Monkeyshines
Chapter Seven b

We rode through Oujda in the back of a truck filled with sheep. The eastern-most town in Morocco, Oujda's women wore veils that not only covered the lower half of the face, but also one eye. We crossed the border into Algeria without stopping at the border. We didn't learn that Algeria was closed to travelers.
The next city we reached was Algiers. As we walked into town along a sunny boulevard, we sensed the city was disturbed. We felt it in the air, and we saw it in the bullet holes everywhere. Suddenly an Algerian soldier approached us. He pointed his automatic weapon at us, made us aware that we were walking along a fenced area, and that he wanted us away from that fence. No problem. We crossed the street. The soldier slung his weapon over his shoulder and went back to his duties.
The French had recently lost control of Algeria, but we thought that the hostilities were over. They weren't, quite. Large colorful billboards proclaimed the arrival of the Socialist era. A power struggle arrived with it, between Ben Bella and Boumedienne. Boumedienne won, approximately on the day we arrived. Also, the U.S. had just ferried some Belgian troops into the Congo(Zaire), and this enraged African socialists. They claimed the action was a new imperialism. I didn't know any of this stuff at the time. (If I had been aware of politics, I would certainly have taken off the French army shirt I wore. I’d bought it in the bazaar in Tangiers. I got it for a peanuts, even taking into account the two little round holes it had in its back.)
I knew about the obvious stuff, like the large surly crowd approaching us as we walked through sunny Algiers. The crowd had a spokesman who said, "Are you Americans?" His tone said, "Are you shit-eating, yellow dogs?"
Ken said, "No, I'm British."
Ordinarily he didn't seem especially proud to be British. He often criticized the Englanders' sense of superiority, and denounced the brutal consequences this had for so many people. But it came in handy there in Algiers.
The angry spokesman turned to me. "American?" he demanded. I looked him straight in the eye and said, "Was suchen Sie, Ich bin Deutsch." Vahs spoken zee, ick bin doytch.("What do you want, I am German.")
"Ah, Deutscher!" he said, quickly turning to study the still sullen crowd.
He seemed to find what he looked for. "Achmed, ah zhee, yell a." ("Achmed, come here, hurry up"). A guy popped out of the crowd, approached, and consulted with the spokesman. Ken and I would have walked on at this point, but the crowd had closed in too tightly. We couldn't move without knocking someone over. The spokesman turned toward me again. He looked a bit like the cat about to eat the canary.
"Achmed worked in Frankfurt. He is plumber," the spokesman said, looking steadily into my eyes.
"Ich verstehe nicht," I said.("I don't understand").
Achmed then said to me, "Woraus kommen Sie?" ("Where do you come from?")
"Ich komme aus Hanover," I said. I picked Hanover because the high German (Hoch Deutsch) of Hanover sounded different and was spoken much faster than the German in Frankfurt. Only a very proficient speaker of German would challenge the language skills of someone from Hanover - I hoped. The crowd awaited the outcome of this language contest, its emotions suspended between rage and hospitality.
Achmed and I spoke for just a few minutes. My old German teacher, Father Tom, would have struck me for my weak performance, but I won by a nose. Actually, my German and Achmed's were so equally inadequate, I didn't rule out the possibility that Achmed was giving me a break. Or was sandbagging. Achmed spoke softly to the spokesman, and the spokesman's eyes softened. He made "Welcome to Algeria" gestures and smiled. The crowd relaxed. The spokesman shook our hands and said he liked Germans. Ken and I were allowed to walk on.
We walked in single file. People crowded around us very closely, sometimes getting exceedingly curious about our packs. Every so often Ken and I reversed positions. This allowed us to inspect the straps on the other's pack. We found a shot-up hotel where we got a room. It felt good to get off the street.
We were still apprehensive when it came time to sleep, so we moved the bed around so it blocked the door. We pushed a large wardrobe cabinet against the balcony windows. We couldn't secure the transom over the door, so we slept with our knives out. Ken stuck his in the wall next to the bed. I stuck mine in the floor. We slept lightly, and left town as the sun rose.
