Category Archives: Snack Sack

Johnny Depp Redux

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Our recent exploration of local chatter regarding Johnny Depp prompted numerous readers to contact the newspaper – some positive, some otherwise – and at least two offered clues to the rumors’ origins.

As near as can be determined, the first second-hand Johnny Depp sighting surfaced approximately three months ago. It may be no coincidence that King Soopers cashier Matt Villareal noticed a person matching Depp’s description buying milk, cereal and fruit at his register at about that time.

Have you seen this man?

According to Villareal, an unshaven fellow clad in a stained, gray trench coat and wearing a type of hat often associated with Johnny Depp appeared in the Bergen Park grocery 10 or 12 weeks ago. While shabby shoppers aren’t ordinarily noteworthy, they are when they look suspiciously like famous people and Villareal was immediately struck by the man’s resemblance to Johnny Depp.

“At least two other employees saw him check out, too, and we all thought he looked a lot like Johnny Depp,” Villareal says. “After he paid, I checked the credit card slip but the signature was illegible.” In itself, Villareal’s account is unremarkable. Added to his next statement, however, it could explain a great deal. “This was before all the rumors started, so I pretty much just shrugged the whole thing off.”

But not before sharing the incident freely with their friends and co-workers. Thus, at least three local residents had reason to suspect a brush with greatness on the eve of an epidemic of alleged Johnny Depp sightings. Taken together, they’re what Bill Nye the Science Guy might call a “causal relationship.”

While suggestive, Villareal’s report does nothing to explain the oft-repeated tale that Depp has, or soon will, buy real estate on Upper Bear Creek Road. Fortunately, longtime Upper Bear resident and local Realtor DeWitt Petty offers a plausible theory as to how an unverified Depp sighting became Hollywood West.

Shortly after Villareal’s curious encounter, Petty brokered the sale of a large property on the Clear Creek County end of Upper Bear Creek Road. Freshly infected with the Depp fever, an acquaintance phoned Petty and asked him to confirm her personal belief that the famed actor had purchased the $8 million estate. Whether motivated by commendable professional tact or a keen sense of mischief, Petty equivocated.

“I told her I wasn’t at liberty to tell her that,” Petty says.

What’s not secret is that, when offered a “no comment,” most people immediately attach a mental nudge and a wink to it, and it’s entirely possible that the tales of Depp’s Evergreen house-hunting can be traced directly back to Petty’s inquisitive friend. In any case, the property was sold to a Denver couple with no known cinematic associations.

For his part, Petty finds the gossip machine’s current product especially entertaining in view of a persistent celebrity fiction that’s plagued him for nearly two decades. Some 19 years ago, Petty was interested to learn that the sale of a nearby home was based in part on the strength of its Hollywood pedigree.

“The sellers were telling everybody that Farrah Fawcett used to live there,” Petty says. “As a Realtor, I got curious and did a title search on it.” He wasn’t surprised to discover that the one-time Angel had no more connection to the home than Charlie did, a fact that did nothing to dispel the notion in the popular imagination.

“In the last 19 years, I’ve sold that house three times,” Petty says, “and every time I do, someone says ‘hey, you sold Farrah Fawcett’s house,’ and I always say ‘yeah, I guess I did.’”

Son of Go Dog Go – Doggone

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Without question, the world’s best-known dog sled race is Alaska’s grueling Iditarod, a 1,150-mile slog across the desolate center of the self-styled Last Frontier. While less epic, the Silver City Classic presents challenges enough for man and beast.

In preparation for last weekend’s races, organizers plowed a narrow lane reaching about 100 yards into the valley from Highway 24, a slim track that served as access, parking lot and staging area for 43 mushers competing in categories from 2-dog skijoring to 10-dog endurance races. Besides a rudimentary starting gate, it was the only feature of the venue not provided by nature.

To someone who’s never attended a sled dog race, the most fascinating aspect of the affair has got to be the dogs. Not because they’re cute and funny, which they are, and not because watching a team launch out of the chute like a string of furry rockets is thrilling, which it is. It’s because they’re plainly experiencing a level of fun that’s unattainable by human animals, and their raw excitement and manic enthusiasm is impossible to resist.

