Simon grinned and leaned back in his chair. “Good. I’m enjoying this. And, of course, Dr. Festa thinks his government is protecting him.”
—
A few days later, Gabriel, Linden and Simon flew to the West African country of Senegal. At the Dakar airport, Linden paid a bribe that inserted their new passport numbers into the global monitoring system. They quickly transferred to a different airline and took an overnight flight to Egypt. In the morning, they arrived and took a taxi from the airport into Cairo. Their cab moved through the crowded streets of Cairo like a boat floating in a labyrinth of muddy canals. Drivers kept honking their car horns while the traffic police stood listlessly on the sidewalk. But the Cairo jaywalkers displayed grace
and confidence: old people, street sellers and pregnant women glided through the traffic as if they had given their souls to Allah before stepping off the curb.
Simon told the taxi driver to take them to the City of the Dead on the east side of the Nile. Qarafa cemetery had once been the site of the Roman fortress of Babylon; and the brick and stone ruins had been transformed into a burial ground by the Mamluk rulers in the fifteenth century. Over hundreds of years, squatters had built huts among the tombs, and these improvised dwellings evolved into four-story tenements built with a grayish-brown concrete that resembled dried clay.
The cab passed through a square where men were selling canaries and parakeets, the little birds calling to each other as they fluttered back and forth in their cages. Men approached their car offering melons, shoes, and lottery tickets pinned to a cardboard sign. Veiled women walked arm-in-arm through the crowd while a recorded voice wailed from the speakers mounted on each mosque.
The driver got lost a few times, but eventually they reached the tomb of Iman al Shafi-i, a Muslim holy man. A mosque with four minarets had been built around the gravesite, and an elderly caretaker gave them a tour of the complex—stone walls and a faded green carpet, swallows darting around the interior of the copula. When they had seen enough of the mosque to provide a reason for their presence in the neighborhood, they walked across the dirt street to a storefront café. Each customer sat at his own little table as the pudgy café owner bustled back and forth with glasses of hot tea that had sprigs of mint floating on the surface.
Simon Lumbroso could speak basic Arabic and had business contacts in Cairo, but as an Orthodox Jew he felt self-conscious about his appearance in a Muslim country. At the hotel, he slipped on a
djellaba—
a long cotton robe that covered his shabby black suit and the fringe from his
tallit katan
, the ritual Orthodox garment.
Linden and Gabriel were wearing cotton trousers and sports jackets without ties. Gabriel didn’t mind looking like a businessman, but he wondered if Linden could truly disguise himself. The big Frenchman moved with an aggressive confidence and constantly surveyed the space around him as if he were preparing for an attack. Beggars and stray dogs sensed the danger and stayed away from him.
Simon lowered his mobile phone and wrote a number down in his memo book. “I just talked to the priest’s wife. She thinks he’s at his uncle’s house.”
“But he was supposed to meet us here.”
“This is typical for Cairo. What is expected never occurs. And what occurs is never expected.” Lumbroso started dialing a new number. “Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”
“While we wait for the priest, order some coffee,” Linden said. “This tea tastes like dishwater.”
Simon spoke to the café owner and then began dialing a new number. Gabriel looked up at the hazy sky above them. The soot and dirt particles in the air softened the light and changed the color of the sun. In the morning, the sun was a yellowish-white, but now it looked like an old bronze coin nailed to the ceiling.
Something was about to happen. He felt a change coming: a moment when he saw the world clearly and all distinctions melted away. In the past, these incidents had frightened him and overwhelmed him. Now, sitting in this street café, he could watch and wait and anticipate what was going to happen. The Light inside him was gaining power like a wave hidden beneath the surface of the sea.
The owner brought out coffee on a tin tray. Gabriel drank quickly and stared at the black grains at the bottom of the glass. A fly landed
on his wrist and he flicked it away. More flies circled his boots while others rested on the café tables—tiny silver islands made of hammered steel.
