Demon Box

In the square of light before one of the doorless doorways a knot of kids are playing with homemade clay marbles. A little boy jumps up from the game and scampers after us. He looks about seven, which means he’s probably close to eleven if you allow for the protein lag. Marag pretends not to notice him, then gruffly makes as if to swat him away. The kid ducks, laughing, and Marag takes him by the hand.

“This is Mister Sami,” he explains, still gruff. “My oldest son. Sami, say hello to my friend Mister Deb-ree.”

“Good evening, Mister Deb-ree,” the boy says. “Is nice evening?” His handshake is as light as his father’s.

We cross a shared yard jammed between four mud huts and enter Marag’s home. From the ceiling a single dim bulb gradually coaxes the room from the night. It is only slightly bigger than the guard’s tomb. There are two big trunks; one carpet and one grass mat; one big bed and two bunks; no chairs or cupboards; no tables. For decoration there is a hanging tapestry with kids’ art pinned to it and a long bundle of sugarcane in the corner, bound with a gay red ribbon.

Marag introduces me to his wife, a tiny woman with one of the milked-over eyes so frequently seen in the Egyptian poor. Also to Mister Ahmed, Missy Shera, Mister Foo-Foo, all younger than Sami.

Marag takes a pillow from the bed and places it on the floor next to the wall and bids me sit. The kids squat in a semicircle and stare at me while Marag helps his wife pump a little white gas burner to hissing flame. I blow my harmonica for the kids and let them play with my compass. The wife begins to prepare tea for us in a little copper kettle.

I ask Sami how he got a crescent scar on his forehead. Grinning, he points toward the pyramid and pantomimes a tumble with his hands.

“It was a bad fall,” Marag says. “But maybe it convince him the spirits want him to be an educated, not a pyramid goat. He can read and count and draw pictures now, Mister Sami can.” He beams at the boy in unabashed wonder. “He can write.”

From the foot of the top bunk he takes down a notebook to show me, the very one that donated a page for that map. He proudly points out the pictures and words.

“Mr. Deb-ree is an artist and doctor, Sami. Maybe he draw for you a picture while I go on an errand.”

After Marag leaves with my five-pound note, Sami and I exchange drawings. I do a Mickey Mouse and Sami does the pyramid. I tell him it looks too steep and he turns to the back page. Taped to the inside cover with electrician’s tape is a dollar bill. It’s taped Great Seal side up, and written beneath it, first in Arabic, then English, in the careful and patient hand of any good grade-school teacher in any language, is the translation of the two Latin slogans: new order of ages and allah has prospered our beginnings.

“Did your daddy give you this the other night?”

Yes, he nods, frowning at the page to remember what else his teacher has told him. “It is Roman lira pound?”

“No,” I tell him; “it is Yankee dollar, American simoleon buck.” Marag is gone a long time. The wife puts Missy Shera and Mister Ahmed to bed. It must be past midnight but they’re still wide-eyed and excited, staring at me from their bunks.

She takes up little Mister Foo-Foo and sits on the edge of the bed and drops one shoulder of her smock. In the dim light she looks withered way beyond her years. But all the kids are healthy, plumper than most of the pyramid pack I’ve seen. Maybe that’s why she’s withered.

Foo-Foo roots in. Mom closes her one good eye and rocks gently to and fro on the edge of the bed, humming a monotonous nasal lullaby. Foo-Foo watches me unblinking as he sucks and rocks.

A scrawny turkey chick wanders in the open door and Sami shoos it back outside. In a corner of the yard I see a very old woman milking a goat. She grins at Sami shooing the chick and calls something in Arabic.

“Mother-my-father,” he explains. “Is right?”

“Grandmother, we say. Sami’s grandmother.” After she finishes she rubs the goat’s bag with oil from a jar and brings the bucket of milk in. She doesn’t acknowledge me at all. She pours half the milk into the copper kettle on the cold gas burner and covers the rest with a cloth over the top of the bucket. She unties a long stalk of sugarcane from the bundle in the corner. She takes up her half bucket and shuffles out. The stalk brushes the bulb and the shadows rock back and forth. The humming never stops and all the little eyes are still wide in the dreamy light swinging, watching me, even the goat’s square pupils in the yard outside, glowing yellow at me as she chomps the cane…

Back at the cabana. I fell asleep on Marag’s floor and had a hell of a dream, that the village had been struck by a sandstorm. I couldn’t see. In despair I tried to call but sand filled my throat. All I could make out was the rising din of thousands of impatient horns.