Nelson loved to travel. Of all the countries which he had considered exotic none had captured his imagination more than Egypt. The deserts, oasis, temples and pyramids all evoked the grandeur of the past in a way that inspires poets, musicians, painters, philosophers and ascetics.

Nelson had especially wanted to visit the pyramids and the silent Sphinx in particular. He once read that Napoleon stood in awe of the sight of the Sphinx way back in the early 1800s. Even then it was thousands of years old windblown by the sands of time.

He had determined that someday he would journey to Egypt and find his way to the foot of the Sphinx and stand perhaps in the same spot where Napoleon had taken his first glimpse of this mysterious monument.

He did not join a tour group. Such kind of travel was beneath him. He wanted this trip to be special. He wanted to linger at the sites and temples he dreamed of and not to have to worry about being moved along to another temple or museum where a lugubrious guide mechanically rattled off historical details.

He flew to Cairo with a budget airfare on an ambiguous Mid-eastern airline scented with the aroma of curry and incense. The female flight attendants were all heavily veiled and deadly serious. He stayed in Cairo for three days before venturing out to visit the Sphinx. On the day of this historical encounter he got up early before dawn. It was a bright mid-summer's day. The air was dry at six in the morning and it was already warm. The muezzin from a nearby mosque was calling worshippers to prayer. The crisp alertness in his voice gave every indication it was a taped recording.

Nelson walked briskly down to the lobby of his hotel and into the cafeteria for a breakfast consisting of coffee and some kind of Egyptian gruel. The coffee was quite good but the gruel was distinctly unappealing sitting on his plate like a pile of waste complete with a host of flies.

After breakfast he walked out onto the streets of Cairo which at six-thirty in the morning was already throbbing with activity. He asked at a local coffee shop for directions to the Sphinx. The waiter twisted his face in a quizzically confused expression. He was puzzled not knowing himself how to get there. Another customer overhearing Nelson's request came to his aid and gave him detailed directions complete with bus numbers and landmarks to follow.

Within an hour Nelson was in a small town on the outskirts of Cairo. It may even have been a suburb of the great metropolis for all he knew, but it gave all the appearances of being a town in itself. Arrows pointed in various directions and signs were written in several languages. The pyramids and Sphinx were not far away waiting to be discovered.

It was still early morning when he arrived and life in this part of the city was less hurried than in downtown Cairo. Men sat in coffee shops smoking on their water pipes and children sat by street curbs selling shoelaces. Most of the town was awake but had Nelson been home at this time he would be turning off the alarm to capture a few more moments of sleep, but his was no vacation. It was a pilgrimage of sorts of a dream unfulfilled.

Walking towards the pyramids along the dusty street which turned into a path and then became even more narrow till it merged into the sand, he felt he was walking down the pages of history. The journey had a mysterious mystique which only came with the unvoiced passage of centuries. Each step brought him closer to the past he had longed to find in his search through antiquity.

When he finally came upon the ruins he was surprised to find himself adrift in a sea of sand. Slowly ever so slowly all the noise of the town and the activity of the streets had disappeared. They had disintegrated from a roar to a hush and them to a silence. Like a vanishing vapor they had melted into the heat of the sun's early rays.

Above him now was the blinding sun, beneath him were the eternal tides of sand. A feeling of awe descended upon him. So here was the Sphinx sitting in the sand in much the same way she has sat for generations with her silent gaze transcending time and space. Others have aged and died around her but she was eternal.

Imagination is a wonderful gift. It enables one to go beyond the limitations of the body and create mental images which transport the dreamer to another time and age, a time before birth and beyond one's death.

The communion with the past was not as eternal as the Sphinx. Nelson soon felt that he was not alone. In the far off distance a cloud began to move towards him like a tornado kicking up dust as if propelled by a fierce wind. Across the level sand it moved forward with great force and began to approach Nelson at lightning speed. Gradually he was able to decipher the figure of a man on a camel galloping awkwardly in his direction.

He froze and stared as if an apparition of some otherworldly origin was to be revealed before him. About four meters from where he was standing, this awesome apparition stopped with clouds of sand billowing around him. The feeling was of a apocalyptic visitor emerging from the pages of prophesy with a foretaste of impending doom.

Against the clear blue desert sky and the yellowish sand carpet beneath them, both the rider and the came cut an imposing figure. The man sat proudly in his saddle. The camel puckered its lips essaying a level of ignorance and boredom beyond belief.

