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Israeli troops out in the Sinai. With or without drugs, what he s asking is risky as hell. I don t know shit
about these people. They might take a dislike to me and blow my fucking head off.
Abdel continued trying to persuade me, and this put me in a thorny position. I could have made my
own way in Cairo without much difficulty, but Abdel had taken me under his wing, treated me more like a
son than a partner, and as a result I was doing very well indeed. He was no saint, God knows; but
compared to Rollo he was an innocent. I did not want him to get in over his head. Yet it was hard to
deny him, knowing he was in trouble. I d had dealings in the Sinai before, and I believed I could deal
with Rollo s people. Crossing the border was no problem -- though detection systems should have made
such crossing impossible, there were many Israelis these days willing to look the other way for a price. It
was the Palestinians who concerned me. Since the Intifada had failed, all manner of eccentric
fundamentalism, some of it arcane in nature, had come to flourish in the camps and villages of the Sinai,
and I had heard stories that gave me pause.
I ll think it over, I said at last, figuring that if I could put him off, some wiser business opportunity
might arise.
He spread his hands in a gesture of acquiescence, but Rollo, tactful as ever, brayed at me, saying,
Yeah, g wan, fink it over! We ll just await your pleasure, shall we?
After we had left Abdel s I explained to Kate what had happened. We were walking along a narrow
street of open-front shops, ignoring the pleas of the beggars. The sun had lowered behind a mosque on
our left, and the golden light had the mineral richness of the light you often get in the tropics when the sun
is shining through rain clouds. As we neared the edge of the bazaar Kate leaned into me, pressed her
breasts against my arm, and said coyly, Can t we go? I d like to watch you in action!
You want to go with me? I chuckled. Not a chance!
She pulled back from me, angry. What s so funny? I ve been in the desert before. And I know how
to handle myself. Maybe better than you!
Maybe, I said, trying to mollify her. But you ve never dealt with people like this. I wouldn t want to
be responsible for what could happen.
That stirred her up even more. Let s get this straight, she said. I m nobody s responsibility but my
own, okay? Just cause we re screwin , that doesn t mean...
Kate, I said, uncomfortable with the crowd that was gathering, the taxi honking at us to clear the
way. We were standing beside a store that sold baskets, and the owner and customers had come out to
watch. A trolley so clotted with humanity, people stuffed inside, hanging all over the outside, that you
could scarcely see the green enamel finish of the car, passed on the street adjoining the entrance to the
bazaar, and it seemed all those brown arms were waving at me.
That doesn t mean, she went on, you got any papers on me. Do you understand? I don t want you
to be confused!
I was startled by the intensity of her anger. She was enraged, her face flushed, standing with hands on
hips, continuing her harangue. Some of the onlookers had begun to make jokes about me; the taxi driver
was leaning out his window and laughing. Even the beggars were grinning.
I caught her by the arm. She tried to wrench away, but I hauled her along, pushed her into an alley,
pinned her against the wall. You can get all over me back at my place if you want, I said. But not here.
I work down here. People see me humiliated in public by a woman, word gets around, and I lose
respect. That may sound sexist, but that s how it is in this culture. Respect s the main currency in my
business. I can t afford to lose it.
She grew instantly contrite, telling me she understood, apologizing, not backing away from her
statement of independence, but saying that she should have known better than to cause a scene, she was
just a real bitch on that particular subject.
I had expected her anger to abate, yet not so quickly, and it was not until later I realized that her
sudden shift in mood was due less to my logic than to the fact that I had acted like the character she
fancied me instead of like the man I was. And perhaps I had been putting on an act. If Claire had done
to me what Kate had, I would have simply walked away from her. But of course Claire would never
have acted that way.
At the time I understood little of this. I believe now that I did not want to understand, that I knew I
would have to play a role in order to keep the affair on course, to satisfy Kate s demands, and I am
certain that this talent for self-deception was partly responsible for all that came to happen.
-=*=-
All that next week I tried to distract Kate from what had become a preoccupation with illegal
adventure by showing her Cairo, a city that, with its minarets and roof warrens, its modern bridges and
timeless river, ubiquitous flies, computerized calls to prayer, crushing poverty and secret pleasures,
seemed to embody all the toxins and exaltations of life. But Kate, though exhilarated, was not distracted.
One evening as we sat surrounded by old men smoking waterpipes in a back alley club -- Claire s
favorite, as it happened -- a place constructed of ornate carpets draped over a bamboo frame, with
folding chairs and little metal tables, all centered about a makeshift stage upon which a drugged young girl
wearing street clothes, her cheeks pierced by silver needles, sang a song that prophesied glory for Islam,
Kate grew surly and silent, and as she often did when depressed, bent coins between the thumb and
forefinger of her right hand. There was a great deal I loved about her, but this fixation on her prosthesis
disturbed me no end. Once she had slit open a seam that ran across the palm, peeled back folds of
plastic skin, laying bare a packed complexity of microcircuits, and demonstrated how, by stripping a wire
that ran to the power pack, she could short out an electrical system. I was not happy to think that the
woman with whom I was sleeping could electrocute me on a whim.
I understood her fixation -- at least I sympathized with it -- but there was much I did not understand
about her reaction to war. I had known men of my father s generation, veterans of Vietnam, who had
exhibited a similar yearning for the terrible pleasures of the battlefield; yet they had been brutally used and
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