Cairo Surrender

The dramatic departure of Pasha Rushdy Abazar took all of the fizz out of the evening in the Gentlemen's Dining Room at Shepheard's. Nothing was going to happen that evening to top that, and many of the gentlemen were suddenly remembering forgotten engagements and bustling off to start spreading the word of the latest affront on civilization inflicted at the very center of proper society.

Those at the steward's table also rose soon thereafter, Sir Cecil and Raymond Little adjourning to the men's smoking lounge for a cigar, brandy, and some private words, with the young man, Michael Powell, being sent off under the protection of the Nubian policeman to finish his studies for the day in one of the receiving rooms off the main lobby before Sir Cecil was ready for them to ascend to their rooms at Shepheard's.

The receiving room was deserted of anyone other than Michael and his guard as Michael sat at a writing desk and poured over the textbook on Egyptian history Sir Cecil was requiring him to read in preparation for the trip up the Nile to the Valley of the Kings. Sir Cecil was a strict taskmaster when it came to Michael's studies. He was endeavoring to give the man a classic university education without the benefit of a university faculty. Michael had always been held in seclusion by his family as being sensitive, delicate, and prone to illnesses, and Sir Cecil, while striving to educate Michael for the responsibilities of an industrialist in his adulthood, was keeping with the regimen originally set by the parents.

No one bothered to consult Michael on what he wanted to do in life. The family fortune and his inheritance was largely through his mother, who had been British, and thus was mostly located in England and so tied up in stipulations until he reached the age of twenty-five that he was as encumbered by the wishes and desires of Sir Cecil, his guardian, as he had been by his smothering parents. And Sir Cecil told him he had his hands full with keeping the hands of Michael's grasping uncles and aunts and cousins from wheedling big chunks of the estate from Michael's hands even before he could gain control over it—and his life.

Michael wasn't interested in becoming a coal and railroad tycoon. All of this study Sir Cecil forced on him was boring to Michael, and he only did it because Sir Cecil was a tyrant and could be an even worse one when his wishes weren't being attended. This trip, even, was more a function of Sir Cecil's interests than his. Michael cared nothing for dead things—for this boy pharaoh, Tut, who was said to have died young and perhaps under suspicious circumstances. Michael cared more about the living—and he wondered when he would be permitted to live, to feel, to experience. He wasn't even sure what was out there to experience, and although there were ideas and urges that moved him, Sir Cecil was the last one he wanted to discuss these with.

The idea of Egypt didn't repel him. It wasn't that, and he was perfectly happy to be taking this adventure. But it wasn't the dead things of archaeology that attracted him. It was the Romance of the place, the dashing, swarthy men in the flowing tunics they wore and he'd read about in his novels—their sparkling white dishdashas—although it had been a disappointment to him to thus far see the Egyptian men stiffly wearing the same suffocating European dress as he did. Like that man in the dining room, the one who was the focus of so much attention. He was handsome and mysterious looking—and dashing as well. Michael wondered what he would look like in a dishdasha.

To Michael, Egypt and all of the Near East was the romance and dashing adventure that he had found in those novels he had read before Sir Cecil discovered he had them and confiscated them. Michael's favorite had been one entitled

The Prince of the Sands

, which Michael had found fascinating and was just discovering to be titillating as well when Sir Cecil found him with it and took it from him.

Where was that Egypt, Michael wondered.

A waiter came in and moved a porcelain cup of tea from a tray and placed it on the desk beside the book on archaeology Michael was unsuccessfully trying to focus on. Watching Michael carefully to see his preferences, the waiter, a young man not much older than Michael, slender and willowy and of dusky complexion and flashing black eyes, expertly dealt out sugar cubes and poured cream until Michael signaled he was satisfied. But Michael wasn't really satisfied. He couldn't understand why he couldn't be in the smoking room, enjoying a cigar and brandy just as Sir Cecil and that pudgy, drab-looking policeman were doing. Why was he still, at nearly twenty—well nearly nineteen, at least—being treated like a child? What was wealth and position—and youth—worth if they could not be spent.

Michael heard a moaning noise in the corner of the room, and he looked around to find that the Nubian guard had the waiter trapped in a corner and was fondling him and whispering to him in insistent tones. The waiter looked frightened out of his senses and completely out of his depth in how to respond to these advances. Michael looked over to the door out into the lobby to see that it was shut—and very possibly locked. The three of them were alone in the room. Michael gauged the distance between himself and the door, but he could see in an instant that the Nubian would make it there before he did if he made a sudden move in that direction.

What could he do but pretend that it wasn't happening? That was what his life had been about to now—ignoring the world around him; pretending that nothing untoward was happening. He remembered a remark that Sir Cecil had made earlier in the day—about the chaos that was about in Cairo and further abroad in Egypt now. Of how the military and police had become an all-encompassing and unfettered power unto themselves in combination with the increasing violence in the Cairo streets—that the two of them needed to be wary and as inconspicuous as possible as they passed through on their journey. Sir Cecil had made an explicit point that Michael, in his lithe, youthful blondness, could not possibly be inconspicuous here, so that he was to remain glued to Shepheard's and out of the limelight until they could embark on the Isis.

