Shooting the Sphinx (4 page)

Ari stepped out of the car and looked up at the architecture around him. But for the pervasive darkness, he could be standing in Paris. The antique, ornate detail of the Belle Epoche was everywhere; balconies with wrought-iron railings; apartments with French windows and high ceilings. From atop the building in front of him, his destination, Ari could hear voices, a man and a woman yelling at each other. He walked inside.

The lobby had a faded glory about it. An ornate elevator shaft rose up through the center of the building like a hundred-foot-tall birdcage wrapped in a square staircase. Ari pushed the button, but heard no whirr of machinery. Evidently the elevator was stuck on a high floor. Resigning himself to the long climb, he started up the worn white marble stairs.

The staircase was clean but dingy. The trace dust of fine desert sand had infiltrated the city in its every crack and nook. About halfway up the stairs, Ari heard a door bang open. The yelling resumed, the man's Arabic distinct and audible this time. Then Ari realized that the woman was responding in English.

“So let them fire me! Let them dare.” A bold young voice echoed down from the hallway above. “If it's only money I want, I can go to Dubai tomorrow and make three times as much. What I don't want is to work for a company that would threaten to fire me for blogging on my own time!”

“Blogging what?” The man's voice had switched over from Arabic to English. “What are you blogging?”

“When will you stop yelling at me, Samir? When?”

“When you are married and living in your husband's home, then I stop yelling! Until then, you are my responsibility. When someone thinks of firing you, they won't warn you again. What are you blogging?”

She didn't answer, but Ari heard the slap of angry footsteps come out onto the landing. He heard the sliding gate of the old-fashioned elevator open and close. The elevator started to descend. The violence of the words, the sexist prerogative, and the challenge to it left Ari a little spellbound. He felt like he had eavesdropped on something unthinkable in his own Western mind, the voice of Arab machismo that entitled a brother to dictate to a sister well into adulthood. Who was this woman who wasn't having any of it? Who was this sister in open rebellion?

Ari watched the elevator loom over him as he climbed up onto the next landing. He could see her legs, and he halted in front of the elevator gate to watch. Dressed like a student, she wore tight jeans and a purple blouse open over a tight T-shirt. She was tall. As tall as me, he thought. No head scarf over her long, almost black hair, which had a slight tinge of red, a henna sheen. She locked eyes with him through the cagelike diamond pattern of the sliding brass gate. Her brown piercing eyes held a smoldering rage that quickened his pulse.

“Hi there.” Ari flashed his brilliant smile.

She blinked several times, surprised. He had confused her rage. She didn't seem to know what to do with anything other than anger at that moment. “Uh … hello,” she said awkwardly as she dropped in the descending elevator beneath him. He watched shamelessly, waiting for her to glance back up at him, which she did. They locked eyes for a second. He winked. Then he continued climbing the stairs to the top, enjoying the little charm bomb that he'd tossed inside the elevator.

On the landing, he looked up and down the hall at signs on doors. Each was in Arabic except for one,
PAN EGYPT FILMS.
As Ari tried the doorknob, he heard the sound of the call to prayer on a loudspeaker from a nearby mosque. The door swung open. Ari stepped inside.

The walls were bright white and freshly painted. Ari wandered through an anteroom toward an open door and into a main office. The wooden furniture was new, and in the Arabic style. Through the door, Ari could see a big wooden desk covered with a sheet of glass, a MacBook, an ashtray, a burning cigarette, and a neat pile of papers with red ink corrections on them. When he reached the open office door, Ari lifted his fist to knock, but Samir Aziz was unrolling a small red prayer rug on the white tile floor.

Ari froze. He had never, in person, seen a Muslim pray. Samir was in his early thirties, clean-shaven, with his hair cropped short and a gray spot about an inch round on his forehead from kneeling five times a day with his head to the floor. Samir was fit, wore a maroon shirt, tan slacks, and brown loafers that he had already kicked off beside the rug. He stepped to one end, stood up straight when he noticed Ari in the doorway, and said, “Welcome.”