The man's age was difficult to determine. He was dressed in a bright turban and caftan which properly camouflaged his age. He wore these garments as ceremonial dress proper perhaps to a Bedouin wedding. The grandeur of his carriage and deportment hinted that he may even have been a chieftain or the leader of his tribe. He certainly was a Bedouin living in the desert. Nelson surmised this because he had seen pictures of such men in travel books and brochures, but none had seen so foreboding.

His height was difficult to determine but he was a huge man with massive hands, hairy and thickly veined as they held the reins of the camel's bridle in his locked grip. His eyes were dark and sunken but not calm or peaceful. Perhaps they got that way from squinting in the heat of the desert sun. He sported a dark tan, and a thick black beard which covered most of his face. The beard ran the full length of his cheeks going straight up almost to his eyes. He had hair growing out of his ears and the hair on his head looked more like the mane of a wild horse as it flowed in the wind beneath his turban. He made a dramatic gesture with his hand and the camel went down on its knees. There was no other person to be seen anyplace in the vicinity and even the Sphinx kept her silence.

"You," he demanded, "You, feed my camel!"

This was not a polite request but a command. Nelson had no idea what camels ate and the beast before him on its knees looked rather contented and altogether well-fed. The animal gave no indication of being hungry and blinked its eyes dumbly sheltering them from the glaring sun and blowing wind.

"Sir," Nelson answered politely, "I have no food."

"No food? What have you got in that bag?"

At Nelson's feet lay small knapsack. The Bedouin pointed again and commanded in a strong voice. "There food. You. Feed my camel."

These cryptic commands were not to be ignored nor challenged. Nelson fumbled awkwardly into his bag and pulled out a package of dry crackers. They were soda biscuits which would only induce thirst rather than relieve hunger. The Bedouin's eyes flared and glimmered like burning coals.

"O.K. It's good. Feed Osmar."

So, that was the camel's name Nelson thought to himself. Osmar. Come to think of it, he does look like an Osmar. Nelson conversed in his mind to himself. With his fat lips, dumb, lifeless eyes and air of passivity mixed with boredom and ignorance he could be known by no other name.

Nelson moved the crackers towards the camel's lips which opened to reveal huge yellowish horse-like teeth. They were the color of nicotine-stained dentures.

"Does he smoke too?" Nelson asked sarcastically.

"What did you say?" the Bedouin retorted not understanding the nuance of cynicism.

"Never mind."

The camel's tongue whipped out and drew the crackers into its mouth. There followed the sound of munching and crunching as the cracker was first pulverized and mashed into a gluey glob which was quickly ingested.

"Give another!," the Bedouin shouted pointing his finger at me.

"Sure," Nelson said to himself. "Take all of my crackers."

Nelson dutifully obeyed and fed the whole bag of crackers one by one into the camel's mouth which appeared grotesque and totally out of proportion to the rest of its face. "God! Camels are ugly!" thought Nelson. "They have faces with features completely out of joint with one another and not the slightest hint of intelligence behind those dull eyes. Somehow cats can be called pretty and dogs definitely fit the category of 'cute'. Deer are all beautiful and lions look perennially proud, but camels are completely ungainly creatures with faces only a mother can love; or a Bedouin lost in the desert sands or another camel.

After the package of crackers had been totally consumed including the plastic wrapping, the Bedouin continued to assert total control over the situation and preceded in his flamboyant and outlandish behavior.

"Now, you give water!"

I dared not say I had no water because I knew that he had already seen my desert supply. It was necessary for my survival in this hostile environment. The top of the water bottle in the backpack was clearly visible. The Bedouin pointed to it with a small whip he held in hi right handed and commanded.

"Water! Now! Osmar wants water!"

Nelson drew the bottle out of his bag, reluctantly uncapped it, and moved it towards the camel's fat lips. He tilted the bottle upwards laying the mouth of the bottle upon the lips of the camel. Osmar slobbered up the water like a schoolboy with no manners. The contents of the bottle were quickly emptied, half of which fell wastefully into the sands of the desert floor. Nelson resented this deplorable waste and he despised the camel drinking his water. Shit! A camel could go months on end without a drop to drink but Nelson felt he would be dead within an hour if he didn't have enough water to drink. Tourists would sooner or later find him dehydrated in the torrential sands at the foot of the Sphinx.

"You!" the Bedouin continued, "Why you no smile?"

"Smile! Smile?" Nelson said to himself. "Would you be smiling if someone had just robbed you of your daily supply of crackers and water stranded in the equatorial desert. Crackers and water! A kind of communion to sustain life! Why even in prison the most hardened criminals are granted at least that much. Nelson lost his portion to a selfish camel.

