Which Way to Mecca, Jack? by William Peter Blatty

Author:William Peter Blatty
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466834736
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

15. The Sphinx vs. Honeysuckle Epstein

IF ANY one man ever takes over the world again, he’ll be a camel driver. Camel drivers are cunning. They are the super race. It’s even conceivable that they are not human at all, but some alien intelligence from the distant stars.

His name was Ahmed and he was inscrutable. When Honeysuckle Epstein and I first saw him he had just finished neatly teleporting himself from the shadow of the Great Sphinx of Gizeh to a mound of Egyptian sand about six feet in front of us.

“My name Ahmed,” he said in a voice that was nighttime. His eyes were falling waters and the camel he rode had mange. “Marhaba!”

The microfilm-stuffed scarab was hanging from a gold chain around Honeysuckle’s florid neck. After three days of moosing around Egypt gathering “feature article material,” we had nosed into the designated curio shop, exchanged arcane passwords with the proprietor, and picked up the scarab without incident. Now, with three hours left before flight time and a return to Beirut, we were sightseeing at the pyramids, sand all around us, and the modern structures of Cairo rising in the distance.

“What is it?” whispered Honeysuckle, looking up at the mysterious creature before us.

“I don’t know,” I said. To our knowledge, no one had followed us from the curio shop. Now I wasn’t so sure.

“Byoot-i-ful scarab lady wear,” said the rider, and although I coughed blood, Honeysuckle seemed unaware. What would James Mason do in this situation? I wondered.

“Y’all sellin’ filthy pictchuhs?” declared Honeysuckle.

“Noh noh noh noh noh!” smiled the man who called himself Ahmed, raising his right hand, “Noh! Noh pitchur!”

“No?” said Epstein.

“Noh.” His right hand was now resting over his heart. “Camel ride. You like camel ride?” He was still looking at Honeysuckle. Honeysuckle looked at the camel. “Huh-uh.”

“Very good camel.” He patted its neck and I had a sudden vision of one of the forty thieves patting the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Honeysuckle, meanwhile, poked one foot around in the sand, not looking up.

“Only sixty piastres.”

Epstein squinted her eyes and looked off at the late afternoon sun, hands on her hips. “How,” she asked me in a whisper, “do yuh say ‘Get off my back’ in Arabic?”

“Hil onni,” I whispered back, my suspicions and anxieties mounting.

Epstein turned her gaze from the sun and looked up at the sly dusk that was Ahmed, declaring loudly: “Hil anni!”

“Hil on-ni!” parried Ahmed, correcting Epstein’s pronunciation, and if he were an agent, there would be no escaping him!

“You like picture?” The Arab held aloft a superannuated heap of camera much like those lugged wearily around Central Park by little old men in faded pin-stripe suits.

“Got my own,” said Honeysuckle, tapping a brittle fingernail against the Retina slung over her ample shoulder. “But wait just a second, yuh hear?”

She turned to me. “Think he’d let me use that godawful lookin’ creature he’s ridin’ foh a pictchuh prop?” Honeysuckle was hot for the color slide.

“Ask him,” I said, nervously, annoyed that she didn’t share my terror.

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