We felt safer when we got back into the countryside. Even so, I stopped wearing my French army shirt. The Algerian landscape was rich with wide fields of colorful flowers. The air was clean and fragrant. The sun shone brightly. Algerians in flowing robes moved on foot along the road or sat along the shoulder waiting for a ride. There were often twenty or more in a group. Occasionally, an empty truck came by and picked up everyone, including Ken and me. Women didn't usually stop for hitch-hikers, but a European woman with a child did give us a ride. When she stopped, twenty Algerians ran toward her car, each one calling out for a ride. We jumped in the car and sped away.
In Constantine we got a ride with a Swiss engineer. He wanted us to have a proper welcome to Algeria, despite the current difficulties. So he took us to what he described as "the best restaurant south of Paris." Though its exterior was shabby, the interior was clean and comfortable. The food was dynamite.
The many patrons were all Europeans. The conversation was hot, and zeroed in exclusively on the "situation" in Algeria. Two arguments struggled for dominance in this little purgatory. One claimed the advantages gained through generations of hard work were lost if the Europeans didn't assert military control over the more native Arab population. The other view, that of our Swiss engineer, suggested that, whoever ruled Algeria, the skills of the Europeans would inevitably remain a valuable bargaining chip in arranging the "new" Algeria. The Europeans could "hang in there." The majority didn't seem interested in just "hanging in there." Ken and I thanked our Swiss host and left for Bone.
Bone was the eastern-most city in Algeria. From there we intended to follow the coast road into Tunisia, but we kept getting rides that took us further and further inland. Late in the afternoon, we desperately sought a corrective ride to take us back toward the coast. Sunset was about to cancel our ticket.
Success seemed to arrive when a fellow wearing robes stopped to pick us up in his 1948 Chrysler. Why we thought he understood us, I don't know. I guess we just wanted it to be so. Anyway, he was a jovial, broad-smiling fellow, and his family was jovial and broad-smiling. It was a fun ride. But as the over-sized African sun settled into its crimson bed, the old guy stopped the car. He cheerfully indicated that something was further down the road, and motioned to us to get out of the car. We all waved and smiled, and said things of no literal value to each other as the Chrysler turned ninety degrees off the road, and drove straight into the desert. Ken and I watched the swirling cloud of dust behind the Chrysler disappear in the distance.
We decided to believe that the Tunisian border was just up the road. We started walking. Hours after dark, we met an old man driving a horse and wagon in the opposite direction. He seemed startled to find us there. He thrice offered us the ritual Islamic greeting, "Salaam Alecum." We said our part, "Alecum Salaam." He then indicated quite clearly that something was further on down the road we were traveling. We thanked him and walked on.
During the next few hours, we heard many voices. We assumed they came from camps around the fires that flickered deep in the surrounding darkness. At midnight in the Sahara, a young Christian may find himself wondering if some Arabs really think killing a Christian is a sure ticket to heaven.
About 1:30 a.m., we reached the border. It consisted of a guard hut five or six times the size of a phone booth and a pole barrier that blocked the road. As we approached, we saw light leaking out through the cracks around the door. We hailed loudly, and that light went out. After a moment of silence, we heard hushed voices from inside the hut. Next came agitated shouts. The message seemed clear enough. There'd be no business conducted with the people in this hut tonight. We were to go away.
The road was still barred by the pole. It rested on a fulcrum, like a railroad crossing barrier. The silent Sahara stretched infinitely and un-fenced in every direction from that barrier. We walked around it and left Algeria as unofficially as we'd entered.
Half an hour later, we reached a small compound of buildings that was the Tunisian port-of-entry. Two men were still up and moving about, but they seemed to be at the end of their day. They pointed out an empty room we should occupy until morning.
The building was expansive and modern. Several large rooms were empty and apparently unused. Later I learned that the building was a gift from the United States.