By 8 o’clock on Sunday morning, dozens of dog trucks had squeezed into the tight snowplowed corridor and hundreds of dogs – still snug in their cubbies – were already in full throat, filling the valley’s east end with noise and anticipation. Both Debra Su and Mark were entered in the seven and a half-mile 8-dog race, scheduled to start at 10:30. Back at the truck, under the watchful eye of their assistant, Nate Quinn of Evergreen, their huskies were busy working themselves into a fever pitch, yammering and yapping and snapping at one another, their competitive instincts in overdrive.

Dogs being what they are, and sled dogs somewhat more so, mushing is a fairly hands-on sport. Removed from their temporary quarters one at a time, dogs were immediately fastened to long chains strung along the running board of every vehicle, secured at every step from home to harness by human hands or stout tether. The reason for all that attention is simple – the dogs were there to run and, given the least opportunity, they were apt to do just that, with or without their master.

To make life easier on everybody, the dogs aren’t hooked to the sled – which is prudently attached to the dog truck – until minutes before launch because, once hooked to the gang-line, the animals simply go nuts, leaping wildly in the air, pressing furiously against the traces and barking madly at no one and everyone. That being the case, mushing is a necessarily cooperative sport, since no sled driver can easily restrain their team when its blood is up. Like hot air ballooning, dog sled racing is a team effort but, as few mushers travel with a retinue, sport etiquette requires any available mushers to assist in calming the dogs as much as possible and guiding them into the chute. It’s an important courtesy by which all racers abide, and typical of the sports friendly, familial character.

At about 10:45, Debra Su and her eight frantic Siberians pulled up in the chute. The mercury stood at about 8 degrees and a thick mantle of cloud pressed nearly to earth, the white sky and snow-covered ground blending seamlessly into a single colorless palette that hid the trail as effectively as a foot of new powder. In addition, the flurries that had been spitting fitfully all morning had organized themselves into a snowstorm – the high-altitude kind in which solid ranks of flakes seem to materialize in the frigid air just overhead, forming a dense, swirling wall that mutes sound and pulls visibility back to nothing.

The race official began counting down at 15 seconds, sending the team into renewed frenzies. At “go”, the pack of barking, fractious, distracted
huskies were instantly transformed into sleek, silent racing machines – stretched out long and low, utterly focused, all straining muscles and undiluted purpose. In moments, Debra Su was lost in the pallid gloom. A minute later, Mark and his eight pups followed.

While the course was relatively simple – a reasonably level route down the valley, around Camp Hale’s old artillery bunkers and back again – the flat-light conditions and heavy snowfall rendered the trail virtually invisible to even experienced sled racers like Debra Su and Mark. If that sounds like a problem, it isn’t. Even the dullest sled dog carries a detailed map in its head of every trail it’s ever run. While that kind of biological auto-pilot is a useful feature in poor weather, it can cause disagreement. “Occasionally, they’ll change the route,” Debra Su says, “and the dogs will fight you on it.”

It was all familiar territory on Sunday, though, and 30 minutes and 9 seconds after take-off, Debra Su and her team steamed back into view. It was a reasonably good time which, added to her Saturday performance, earned Debra Su the second-place spot in her category behind John Perry of Sterling, Colo., who’s team of husky/pointer crossbreeds has been known to average a blinding 22.7 miles per hour on the trail. “John’s got the fastest 8-dog team in the world,” Debra Su said, “but it took him four miles to catch me.”

Mark finished fourth in the class, a respectable finish considering the limitations of his young lead-dogs, Keeper and Montana. “They’re really fast,” Mark said, “but I can’t get ‘em to pass anybody because they like to stop and play with the first team they catch up with.” Well, dogs will be dogs, which is the whole point of mushing.

By 2 p.m., Colorado’s four-month dog sled racing season was over and, one by one, the dog trucks surrendered the high valley to the silently falling snow. Before long, the narrow plowed lane would be filled and all signs of the Silver City Sled Dog Classic would be obliterated.

