It turns out the kid might have been right – my exodus was premature. I don’t seem to be anywhere near the goddamn pyramids. By my guess, it’s a good mile along the road before I even see them. My march is punctuated by blaring horns of passing cars that courteously scare the shit out of me.
At the parking lot, I am already sweaty and grimy, but still glad to be there. I pull my hat down a little and pay the entrance fee, uneasy about the guards recognizing me from my wild ride the day before. Thankfully, there are no wanted posters, and they pay no attention to me as I pass through the main gate.
The Sphinx is covered with an annoying jumble of scaffolding. Just my luck. How many times per thousand years can the Sphinx possibly be closed for renovation? Determined not to dwell on it, I continue up the hill toward Cheops, the largest of the pyramids, which rises up before me like a shopping mall across a vast suburban parking lot. By the time I reach it, I am starting to believe that I might actually die.
Thankfully, my options for refreshment are virtually limitless, and I buy a surprisingly cold bottle of Fanta Orange from a soldier in the army of vendors. There follows the necessary assurances to the others that I do not need or desire any more Fanta, Coke, Pepsi, 7-Up, film, or carvings of pharaohs. I am even reintroduced to the camel, “Charlie Brown,” who I again must decline. This done with flourishes and polite “sukrans”, I am finally left in relative peace, and take a seat about fifteen feet up the massive steps of the pyramid leaning my sweaty back against the cool stone. This is it. I am actually touching the pyramids; and with my ass no less.
Like all thrills, this one fades, and I am left with my Fanta bottle empty, and my bum asleep. Scrambling to the top of the pyramid looks difficult, and prohibited, and I don’t feel like trying my luck with the tourist police again. Instead, I decide to follow the step I am sitting on over to the opening in the side of the pyramid wall. Another tourist back at the hotel mentioned that there was really nothing to see inside, but, now that I am here, I am determined to touch all the bases, and hopefully avoid lifelong regret.
The entrance is pretty much just an absence of stones about the size of a single car garage door, like a tunnel in a sports stadium connecting the seats with the hot dog stands and bathrooms. Outside, on the ledge, some tourists and a few more people trying to sell them things stand in a tight knot. By the time I pick my way through, a somewhat frumpy looking Italian woman is coming out of the tunnel. “Frumpy” isn’t a word I usually associate with Italian women either, but in this case it fits.
“You don’t want to go into there,” she tells me in a thick accent, which is all that clues me in to her Italian-ness. “It was horrible.” She leaves the “h” off the word, and tries to brush invisible dust from her purple slacks and silk blouse of swirling colors that still somehow matches.
“What was horrible?”
She retrieves her black and gold Gucci sunglasses from the nest of her hair and puts them on her face. “It was horrible down there – hot.”
The fact that it is hot inside the pyramid is not exactly a revelation. I hadn’t expected air-conditioning.
“Dark, dark and hot, tiny room – no air,” she is almost gasping telling me this. “And hands! Hands everywhere.” As she says this last part, her hands dart toward my torso making little grabbing motions. It is both terrifying and ticklish, and I squirm but she doesn’t stop. “They are always grabbing at me, always wanting something.”
I take a step back to get away from her grabbing demonstration. I can’t tell if she was pick-pocketed, sexually assaulted, or just asked for a tip, but I don’t care. She’s right, I don’t want to go in there. I don’t want to pay a tip to see what I already paid admission for; I don’t want a Fanta, Coke, or Pepsi; I don’t want film; I don’t want to ride Charlie Brown; I don’t want to buy a carved statue of an Egyptian Eagle that is also a flute; I don’t want to be here anymore. I am tired – tired of this place, and everyone in it. I don’t know why exactly or what it is about right now, but suddenly I’ve had it. This is the opposite of my perfect moment: this is my fold up moment.
I will not be seeing the inside of a pyramid, and will not be telling hypothetical grandchildren begotten by unborn children I will have with a wife I do not yet know. And I will just have to learn to live with it. I am leaving the pyramids, leaving Cairo, and leaving Egypt.
I won’t be going to Luxor tonight. How would I get there? I don’t have a train ticket – I have a piece of Egyptian fucking toilet paper! Gamal is not going to pick me up and take me to the station. There will not be a train waiting at the platform. There will be no empty seat with my number on it. I bought a train ticket just like I bought an ancient papyrus painting, or admission to the pyramids included with the horse rental. I’ll show them, I’m finished with it all. I am launching a one man boycott of this economy of lies!
Ignoring everyone around me, I stomp down the side of the pyramid and onto the sand, beginning a single-minded trudge back toward the highway and whatever fucking date tree will undoubtedly be serving as a bus stop.