He turned his head slightly, glanced down the street, and then the world opened up before him. During the interval of one heartbeat, his mind pulled back and he saw the city with total detachment. Everything before him—the sky, the flat-roofed tenement buildings and the scrawny fichus trees—was a complete unity, but he could also perceive each detail. He saw motes of dust rising and falling; smelled garbage and baking bread; heard a woman singing on the radio.
The world enveloped him with its intricate variety, and he watched it all as if it were a photograph projected on a wall screen. He saw the faces around him just as clearly—Simon, Linden, the other customers sitting at the café, a woman carrying a white bird in a silver cage and a group of boys kicking a bandaged soccer ball. When his mind was detached in this way, he could float above the street like an angel gazing down on fallen souls. The children radiated joy and happiness, but the adults shuffled along with faces that showed weariness, anger and pain.
“Maybe that car was at the airport,” Linden said. “Someone could be following us.”
Gabriel’s vision melted away and the world was ordinary again—with a feral dog staring at him and a black car parked at the end of the street.
“It is just a Renault sedan,” Simon said. “There are thousands of them in this city. Cairo is where old Renaults come to die.”
“This one has mud on its left headlight.”
“Are you sure you’ve seen it before?”
“It’s possible.”
“Possible? Or just Harlequin
pazzia?”
“Even crazy people have enemies …”
Both of them stopped talking as a battered taxicab came around the corner and stopped in front of the cafe. A door popped open and a bearded Coptic priest got out. Using his hands to hold up the hem of his robes, he marched over to their tables. The priest’s blue jogging shoes had lightning bolts on the sides.
“Mr. Lumbroso?”
“Yes.”
“I am Father Youssef from the Church of St. Bartholomew. My cousin, Hossam, says you are looking for me.”
Simon got up and shook the priest’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Father Youssef. We just arrived in Cairo this morning. These two gentlemen are my friends.”
They circled the chairs around one little table and Father Youssef ordered a glass of tea. All the windows on the street were either darkened by curtains or concealed behind shutters. There were no surveillance cameras in the City of the Dead, but Gabriel felt like someone was watching them. When the black Renault made a U-turn and vanished around the corner, Linden relaxed slightly and leaned back in his chair.
The priest stirred sugar into his tea, and then used a spoon to mash the sprig of mint against the side of the glass. “How do you know Hossam?”
“I’ve done business with him involving antiquities,” Lumbroso said. “Your cousin has a good eye for what is real and what is a fake.”
“Hossam says you are a man who keeps promises. That is difficult to find in this city.”
“I know that the Coptic Church is being persecuted.”
“Our young men are beaten and arrested for nothing. My church has no electricity and the roof leaks when it rains.”
Lumbroso touched his breast. A wallet filled with Egyptian pounds was concealed within the inner pocket of his suit coat. “We
would reward the person with accurate information. We are looking for—”
“Hossam told me everything. You want a passageway that will take you to another world.” Father Youssef drank his tea with a loud slurping sound and put down the glass with a click. “Most people do not care about these passageways. All they want is a new car and a big television.”
Simon dropped a lump of sugar into his coffee. “We thought that a passageway might be connected to the pyramids. They’ve been a special location for thousands of years.”
“The pyramids were built for the dead. A passageway is for the living.”
Looking annoyed, Linden leaned forward and touched the priest’s arm. “Tell us something of value and your church will get a new roof.”
“The Coptic Church is poor and persecuted. They have taken everything from us, including our sacred chapel. It guards the way to another world.”
“And who controls this chapel?” Linden asked.
“The Greek Orthodox Church. I talk about the Sacred and Imperial Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount of Sinai.”
Lumbroso turned to Gabriel. “Most people know it as St. Catherine’s Monastery. It was built by the Emperor Justinian during the Sixth Century.”
“Our church had a shrine at Mount Sinai before the monastery was built. It was called the Chapel of the Burning Bush. Do you think Moses got his vision from a plant on fire? The burning bush was just a children’s story that someone invented to protect the passageway.”
“Can we go there?” Gabriel asked. “Will the priests let us in?”
Father Youssef spat on the dirt. “When pilgrims arrive at the monastery, the Greeks show them a bush growing outside the church. The chapel with the passageway is in a room behind the altar.”