Just because there aren’t any races during the warm months doesn’t mean mushers and huskies sit around playing Nintendo and filing their nails. Training, for example, is a year-round chore and, in summer, the Stephens take their huskies up to Kenosha Pass and let them pull a four-wheeler around.

Dog sled racing is nothing if not a social hobby, and local mushers attend frequent picnics, barbecues and husky-meet-and-greets held throughout the year, many of them sponsored by Colorado Mountain Mushers. In the end, though, it’s still about the dogs.

“Mushers are really just dog-lovers,” Debra Su said, “and mushing is just an excuse to spend quality-time with our pets.”

A Little Perspective, Please

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Here we go.

Another shooting spree, another media melee, another 15 minutes for anybody with a pet cause to promote.

I don’t expect any better from the media. Senseless tragedy is good business for the yakking classes. With the whole nation watching, they get to ordain heroes, condemn villains, and indulge in the kind of self-serving histrionics that would be roundly condemned as bias under less sensational circumstances.

And I’ve come to accept that packs of opportunistic jackals will always be lurking outside the newsroom, hungry for a chance to feast upon the misfortunes of others and twist violence and heartbreak to their own purposes. On Friday, with news reports from Newtown still confused and largely news-free, the Usual Suspects were already standing tall atop their soapboxes demanding more gun control, or less gun control, or increased spending on schools, or increased funding for mental health initiatives, or, incredibly, the imposition of a mandatory national program of cradle-to-grave psychological profiling designed to detect mass-murderers before they go off the rails. While all of those topics may individually contain some particle of merit (except, perhaps, the last one), hoisting them up on the backs of slaughtered innocents not yet cold is simply unconscionable.

Sadly, exploiting tragedy has been a favored tactic of the ruthless at least since the year 1002, when King Ethelred II, unable to control the sporadic Viking raids plaguing England’s coasts and tired of hearing his subjects whine about it, ordered the murder of every Dane within his realm. The “Saint Brice’s Day Massacre”, as it became known, did nothing to dissuade the Viking raiders, but had a pronounced calming affect upon Ethelred’s domestic critics. As luck would have it, Denmark’s ruler grieved for about two minutes before using that abuse of his countrymen as justification to invade England and sieze Ethelred’s throne.

But if hijacking another’s misery in pursuit of personal ends enjoys a long and ignoble history, it may be that the Modern Era’s fascination with Social Media has plunged that abhorrent practice to new lows of thoughtless self-indulgence. I’m talking about what, for lack of a better name, I’ve come to think of as the Sympathy Games.

By nightfall on Friday, Dec. 14, Facebook was alive with posts professing infinite, abject, soul-rending horror at the events in Connecticut. The contestants seemed to feed off of each other, as each tortured memoriam begat another of even greater anguish and empathy, a ghoulish competition to see who would wear the crown of Most Compassionate.

“I’m heartbroken. It seems like a bad dream.”

“I cried last night. I can’t even believe what I’m reading.”

“I feel physically sick. I can’t stop crying.” 

“I’m totally devastated. I feel like I lost one of my own children.”

“I already called in sick to work tomorrow. I feel overwhelmed with grief for those children and their families. I’m going to stay home and pray for them.”

 And, of course, about a thousand variations on the theme “I beg you – hug your children. Love them. Just love them.”

Don’t get me wrong. No person of ordinary mental composition could learn of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary and not feel strong emotion. I feel anger toward the craven worm who took whatever beef he had with his mother/associates/society and turned it against a bunch of 6-year-olds who, almost by definition, were incapable of committing any injustice against him. I feel a deep sympathy toward the slain children and their families – lives senselessly cut short, and other lives forever blighted. And I feel a weary frustration that there’s little a free and open society can do to prevent pathetic mongrels like Adam Lanza from exploiting a generally trusting public to murderous purpose.

On the other hand, reason and nature prevent reasonable people from becoming unnaturally affected by events outside their own lives. A massacre of innocents is a terrible thing, but the world conjures a dozen terrible things on every day of the week. Where is the out-sized outpouring of despair when a ferry accident in Asia kills hundreds? Or a mudslide in South America kills thousands?

