City of the Sun (4 page)

“
Yalla
, come,” Lili told Maya, deliberately using Arabic. “Be careful of the vendors; they’re big flirts.”

That Lili, an educated girl like Maya, spoke French was no surprise, but Maya had not expected that the Arab, a simple and probably unschooled man, could speak any French at all. She was impressed that Napoleon’s mere two years in Egypt had left such a legacy.

They passed more stalls, Maya’s eyes marveling as she discovered them. Fruit and vegetables, nuts, fresh fish on ice, and those dates! Black ones, red ones, brown ones, beige ones, and yellow ones. She wished she could taste them all. There were also stalls of cotton clothing, leather sandals and belts, artisanal wares in copper, and knickknacks of every kind and shape from fans to souvenir ashtrays with Cleopatra’s face inside. She found it all dizzyingly exotic. One of the store windows that caught her attention
displayed Egyptian oils in tiny bottles. She was sure that one of them would contain an extract of lotus flowers, a fragrance she was dying to experience.

“Here’s the baker shop,” Lili said, leading her into an impossibly hot hole in the wall sporting five open wood ovens and an equal number of sweaty workers. Women were shouting their orders. Maya suddenly felt dizzy. She would wait for Lili outside.

She breathed the fresh air in slowly and deeply. She hadn’t eaten since leaving Alexandria in the morning. She mustn’t do that. She couldn’t afford to lose one more kilo. There was a postcard display outside the bookstore next to the baker’s shop, and she casually walked over to look at them. There were beautiful hand-painted representations of pharaohs and temples and depictions of life in ancient Egypt that excited her imagination. She resolved to visit the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities while here. She picked up a card she found particularly appealing. It depicted the rays of the sun shining brightly on the apex of a pyramid and said
Greetings from Heliopolis, City of the Sun
. Of course—that was the translation of the city’s ancient Greek name. Maya smiled—a city dedicated to the source of all life on earth. She loved the sun and had always felt a powerful kinship with it, reveling in its warm glow and healing rays. She would drink it in, believing God was caressing her and filling her body with light. Perhaps this was so, for people often said she gave off sunlight when she smiled—at least that’s what they used to say.

Lili slid up next to Maya and interlaced her arm around hers. “Should we go?”

Maya placed the postcard back in the display, and they started walking back.

CHAPTER 4

“Siwa,” Sidi said, pointing to the small town just inside the Egyptian border, which shimmered in the heat like a mirage. “We’ve finally arrived.”

Mickey shook from his head the haunting images of the decimated Cruiser tanks littering the desolate landscape like dinosaur carcasses in a prehistoric graveyard and turned toward Sidi. The poor man had been badly injured, with cuts all over his body and a broken ankle, if not more. Angry with Mickey for his recklessness, he’d sulked the whole way. The journey back had taken three times longer than expected because of the high winds they’d encountered on the way. “We’ll go straight to the field hospital. They will take good care of you,” Mickey said.

“I doubt it. They are British,” Sidi snorted.

“I don’t blame you for not liking the Brits, habibi, but I wouldn’t trust this Mohammed Haider,” Mickey said. “Ask the Russians. He signed a nonaggression pact with them and then he turned around and attacked them.”

Sidi stared straight ahead, unhappy with this truth.

As the Jeep drew closer to town, tanks and trucks milled around in the afternoon sun. Once a sleepy plantation of dates and olives built around an oasis, Siwa was now a British military garrison. A high wire fence surrounded the encampment on the outskirts, and a British sentry emerged from the
wooden hut that served as a gatehouse. He flagged them down as they approached.

“Papers ’ave ye?” the Brit demanded in a bored Cockney intonation, scrutinizing the two bloody men.

Mickey reached inside the jacket lying on the backseat for his papers, careful not to brush his wounded hands against the rough fabric.

The soldier jotted down Mickey’s name from his ID and glared at the Egyptian. “Who’s the camel jockey?”

“He’s my interpreter,” Mickey answered. “The official translator for the
Detroit Free Press
and, as you can see, we are both injured.”

“Listen, mate. I don’t care which press you’re from. If ’e doesn’t ’ave any papers ’e can’t enter a bloody restricted area.”

“
Maalesh
, it’s okay,” Sidi urged. “We go to the hotel and get my papers.”

“The hell with that,” Mickey retorted. “This man needs medical care and I’m taking him to the hospital.” He slammed the pedal to the floor and sped off.

Sidi laughed at Mickey’s brazenness as he looked back at the sentry, who was running after the car in a huff. “You are brave, habibi. I hope your paper is paying you a lot of money for all the risks you are taking.”

Mickey didn’t say anything, but he was not actually on the payroll. He was a stringer, writing stories and selling them to any publication that would buy them. His letter from the
Detroit Free Press
designating him as one of their official stringers was baloney, but he needed it to obtain press credentials in Egypt. Gunther Hoff, his mentor and former political science professor at the University of Michigan, had pulled strings to get it for him.

The field hospital consisted of a large compound of khaki tents. Mickey pulled up next to an ambulance where two men were unloading a bandaged soldier and putting him on a stretcher. A
receiving nurse was instructing the medics where to take him after noting the serial number on the ID tag that hung from his neck.

“Just a few steps,” Mickey said as he draped Sidi’s right arm around his shoulder and lifted him from the Jeep.