In the morning we cleared customs and immigration, and we spent the rest of the day hitch-hiking. As evening came, we still stood across the road from the customs house. No cars had passed, except for the Kharmann Ghia carrying two tidy, middle-aged Italian women. They had a sort of impish air about them, and they offered to give one of us a ride, but didn't have room for us both. We considered the opportunity, but declined, mainly on the ground that they were going back the way we'd just come.
The Tunisian border crew lived with their families behind the customs building in a compound of more rustic, native buildings that looked like a wart on the backside of the new stone office building. They invited us to join them for dinner that night.
We all gathered around a large desk in the main office for dinner. The women brought bowls of food. The traditional way to eat was to take a piece of bread in the right hand only, and scoop a bit of food from the common bowl. The left hand was reserved for a toileting practice that always seemed to horrify Westerners. Our host on this occasion, another Achmed, sent one of the women from the room on an errand. She returned with a table spoon and a fork, which she offered to Ken and me. We declined. This seemed to please the group.
After we finished the cous-cous, Ken, Achmed, old Jamal and I laid a blanket on the stone floor of an empty office and celebrated. Achmed was a bit of a rogue. With a glint in his eye, he sang out his full complement of English, "Just give me wi-ine." Simultaneously, he exposed with a flourish a large bottle of French wine. This was somewhat sinful behavior for a Muslim. In the restaurants and bars in Algeria that had been taken over from the French, we had seen only grape juice where once there had been wine and liquor. It was clearly Achmed's encouragement that convinced the shy old man, Jamal, to partake of the demon fermented grape. We laughed and babbled our way through the wine.
That wine no doubt reduced our discomfort that night. We were sleeping right on the stone floor, and the desert nights got cold. By sunrise, the air and stone had sucked all the heat out of our bodies. We were up with the sun, positioning ourselves like lizards to maximize our exposure to those first delectable rays of golden warmth. In half an hour the sun cooked most of the stiffness out. Achmed's woman brought us another cous-cous variation, this one mixing wheat with bits of potato and a few string beans. It also contained an unevenly distributed fiery spice that absolutely banished any remaining thought of the cold.
The rest of that day we stood by the road. Two overloaded cars passed. The following day we took Achmed's suggestion and rode the Tuesday bus to the coast town of Sfax. On that bus were a number of women from the Blue Tribe. The people of this tribe were known for the extensive blue tattoos on their bodies. These Blue women shuddered and moaned pitifully, seeming to be very frightened. Occasionally one shrieked and reached out to cling to one of the others. A fellow passenger explained that these women never rode a bus before. Maybe these women thought they'd been eaten by that bus.
Anyway, I cut open my emergency can of peaches and handed it around. It didn't seem to hurt. One of the younger Blue women looked directly into my eyes. This was something no Muslim woman had done with me before. I mean, she looked DEEP into my eyes. By the time I looked away, other Blue women had noticed the exchange. I think we were nearly married.
From Sfax, we went to Tripoli in Libya. This was before Khaddafi. Libya was three sheikdoms, heavily impacted by oil companies. Tripoli looked like a city out of the middle ages. It had a high wall around it made of large stone blocks, and the atmosphere seemed charged with mystical energy. Flowing robes and veiled faces moved smoothly and quietly through the dark streets.
As night came, Ken and I found a small cave-like room tucked under the city's wall that was just big enough to sleep in. I imagined that room had been used for storing cannonballs or camel saddles or tools for repairing the wall. We made a small fire from newspaper in order to smoke out the insects, but it didn't work. We woke up in the morning with bites and stings all over our exposed skin. We realized how bad it was when we looked at each other, pointed, and laughed. Our eyes were almost puffed closed, and our swollen lips, ear lobes, cheeks and noses made us look so grotesque that we couldn't get a ride until late in the afternoon. Even then, the fellow who picked us up admitted he almost didn't stop, because we looked so strange.
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Monkeyshine #37, the instinctive aversion to the sick, the different or the ugly.
