Paul Christopher: The Lucifer Gospel

“When does the mystery monk arrive?”

“Late tomorrow night.”

“I guess I can play tourist for one day.”

“I’m doing a photostory for National Geographic Traveler. Why don’t you come along?”

“Where are you going?”

“The City of the Dead. The liveliest cemetery in the world. You’ll love it.”

In the immense, ancient, and melodramatic sprawl that is the city of Cairo, there are five major cemeteries that were once located on the eastern edges of the city beneath the Muqattam Hills, but which had been absorbed by the ever-growing metropolis many years before. In the old way, in a time when the family of the departed would mourn beside the grave for forty days and nights, the tombs for even the most modestly endowed were provided with small shelters for the living, while great mosques and death houses were built by the rich and the important. Streets and alleys between and around the graves and monuments appeared, and eventually the five cemeteries beneath the hills became known as the City of the Dead. In the second half of the twentieth century overcrowding, immense poverty, and a population that grew by a thousand a day forced the living into the confines of the dead. Over the years a city within a city grew until the cemeteries were occupied by more than a million desperate souls, all of them surviving without heat, electricity, or sanitation.

It was Friday, the Muslim holy day, and the streets of Cairo were almost empty of traffic, a nearly miraculous change from Finn’s arrival. She waited under the shaded entrance to the hotel, looking out across the square. On the left was the old Museum of Antiquities, already under siege by the occupants of a dozen tour busses parked out front. To the right was the sand-colored slab of the Arab League headquarters, and directly across the square was the entrance to the Cairo Bus Station.

Following Hilts’s advice about local customs, Finn had dressed carefully, wearing loose linen pants and an equally unrevealing green silk top. She’d tied her hair back in a scarf, hiding everything, including her bangs. She wore a plain pair of North Face hiking boots and her favorite drugstore sunglasses. She’d left her passport with the front desk, had nothing but her international driver’s license for ID, and carried only five hundred Egyptian pounds, less than a hundred dollars. She’d left her digital camera locked in her suitcase under the bed and picked up a disposable Fuji in the hotel gift shop. According to Hilts, the trick about a trip to the City of the Dead was to make sure you didn’t appear to be worth mugging, raping, or killing.

A thundering roar broke into the relative peace of the morning and Finn saw a huge black motorcycle turn into the square from the Nile side and rumble toward the hotel entrance. The rider stopped directly in front of her and pulled off his dark, full-visor helmet. It was Hilts. He was wearing motorcycle boots, jeans, and a T-shirt that read “Harley-Davidson Egypt” on the front. The name on the side of the motorcycle spelled out Norton. He reached back and handed Finn a helmet.

“Hop on.”

“I thought we were supposed to be keeping a low profile.”

“Sometimes fun takes precedence over good sense. I don’t get to ride bikes much anymore.”

“You’re crazy,” she said, slipping on the helmet and buttoning the chin strap. Suddenly the world was the amber color of the visor.

“That too,” he said and grinned. She climbed on the bike behind him, put her arms around his waist, and they were off.

They rode through the smoky fog of pollution along the Corniche El Nil, then turned away from the river and the Island of Rhoda along the wide and almost empty Salah Salim highway. To the right was vacant waste ground and abandoned building sites; to the left was Telal Zenhom, a district ravaged by the massive earthquake in 1992. It was all like some sort of arid Blade Runner. Heavy electrical cables ran like thick black snakes across rooftops and TV antennas drooped from minarets.

They turned off Salah Salim at the Al-Qadiraya exit and slowed as they moved steadily deeper into the intricate web of roads and alleys that made up the crumbling, foul-smelling necropolis. Within seconds Finn was completely disoriented, lost in a sea of tombs and tombstones.

They stopped. Ahead of them was a broad circular mosque, teardrop-shaped windows exquisitely carved into the old white stone. To one side of the mosque, built on the roof of a large, thick-walled death house, was a ramshackle assembly of crates and boxes, looking more like a chicken coop than a place suitable for human habitation. Finn climbed off the motorcycle and slid her helmet off. Instantly her eyes began to sting. Here the pollution was even heavier, made worse by a thick, clinging fog of gray-white dust that began to clog her nose and mouth. Hilts reached into the pouch at his waist, took out a surgical mask and handed it to her. She slipped it on gratefully.

Hilts dug out a second mask and put it on. “Living in Cairo is the equivalent of smoking a pack and a half of cigarettes a day.”

“Camels?” Finn responded.

“Very funny. Keep the mask on.” He clipped his helmet onto the rear carrier rack and did the same with Finn’s. A crowd of children, all boys of varying sizes and ages, had gathered around them. They stared silently at the two Americans.

“What do they want?” Finn asked.

“Anything you’ve got,” Hilts replied. “They’re beggars.”

But these kids weren’t the jostling innocent ragamuffins she had seen in movies, hands outstretched for a few coins. This was a feral pack of young wolves, eyes dark and full of hate for anyone who had more than them, which was virtually anyone else in the world. One of them, the tallest, wore a soiled skullcap, a torn pair of shorts, and a faded pink “Feelin’ Lucky” Care Bears T-shirt. Like everything else he was covered with a layer of thin, streaked gray dust. He had one hand thrust deeply into the pocket of his shorts. In the other hand he carried a fist-sized chunk of rubble.

“Shu ismaq?” asked Hilts, taking a step forward.

“Baqir,” the boy replied, hefting the rock.

“Lovely,” muttered Hilts.

“What?”

“Baqir is his name. It means ‘to rip open’ in Arabic.”

“Are we in trouble?”

“I could always let them kidnap you, then run like hell.”

“I’m serious,” said Finn.

“So am I,” said Hilts, but she could see him smiling behind the mask. He reached into the pocket of his jeans and flipped two coins at the boy, one after the other. He caught them both, but he had to drop the rock to manage it. Hilts spoke to him again in Arabic and the boy nodded. “Shukran,” Hilts said, bowing slightly. “That’s thank you,” he added for Finn’s benefit. “A good word to remember. That and saadni!”

“What does sadnii mean?” Finn asked, struggling with the pronunciation.

“Help me!”

Hilts opened the saddlebag slung across the rear baggage rack and took out an identical pair of old and well-used Nikon F3s. He slung the cameras over his shoulder, then took Finn by the elbow and led her away from the crowd of boys, who now surrounded the motorcycle.

“You’re just leaving the bike there?” Finn asked, startled.

“I gave him fifty piastre. That’s about a dime. I promised him five pounds if he watched it until we got back. That’s about a buck. More than he earns in a whole day on the streets unless he’s a tourist sariq-a pickpocket.”

“You trust him?”

“I put the fear of god into him. He knows who the bike belongs to.”

“And that would be who?”

“A friend of mine who operates a dealership on Zamalek, that’s the big island in the middle of the Nile you can see from your hotel balcony. She has six brothers.”