covered, for shade, we stepped into a blast of dusty, nose-searing heat—
And chaos.
Men rushed us from five different directions at once, getting in our faces, shouting at us in Arabic with snippets of English: “Cab?”
“Good ride!”
“Take care of you!”
“La’,” said Rhys, speaking more firmly than usual.
And a dark man with a bushy moustache snatched my suitcase right out of his hands! Rhys reached for it, but I got it first, yanking with all my strength. The man let go, shouting his displeasure, and I stumbled backward from the lack of resistance—right into someone else’s hand on my butt. When I spun to face that one, he smiled proudly and held out a hand, as if for a tip. That’s when I felt someone pull at the laptop case over my shoulder.
“La’la’la’!” said Rhys again, louder, but intimidation isn’t his thing.
Me, I spun to face the man who had my laptop and, hands full, I kicked at him. Not an hour in this country and already I was resorting to violence.
“La’!” I said, whatever the hell it meant.
Somehow he jumped clear of my kick, which was maybe for the best. Annoying or not, these men didn’t seem to be trying to hurt us, or even rob us. Even the luggage snatching seemed to be a twisted sales technique. The same thing was happening to other travelers up and down the sidewalk.
Most important, my throat wasn’t tightening with any kind of warning.
Still, I’d had enough gestures, offers, pleas and definitely enough gropes! We were surrounded, the hot, already suffocating air thick with garlic breath and sweaty bodies and pushing, grabbing men shouting foreign words with only moments of English clarity: “Give ride!” or “Help you.”
“I don’t want your help,” I insisted, first in English and then in French, and bumped into Rhys. “La’ isn’t working,” I complained. “What’s Egyptian for piss off?”
Two of the men shouted louder and gestured more rudely. Apparently they understood and disapproved, despite that they were harassing us.
I was about to show them some freakin’ disapproval….
That’s when a suited, square-shouldered, swarthy man stepped up to the fray. He made a small motion with his right hand, like scooping something away from him, and the others immediately drew back.
Why did I think this couldn’t be good?
“Try imshee,” the gentleman suggested in cultured, British-accented English—to Rhys. “It often works.”
I said, “And that really means…?”
Finally he looked at me—and smiled, charming as any sheikh hero in a romance novel. “My dear lady, it means get lost.”
Close enough. Although they’d already backed off, I glared at the remaining hawkers and said, “Imshee!”
Several turned away from us, gesturing that we weren’t worth the trouble. The ones who remained, hands still outstretched for my luggage, weren’t getting as close.
But was that because of the word, or the man?
The still-crowded sidewalk by no means became an oasis of calm. But at least I could actually look around us. A handful of mosques and minarets cut the smoggy, uneven skyline of dusty stone skyscrapers. Cement was winning the war against a stretch of grass here and a cluster of palm trees there; the plaster facade above us read Cairo Airport, followed by Arabic lettering. The stench of heat and car exhaust was dizzying. A cacophony of horns mixed with shouts and music from open car windows…but okay, that part just sounded like New York.
This may once have been the land of the goddess Isis, but it sure looked like a land of men now. Men’s values. Men’s importance. I couldn’t help feeling vulnerable.
I turned back to grudgingly thank the man who’d helped us.
He was gone.
Then Rhys caught my elbow and ran with me across a road snarled with traffic, toward an open parking lot, and I let the matter go. Sort of.
By the time we’d let the worst of the heat out of his borrowed car’s open doors, I’d made at least one decision. “Can we stop somewhere on the way to Alexandria?”
“Absolutely.” Rhys started the car, a battered, dusty, blue Chevy Metro. Something that resembled air-conditioning sputtered from its vents. “Museums? Pyramids?”
Well, of course I wanted to see the pyramids—who wouldn’t? But, “I want to go shopping,” I told him, and didn’t smile at his double take. Damn it, I hadn’t yet made it off airport property, and already I was awash in testosterone. Women with veils. Guards with assault weapons. Double standards.
Hopefully I wouldn’t run into actual violence this time around, not like my last grail quest. The Comitatus didn’t know I was here, after all.
But just in case they found out…
“I want to buy a sword.”
Chapter 3
Isis may not have been anywhere near the airport, but she made multiple appearances in Cairo’s ancient shopping bazaar, the Khan el-Khalili. The labyrinth of narrow medieval streets and plazas snaking between four-and five-story buildings burst at the seams with goods, wares and of course souvenirs. Here I saw Isis and many of her fellow gods on T-shirts and postcards. I saw her painted on papyrus and ceramics, on figurines of varying sizes, on jewelry.
“Pretty lady try on necklace,” shouted one turbaned man from outside a souk, or store, that sold jewelry. And sure enough, the handful of necklaces he held up included not only scarabs and sphinxes and Eye-of-Horus design called an udjat, but ankhs and pendants with a circle topped by a half circle, like horns. Those last two were major Isis symbols.
“Rings for rings,” called the woman behind him. Veiled. In this suffocating heat. “Pretty things.”
People shouted. Chickens squawked. Children laughed and dodged past shoppers—or begged. The way both handcrafted and plastic-wrapped merchandise spilled out into the already littered streets, and bright banners draped across the open area above us to provide shade and color, I found myself increasingly glad I didn’t suffer claustrophobia. With claustrophobia, this would be hell.
Instead, it was fun, if ovenlike. The smells of spices, incense, perfumes and produce—mountains of oranges and bananas and white garlic bulbs—overwhelmed the lingering scent of diesel like an exotic time travel. Quite a few merchants dressed as their predecessors must have for hundreds of years.
“Welcome to Egypt!”
“Where you from?”
“No charge for looking!”
Leaning close to Rhys, I raised my voice. “Are you sure they sell swords here?”
“I’m told they sell everything here.”