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The next stop was Bengazi. As with Tripoli, Tobruk, and a lot of other places, I was exhilarated to arrive at Bengazi. I'd heard their names in a classroom, and my head was full of imaginings. Now I saw them for real, smelled them, heard them, tasted their food and looked into the eyes and lives of their people. That's what I'd set out to do. I must be getting to the bottom of things.
Bengazi was a furiously active city, and sharply divided into an Arab part and a less-crowded, European part. Lots of oil company men worked there. Ken and I envied them their jobs. The pay was legendary, and we thought the work couldn't be that hard. In fact, the oil company workers complained a lot, about the Arabs, the food, the government, the lack of entertainment, the lack of a wide selection of alcohol, etc. One guy actually complained that he missed his family.
These guys treated Ken and me very well, but I sensed this was because we weren't Arabs. It seemed to be assumed that we "understood" all the negatives they shared with us. It was discomforting. In fact, I complained a lot, too. Hitch-hiking across North Africa wasn't very comfortable.
The European grocery stores we found in Bengazi dazzled us. In the first one, we foraged like wild things from the desert. Ken took a jar of lemon curd and ate it from the jar in the aisle where he found it. I did the same with some Campbell's vegetarian vegetable soup. I used my bayonet to hack the top off the can and hurry the wonderfully familiar dehydrated slime into my mouth. The girl at the cash register seemed to consider whether to accept our money or run out of the store.
We met a pilot who delivered equipment for an oil company. He let us stay the night at his apartment, and I got my first bath in over a month. I took my bath with my clothes on, at first, in order to wash them as well as myself. I didn't feel particularly dirty, but the thick layer of sand completely covering the floor of the tub reminded me of the several wind storms that blew us blind, and drenched us with sand and salt. And I remembered examining a Sahara sand dune a few days earlier, surprised at the fineness of the sand. To a kid in Chicago, on the shore of Lake Michigan, sand was heavy and gritty. Some of the Sahara sand was so fine that when you dropped a handful, it floated in the air like flour.
The pilot was delivering gear to an oil rig in the desert. He'd be stopping in Cairo. He said he'd take us along, if weight permitted. Getting an airplane ride was the ultimate for hitch-hikers, but the weight scotched us. Our pilot had too much. We sat in a cafe, lamenting the collapse of our flight plan, when a taxi driver came in to announce that he was driving to Alexandria. He wanted passengers. Cheap.
He’d just driven some pilgrims back from Mecca to Bengazi, and he was deadheading back to Egypt. We were still hundreds of miles from Alexandria, and it was much too late to hitch-hike, so we made a deal. Five pounds each. More than we wanted to pay, but an excellent price per mile. We left immediately.
We reached the Egyptian border in the middle of the night, and it was closed. Not like the Algerian border. This border was sealed. People arriving during the night pulled into a car park area and waited. In the morning, border guards put everyone through a grueling and time-consuming bureaucratic ordeal. Ken and I congratulated ourselves for having had the foresight to get our visas back in Morocco.
One of the people delayed there was an Italian businessman. He applied for his visa there at the border. A clerk examined his passport and noticed an Israeli visa and exit stamp. The clerk clouded up, and told the Italian he couldn't enter Egypt, period, end of story. The Italian raged, cajoled, hollered, wheedled and, finally, begged, but it was no use. The clerk was adamant. The Italian wasn't even allowed to speak to a more senior official. The clerk-typist sent him packing.
But they admitted Ken and me, and by evening our taxi had passed El Alemein and reached Alexandria. The city had been established eons ago to memorialize Alexander the Great, but now a feeling of doom hung over it. It was on the line between Egypt and Israel. Troops and tanks gathered there. Barbed wire barriers shut streets to traffic. Few people walked. We stayed the night in a youth hostel and left for Cairo in the morning.