Is Newtown somehow worse because most of the victims were children? This week in America some 130 children will die in car accidents. Another 20 will drown, 10 more will die of burns, and 25 will suffocate. Those are grim statistics, but ones that we’ve come to terms with, because the alternative would be mental and social paralysis. And affectations of “shock” over mass killings in the supposed “safe haven” of school ring hollow against the 10 that have occurred in Canada, the 19 in Europe, the 12 in Asia and the Middle East, and the 13 that have taken place in the U.S. during the last decade alone.

It is simply not in the human mental apparatus to become emotionally incapacitated by tragedies that have absolutely no direct impact on our own lives. We care, yes, but we carry on.

So how to explain the agonizing flood of commiseration that jumped Twitter’s banks last Friday and is only now beginning to subside? I list the probable causes here in acending order of offensiveness.

Hysteria: I recognize that some people are just too close to the surface. You know the ones I mean. They throw things at the TV when the Broncos turn one over. They think every song on the radio is speaking directly to their heart. They hyperventilate at birth announcements, sob uncontrollably at a third-cousin’s wedding, and take every word, gesture and expression that comes their way as a personal judgment. These people can be forgiven their emotive excesses, as they are, themselves, victims of their own unstable psychological geology.

Schadenfreude: I certainly don’t mean to suggest that all of those rabid posters actually take pleasure in the deaths of children, but I am absolutely certain they love feeling bad about it. There exists a well-established human desire to associate oneself with events percieved as great, or important, or, in this case, dramatic. Fact is, lots of people take pleasure in inserting themselves into the triumphs and tragedies of others. It’s that impulse that drives people to hold a candle at vigils for people to whom they have no connection, or to buy a commemorative Royal Wedding plate, or to vote on American Idol. Apparently not satisfied with the tame spectacle of their own lives, they borrow the drama of strangers. Since Friday, their game has been to insert themselves into the Newtown narrative and claim for themselves a supporting role as aggreived spirit, albeit one at a comfortable distance. By being so very shaken and shattered by the killings, they become co-victims deserving of both sympathy for their sufferings and admiration for their strength. It’s a shabby form of recreation of which they should be ashamed.

Self-aggrandizement: This is the Sympathy Games at their most despicable. I care more than you do. You are sad, I am bereft. You prayed last night, I skipped work to pray all day. You hug your children because you suddenly understand how precious they are, I beg everyone else to hug theirs because my love of children is unselfish and all-encompassing. And heaven forbid anyone should think I’m not caring enough.It’s a contest of compassion, self-indulgent boast-fest, and everybody wins so long as nobody catches you cutting fresh powder at Copper Mountain when you’re supposed to be at home praying. It’s exploitation of another’s misfortune for personal gain, and if it’s less public than stumping for a high-capacity magazine ban on Today’s Weekend Edition, it’s no less contemptible.

We are weak creatures, and vain, and naturally thoughtless. In their hearts, most of the people falling all over themselves to appear heartbroken almost certainly believe they are expressing the appropriate emotional response to a horrific crime, and that it’s a true – if somewhat robustly-stated – reflection of their true feelings. I would like to believe that they are all perfectly sincere in their majestic grief, but I don’t. I’m too old, and have seen too much to believe that. To those for whom the Sandy Hook tragedy has become a temporary entertainment, I say “stop it.”

The Connecticut slaughter was, and is, an outrage against decency, and a crime against our shared humanity. Hate it all you like, and then hate it some more. But don’t own it.

As much as you’d like it to be, Sandy Hook is not your tragedy. You have no right to be “devasted” or “overwhelmed”, because your circle is intact. You are not brave because bad news is not the same thing as adversity. You have earned neither sympathy nor admiration because you’ve lost nothing worthy of pity, nor done anything worthy of praise.

Be sad. Be angry. Recommit your life to good works. Hug your children, but please don’t feel obligated to inform me in advance. By all means pray, but not to everybody on Facebook, but to a loving God who will gather the murdered innocents unto Himself.

