Demon Box

To tell the truth, when Marag and his map didn’t come through, I pretty much gave up watching the road past the henhouse. I wish I could duck out of the kitchen entirely. Let Jann Wenner make a change in his menu: “Scratch the chicken stew special, Jacky, and open some windows; the whole diner is steamed up.”

The vaunted Secret Sanctorum? I was closer to opening it in Dayton, Ohio, than moping here in Giza watching my linen maid suck a persimmon—I can’t even open a conversation. “Hot today,” is all the talk I can come up with, though I know her name to be Kafoozalum and the juices of the fruit are dripping. Her eyes are on me like the top two buttons of her Mena House uniform, talk about open.

I know she speaks English. I’ve had many an opportunity to watch her prattle around the cabanas, cart full of fresh white linen and uniform full of ripe brown hide, but never had occasion to make conversation more than Hello or Thanks, even when she gave me her most treasured smile, 14-carat incisors, conversation pieces both of them… until this noon.

I’d been hurrying back to the hotel with an exciting find. Buttoned in my khaki shirt pocket was the best thing I’d found since the ‘66 Pontiac convertible: a fantastic old Roman coin, I think, or Greek, with a noble profile still clearly raised from its time-battered bronze.

In my enthusiasm to show Jacky Cherry that I could find something of ancient value, I had headed back as the crow flies. Instead of circling the grounds to the front gates I had managed a running vault over the rear wall of the compound. I lit, feet first, right between the spread brown knees of Kafoozalum on a little square tablecloth.

I thought she was having lunch. Staggering to keep from stepping in her beans or on her knees, I managed quite a dance before I could catch my balance and hop off. I saw then that instead of food the cloth had been spread with what looked like some kind of Egyptian tarot. She gathered the cards prudently out of my way, glaring up at me in an expression both enticing and curious.

I apologized and explained about my coin, and that I meant nothing disrespectful, jumping on her.

“I mean on your cards. Can I see them?”

“You bet!” The grin flashed and the two golden incisors winked out at me. “Sure!”

When I was comfortable on a sack of cement, she smoothed the linen back out and began spreading the cards in rows for me to see. They weren’t tarot after all. They were her personal collection of those saccharoidal “posecards” that you see sold at all the knick-knack stands. Only these are for the natives, not the tourists. They display Egyptian fashion models, male and female, in stiffly tailored romantic poses. Mostly of marriage and courtship. Instead of a major arcanum like The Lovers, for instance, you have Handsome Young Couple at the Girl’s Door Saying Goodnight with Soulful Looks or Fiancee Alone, Beaming Wet-Eyed at Her Mailbox by the Flowery Gate with a Letter from Him—all always in Cairo’s latest hair and haberdashery, all always beautiful, loving, beaming. In short, sickening. But I was impressed by the way she presented her presentation.

She reverently dealt the last one, her favorite (Beautiful Young Couple Still in Wedding Finery Alone for the First Time at Last or So They Think for We See in the Windowpanes Behind Them the Wedding Party Watching, as He Lifts Her Veil, Tenderly, and as She Touches His Mustache, Provocatively), then lifted her lashes to me with a look asking, in any language, What are you waiting for, fool? I responded by inviting her to drop into my cabana when she got her next break, I’d show her my Polaroid negatives—

Now she’s accepted, traipsed into my cell with an armload of fresh folded damask and let the door blow closed behind her. Preliminary rites have been observed; we’ve exchanged pictures and she’s taken the persimmon from the dish. Nothing remains but for me to incant some key words, unlock the doors of our delight. And all I can say is Hot today.

“What is you write?” Dripping on my notebooks, here.

“Nothing. Notes. To remember what happened…”

All for lack of simple courage, for fear of international faux I sit gnawing my tongue until she mercifully takes us off the hook.

“Ya Salam!”

Photos traded, fruit gone, there is nothing left for a maid to do but check the time on her wrist how it flies! She thanks me in a rush and scoops up her unrumpled linen, peeks a quick check both ways out my door, and is off to her cart, sucking on the seed.