The first ride we got was with an Egyptian general and his wife. All the way to Cairo. The general gave and solicited views on the middle east, the Arabs and the Jews, etc. I was ignorant about the middle east. I knew Israel took a piece of real estate that was occupied by a lot of different people over many generations, and I thought they justified it through biblical interpretations and the need to avoid any future Holocaust. I sensed the Israelis usurped territory the same way American immigrants took Indian land. The biblical story seemed more like smoke to me. But what did I really know about it?
As the Egyptian general told his story, I expected diatribes and bitter accusations. I was surprised. The general claimed the Jews as brothers. "The Zionists," he said, "Are Jews who wish to dominate the middle east. They parlay world sympathy for the holocaust victims into power and land. European Jews dominate Zionism, and they are the same as the Nazis. They want living space for their people just as Hitler did for his."
The general went on about the Rothschilds, big German-Jewish bankers, who had funded Hitler's National Socialism for a time. The general thought the Rothschilds sold out the lower class Jews, and advanced this as evidence that the people of the middle east could not expect equitable treatment should the Zionists gain control.
I realized I was being propagandized, but I was relieved that I didn't have to listen to the mindless, Jew-hating anti-semitism I'd expected, the sort of stuff I'd seen in films about Hitler. The general said, "I am a Semite. All Arabs and Jews are Semites. I am not anti-Semitic." And maybe he was sincere.
I grew up in Chicago, and my friends and I were anti-Semitic, sort of. It was a local folkway. It was part of a general pattern of mild to moderate hostility that we felt toward anyone who wasn't in our group, like Blacks, Jews, homosexuals, Latinos, non-Catholics, communists (we had little opportunity to dismiss communists, as we didn't know any, as far as we could tell), boys our age from another school or neighborhood, anyone who dressed differently from us... , Damn! We were anti-everybody. We only liked a tiny group of ourselves, and the definition of "ourselves" was always under review.
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It was Monkeyshine #5, Territorial exclusivity. A sort of genetic imperative toward fascism.
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I didn't tell any of this to the Egyptian general. I was still pretty relieved that I hadn't gotten a hate bath from him. Why push it. On its face, the general's presentation reinforced my suspicion that the truth about Egyptian generals, Jews, and the middle east was not very clear to me.
I developed a theory about reality that I tried to remember when I thought I knew the whole truth about anything. In my theory, true reality was an artichoke with an infinite number of leaves. The irrefutable truth was in the heart of that artichoke, with each leaf holding a succulent bit, as well. There was always another leaf. You never got to the heart.
Arguing about political truth one night at a youth hostel in Germany, after I was baited about what a repressive, destructive country America was, I recounted the undeniable truths that I'd been taught. America saved the world from Hitler, fed the starving survivors, rebuilt Europe with the Marshall Plan, and provided an umbrella of protection against the ruthless communists. The European guys who'd baited me were hardly squelched. They laughed, and suggested I was a naive ignoramus. Which, of course, I was.
One fellow quickly pointed out that Franklin Roosevelt was a master politician, who kept America out of WWII until everyone else was devastated, then entered the war as a savior, the Marshall Plan just subjected Western Europe to American economic colonization, and the hostility between Russia and America was simply a matter of two demonic giants competing for domination of the world. I was squelched. Not because their version was true and mine was false, I was flattened by my arrogant assumption that there couldn't be such plausible concepts so contradictory to mine.
The general dropped us off in Cairo, and we were tourists again. First, we ate lunch. Cairo street vendors sold fantastic, two-cent sandwiches made with liver, pita bread, lettuce, tomato and onion. The bits of liver were saute’d on the spot in a copper, cone-shaped pan and seasoned with cumin, paprika and salt. For another five cents, I got a twelve ounce tumbler of ice-cold, pureed strawberries.