The massacre in Newtown is the worst kind of tragedy, and it’s not about you. It belongs solely and wholly to the children and teachers who died there, and to the people who loved them.

Then and now, we are not all Columbine.

Egyptiana IX: The Duel

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The Ninth Part in which Steve comes Very Close to a Real Camel

 

Scaffolding sphinx

The wonders of Giza quickly overwhelmed any lingering guilt regarding poor Mahmud. We clambered about the stones, visited Khufu’s burial chamber, marveled at the Sphinx, kicked around the royal cemetery. Camels were everywhere, and watching less savvy tourists awkwardly mount them and lumber about in train to bored-looking guides, we shared a sense of smug superiority. By 3 o’clock the crowds had fled to shadier regions. We bought two of something that may have been peaches and split a can of Coke, then headed off across the sand toward the transportation kiosk. We had plenty of time to get to the airport. My pocket held less than five Egyptian pounds, all of it change. Sweet Apricot had no money at all.

Our path took us near the low hulk of a stone wall all but buried by wind and time. A camel stood upon the ruin, its saddle and reins strung with silver and tassels. On its back sat an old man, or an old-ish one, anyway, ramrod straight and draped from head to toe in Bedouin splendor; layered robes, a jingling curtain of chains hanging down his chest, a broad, curved knife in a jewel-crusted leather sheath thrust into his thick fabric belt. His skin was the color of mahogany and deeply seamed. His salt-and-pepper beard nearly brushed the camel’s back. Thick, wild brows shaded black eyes that seemed remote and wise and filled with ancient secrets. He was a figure straight out of Lawrence of Arabia, and I was impressed. He raised an arm and beckoned us to come near.

“No baksheesh,” I said, not slowing. If I don’t talk to him, he can’t ask me for money. “No baksheesh,” he replied, evenly. He was a baritone, with a whiff of desert campfire in his voice. “Come! Come!” He sounded friendly enough, an oasis of calm self-possession. Sweet Apricot wasn’t buying it. “No baksheesh,” she said. He merely smiled a patient smile. “No baksheesh,” he repeated. “I want to show you something.”

His tone was easy, reasonable, a little bemused. “No baksheesh?” asked Sweet Apricot, still wary. She maintained a charmingly innocent surety that forcing him to re-state his position somehow locked him into it. It’s how she lived her life – as long as the deal was clear and she held up her end of it, she was “a basically good person” and could sleep the sleep of the just. It wasn’t a bad policy, simply inadequate to local conditions. “No baksheesh,” he assured her.

Reaching his right hand into the cavernous sleeve of his left, he produced two scarabs the size of jelly beans indifferently carved from some unremarkable gray stone. They were the least of souvenirs, available wherever money changes hands in Egypt for 50 piestras a pop. He leaned down from on high and held them out to us, one in each hand. “These are gifts. For you. Take!”

Our Trojan Horse

It wasn’t our first rodeo, and we both felt the lariat tightening. This was a transaction, plain and simple, and Sweet Apricot’s reaction was automatic and justified. She took two quick steps back and snapped “no baksheesh!”, then glared at him defiantly, silently daring him to admit his treachery now that his feeble charade was exposed. He merely sighed a tired sigh and shook his head. His voice grew conciliatory, indulgent.

“I am Muslim,” he said, as he might speak to a slow child. “It is Ramadan. I give you these gifts for Ramadan. That is all.”

That set us back on our heels. If it was a trick, it was a new one in our experience. It was certainly Ramadan, after all, and he looked about as Muslim as anyone we’d ever seen. We didn’t want to get soaked again, but neither did we want to insult a pious man who was simply obeying the teachings of his church. Sweet Apricot and I looked at each other for a long moment, then at the ground for a long moment, then Sweet Apricot hammered in one more nail of certitude; let there be no misunderstanding. “No baksheesh,” she repeated. It was a statement, a warning, and a guarantee. “I give these to you,” he said softly, soothingly, deliberately, “for Ramadan.”

