Edward Whittemore - Nile Shadows

How lovely, he said with profound satisfaction. It's Gounod's Faust and the Bulgarian who sings the part of Mephistopheles is superb. What do you suppose ever happened to him?. .

***

On the wall facing Joe, a large heroic poster from the time of the First World War advocated membership in the Young Men's Moslem Association.

WE WANT YOU, said the authoritative mullah depicted on the poster, as he pointed a bony forefinger out at the viewer. Behind the mullah a group of plumpish Moslem youths lounged beneath a flowering tree in the courtyard of an imaginary Cairo mosque, happily admiring each other's large gold wristwatches. In the distance rows of sturdy industrial smokestacks puffed thick white smoke into the air, while overhead a small primitive triplane came racing in above the pyramids, bearing the morning mail to Cairo. In all, life was humming and exceptionally clean in the poster.

Ahmad glanced up from his crouching position next to the sound trumpet. For a moment he too contemplated the poster.

What do we get from the art that obsesses us? he shouted.

I firmly believe, he shouted again, that most abstractions are simply our pseudonyms, and that we are therefore time. For surely it is in our fancy, not in reality, that the basis of our lives is to be found. .

He laughed.

Which can only mean that in addition to everything else reality is, it's also unreal.

At last the faint scratchy aria came to an end. Ahmad switched off the phonograph and held up a bottle of lavender liquid he had found somewhere, an atomizer attached to its top. He pumped and great clouds of sweet-smelling mist shot in every direction.

Disinfectant, he said, sitting down again. These old buildings, you know. But to tell you the truth, I'm completely indifferent as to whether the ruler of the world is called Anthony or Octavius. What does interest me, and what I've always strived for, is a purity of heart which forgives and justifies and includes everything, because it understands. . Yes, but like all people who ponder life, I often feel frightened and alone.

Ahmad gazed at the floor and lapsed into silence.

Do you still write poetry? asked Joe.

Ahmad sighed.

No, I'm afraid I don't. For a long time I tried to fool myself, but the words would never come to life no matter how hard I labored over them. Then after that I thought I'd accept second-best, so I started work on a poetical dictionary. But I didn't even finish the letter A . The last entry I worked on was Alexander the Great . Somehow it was just too painful sitting out front at the counter night after night, contemplating all the things Alexander had done in such a brief lifetime.

Ahmad turned to Joe. He smiled sadly.

I think I recognize my condition. Quite simply, I'm a poet who can't write poetry. I was given the soul and sensitivity for it, but not the talent. So when all's said and done my profession remains that solitary one known through the ages as the failed poet. And there must be many people like me who live alone in their little corners, knowing they've never been anything but ordinary, and it's not that we can't contribute to the world in some minor way, for of course we can. The sadness comes from the fact that we can't contribute as we'd like to and create even one little moment of beauty that might live on in someone's heart. . But do you know what the real tragedy of the profession is? It's that we get used to it. It's that we go beyond self-pity and beauty and simply endure in our little caves.

Solemnly, Ahmad gazed around the tiny room.

Surrounded as always, he murmured, by a little universe of things we understand. .

He lapsed into silence again.

***

I've often wondered, said Joe, what it must be like to have grown up among all these wonders of antiquity, the pyramids and the Sphinx and all the rest of it. How does it affect you?

It affects your taste, said Ahmad.

You mean you tend to take less notice of passing fashions?

Well I don't know about that, I was being more specific. What I meant was the taste in your mouth.

Oh.

The fact that you never know who or what is going to blow into your mouth next.

Oh.

Yes. There you are walking down a street and suddenly some hot dry dust swirls into your mouth and coats your tongue, but who or what is it? Some deserted corner of the desert being sent to you on the wind so you can taste its desolation? All that's left of some ancient tomb? Or is this grit on your teeth the final remains of a unicorn of the XVII Dynasty? Or is this new unsavory coating on your tongue the very last memory of the Hyksos, who were always an obscure people?

Ahmad smiled.

Dust to dust, he said. In the desert only a part of the past gets buried and forgotten. Another part always gets eaten, and although we like to pretend we can forget that part too, we don't really.

Ahmad frowned.

So the past is always with us and never more so than during a war, when so much of the past is seemingly being destroyed. Just look at that old cardboard suitcase in the corner. I bought that suitcase thirty years ago in a hurry one evening when I was on my way to Alexandria for a night of pleasure. Then I was young and strong and not yet ugly, and for me that flimsy suitcase will always bring to mind the memory of a boy in a cinnamon-colored suit, shabby because he was so poor, who then revealed mended underwear and a faultless body.

And do you know what's in that suitcase now? Two folders of my useless poems, a collection of scribbles once meant to be more, a forgotten footnote to the conscience of the race. My life, in other words. .

Ah Cairo, Cairo, this sultry place of half-light where the windows have to be shuttered until sunset for most of the year, where white-tiled terraces violently throw back the heat and the hoofbeats of horses pulling old carriages clatter reassuringly in the darkness. This Cairo with its radiant winters and its glowing springs with their winds from the desert bringing the terrible heat of summer, yet also bringing cool nights and breezes off the river. .

Yes, my Cairo, my life. In the end all grand schemes of order are private, and all the systems which we pretend are universal have but the dimensions of my closet. And thus we never find new places, nor do we find another river, for the city follows us and we grow old in those byways where we wasted our youths.

Ahmad stared into the distance.

Wasted. . so many things in so many places. And now there is but this body, this worn and tarnished locket hung upon my soul. How many thousands of times have I celebrated the glory of its treasures and the wonder of the gift, the blessing. . the burden? And lamented them, surely. How many times in these byways where I wasted my youth?. .

Joe watched him. He shook his head.

Wasted, Ahmad? That's not what I've seen here. That's not what I've heard at all.

Ahmad stirred.

What do you mean? What have you seen, what have you heard?

Joe laughed. He spread his arms wide to take in the small crowded cave where so much of Ahmad's life lay heaped around them in dusty piles.

Ah yes, Ahmad, a world of your own making is what I've seen and heard, and what poet could hope for more than that? And when I look to the heart of that world I see a great wide boulevard with three young men striding down it. And their talk swirled into the night, for they were great companions in those days and they always made their rounds together, elegant and witty and matchless in their joy and laughter, three fearless kinds of the Orient of old. And one of them was a painter, and another a poet, and the third an extravagant dreamer from the desert. And people flocked to hear those three kings' of old, to catch even a glimpse of their outrageous performances. For they were Cohen and Ahmad and Stern and they laughed and wept with the very gods themselves, for the world was an opera then and the sidewalks of life were rich with poetry and color and love, and they were the masters of the boulevards in those days and everyone knew it. Knew it . . Everyone who ever set eyes upon them.