time.
“There, there, you see there.” Mustafa pointed to a panel depicting a boat being carried by soldiers. “Some colour remains, beautiful colour.”
I tried to read the other panels in front of me, but my memory of the alphabet was poor. Ankh and Horus’s eye stood out consistently. I comforted myself with them as I strode before the artisans chronicled in the midst of their daily activities—weaving, making pottery, and the paramount fetching of water. Kings were displayed with their enemies below them, and slaves on either side fanning them. Oxen were powerful and cherished. These signs were the yield, merge, and deer crossing warnings oftheir time. Yield to the King. Merge with the progress of civilization. Honour the beast of burden.
“But slaves … slaves,” I muttered. “All of this built by slaves.”
Mustafa stopped in his tracks and looked at me. He raised his forefinger and wagged it as though I’d blasphemed. “No,” he said coldly. “Let me assure you: they were not slaves. That is a wrong impression. They were prisoners, captives from enemy nations, yes, but they were workers, paid for their work with food and homes. This is something you have wrong.” Perhaps he, as an Egyptian, knew the truth. Who was I to say? But I couldn’t get the idea of forced labour from my head.
“Look, look there, you see?” said Mustafa, pulling me away from a panel where I had been examining an image of an ox and cart, and pointing upward. “Hatshepsut and the god of fertility, you see, see there?” I looked to where he pointed, and he pulled me in closer. He rubbed his hand along the wall, and finally I saw what he wanted me to see: the god of fertility’s erect penis was pointing straight at the female pharaoh, and through the sunlight and dust motes and shadow of stone, it was mocking me. “The god Min is often symbolized by an ox—a bull,” Mustafa added and took out his solar laser pointer and shone it on a shaded panel above our heads. His pointer traced a beast in the field; next to it stood Min, brandishing a thunderbolt.
Later that day, on the west bank of the Nile—the bank of the setting sun, the bank of dusk and the twilight of life,where the Pharaohs built their tombs to wait out eternity—Mustafa took us to Hatshepsut’s temple. He seemed obsessed with this female pharaoh. Built into the east face of the mountain that barricaded the Valley of the Kings from the Nile, the temple was the spot where I have felt the hottest in my life. Mustafa described, again mostly for Anna, how Hatshepsut built the temple here because she planned to link it with her tomb, which was being built, simultaneously, on the other side of the mountain. But the rock proved impossible to tunnel through, even for the Egyptians, and the mountain now stood forever between the female king and her temple. How disappointed she must have been upon her death, Mustafa said.
Anna smiled at him, knowingly, as I took a step back.
In our hotel that afternoon, as I rode Anna like Min rode his ox, I could not stop blathering about how much I loved her.
When we returned home after two weeks, we were tanned, relaxed and intimate. I held her hand on theplane. We smiled at the memory of what had gone on between us, in the hotel room and, particularly, in the desert tent. I felt I could, once more, be forever under this woman’s spell.
We were met at the Toronto airport by Fred, with his hair cut shorter than it had ever been before. He seemed older than eighteen, like a man who had serious business on his mind. He was about to start university in the autumn and was already determined to go to medical school. He barely looked at us when we emerged through the sliding doors from Arrivals.
“There’s some news,” he said.
I felt Anna’s body go rigid, as if all the ease the sun had given her had retracted, and in that instant we snapped back into atrophy.
In a bed in Cairo, the touch of your thigh on my cock
“There, there, you see there.” Mustafa pointed to a panel depicting a boat being carried by soldiers. “Some colour remains, beautiful colour.”
I tried to read the other panels in front of me, but my memory of the alphabet was poor. Ankh and Horus’s eye stood out consistently. I comforted myself with them as I strode before the artisans chronicled in the midst of their daily activities—weaving, making pottery, and the paramount fetching of water. Kings were displayed with their enemies below them, and slaves on either side fanning them. Oxen were powerful and cherished. These signs were the yield, merge, and deer crossing warnings oftheir time. Yield to the King. Merge with the progress of civilization. Honour the beast of burden.
“But slaves … slaves,” I muttered. “All of this built by slaves.”
Mustafa stopped in his tracks and looked at me. He raised his forefinger and wagged it as though I’d blasphemed. “No,” he said coldly. “Let me assure you: they were not slaves. That is a wrong impression. They were prisoners, captives from enemy nations, yes, but they were workers, paid for their work with food and homes. This is something you have wrong.” Perhaps he, as an Egyptian, knew the truth. Who was I to say? But I couldn’t get the idea of forced labour from my head.
“Look, look there, you see?” said Mustafa, pulling me away from a panel where I had been examining an image of an ox and cart, and pointing upward. “Hatshepsut and the god of fertility, you see, see there?” I looked to where he pointed, and he pulled me in closer. He rubbed his hand along the wall, and finally I saw what he wanted me to see: the god of fertility’s erect penis was pointing straight at the female pharaoh, and through the sunlight and dust motes and shadow of stone, it was mocking me. “The god Min is often symbolized by an ox—a bull,” Mustafa added and took out his solar laser pointer and shone it on a shaded panel above our heads. His pointer traced a beast in the field; next to it stood Min, brandishing a thunderbolt.
Later that day, on the west bank of the Nile—the bank of the setting sun, the bank of dusk and the twilight of life,where the Pharaohs built their tombs to wait out eternity—Mustafa took us to Hatshepsut’s temple. He seemed obsessed with this female pharaoh. Built into the east face of the mountain that barricaded the Valley of the Kings from the Nile, the temple was the spot where I have felt the hottest in my life. Mustafa described, again mostly for Anna, how Hatshepsut built the temple here because she planned to link it with her tomb, which was being built, simultaneously, on the other side of the mountain. But the rock proved impossible to tunnel through, even for the Egyptians, and the mountain now stood forever between the female king and her temple. How disappointed she must have been upon her death, Mustafa said.
Anna smiled at him, knowingly, as I took a step back.
In our hotel that afternoon, as I rode Anna like Min rode his ox, I could not stop blathering about how much I loved her.
When we returned home after two weeks, we were tanned, relaxed and intimate. I held her hand on theplane. We smiled at the memory of what had gone on between us, in the hotel room and, particularly, in the desert tent. I felt I could, once more, be forever under this woman’s spell.
We were met at the Toronto airport by Fred, with his hair cut shorter than it had ever been before. He seemed older than eighteen, like a man who had serious business on his mind. He was about to start university in the autumn and was already determined to go to medical school. He barely looked at us when we emerged through the sliding doors from Arrivals.
“There’s some news,” he said.
I felt Anna’s body go rigid, as if all the ease the sun had given her had retracted, and in that instant we snapped back into atrophy.
In a bed in Cairo, the touch of your thigh on my cock
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