the same land, the same landscape; but look how the Greeks have used theirs.
Scrub hills.
Scattered villages. Concrete blocks, whitewashed. Flowers.
Untidy places, but not poor; Jim’s ap is smaller than any home here.
Olive groves cover the gentler hills.
Gnarled old trees, crooked arms, silver-green fingers.
The road is spotted with black oily circles: crushed olives.
Do you live here?
Blue-domed, whitewashed church, there on the hilltop. Inconvenient!
An orange grove.…
“This is how it looked,” Jim says quietly. And his friends listen to him, they stare out the windows.
They stop in at a village store and buy yogurt, feta cheese, bread, olives, oranges, a salami, retsina, and ouzo, from a very friendly woman who has not a single word of English. After Egypt’s ceaseless venality her friendliness pleases them no end.
Late in the day they drive down one last blacktop ribbon of road, which follows a dry streambed to the sea.