Shooting the Sphinx (23 page)

When they turned onto Samir's street, Ari looked up and saw Samir's light was off.

“He's gone,” said Ari contemptuously. “Looks like we took this whole ride for nothing.”

Omar's car pulled up in the dark quiet street. Ari got out and jogged to the building. He was going to go up to the office in the elevator and check. At that moment, Samir walked out of the front door holding a clean, new budget. They ran smack into each other.

Ari didn't know what to say to fire Samir. He hadn't planned his words. He just said, “That's the new budget?”

Samir started to hand it over, but didn't let go.

“You were at Studio Giza today.”

“Yes.”

“Why? Are you negotiating with me to lower my price?”

“No, Samir. We … they … when you yelled at Frank in front of everybody…” Ari didn't finish his words.

“Do you think Frank is right?” asked Samir.

“It doesn't matter what I think.”

“But what do you believe? You? By yourself?”

“Blacklist an actor?” Ari felt he was being asked to choose and he had to choose his own kind right or wrong. “Of course he's right. The director is always right. He has to be, or you'll never finish the film.”

“Here is my budget for your shit movie,” sneered Samir. “Give it to Studio Giza for them to copy.”

“It's not shit.” Ari was deeply offended. Why that word should bother him at this moment, he could not understand, but the film and its message had become a kind of crusade to him.

“I'm finished with you.” Samir let go of the budget and started to walk away. Ari followed him and walked up beside him.

“You've got to be professional about this. These things happen. No one is any good until they've been fired.”

Samir stopped and turned to face him. “I'm no good? You should fire yourselves.”

“Samir, it's happened to me, when I first started out, and so I learned how to go with the flow. That's how you learn it.”

“And our contract?”

“Samir.”

“So your word, your bond is toilet paper to you? Did you get the shot?”

“What shot?”

“Of the Sphinx?”

“At twice the budget. How much of that money did you really spend and how much did you keep?” They both knew that Samir had overcharged for that shot. “Let's get real, Samir, I need the permits.”

“Never.” Samir started to walk away again, his shadow from the streetlight sweeping around on the sidewalk behind him.

“But you already gave them to me?” Ari ran up beside him again. “Threw them at me.”

“That was my choice,” said Samir defiantly.

“Then I saved Farah from being … raped … right here, right here on this street.”

Samir stopped again. He could not disagree. He wavered there for a moment, staring at his shadow on the sidewalk.

“I'm begging you, as a friend. Think about your future. If we can't shoot because you gave us a problem, the insurance companies will make sure you never work again on an international production.”

“You are threatening me.” Samir looked at Ari, surprised, and a little sad. His anger was melting into sadness.

“No, no, Samir. It's just the reality of what will happen.” Ari realized that, more than business, more than anything else, Samir felt rejected, and Ari had to show that he cared. “If I don't tell you now, you'll never know why you never worked again. You don't want to get on the blacklist, do you? That guy, Omar, wants to call in the police.”

Samir suddenly shivered and recoiled in horror. He started to back away from Ari.

“To … to … do what?”

“To investigate you.”

Samir was shaking as if the temperature around them had dropped below freezing. “On what grounds?”

Samir saw headlights erasing his shadow on the pavement. Omar's car was inching along in the street toward them. Samir noticed. He saw Omar in the backseat. Samir started backing away in fear, staring at Ari as if he held a knife in his hand.

“Samir? Why are you looking at me like that?” Ari couldn't understand it. “Let's go back to your office and get the permits … wait!”

Samir turned and walked away faster and faster. Ari jogged after him, trying to keep up. The faster Samir walked, the faster Ari jogged, and the faster the car picked up speed.

“Where are you going? Samir—Samir!” Ari called after him. Samir was jogging. “Wait a second! I'm not going to hurt you! Let's talk about this!”

Soon they were running through the streets full speed. Samir dodged down a narrow alley between two closed-up shops. Ari chased him into the darkness. The car couldn't follow.