“I’m sorry, but this is a military hospital,” the nurse said as she strode briskly up to them, all business. “We don’t treat civilians.”

“This man needs attention,” Mickey began to say.

“Is that an American accent I hear?” a woman asked.

Mickey turned to find the driver of the ambulance stepping out of her seat and coming toward them. She was all of five feet tall and in her midtwenties. She wore a red scarf around her neck, which offset the severity of her khaki uniform.

It was Mickey’s first encounter with one of the infamous lady drivers of the Ambulance Corps. His college buddy, Hugh Charlesworth, who had convinced him to join him in Cairo in the first place, had waxed on about these women in his letters, assuring him that they were as bold in the bedroom as they were in the field.

“I know you!” she said to Mickey, recognition crossing her face as she reached him. “You’re that American pressman. I saw your pretty face in the photo listing of foreign correspondents. There are not too many Americans.” She spoke the King’s English, every letter perfectly enunciated. “What is the trouble?” she asked Sidi before Mickey could reply.

“I think my foot is broken, and I have a pain here.” Sidi indicated his lower abdomen.

“I’ll be happy to take him in my lorry,” she told Mickey. “I’m headed to Mamoun. It’s only two hours away. I can drop him off at the general area hospital. I’m sure they can help him there.”

Mickey brightened. He looked expectantly at Sidi, who shrugged, his lower lip still turned downward. “That would be fantastic,” Mickey said.

“Brilliant. I’m Sally Harper.” She gave Mickey the once-over as
she offered her hand. She radiated a cool sophistication that was only slightly undercut by the dimples in her cheeks.

“Mickey Connolly,” he said. “Sorry, I can’t shake.” He showed his banged-up hands.

“Better put some peroxide on those and bandage them up,” she advised, as she delicately inspected them and blew at some of the sand that had settled into the cuts.

“That’s all right,” Mickey replied, pulling away. “Only a few scratches. Just take care of my buddy here.”

They inched their way back to her ambulance and carefully deposited Sidi in the rear seat.

“We’ll leave as soon as my friend comes out,” she said before putting two fingers in her mouth and jolting everyone with a piercing whistle. She leaned against the ambulance and crossed her arms. “So, you were just taking a stroll in the desert?” She grinned impishly while tossing a lock of blond hair from her eyes.

“Something like that.”

A plump redhead wearing the same uniform as Sally came out. After a brief introduction, she settled into the passenger seat.

“Maybe we’ll bump into one another again,” Mickey said as he opened the driver’s door for Sally.

“I’m sure we will bump into one another,” she said, taking a step closer and tossing a hip into Mickey’s. She looked up at him with sparkling blue eyes. “We’re going to Cairo soon. The city is very small. You run into the same people in the same old places all the time.” She slipped into her seat.

“Then I look forward to bumping into you there,” he said with a wink and leaned in to say good-bye to Sidi. The man would probably be out of work for a few weeks. Mickey unhooked his watch and handed it to him. “Here, to tide you over.” He slammed the door shut over Sidi’s protests and tapped twice on the vehicle as it started off.

By the time Mickey made it back to Siwa and returned the Jeep he’d rented, the sun was setting and the heat had finally begun to recede. He was beyond filthy and couldn’t wait to get back to his hotel and out of his clothes. He also couldn’t wait to get to his typewriter. The Brits had to be helped in spite of themselves. There was no way they could prevail in North Africa against the Germans’ new Panzer IVs with their 75 mm guns. They needed better arms and a better plan. He would tell the American people what was going on—assuming he could get his article out of the country. He knew how tight-assed the guys in the Censorship Bureau could be. They’d rejected the first story he wrote after arriving, a benign account of his impressions of Cairo. He had found the metropolis alive with glamour and exuberance, not a city paralyzed with fear and suffering, as he had expected. He’d entitled the piece “The Sweet Life.” It had no military implications whatsoever, but the censors feared that back home in England—where rationing had rendered an orange an extravagance and the blackouts and bombings had made socializing impossible—reading about opulent parties in chic Cairo might be offensive. He knew he would have to smuggle this new story out of the country if he wanted it published. And he knew what he would name it—“SOS”

The next morning Mickey awoke to the creaking of the slow-turning ceiling fan. He lay still for a few moments in that languid state between sleep and consciousness when the memory of yesterday’s events flooded his mind. His eyes popped wide open. No, he hadn’t dreamed it. His desert clothes lay torn and filthy on a chair and the ashtray next to his typewriter was brimming with cigarette butts. He let out a long, dejected sigh.

The sun outside was at its zenith. He tried to sit up and winced.
His body was as stiff as cardboard. His left arm was bandaged, but was still a little tender and his scratched hands were still smarting.

A loud knock on the door jolted him. “Telegram for you,” a man’s voice boomed. It was the desk clerk. “It says ‘Urgent.’ It came just now, sir. Right this minute.”

Mickey’s first thought was that something had happened to his father. What else could be urgent? A stubborn union man with a twenty-five-year career as a welder for General Motors, Patrick Connolly had so far been lucky enough to avoid having any accidents with his blowtorch, especially since he had lately developed a tremor in his hands from his drinking.

Mickey stumbled out of bed, slipped into his trousers, and opened the door just wide enough to retrieve the envelope. The telegram was short and to the point:

Please report immediately to the American Embassy in Cairo. British authorities revoked your visa. Must leave country within seventy-two hours.