Edward Whittemore - Nile Shadows

Liffy laughed.

Too roundabout for you? Too devious and obscure? Well it wouldn't be for Bletchley and his Monks, I'd wager. Because lastly there's the fact that you're the only person staying in the Hotel Babylon, other than Ahmad himself, and that didn't happen by chance. That had to be arranged that way, by Bletchley of course. So whatever enigma Bletchley's brooding over, it starts right here in the Hotel Babylon with our local hermit-in-residence. And clearly, at this point on your journey east, all paths lead to Ahmad.

Liffy nodded thoughtfully.

Yes. That's exactly what Bletchley seems to be saying in his cryptic Monkish way. . Your journey now involves time, my child, not space. Not rivers and mountains and deserts to be crossed, but memories to be explored. For the moment has come to stop look and listen while tarrying in caves and open spaces, those of the past, and while marking well the local aphorisms. Ahmad's, no less. For now you must behold the very notion of this crumbling hermitage where you find yourself, this mythical Babylonian retreat which you share with only one other human being deep in a Cairo slum. . In short, what is the Hotel Babylon, my child? And who is Ahmad and what on earth is someone like him doing in these crumbling ruins while a terrible war rages across the world?

Liffy laughed, then turned serious.

In a way I envy you, Joe. I've never gotten to know Ahmad well, but I've always sensed there are whole worlds to be explored there, perhaps even a whole secret universe. And it may be that old Menelik is somehow at the center of this distant hieroglyphic past, a kind of black sun around whom many lives once revolved in some mysterious underground way. And although Ahmad has a strange ability to move from this world to others and back again, perhaps for that very reason you can't expect a coherent narrative for what you seek. Because it's Ahmad's memory that you hope to explore, isn't it, and memory never flows from beginning to middle to end, does it? It's always in transit in the middle of things, all of it is, and it deals exclusively in glimpses and suggestions, or shards, as Menelik might have called them.

Fragments, in other words. Odd bits and pieces from which we must try to reconstruct the cup that once was, the fragile vessel that once held the wine of other lives in other eras. . Fragments, shards, yes.

The elusive materials of the Egyptologist gut after all, we're in Egypt so that's only natural, I suppose.

Only to be expected, I imagine.

Joe watched him. He smiled.

My God, Liffy, your imagination has found a lot for me to do this Sunday afternoon.

Liffy looked up and nodded eagerly.

True? While I'm exploring a totally different kind of reality? But let's consider your business first, since yours is business and my plans involve nothing more than straightforward outright debauchery, merely erotic tumbling at its sweatiest. . Now then, how can I help? What can I tell you about Ahmad or the Hotel Babylon or the music of time? But wait, I have an idea. Why wouldn't a pianola be as good a way as any to get things rolling?. .

***

Liffy snorted. He laughed.

You've seen it, I know you have. There it stands under decades of dust at the far end, the dark end, of the corridor downstairs, a pianola of all things. And what in God's name could it possibly be doing there?

Joe moved as if to stand up and Liffy immediately whirled and glared at the bottle of gin on the table.

Is there a genie trapped in that bottle? he asked.

It seems likely, muttered Joe.

And you want to let him out? Set him free?

It seemed like not such a bad idea.

Liffy frowned, shaking his head vigorously.

Business first, Joe. The pianola takes precedence. Now then. Every Sunday morning, after Ahmad has his coffee and his sesame wafers on his high stool behind the counter, he strolls back there into the gloom and ponderously plays the pianola for an hour or so. Peddling the past, he calls it, perhaps because the pianola only has one roll. Home Sweet Home . You might say Ahmad has a delicious nostalgia for bygone eras.

Liffy looked thoughtful.

Of course he also has his trade which he pursues in old Menelik's mausoleum, currently Ahmad's secret workshop. Down there Ahmad's a master forger second to none, said to be the best in Egypt. Money is his specialty, great heaps of counterfeit currencies for the use of fanatical Monks who have taken the vow of poverty. Spurious millions in the cause of bogus appearances, don't you see, rather like life itself. But Ahmad also turns out identity papers and other scraps of this and that, such as those coupons good for free drinks. Don't you remember me flashing one at the airport? Say Ahmad sent you and you'll never be sorry?

You mean those coupons actually work? asked Joe.

Always. Anywhere in Cairo.

Why?

Liffy smacked his lips.

I thought you'd never ask. They work because Ahmad's father, also an Ahmad, was once a famous dragoman in Cairo, the leading guide and interpreter for tourists in these parts and something of a patron saint to those in the pimp and alcohol trades. It seems they still revere his name because he was one of the forerunners of modern Egyptian nationalism, by way of the dragomen's benevolent society, which he founded. Anyway, Ahmad père used to hang around the verandas of tourist hotels, leering up business for himself in the last century, and one winter he chanced to have a torrid affair with a young German woman who was down for a holiday, and Ahmad fils, our Ahmad, has been a fiercely anti-German vegetarian ever since.

Why?

Because that young German woman became his mother. Soon after Ahmad fils was born, you see, she abandoned both Ahmads and returned to Germany. She thought it was best for all concerned, but certain political enemies of Ahmad père spread a rumor that she'd buzzed off home because she couldn't live without a daily chomp on the long thick blood sausages of her fatherland. Our Ahmad heard this malicious rumor while still a sensitive youth and took it as a personal insult, reading some kind of sexual innuendo into his mother's reputed craving for large Germanic blood sausages. He never forgave the poor woman for preferring them to him. In fact he has never forgiven women in general, or Germany in general, or meat. . Once more the meat problem looming large in human affairs, I'd say, and it does have a way of doing that, doesn't it, old horse? Meat, I mean. Meat, that's all. The meat of the matter, pure and simple. Even when someone's as spiritual as Ahmad is, it's just extraordinary how often meat can be fundamental to what ails us. . Yes, meat, my child. Consider it well while tarrying in spiritual caves and open spaces. .

Liffy sighed.

As I well know. As I know as well as anyone. . But in any case our Ahmad is generally referred to locally as Ahmad the Poet, although no one has ever seen him write any poetry. A matter of disposition, perhaps. And it's safe to say that on top of everything else, Ahmad's very keen on the Movement.

Which movement is that? asked Joe.

My dear fellow, the Movement. Is there ever more than one? The Movement may be defined as whatever explains history to the individual concerned. The Movement is revolutionary in nature, a dazzling innovation that no one has ever thought of before, again, save for the individual concerned. The Movement smashes through the old order of things and updates us, a kind of political trolley used by some to transport them from being young and no one, to being older and someone. I'm sure you've heard of people dedicated to the Movement, even if you haven't met one recently. L'homme engagé, for example, remember him from the '30s? Dashing French fellow in a beret who was always chain-smoking dramatically? Who used to turn up behind the intellectual barricades in moments of crisis to sum it all up by saying, Life is absurd or Life is a Cambodian, that sort of thing? But if all of this seems confusing to think about, why not relax and leave the thinking to Ahmad? I'm sure he'll tell you everything you could ever want to know about the Movement, and I do mean everything. Followers of the Movement are like that. . But what's the secret of the pyramids, master? Everything, my child. .