“Samir,” Ari called after him, “this is crazy!”

Ari lost sight of him in the shadows, and slowed to a walk, thinking that Samir had hidden or got away. Turn around, thought Ari. A back alley in Cairo? But he couldn't leave it like this, not with Samir so afraid of—what? Of him?

“Samir?” Ari called out softly. “Samir? Where are you? Come out. I have money.”

Ari had second thoughts, but he reached under his belt, into his secret pocket, and pulled out the ten thousand dollars. He held it out like a gun or a flashlight as if it would guide him or protect him. Ari came to a little dogleg where he could not see around the corner and the canyon of the alley narrowed overhead. The very walls seemed to close in upon him. Ari stopped in his tracks. He could smell fear in the shadows around him. Slowly, he looked over his shoulder. There in the black crevice between two buildings, Samir hid, flattened up against the wall.

“Samir, what are you scared of?” asked Ari softly. “I can't hurt you.”

“Oh yes, you will.” Samir's two black eyes peered out of the darkness terrified. “You are an American!”

“What?” Ari was perlexed, then insulted, then angry. He lashed out. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Samir lunged out of his hiding place and barged past Ari to run away. Ari stumbled back against the other wall and caught his balance, too confused to chase after him.

 

Chapter 47

Ari squinted in the noon glare as he rode in the backseat squeezed in between Beth and Omar. Omar's car pulled up in front of a fortresslike old Moorish building made of red brick walls and tan corner stones. This was an old police station.

“Here we are,” said Omar.

They got out. Parked on the street were a couple of police cars with freshly broken windows, and vans with police hustling in and out of them. A scrawny little porter stretched a hose toward the water tank of an armored personnel carrier with a water cannon on top. Everything seemed to have an air of preparation about it.

Omar ushered Beth and Ari inside past the desk sergeant with a quick question. The sergeant pointed down a hallway. Omar led the way. The number of police bustling through the station, both uniformed and plainclothed, seemed excessive for the narrow hall. The walls were painted a dull light green running up to very high ceilings. In each room was an old ceiling fan on high speed creating little drafts of wind past each door, stirring the hair and the papers of the police in the rooms.

On a bench at the end of the hall sat several clusters of people who looked like crime victims waiting to make complaints. No one was paying any attention to them. They seemed like they had been there for hours.

Omar found a particular door, peeked inside, then waved at Ari and Beth to follow him in.

The room had only a table and several wooden chairs scattered around. A sergeant sat at a table with a stack of several forms and a couple of pens. Behind him, by the window, stood a very short, very powerfully built man in a suit, who was bald and looked like a human bullet.

“Beth and Ari, this is Detective Kek,” said Omar. “He will be expediting our case.”

The detective nodded, then sat on the windowsill, splitting his attention between what was happening inside the room and what was going on down below in the street.

The sergeant took a form and picked up a pen, poised to write.

Omar started to dictate a story in Arabic. Several times Ari heard his own name mentioned and Samir's. Omar worked himself up from fairly calm into a tone of righteous indignation. At some point, Detective Kek barked an order to a passing porter in the hall, and a few minutes later, cups of mint tea appeared. Detective Kek watched with an air of attentive boredom. Every time a vehicle pulled up, he would look out the window.

The sergeant wrote everything down word for word, stopping Omar every so often to catch up with his narrative until, finally, Omar had finished. The sergeant spun the form around and slid it across the table to Ari.

“Okay, now sign it,” said Omar.

Ari looked down at the form on the table. “What's it say?”

“It tells the story,” said Omar. “The history of your dealings with Samir.”

“It says that he stole our money?” asked Ari.

“In order to strip the permissions away from him, we need to accuse him of theft.”

Ari slid the paper across the wooden table over to Beth.

“You sign it.”

She looked back at him poker faced for the benefit of the police, but Ari knew her well enough to know that she was seething inside.

“Ari, that won't work,” said Omar.

“Why not?”

