Oh he was a colorful rascal. Very elegant and witty and a great favorite of the ladies, they couldn't resist those long dark eyelashes of his. He was a very gifted painter too, a trifle morose on occasion but that only made him more appealing to the ladies. The handsome and moody young artist, you know.
And then there was you, said Joe.
Yes, lastly there was me. Much clumsier than them in almost every respect, in everything save for music really, yet somehow I was able to provide a certain rawboned paste to their mysterious leaven. And mysterious it was, magical even, when the three of us were together. Everyone remarked upon it and we were always mentioned in the same breath, because we did seem inseparable. And oh how we carried on in the grand tradition, roaming the boulevards with a word here and a smile there, the three of us in swirling cloaks and cocked hats in the dramatic manner of Verdi, our eyes afire for whatever mischief might suddenly leap into being in front of us, whatever gaiety might swoop our way on the amazing sidewalks of life.
Ahmad smiled gently.
Later Cohen dropped out of our group to get married and raise a family. Odd, but the men in his line always seemed to be doing that.
Ahmad laughed, rubbing his knees with pleasure.
And what a line it was, those infamous Cairo Cohens. . . . But see here, what kind of a host am I today?
Where is your aperitif and where is our music? Forgive me, I seem to have forgotten myself.
Ahmad jumped to his feet, laughing. He dug behind a stack of newspapers and came up with a dusty bottle of banana liqueur, to all appearances as old as the newspapers. A little digging somewhere else and he found two small glasses, then busied himself over a dusty pile of primitive phonograph records, all of them warped by time. When he found the one he was looking for he placed it on an old-fashioned phonograph with a wind-up crank and a flaring sound trumpet. He vigorously worked the crank and a faint voice screeched from far away. Immediately Ahmad went into a crouch, his straw hat askew, one ear almost inside the gaping mouth of the sound trumpet.
***
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
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
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
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,