Okay then. We accepted the worthless trinkets, looked them over with feigned admiration, and thanked him politely. Fact is, I was pleased with mine. Sure, it was a throwaway, but it had a story to go with it, and I would always associate it pleasantly with the striking Arab who gave it to me for Ramadan in the shadow of the Pharoahs’ pagan majesties. He accepted our thanks humbly, then rose up straight in his saddle, patted his camel’s neck, and looked down on us with a triumphant smile.

 “Now,” he said, “ what will you give…for Ramadan?”

We gaped at him, both of us struck dumb.

Damn.

We were caught and we knew it. He didn’t just take us, he took us with ease.

This is the part of the story where I’m supposed to say something about the fortunes of war, about contests fairly won and honor in defeat, and how I conceived a grudging admiration for the dusty camel driver who so ably outwitted us. But I didn’t conceive a grudging admiration. Just a grudge. And I didn’t feel honorable, just defeated. We weren’t the kings of Egypt, or even savvy travelers confidently navigating foreign lands armed with no more than native cleverness and raw moxie. We saw – too late! – that we were just two more feckless American tourists, fish in a barrel, long on vinegar but short on salt, easy game for an inventive Egyptian with a camel and a dagger and a lifetime’s practice coaxing a poor living from the aforementioned.

To his enduring credit, the canny Bedouin didn’t gloat, but his placid expression stung more than anything he might have said. I gave him everything in my pocket, and he silently took it. We shuffled off toward the city. I glanced back once to see him still sitting motionless upon his camel, watching us go. We boarded the plane a few hours later, a mortally humbled pair without the wherewithall between us to buy a stick of gum.

Greece was a relief. Things cost what they cost, cabbies took us where we wanted to go, public bathroom stalls were adequately supplied, and nobody ever, ever asked for baksheesh. It was orderly, predictable and, quite frankly, a bit tame. We were loaded for bear in rabbit country.

The warm feelings shared by Egypt and America seem to have turned a bit frosty of late. I’d still very much like to return to the Land of the Nile one day, but, for the foreseeable future, I’m not exactly in the way of scouting cheap airfares. And for what it’s worth, and because you’re wondering, I wouldn’t be going back to settle any old scores.

I belatedly appreciate that Egypt’s economic woes run deep and its safety nets are few. I suspect that Mahmud was simply doing his best to put food on his family’s table by the only means available to him. I’m guessing that relentless little souvenir shark at Karnak would be in school working toward a more secure future if dire financial circumstances didn’t demand otherwise.  Those young hotel herders likely had no choice but to scramble for poor scraps from second-rate hotels that weren’t doing much better. Our crafty airport greeter was probably trying to augment a pauper’s wage by grifting people who, to be perfectly honest, could afford it. I expect Mr. Maghdi had a wife and kids at home who owed their precarious existence to whatever meager kickbacks he could squeeze out of cagey perfumers. And I’m dead certain that all the old men who haunt Egypt’s ancient precincts would much rather spend their seniority in dignified retirement instead of spending the long, hot days of their decline nickel-and-diming resentful tourists. And when I think about it, and every now and then I do, I like to think that masterful swindler on the chintz-bedecked camel was Mahmud’s cousin.

Looking back, I guess I was kind of a baby about the whole thing. Should I ever again find myself in those parts, I’ll still count my change and watch the cabbies like a hawk, but I won’t get my nose out of joint if I get hustled now and then. What’s more, I’ll bring along a sizeable fund earmarked for baksheesh alone, and I’ll cheerfully dole it out whenever, wherever, for whatever and by whomever I’m asked, with or without assault rifles.

I’d like to think I grew a little bit in Egypt. If true, that would come as a surprise to anybody who knows me.

 

 

Egyptiana VIII: The Lion’s Den

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The Eighth Part in which Steve recieves a Free Beverage

Booked on an evening flight back to Athens, we had yet to visit the pyramids. Bright and early we parked our packs at the hotel desk (baksheesh was, alas, unavoidable) and hopped a bus to Giza. We had perhaps LE10 between us, just enough for two admissions to the Great Pyramid and maybe some cheese and a can of pop for lunch. Our travails had rendered us irrationally cheap, and although we were about to stand in the shadow of truly extraordinary history, to walk in the footsteps of the Pharoahs, to immerse ourselves in ageless mysteries of the human experience, we weren’t about to change a $20 traveler’s check and have to eat a second five-percent cambio fee changing half of it into drachmas the next day.