“Oh, excuse me,” said Ari. “Don't stop.”

“Once you start, you cannot stop.” Samir slipped on his shoes, walked over to Ari, and held out his hand. “Have you had anything to eat?”

Ari shook his head. “Oh no, I ate on the plane. Besides, my stomach's asleep.”

Samir looked at him skeptically. “We will get you some real Egyptian food.”

Samir had the same smoldering brown eyes as his sister. Ari wanted to ask about her as they walked out, something indirect that might open a window of insight into this furious Arab machismo, but Samir turned out the light. The moment had passed.

 

Chapter 7

“So they took everything?” Samir pressed the old elevator button. The elevator didn't move.

Ari nodded. “All sixteen cases.”

“Not seventeen?” Samir was alarmed. “One is missing?”

“No, no.” Ari reassured him that nothing had been stolen. “When I was checking in in New York, the TSA agents took the generator.”

“Why?”

“They were dicks.” Ari started to explain the American slang. “That means—”

“I know what is dicks.” Samir cut him off.

“Assholes.”

“Yes, in Arabic we have a whole dictionary for that word.” They chuckled. Samir pressed the button again, harder this time, poking it. The elevator still did not move.

“Someone forgot to shut the gate properly,” Samir said with a tinge of resentment. Ari assumed that in Samir's mind he blamed his sister. “That person's carelessness means that we must walk down the stairs.” He ushered Ari to the staircase. “Anyway, a generator is the least of our problems. We can easily rent another. Your SpaceCam, on the other hand…”

The unfinished sentence hung in the sober air between them all the way down the stairs and out into the street.

“So when the woman from the Press Ministry found you…” Samir broke the silence.

“Yes?”

“Was she wearing the hijab?”

“The what?”

Samir made a circle with his hand around his face. “The scarf over her head.”

“No, no scarf.” Ari shook his head.

Samir winced, then slapped the wall of the building beside them with his palm, hard.

Ari was again startled by this macho overreaction. “What's the problem?”

“I told her to wear it to create respect,” said Samir.

“Respect for…?”

They turned the corner and found themselves amid round café tables on the sidewalk. Each tabletop had a tile mosaic of a swirling Arabic design. Four men smoking an enormous hookah passed the pipe between them. The sweet apple scent of their tobacco wafted through the night air. The men turned and looked at him. Ari was the only Westerner. He could feel all eyes checking him out.

“Respect for what?” asked Ari again. Samir heard the question, but he didn't answer. He walked inside the café. Ari followed him past beaded curtains to a quiet section in the back. They took the very last table.

“Tell me everything that happened once you stepped off the plane,” demanded Samir.

Ari recounted the whole trip as they ate. When he finished the story, he wiped up some scattered bits of rice with a final morsel of lamb. Samir took out a cigarette and flipped it around several times in his fingers.

“Why didn't you take Lufthansa? They land at Terminal Two. I have a man at Terminal Two.”

“I had no choice,” said Ari, remembering the cool blond ticket agent. “We might not have seen those cases for a week.”

“At Terminal One, I have no control. Cigarette?” Samir offered one to Ari, who shook his head.

“No thank you. I don't smoke. Look, Samir, film is an existential universe. We can't look back. The only question is, will we be able to get our camera out in time to shoot?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?” Ari wasn't used to hearing those words in the movie business.

Samir started tapping the unlit cigarette on the table. “That is right.”

“But you're my fixer. Can't you fix it? A good fixer can fix anything.”

Samir took out a tarnished old brass Zippo lighter and lit his cigarette. “You don't know what it's like to live in a military country. Our permission has to be signed by Tantawi himself.”

“Who is Tantawi?”

“The defense minister.” Samir took a deep nervous drag, blowing the ember bright orange in the night. “When you first called me, two months ago, I applied the very next day, even before you gave me the job.”

“Really?” Somewhat surprised that Samir would do so much work on spec, Ari locked eyes with Samir. “And what if we hadn't hired you?”

“‘Go to work and the job will come.'”