“She just got here yesterday, and besides, she's a woman,” explained Omar. “It's already filled out in your name all the way through.”

“But it's bullshit,” said Ari.

Detective Kek stood up from the windowsill and stepped over to Omar, saying something in Arabic and pointing at the paper.

“No, no,” said Omar, shaking his head at the detective emphatically. Then Omar turned to Beth and uttered with forced jollity, “This does not look good, arguing in front of them.”

Beth turned to Ari. “When we walk out of here, do you want to call Frank and tell your old friend not to come and finish his movie? And the twenty-nine other crew who are booked on a plane here the day after tomorrow? Is that what you want?”

Ari was seething, but he had to admit, “Of course not.”

“Then strap on a pair of balls and get the shot.” She threw his favorite justification for any behavior right back in his face.

Ari picked up the pen. He tried to read the Arabic for a moment.

“This is too fast.” Ari shook his head and signed. Omar and Beth stood up to go. Ari didn't move.

Outside the window, a familiar truck pulled up, the police truck from the Sphinx with the navy blue box on the back.

Then a policeman walked into the room with two injured protesters in handcuffs. One had a head wound and looked like he'd been dipped facedown in blood, like a red ghost with two white eyes that seemed alert. The other clutched his stomach where his shirt had boot prints on it. He looked like he had been walked on. He had no other visible signs of injury. Detective Kek pointed to the bloody one, said something in Arabic, presumably that he was fine, then picked up a statement form and handed it to the policeman.

Detective Kek then lifted the eyelid of the protester holding his stomach and checked his pupil dilation by turning him to face the window and passing his hand over the light several times. The bored detective's eyes came alive for the first time with urgency. The detective pointed out to the street to an ambulance standing by, and spoke a torrent of Arabic. The policeman quickly grabbed the protester holding his stomach and took him away. The bloody protester stood there forgotten.

“I think I made a mistake,” said Ari breathlessly. “Tell him I want to take it back. Tell him … Tell him…” Ari couldn't catch his breath.

“Tell him what?” demanded Beth.

“That it's too quick. That I didn't have a chance to think it over.”

“Look, Ari…” Omar spoke softly, sympathetically, to Ari. “When you're done shooting, we'll just come right back here and withdraw the complaint. Nothing will happen to Samir. We just need the accusation to take away his permissions. It's just a bureaucratic move.”

Beth was impatient. “Ari, let's go.” She pulled him up out of his chair by the shirt.

As they walked out and down the front steps of the police station, a line of protesters was jumping down out of the big blue box on the truck from the Sphinx. They were all daisy-chained together, zip-tied hand to hand with white plastic flex-cuffs. The last one was filming the whole scene with his cell phone. When he hopped down, the policemen wrestled the phone out of his grasp and stomped on it, crushing the phone on the asphalt with their boots like a bug.

Ari knew that he had made a mistake.

 

Chapter 48

Ari stood on his terrace at the Mena House watching the Sphinx fade slowly into the night at the end of the light show.

“I saw Anthony and Cleopatra pass,” boomed out the British voice through the loudspeakers. “Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon paused at my feet. I saw the ambitious dreams of conquerors whirling like dead leaves. Tomorrow, once more, the rising sun will give me his first caress…” The plummy British voice droned on, and Ari could feel Beth's arms slide around his waist from behind.

He felt the downy white hotel bathrobe against his back, then her lips on his neck. She turned him around. Her robe fell open. She was naked underneath. The perfume of jasmine and bath salts wafted up off her skin. She nuzzled him and her lips came up to his, but he turned slightly and she missed his lips, kissing him only on the cheek.

“Honey, what's wrong?”

“Nothing,” he lied.

She said softly, “We had to do it.”

“Of course, we … did,” said Ari sardonically.

“We had to cut Samir loose. Had to.”

“But how about a little warning?”

Beth closed her robe and tied the belt. “Why do you think I came early, before the rest of the crew? To make sure you did what had to be done.”