A grand finale

A young man seated at the front of the bus moved back and parked himself directly across the aisle. His name was Mahmud. He was tall and skinny and dressed in sneakers and a mis-matched sweatsuit. Were we going to see the pyramids? Yes we were. No baksheesh.

 Mahmud asked if we would be hiring camels while on the plateau. We told him we had no money for camel rides. He clearly didn’t believe us. His cousin rented camels, he said, and he could get us a sweet deal on a couple of real cream puffs. Thanks, but, like we said – no money. To this day I’m not sure how it happened. We knew with absolute certainty that we weren’t going to rent a camel at any price, yet a short time later found ourselves marching behind Mahmud through the narrow streets of a 17th-century Cairo suburb wondering how we were going to get out of it without embarrassing ourselves.

Mahmud’s home was built along classic local lines – two stories, plaster domes atop square blocks, an interior courtyard where all the work of the house was performed. Also along classic local lines, his mom and sister were busily performing all the work of the house. A half-dozen chickens clucked and strutted around them. Mahmud shooed an honest-to-gosh goat off the stairway and showed us up to his receiving room. It was large, completely unadorned, and unfurnished save for a shiny, like-new, four-piece, green velvet Louis XIV livingroom set huddling against one wall. He motioned us to be seated in the two chairs, then lay back grandly on the sofa, like an Oriental potentate, throwing both arms over the back and breaking into a broad smile. He could get us two camels for only LE35. Each. We were getting nervous. We were on his turf, far from friendly tourist haunts, and we were about to waste his whole morning.

We complimented his home (we were both genuinely charmed) and praised his command of English. We waxed eloquent about Egypt’s many wonderful attributes. We said it again. “Thanks, Mahmud, but no. We really don’t have enough money to rent camels.” He leapt from the couch and stuck his head out the glassless window. “You see? You can see the Great Pyramid!” Sure enough, by leaning dangerously far out over the rutted dirt street below and craning our necks west, we could discern through the maze of buildings a thin sliver of tan blocks that appeared consistant with ancient pyramid construction. “That’s awesome,” we said. “But we should probably get going.”

I think that’s when it occurred to him that we might actually leave without renting camels. If we’d blown half the morning getting sucked in by Mahmud’s hyper-persistent gravity, he’d blown it buttering up a couple of pikers. He barked a sharp command and in short order his mom appeared with three cans of local-brand lemon-lime soda on a gleaming silver tray. Sweet Apricot and I exchanged uneasy glances. By accepting refreshment we’d be beholden, and that meant baksheesh, or worse. “Thanks a lot, but we’re really not thirsty.” Mahmud would have none of it. His hospitality had taken on a slightly desperate edge, and he watched intently as we sipped our drinks, all the while lowering his cousin’s bottom line on camels and determinedly ignoring our increasingly firm rebuffs. It was Sweet Apricot who finally saved us. She stood up. “We have to go,” she said, and simply walked out the door. Mahmud looked at me with a mixture of disbelief and dawning realization. Like the coward that I am, I shrugged a weak apology and skipped out after Sweet Apricot. We were wending our way through close, littered lanes in the general direction of the pyramids when Mahmud suddenly appeared behind us, walking fast. I expected an unpleasant scene, but he hustled past without a word. A single glance – an accusatory blend of bewilderment, disappointment and bone-deep irritation – served as our just rebuke. We’d come into his home, drunk his lemon-lime soda, and let him down. He was doubtless heading back to the highway in hopes of salvaging the day with a better class of tourist.

A long walk

The episode with Mahmud cast something of a pall over our Giza adventure, but only a little one. If our escape hadn’t exactly been graceful, it had been decisive. We’d gotten ourselves into a tight spot, but acquitted ourselves with dignity more or less intact and with all the money we came with. We were still the reigning kings of Egypt, and that happy thought saw us through the long hike up to the plateau.

 

Next Time: The startling conclusion!