Michael turned his head away, ashamed that he was interested in watching, that within the wave of fright there was a drop of inexplicable arousal that he was too protected, too virginal to begin to fathom, and knowing that this was sinful and was something that Sir Cecil admonished him about incessantly, telling him that he must accept that his visage was such as to be attractive to a certain kind of man and that he needed to protect himself at all costs. A shudder ran through him at the thought of what this ebony monster might do to him if he made any move to intervene—or even to acknowledge that anything was happening in the corner of the room.

He rose and moved over to the French windows that overlooked the stone terrace and gardens of one of the several courtyards that made up the complex of the rambling Shepheard's edifice. He would not look at what was transpiring in the corner, although he tuned his ears to the heavy breathing and moaning and groans he could hear. He had no control over the Nubian. Indeed, the man was so massive and menacing that he frightened Michael.

He would concentrate on looking out into the night, to see what he could pick out as the form of the courtyard garden.

As Michael's eyes became adjusted to the dark, he saw that there was a figure out there. An old crone of an Egyptian woman in a black, swirling garment and a veil. She was pushing a cart filled with who knows what—and she was looking at Michael in the window, where he stood, backlit by the array of candles flickering in the receiving room.

As Michael watched, she unhooked her veil and showed him a broad smile that was missing only a few teeth. She may have been a beauty at some point in her life, but she was far beyond that point now. But hers was a friendly, benign look.

She beckoned to him and slowly waved her arm across the top of her cart, signaling that she had wares to show him, souvenirs of Egypt that he surely would want.

And Michael was interested.

He also, against his will, was interested in what was happening in the corner of the room, as well. He was confused—and titillated—by the incongruity of it. A raw, rough, sexual act—yes, he had to acknowledge that he knew it was a sexual act—being conducted in a luxuriously appointed anteroom at the very center of proper civilization—with men and women of reserve and breeding sipping their tea just on the other side of the locked door.

At a sharp cry, he looked around, into the corner. There would be no denying now what was happening there. The waiter's legs were off the ground, hooked on the Nubian's hips—and bare, his trousers on the floor at his feet—entangled with those of the Nubian. The waiter's flashing black eyes, overflowing with surprise and pain-pleasure and pleading, were glued to Michael, as if there were some hope of release there. His back was being slid up and down on the scarlet brocade covering the wall, and his dusky brown buttock cheeks were being palmed and squeezed and separated by the Nubian's massive black hands. The Nubian's globular buttocks shimmered and bounced as they rhythmically moved back and forth, back and forth, eliciting a groan and a squeak from the mouth of the waiter with each forward thrust.

The crone was at the window now, offering a stone statuette in her raised hand, smiling hopefully at Michael—wanting something from him just as the beleaguered waiter wanted something from him.

What would the Nubian do when he was finished with the waiter was the thought flashing across Michael's face? Would he dare? Surely it would mean death for him to do anything to Michael here in the luxuriously appointed, protective arms of Shepheard's Hotel. But could the Nubian stop himself now that he'd gone this far? Michael knew nothing of the balance of power in Egypt—who could get away with what.

Drumming in his head was the instruction from Sir Cecil to make himself as wallpaper—cause no ripples, take no chances—while they were in the raw wound that was present-day Cairo.

Michael reached for the latch of the French door and found it was open. He was out into the open air even before he could think of what he'd do next. Just beyond the light cast from the room through the French windows, he stopped and looked around, expecting pursuit. But the Nubian was obviously lost in his current taking—at least for the moment.

Where was the entrance to the hotel proper, Michael wondered. It didn't appear to be off to the side. This courtyard must be on the opposite side of the hotel's façade, he thought. He took a step in one direction and then turned, uncertain, and took a step in another direction.

He felt a hand on his sleeve and whirled around, expecting the Nubian, but finding the crone—still proffering the stone statuette in her upraised hand, smiling her gap-toothed smile.

Michael shrugged, trying to convey that he had no money—Sir Cecil carried any money they spent. And he conveyed as best he could that he was looking for the front entrance to the hotel.

The crone smiled a knowing smile, grasped his sleeve and started guiding him toward the shadows, which appeared to him to be an isolated corner of the courtyard with no passage beyond. He was about to turn from this direction, despite her insistence, when all he could see was a swirl of dirty-white dishdashas below mean, swarthy faces of rough men of the Cairo street. And then a cloth was forced over his head, his wrists and ankles were tied together, and he saw nothing and felt himself lifted from the ground and roughly manhandled across the stone of the terrace.

Michael initially was so shocked by what was happening that he froze. Half way across the terrace, though, the wind was knocked out of him as he was dropped abruptly to the paving stones and heard the sound of a near-silent struggle going around him to the sounds of huffs and groans and short, cut-off muffled cries. He was being trampled under a dozen feet—and then only under a few, and then all was silent for a moment.

He expected to be freed then, but this didn't happen. He was lifted again by several hands and was being carried someplace again. He cried out and struggled as best he could. And then briefly the cloth was removed, but only so that another cloth could be brutally wrapped over his face, covering his mouth and making it hard to breath even through his nose. Then a sharp pain to his jaw, followed by . . . nothing.