In Egypt, in 1992, because James did not know the Arabic words for, “Mr. Taxi Driver, we are almost certain your cab is about to throw a rod,” our trip into the desert in search of a famed oasis ended with a sickening bang on an empty highway.
The driver, grieving over his ruined engine looked around the hood as we started on foot across the sand toward what seemed to be a cluster of ornate buildings, a village, in the distance.
He laughed and said something James interpreted for us. “City of the Dead,” he said. “It’s a cemetery.”
We were rescued by a bus before any of us suffered heatstroke or sand blindness, and because the bus went past Giza on the way back to Cairo, James figured he could salvage the day by showing us the great pyramids. To make it all the more special he arranged for a man operating a tiny stable to let the five us see them on horseback, the twitching ponies charging up the dunes at dusk, kicking sand and snorting.
But because James did not know the Arabic words for, “Young man, why don’t you let go of your pony so my brother-in-law can gallop up the dunes with the rest of us?” one of us saw the great pyramids only at the pace a sullen teenager would walk, clinging to his pony’s reins, willing to lend the horse last-minute to his uncle’s enterprise, but not to let it out of his grasp.
That was one day, 17 years ago, and the last time I witnessed James not knowing something.
Since then he directed me and his sister Meg unfailingly to interesting music we never would have come across on our own, the best-ever places to eat in Chinatown, and Queens, Bloomington, Rochester and Rome, and to a Ukrainian bakery so good I’m keeping its location a secret. The best novels by writers we’d never heard of, the most cogent political journalism, the writers and commentators who knew and spoke the truth about what was happening in the Middle East and Africa, a passel of brilliant friends, and the places in the world with ancient human works so splendid they give you a sense that maybe we are capable, at least occasionally, of engineering our way out of the troubles we bring on ourselves.
We’ll miss him for all that. For the news he brought us of far-off places and times, and for the example he set for how to live – expose yourself to interesting people and places, take it all in, dig down.
And show subservience only to your cat.
Astoria, 2005
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