Demon Box

“Yes. Mt. Nebo I know. I visit your state this summer. With the Rotary. See, is flag?”

It’s true; hanging on his wall among many others is a fringed flag from the 1974 Rotary International meeting in Portland, Oregon.

“I know your whole state. I am a doctor, archaeologist! I travel all over your beautiful state. So. What part the town you are living? East Mt. Nebo or West Mt. Nebo?”

“Kind of in the middle,” I tell him. Mt. Nebo is your usual wide spot in a two-lane blacktop off a main interstate. “And off a little to the north.”

“Yes. North Mt. Nebo. I know very well that section your city, North Mt. Nebo. So. Let me show you something more…”

He checks both ways, then draws his wallet from a secret inner-serge pocket. He opens it to a card embossed with an ancient and arcane symbol.

“You see? Also I am Shriner, thirty-two degrees. You know Masons?”

I tell him I already knew he was a Mason—that was how Enoch knew of him, through a fraternal newspaper—and add that my father is also a Mason of the same degree, now kind of inactive.

“Brother!” He claps his palm tight to mine and looks deep into my soul. He’s got a gaze like visual bad breath. “Son of a brother is brother! Come. For you I not show this junk. Come down street next door to my home for some hot tea where it is more quiet. You like Egyptian tea, my brothers? Egyptian essences? Not drugstore perfumes, but the true essences, you know? Of the lotus flower? The jasmine? Come. Because your father, I do you a favor; I give you that scarab you favored.”

He clasps my hand again, pressing the gift into my palm. I tell him that’s not necessary, but he shakes his head.

“Not a word, Brother. Some day, you do something for me. As Masons say, ‘One stone at a time.’ “

He holds my hand, boring closer with sincerity. I wonder if there is some kind of eye gargle for cases like this. I try to steer us back to archaeology.

“Speaking of stones, doctor, you know the legend of the missing Giza top stone? Where the Temple of Records is supposed to be hidden?”

He laughs darkly. “Who could better know?” he asks, pulling me after him along the sidewalk. “But first, come, both of you; for refreshment.”

Jacky follows but he isn’t to be so easily distracted. “Then you’ve heard of this place, doctor? This hidden temple?”

“Dr. Ragar?—Archaeologist, Shriner?—hear of the Hidden Temple of Records?” He laughs again. Like that flag from Portland, there is in his laugh a dark insinuation that keeps you guessing. “Everybody hear of the Hidden Temple. Hear this, hear that… but The Truth? Who knows The Truth?”

He stops and holds his Masonic ring out for me to see, not Jacky. “We of the Brotherhood know The Truth, which we cannot by oath tell the uninitiated. But you, my brother son-of-a-brother, to you I can maybe show a little light not allowed others, eh?”

I nod, and he nods back, tugging me on a few steps more to a narrow doorfront.

“First here we are at my factory with excellent spice tea… white sugar—none for me, I must apologize; this holy fast—then we talk. Ibrahim!” he shouts, unlocking the heavy door. “Tea for my friends from America!”

We enter a smaller, fancier version of the other shop. It is hung clear to the ceiling fan with old rugs and tapestry. This muffles the noise of downtown Cairo to a medium squawl. But good Christ, is it stuffy. Doctor turns on the fan but it can barely budge the swaddled air.

“So. While we wait my cousin bring the tea you will smell the true essence of the Nile lotus which no woman can resist.”

Jacky ends up buying $50 worth of perfume for the girls back at Rolling Stone. All I get from the wise doctor, besides my free scarab, is the use of his telephone to call the American University of Cairo. I leave a message for Mr. Muldoon Greggor to please contact me at the Hotel Omar Khayyam. After an afternoon in the essence factory I can tell that if you want some straight information here in Cairo, you’re going to have to see an American.

Walking back to our hotel we pass a street display of the ‘73 war, the campaign when Egypt crossed the Suez and kicked Jew ass and got away with it. In the center of the display is a two-story cement foot about to crunch down on a Star of David. I want to shoot a picture of it, but everybody watching makes me nervous about this damn big negative-print Polaroid.

An intense young vet of that war leads us personally through the exhibit, pointing out strategic battle zones and fortifications in the big sand model he has built. He is passionately patriotic. He points to a bazooka shell propped against the sand that depicts the Bar-Lev, the Israeli version of the Maginot line.

“That missile? Made in America. These captured guns? Also American.”