The Tooth Fairy by Clifford Chase

Author:Clifford Chase [CHASE, CLIFFORD]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Nonfiction, Personal Memoirs, Retail
ISBN: 9781468309263
Publisher: Overlook
Published: 2014-02-06T05:00:00+00:00

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INDEED CAIRO OFFERED no ordinary distractions, only extraordinary ones.

We spent most of the next day with Abdul and Ali, a pair of young men who befriended us on the street as we puzzled over a map. They helped us 1) find the American Express office; 2) make our train reservations to Aswan for later in the week; 3) get our passport-size photos taken; 4) obtain fake student ID’s so we could save money on the already low entrance fees to museums and other sights.

John and I were poorer back then, but not that poor. Nor were we students. I was thirty-nine and John was thirty.

I had caught a bad cold in Israel and was still jetlagged, thus I actually believed that these two friendly Egyptians were art students, that they were brothers, and that their names were indeed Abdul and Ali.

As soon as we accepted their aid, it was as if we entered a tunnel of gradually deepening trust.

Theory: Because my mother felt my father never listened to her, I doubted John could ever listen to me.

My mother’s own disinclination to listen must also be taken into account.

Though John and I flattered ourselves that we were setting out on a fascinating cross-cultural friendship with Abdul and Ali, we tried numerous times to get rid of them by offering baksheesh, but they wouldn’t hear of it.

Like all good confidence men they kept each of us engaged separately in conversation, so that we never had the opportunity to compare notes.

John and I did, however, exchange glances at Abdul’s suggestion to go to his uncle’s papyrus-painting shop, since we hoped this was what the two men had wanted all along, a commission on whatever we bought.

In the dim room we gazed at dozens of colorful images of pharaohs, barges, and various gods inked onto brown crinkly paper guaranteed to be real papyrus, not banana leaf.

“Did you paint any of them?” I naïvely asked, but Ali said no, they were still learning.

In our foolish parsimony, John and I bought only a single small painting, and thus began our next escapade: I agreed to go to the duty-free shop to purchase two bottles of liquor for Abdul.

The circuitous journey of that day must have rhymed with my perplexity over John, since that’s the only way I can account for my continuing fascination with the incident.

Like my mother, I have a special talent for feeling cheated and deceived, whether of goods, services, or affection.

Until then John and I had walked everywhere with Abdul and Ali, but now as we rode in a cab with Abdul around a huge, insanely busy traffic circle, John glanced at me uneasily, and I realized with a bolt of dread that we had no idea where Abdul had asked the driver to take us or what might happen when we got there.

It wasn’t a comforting portent that Ali, the gentler of the two, had decided not to join us on this errand.

But soon enough the taxi came to a stop in

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