Demon Box

His eyes are hard when he says these things to me, but there is no animosity. Even when he speaks of the Jews (pointing out their faces in the photographs so I can tell the bedraggled Israeli captives from the dust-ridden Egyptian captors), his voice holds no blame. He talks of the Israeli soldiers the way a player from one team speaks of his rivals across the river, with respect. And such close rivals, I realize, looking at the way Fate and the United Nations have placed Cairo and Jerusalem within a jet’s moment from each other. No wonder the military show on every street.

Returning over the bridge I see again our little soldier standing shabbily at guard beside his tent and his haphazard pile of sandbags. We salute and I march toward the hotel, feeling a new familiarity with the political situation.

October 15, Tuesday. Still unable to begin my article. Lots of walking in town. There are some hard sights, putting my put-down of our pampered lifestyle to the test: childworn wives leading patched families past the fruit stands to the mildewed piles of cheaper foods in the rear; a dog peeled to the bone with terminal mange, gnawing on a Kotex; a cryptic black lump in the middle of the sidewalk, about the size of a seven-year-old, all balled up with a black blanket pulled tight over everything except the upturned palm stuck on the end of a withered stick; whole families living in gutted shells of Packards and Buicks and Cadillacs biodegrading against the curbs…

“Jacky, what this town needs is some New York tow-away cops. Keep the riffraff on the run.”

And always the smell of urine, and the unhealthy stools half-hidden everywhere. As Cairo has a distinctive and subtle recipe of sound all its own, so it has its odor.

All in all, it’s awful to behold. I carry the special Polaroid I bought in New York with me everywhere, but as yet I’m too squeamish to point it at this hard privation. I remember an argument I had with Annie Liebovitz: “Listen, Annie. I don’t want any pictures of me shaving, shitting, or strung out!” Neither would I want any shots of my teeth rotted away, or my eyes gummed over with yellow growths, or my limbs twisted and tortured.

Tuesday night or Wednesday morn. Today is the last day of the Ramadan fast. Christmas in Cairo. Like New York, the power of this city is overwhelming, a presence too frightful to face. Unlike New York, though, the power of Cairo is generated by more than the daily flow of liquid assets through economic turbines. Cairo’s main current streams from its past, out of a wealth that flows toward something yet-to-be—a power of impending power. This is a city of influence since before New York was a land mass, a place of ancient records since before the Old Testament was in rough draft. Somewhere between the brittle no-magic nationalism of the young patriot in the park and the shopworn mysticism of the Illuminoid in serge, this larval account is swelling.

Even now the cannon fires—the signal for the last day of Ramadan. The caterwaul of traffic politely drops so the amplified chants can be heard from the minarets on this night of nights.

It gets quiet. You can hear the responses of the faithful in the scattered Moslem night, the prayers rising from the mosques and sidewalks. This afternoon I saw a streetsweeper prostrate himself alongside the pile of dirt he was herding, answering the call from Mecca with cabs swerving all around him.

Ye gods, listen! It spirals louder yet. Let me out of this moldering room! I’ll take my pen and camera and face this thing while it’s still damp with dawn.

I hurry past third-rate Theseus and his plaster legions, through the lofty lobby where chandeliers hang from ceilings infested with gilt cupids, around the praying gateman outside up the sidewalk to the belly-high cement wall that runs along the steep bank of the Nile.

I put my notebook on the wall. The prayer is still going on but the city’s business has stopped holding still for it. Engines sing; brakes cry; horns tootle; head– and taillights blink off and on. Long strings of colored lights go looping along the streets, past elaborate cafe neons and simple firepots cooking kebobs on the curb. In the minarets the chant leaders are vying with the city and each other in amplified earnest, as thousands upon thousands of lesser voices try their best to keep up.

It’s windy, the historic wind that blows against the current so the Nile boatmen of eons can sail south upstream and then drift back downstream north. A dog in the back of a passing pickup barks. The soldier comes out of his tent and sees me at the wall writing in my notebook. He turns up the collar of his long overcoat and comes toward me with a flashlight. He carries it with his hand over the lighted end so it is like a little lamp glow between us. We smile and nod at each other. This close I notice the bayonet on his shouldered carbine is rusty and bent.