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.
And that's what I've seen, said Joe. And that's what I've heard.
Ahmad stared into space, his face solemn behind his great round tortoiseshell glasses, his enormous head swaying defiantly in an imaginary breeze, his battered flat straw hat standing at a slight angle to the universe. Gravely then he nodded to the left and to the right, as if welcoming the companions of his youth, his hand all the while straying down the wall to where an ancient dented trombone rested amidst the shadowy piles of debris. Solemnly Ahmad drew the dusty instrument to him and caressed it, blew a tentative note, rose to his feet.
And sounded a melancholy blast on the trombone, a powerful glissando, his hand sliding slowly downward in a lingering salute to the majesty of a lost world.
-11-
Trombone
When night fell they moved from Ahmad's cave to the courtyard behind the Hotel Babylon, where Ahmad built a small campfire and served a vegetarian supper, expertly mixing grains and spices and vegetables in an array of little dishes that Joe found delicious after his three days and two nights of fever.
As for Ahmad, he was delighted to have an excuse to cook for a guest again, having not really done so, he said, since his tiny cottage on the edge of the desert had been swept away in the windstorms of the last war, along with the rest of his early life.
And so they camped like wandering bedouin in the narrow courtyard where vines and flowers had come to take root beneath the single palm tree, the two of them huddling around the glowing coals of their little campfire in the remote oasis they had found for themselves in the slums of the great city, whispering together under the stars and sipping endless cups of strong sweet coffee as the night deepened and Ahmad gently reminisced, his recollections ranging wide through the silent play of shadows that suggested other lives just beyond their small circle of light, Ahmad quietly conjuring up odd corners of memory in the reassuring darkness, in the vastness of that clear Egyptian night.