We found a place to stay on an old ferry boat moored in the Nile. The NILE!! We stowed our gear and set out immediately for the pyramids. They weren't far from Giza where our ferry boat was moored. I was amazed at how suddenly the city ended and the desert began. It was as if a line with people and green on one side and empty, brown desert on the other. An Egyptian guy offered us horses and camels for the short ride to the pyramids. I picked a camel to be exotic, but it was a mistake. The saddle sat on top of the Dromedary's single hump which wobbled from side to side. Combined with the camel's gawky up and down, forward and back, I nearly got sea sick. From then on, I doubted the Lawrence of Arabia stories about tribesmen shooting rabbits from the back of a running camel. I couldn't even spit from the back of a running camel. I traded the beast for a horse.
We rode to the pyramid of Cheops. We crawled on hands and knees up a long shaft to the burial chamber. It was just an empty stone room. The gear had been taken to the museum. It felt a bit magical, though. The old pharaoh's presence lingered. This was the most ancient place I'd been, and I felt slightly like a trespasser. It was an interesting enough feeling, that Ken and I decided to go up river and visit more tombs, some of which would soon be submerged forever by the lake being formed by the new high dam at Aswan. We particularly wanted to visit King Tut-ahnk-amen's tomb at Luxor.
Ken and I rode the train 600 miles down to Luxor and got a room at the youth hostel. Luxor shimmered in the early summer heat. The temperature was always above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. We took cold showers at the hostel, but we'd be over-heating immediately afterward. We put eggs on the windowsill in the morning and by afternoon they were hard baked. By mid-afternoon it was 126 in the shade. The heat intoxicated me. My I.Q. seemed to drop as the temperature rose.
There was a Victorian style hotel in Luxor with a bar three floors under ground. It was cool and they served Coca-Cola. It became our headquarters.
We set out at 5 am to visit Tut's tomb. We reasoned it would be cool in the early morning. It was 106 at first light. We ferried across the Nile, rented bicycles, and pedaled the seven miles to the tomb. The site of Tut-ahnk-amen's tomb was most prominently marked by a Coke stand with a large sign. Otherwise the setting was unremarkable desert. King Tut's Coke stand reminded me of the one next to our houseboat at Giza. Early one morning, we'd watched as the operators opened for business. As we watched them folding bedding, we realized that the operators were a family of five, and that they lived in that Coke stand. They seemed unperturbed by it. I looked for clues at King Tut's Coke stand that would tell if a family lived in that Coke stand as well.
Next to King Tut's Coke stand, there was a fence with a gate we had to pass through to enter the tomb. We had to have a ticket to pass through the gate. The attendant said we could only buy tickets back in Luxor. These revelations started to get us down, but we restrained our disappointment. The Egyptian fellow giving us this bad news was just doing his job. He wasn't supposed to make exceptions, even for people who’d just ridden bicycles seven miles through the desert heat and were willing to pay. No need to get upset.
I asked this bad news gatekeeper for a drink of water before we started back, as we’d forgotten to bring water bags, and he refused. That was it. I got upset. I jumped up and down, screaming profanities at him. A group of elderly, North American tourists emerged from the tomb just then, and in my peripheral vision I saw astonishment on their faces. They expected no such sounds in the Sahara.
The gatekeeper and I tried to beat on each other, but Ken pulled me away, and the gatekeeper's friend pulled him away. Ken and I left for Luxor. As we rode along, I savored the comments that I'd make to that sonofabitch when I got back with my ticket. Then I felt weak and light headed. My vision lost acuity. Ken said he felt the same, and we guessed the symptoms were from dehydration and/or sun stroke.
Earlier, we'd agreed that we could actually feel the moisture evaporate from our bodies in that terrible dry heat. And we'd got down to one hat for the two of us. Ken wore it for a while, then I took a turn. We started to worry that we might die along the side of the road in southern Egypt. Then we came to a house, the only house for a long way.
We got off our bikes and were standing in front of the house, swaying, and trying to focus our eyes, when a fellow opened the door, and invited us in. Another man sat on a sofa inside. They looked at us, then at each other, then one of them left the room. He returned with a pitcher of water and two glasses which he offered us. We drank our fill, gave thanks, and continued on back to Luxor.