Ari was impressed with Samir's drive. This was Ari's own attitude to work. “If we miss our date on Monday, can we just get another date a few days later, or do we need to apply all over again?”

“I do not know.”

There was that phrase again. “You don't know much.” The recrimination had just slipped out. Samir flinched. Ari wished he hadn't said it.

“Do you accuse me of doing my job incorrectly?” Rising up an inch or two in his chair, Samir's spine was up.

“No one said anything about—” Ari backpedaled.

“You just did.” Samir stamped out his barely smoked cigarette. “I told you I did not know the answer to that question on the phone before you boarded your plane in New York. Have you forgotten?”

Ari was shaken by Samir's vehemence. “Relax. I've done this kind of thing all over the world. It always works out.”

“But this is Egypt.” That smoldering rage came into Samir's eyes again, and Ari felt weak. He needed to assert control. He stood up and looked down at Samir.

“One way or another, we will get that shot.” Ari flashed a quick burst of his own well-hidden aggression, then he changed the subject. “How are we doing on the university?”

“We can shoot there any day but that Thursday.” Samir seemed relieved by the change. Good, thought Ari, he knows he's a hothead. “But there might be an issue with noise.…”

“What kind of issue?” demanded Ari.

“The students have been very active lately.” Samir stood up and reached into his pocket for some money.

“Well…” Ari remembered his own college days, and flashed his smile, dropping the tension between the two men. “Students will be students. And the museum?”

“We can't shoot there on Wednesdays.”

“So we'll do the airport scenes on that Wednesday.” Ari glanced at the door. Hamed leaned against his car out in the street. “I'd better go check in with the studio now that LA's waking up.”

Samir threw some Egyptian pounds on the table, and the two men walked outside. Hamed was leaning against Ari's car, also smoking.

“Hamed will drive you to your hotel.” Samir spoke to both Ari and Hamed, instructing them. “He will pick you up at six thirty in the morning. He will tell you what to do.”

“Where will you be?” asked Ari.

“Asking for another date at the Ministry of Defense,
inshallah
.”

“And where is Shah Allah?” asked Ari.

“Excuse me.” Samir stared back blankly.

“Where is … Shala?” Ari tried again with a different accentuation.

A smile broke open Samir's serious face, growing and growing until he burst into laughter so uncontrollable, so almost hysterical, that he doubled over from lack of air in his lungs. It was the first time Ari had seen Samir smile.

“What's so funny?” Ari asked, mystified.

“You will soon … ha, ha, hee, hee, find out.” Samir put a hand on the car to steady himself, but he was racked again with a fresh wave of manic laughter. The few remaining café patrons drinking their coffee looked on in bemused curiosity until two policemen hurried by. Everyone gradually went back to their own business, amused. However, at the sight of the policemen, Samir sobered up immediately.

 

Chapter 8

Ari gazed out the window of Hamed's car at the multitude of Egyptians thronging the streets at night. Mostly men, but more than a few women, some with children in tow, bustling in and out of butchers, bakeries, laundries, restaurants, electronics stores as if it were the middle of the day.

“Hamed, the streets are full of people and it's one in the morning?” asked Ari.

“Yes, Mr. Ari.
Um al-Dunia,
” Hamed replied over his shoulder.

“Excuse me?”

“You don't know what is
Um al-Dunia
? Cairo is ‘Mother of the World.' Peoples in the street all night long.”

Ari spotted a vegetable stand on the corner ahead. The owner seemed to be everywhere at once, stuffing an armful of cucumbers into the string bag of a woman wearing a black abaya, tossing a melon to a boy who threw back a coin; then, like a magician, seemingly out of thin air, he produced a glass of pulpy yellow juice for an old man with a long white beard.

“Hamed, pull over there. That fruit seller.”

“But, Mr. Ari, you will have anything you want in your hotel.”

“I want the real thing. Pull over.”

Hamed did so, and Ari jumped out, surprising the fruit seller. Ari pointed at the half-empty glass of pulpy yellow liquid at the mouth of the white bearded man.

“What kind of juice is that?” asked Ari. He could already smell the sweet perfume of it.