Nile Shadows

That's right, said Joe, he never did all of it. Cohen started out in the restaurant with his two friends, but already being a family man, he didn't spend the afternoon carousing there but went home to have Sunday dinner with his fine young wife and young son, as you say. Then when Sunday dinner was over he'd suggest a pleasant walk down by the river, and in the course of this pleasant stroll the family would pass a felluca tied up, ready for hire, and the son would beg for a little sail and Cohen would kindly agree, and the whole family would climb on board for a lovely cruise in the late afternoon.

Well it would just so happen that while they were out there sailing on the Nile, Cohen would spot a couple of belching bubbling bodies floating by on the great river, his good friends Strongbow and Ziwar dead drunk on the currents of time, and the felluca would take a turn or two and Cohen would pluck his friends out of the water and lay them out on the floorboards to sleep it off. And a good thing it was, too, for if Cohen hadn't done that then Strongbow and Ziwar might have gone right on floating down the Nile and out to sea and been lost to history forever, which would have been a loss for all of us. So that's how those Sundays worked and that was Cohen's Sunday role, an essential one, because without him those other two wouldn't have been around to see Monday. . . . Your great-grandfather. A faithful friend.

He was a good family man, murmured Cohen.

Oh he was definitely that, said Joe, like all the men of the Cairo Cohens. And he was also on his pious way to becoming the patriarch of his clan as well as a hugely wealthy man, after first being viewed as crazy. For it seems he had two mysterious dreams one night, the first depicting seven fat cattle coming up out of the Nile and being eaten by seven lean cattle that followed them, and then right on top of that another dream, this time of seven full ears of corn being devoured by seven lean ears.

Cohen smiled, relaxing and enjoying himself.

Do I hear an echo from the Bible? he asked.

And so you do, replied Joe, and of course messages from God were often said twice in those days so nobody would get them wrong. Well knowing the good book as your great-grandfather did and the history of his people in Egypt and all, and being himself in Egypt, he didn't need a prophet to tell him what his two dreams were all about. So the very next morning this Cohen put aside the lenses of his trade and headed out into the fields of Egypt to buy grain. He'd decided to give up grinding glass, you see, in favor of grinding grain.

Cohen drew some shapes in the air, a quizzical expression coming over his face.

Right, continued Joe. And at the time there happened to be plenty of grain in Egypt, yet here was this Cohen going deeper and deeper into debt to buy up all he could and store it away in warehouses. And he went on doing that for seven years and naturally everybody in the country got into the habit of calling him Crazy Cohen, for who in his right mind would fill up more and more warehouses with grain when all the fields were heaped with it already?

Well obviously no one who's sane, that's who. Obviously only a Crazy Cohen, a ward of God who'd been snatching messages out of thin air, thinking he'd been chosen to hear them. But he carried on in his delusions, Crazy Cohen did, never forgetting for a moment his back-to-back dreams in sevens, and lo and behold and surprise of surprises, all at once there was a terrible turn to the harvests in Egypt that wouldn't let up, with the result that almost no grain grew in Egypt for another seven whole years. And during that second stretch of seven years, the lean stretch, all that stood between Egypt and starvation was Crazy Cohen and his demented pious foresight, and his warehouses.

Joe leaned back and smiled.

Chosen, it seems, he was. And thus by keeping the faith and keeping his mind on my namesake, he made a stupendous fortune. . . . A pious gambler. Your great-grandfather.

Cohen nodded thoughtfully.

Your name is Joseph?

More commonly, Joe. Also O'Sullivan Beare. But my coat isn't many-colored, as you can see.

Cohen nodded again.

Do you also have eleven brothers, Joe?

More, I'm afraid. Or at least I used to. Over the years a lot of them seem to have fallen off roofs in the New World, while drunk. Thought they were reaching for the stars, don't you know. Queer place, the New World. Some people actually believe it's that.

Cohen gazed at Joe and drew a circle in the air.

So history comes around, he said, and that much is history. But I don't see what any of it has to do with us.

Right, said Joe. History hiding its real intent behind a cover, like secret agents and most people. Now let's just recall those three young gents who were such close friends in the nineteenth century, said Strongbow and Ziwar and Cohen. Of the three of them, Ziwar was a Christian and Cohen was a Jew, and Strongbow, although born an Englishman, was on his way to becoming a Moslem holy man. So already, to those of a religious bent, we have something of a representative gathering for this part of the world.

Cohen laughed. Friendly fellow, thought Joe, and so far so good. He poured more arak for himself as Cohen gestured at the buffers and grinding wheels in the workshop.

Religion aside, do these tools speak of great wealth to you?

No they do not, said Joe. But there used to be a saying in Cairo, I'm told, which explains that. A little madness is a dangerous thing. Remember the Cohens. . . . Which saying was as accurate as can be, for what happened in Cairo in those days was that old Crazy Cohen's son, who was partly practical and only a little mad and therefore known as Half-Crazy Cohen, what happened was that Half-Crazy went on to spend the entire family fortune while in the company of a great friend of his named Ahmad and two beautiful young women known as the Sisters. Some of the fortune went to the racetracks and the casinos, and some of it for champagne to fill alabaster cups of pure moonlight when the four of them were out carousing on the Nile, so long ago. . . . Such madcap living by your grandfather in his youth, in other words, said Half-Crazy Cohen, that all the Cohen fortune got spent. So that later when your father came of age he had to find a trade to support himself, and what better trade to turn to than the one that got the Cohens started in Egypt in the first place? Lenses. Nothing grand about it but honest work all the same, so back your father came to this very house where your great-grandfather had started and resurrected a faded old sign in the shape of a pair of giant spectacles, a symbol of eyes that can see, the sign we find hanging out front tonight. . . . And that, I believe, is the tale of the Cairo Cohens over the course of four generations and more than a century, stated in its essentials. Rags to riches to rags it goes, and whoever said we all begin the same and end the same knew what he was talking about.

Cohen smiled, opening a silver cigarette case. He offered it to Joe, who took a cigarette and struck a match for both of them.

Are you also an itinerant Irish historian, Joe?

More so on some occasions than others, but it's really the present that interests me, so let's head that way and consider the time when your father was a young man in Cairo, before the First World War. Now at this point old Menelik Ziwar was living in retirement in a crypt beneath a public garden beside the Nile, using a gigantic cork-lined sarcophagus as his bedroom, where he was known to be at home on Sunday afternoons, as they used to say, meaning he was ready to welcome friends and serve them a bracing cup of underground tea. And since so few people had ever heard of old Menelik to begin with, we shouldn't be surprised to find that most of his guests were the children of former friends.

A suggestion of a frown flickered in Cohen's face, even though he was still smiling. Joe pretended not to notice it.

So for one, said Joe, there was the grandson of his old friend Crazy Cohen, your father. And there was the son of an old friend and fellow dragoman-in-arms named Ahmad, the son also Ahmad. Then there was the son of the great explorer Strongbow, the child born to the Jewish shepherdess Strongbow married late in life, young Stern. And of course the Sisters from their strange houseboat, older than the other guests and the only ones who had known Menelik in his prime, long-term residents on the Nile who never wanted to miss a good thing near the river and seldom did. And that was the inner circle gathered around old Menelik's cork-lined sarcophagus on Sunday afternoons back before the First World War.

There were some others who dropped in now and then, but we don't have to concern ourselves with them tonight.

For the first time Cohen stopped smiling. But his composure was still remarkable and Joe admired him for it.