Two days later we took the train back to Cairo. By the time we reached the riverboat in Giza, I was sick. The next day, Ken helped support my weight as I wobbled to a doctor. The doctor said I had sinusitis, bronchitis, laryngitis, malaria and dysentery. He gave me shots, pills, suppositories, and syrups to take. I spent the next three days on the riverboat, delirious. Ken cared for me during the chills, fever, vomiting, raving, bedwetting and shitting. He fed me Coca-Cola until I recovered. I know it was horrible for Ken, because he got sick just as I got well, and I had to care for him.
When he recovered we celebrated by going to a movie. "Old Yeller" was playing in English with French and Arabic subtitles. I remember one scene where Chill Wills and Slim Pickens sat on horses in a desert with their pals. They scanned the horizon then Slim Pickens said, "Jumpin Jehosafat, look at all them gol-danged, red-skinned varmints just a pourin' over that there hill yonder!!" The French subtitle translated: "Here come the Indians."
That night I called my dad. There was a radio telephone system in Cairo that cost five dollars for a call to Chicago. I paid the man and made the call.
"Hi Dad," I said.
"Michael?" my dad said.
"Yeah, its me. I'm calling from Cairo."
A little bit of a groan slipped out of him, and he said, "How much is this going to cost me?"
"I already paid for the call," I said proudly.
"Where are you?" he asked, still a trace of dread in his voice.
"I'm in Cairo," I said again. The connection sounded as though it could be from Mars.
"How much is this going to cost me?" he asked again.
"I already paid for the call at this end," I repeated, a little amused that it could be so hard for him to accept that I'd paid for the call. "Could you go down to TWA and buy me a one way ticket from Cairo to Chicago, please?"
Silence. More silence.
"How much is this going to cost me?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said. I winced as the first glimmer of insight reached me that my dad had not been thinking about the cost of the phone call at all.
"Will you do it?" I asked. Dad kneaded my brain and nervous system with a little more silence.
"Okay," he finally answered.
That was about it. I stopped sweating, and my dad and I said good-bye.
Ken and I parted casually. As though we had just ridden the bus across town together. That's the way it was. We were immortal. We trusted fate. We shook hands and each of us said to the other, "Take it easy." Ken went to arrange travel to Cyprus and a boat to Israel. He had a girlfriend on a kibbutz, and he was yearning to visit her.
I took a taxi to the airport. I camped there until the plane left the next day and took me to Athens where I connected to Munich. In Munich I learned from a baggage handler that Sam had recently quit his job and flown back to America. I flew on to Frankfurt where I got a flight over the North Pole to Chicago.
I hadn't washed properly for a long time. I thought back to the showers in Luxor. After Luxor I rode to Cairo supine in the luggage rack over the seats in third class. It was a twelve hour trip. Then those days of appalling sickness in Cairo. I shouldn't wonder that no one wanted to sit near me on the plane. People looked at me as though I just exited a door marked DO NOT ENTER.
Back in Chicago, the customs agents seemed to handle my gear reluctantly, but eventually I cleared immigration and called my sister, Barbara, for a ride home. Home was still the house on Luella Avenue where my mother lived. My dad lived in his shop a few miles away. In half an hour Barbara arrived. I stood alone by the main entry doors, but she walked past me, seeing me peripherally, as she would see a derelict. She went into the terminal and looked around. I stayed in my place and waited, smiling patiently. Eventually Barbara glided slowly back toward me. She seemed to be mulling over an incredible thought. She approached me obliquely, and said tentatively, "Michael?"
"Yes, it's me," I said.
My weight had fallen from 200 pounds to 155. I was dirty as hell and smelly, too. My head and face were a ball of fur. My clothes had aged and faded beyond recognition. I felt like I was back from space. The reality of sweet home, Chicago, had faded during the months in the Sahara. Suddenly Chicago was real again. As she drove me home, Barbara scrutinized me as often as she could take her eyes off the road.
I spent the next few weeks in culture shock and quarantined for the diseases to which I'd been exposed.