“What if we offered them a donation?” Lumbroso asked.
“If the monks think you know their secret, they will call the police and have you arrested.”
Looking annoyed, Linden shook his head.
Ce prêtre est inutile
, he whispered to Simon.
“I want to be helpful,” Youssef insisted. “I can draw you a map of the church and show you the hidden chapel. But you should forget about this and go back to Europe. Passageways are dangerous. If you cross over, you can be trapped in a world with demons or ghosts. Only a saint can take such a journey, and there are no more saints.”
Simon Lumbroso smiled. “Certain rabbis tell us that a handful of hidden saints keep this world from being destroyed.”
“That’s a big responsibility,” Gabriel said. “I don’t know if that’s true.”
“It is
not
true.” Father Youssef tapped on the table with his spoon. “The Age of Saints is over. God no longer speaks directly to men and women. We speak to ourselves and pray to the echo.”
S
imon Lumbroso arranged for a car and driver, and they left that night for St. Catherine’s monastery; Gabriel and Simon in the back seat and Linden in front with the driver. The Renault sedan had a scratched and dusty exterior, but the driver had installed red velvet carpet on the floors and decorated the dashboard with plush dogs. A family of Yorkshire terriers stared at Gabriel with little glass eyes as the car glided past the walled palaces of the Egyptian military and headed east.
The four-lane highway cut a straight line across a flat desert landscape. Occasionally they passed a military installation protected by a high wall or a barbed wire fence, but no one other than soldiers appeared to be living in the area. Their Egyptian driver was a small, quiet man with a pencil-thin moustache. He kept the Renault in the middle of the road—aiming straight at each pair of oncoming headlights, and then swerving to one side at the last possible moment before they smashed into a trailer truck or a lumbering gasoline tanker.
The sun was coming up when they reached the outskirts of Suez.
The driver showed his travel permit at three army checkpoints, and then they entered the tunnel lined with white tile that passed beneath the canal. When they reemerged into the sunlight, they had left the African continent and entered the Sinai Peninsula. Linden stretched his legs and arms, then tilted the rearview mirror so he could see out the back window. The driver began to protest, but Linden glared at him. “If you want some extra money, then leave the mirror alone. I like to travel this way, looking at my past.”
The sun rose higher and the driver switched on the air conditioner. Every hour or so they passed a city with a smokestack and a power plant, a mosque and a cluster of pastel pink apartment buildings—the entire community dumped into a bare landscape of sand and scattered rocks. All the Egyptians had disappeared except for women on the side of the road selling melons that looked like little green cannonballs.
By nine in the morning, they had reached the seaside resorts on the Gulf of Suez. For Egyptians, recreation and luxury was all about palm trees; each resort would announce its presence with date palms in the median strip or a row of weary looking doum palms by the side of road. Finally, billboards would appear and then a boulevard lined with Royal Palms that led to a hotel and a strip of beach.
More check points—some run by the police, others by the army. Linden glanced over the seat at Simon Lumbroso. “It feels like half the population of Egypt is checking the passes of the other half.”
“There’s a lot of unemployment in this country,” Simon explained. “This gives them something to do.”
After stopping at a gas station, they left the beach resorts and headed inland toward a range of grey mountains. The cliffs and hills around them were eroded by the wind, and sand covered portions of the two-lane road. Simon was dozing now, but Gabriel sensed that something was wrong. Linden adjusted the rearview mirror a second
time and then his hand brushed against one of the knives strapped to his lower legs.
“Stop the car,” he said.
The driver looked startled. “Is there a problem, sir?”
“Stop the car. Now.”
“We are about thirty minutes away from the monastery.”
“I want to contemplate
le paysage.”
The driver turned off the road and parked on sandy patch of ground. Linden grabbed his knapsack with one hand and glanced over the seat at Gabriel and Simon. “All of us want to look at the scenery,” he announced. “Let’s go.”
The two men followed Linden up a hill covered with desert vegetation. It was hot and dry on the ridge and there were no shade trees to protect them from the sun.