"Smile?" he asked the Bedouin. These words were barely able to escape his mouth. It was as though his lips and face refused to yield to this Bedouin's every demand, a man whose name he did not ever know and was afraid to ask.

"I don't like man who don't like smile."

Nelson tried to force a grin onto his face to somehow diffuse the tension which had gradually begun to shape the situation. The sun continued to glare down like an unwelcomed torch. The Sphinx remained silent almost embarrassed that one of her countrymen was behaving in such a boorish manner. Yet, she had seen many such encounters over the centuries played out beneath the shadow of her presence in the eternal sands of the desert. She had seen the bullies and the bullied, the strong and the weak, the advantageous and the disadvantaged.

Suddenly the Bedouin without a name made a gesture which startled nelson. He opened his caftan and, placing his right hand onto the hilt of a sword, he drew forth a tremendous weapon. It was longer than a meter in length and tapered off to a fine point. Its blade was thick and its edge was sharp. The hot torrential sun danced off its point and blinded Nelson causing him to cover his eyes. This chieftain of the desert held it above his head in a majestic gesture of triumph and looked as though he were posing for a travel brochure to be hung in the lobby of a five-star hotel.

"You now take picture!" he commanded.

"Now, I understood completely," Nelson said to himself, "So, that's his gimmick!

First I feed his camel, then I take his picture. What pompous audacity! Holding that saber above his head he must be saying, 'See, these stupid tourists! I get them to feed Osmar and then I get them to take my picture. Ha!'

"YOU!!" he pointed, "Where camera?"

In a total state of intimidation Nelson searched in his knapsack for his camera. It was buried under guidebooks and sunglasses, but his last roll of film was still within the encasement of the camera completely used up and waiting to be rewound and developed. Nelson had no idea what this man's intentions might be. His eccentricity placed him beyond the realm of predictability and beyond the limits of normalcy. But, perhaps a picture might appease him and calm his impertinence.

The Bedouin struck a pose. It was a majestic one. His dramatic instincts were natural and inborn. He was definitely an actor. His flair for that which was beyond the ordinary certainly had potential and he was definitely wasting his talent eking out a life on the desert sands.

Nelson faked the photo. The last frame had been shot the day before in the marketplace. It was a photo of a Arab woman selling watermelons; hardly a picture to rival a mad Bedouin on a camel. The comparison begged absurdity. Yet, Nelson was so annoyed and intimidated by this man's intrusion that he refused in principle to take his picture. He had not bothered to unload the camera and was not now in the mood to reload it with new film. At least, not until this nuisance went away.

Nelson took the Bedouin's photo as commanded. The man struck a pompous pose. His martial features, regal and serene exuding an aura of majesty. Nelson wanted to ask him to smile but wouldn't dare. In his theatrics the Bedouin put on a solemn face. It was that of a conqueror in search of another kingdom or an insurgent ready to lead a revolt and march on to victory. On the other hand Osmar was indifferent and chewed his cud idiotically bored. Together they were a team, an eccentric pair,

honing an act they had both performed before and had mastered very well.

"Click!" the sound of the camera snapped across the desert sand.

"Wait a moment!" I dared to say, "Let's take just one more."

The Bedouin ( whose name Nelson did not know and to this very day still does not know and does not regret) did not move.

The photo session now completed, the Bedouin relaxed his pose. Turning to Nelson he demanded.

"O.K. Now money!"

"Oh, no. Don't be silly. You don't have to pay for the picture. I'll send you a copy. Just give me your…."

"I don't pay for the picture. YOU pay me!"

So, that was the scam. How stupid could Nelson be. How conceited could this man of the desert be! In the labyrinth of his sundrenced mind he deemed himself of such importance and worth that an unsolicited picture of himself would be a tourist's delight. He probably imagines tourists going back to a comfortable corner of the globe to display their cache of photos to friends. Invariable they will come across this photo and say, "Oh, and this is the Bedouin I was telling you about. The one who I met on the desert sands in the shadow of the Sphinx."

"Really?" their friends will exclaim in amazement.

"Yes, of course. And that's his camel, Osmar. "

"Oh, dear! Weren't you frightened?" would come the response of the untraveled.

"Oh, no! he was a rather tame Bedouin and he let me feed his camel."

This interlude of reprise was interrupted. "Now you give me money for photo."

This rather tame Bedouin was not in a playful mood. Time was money and he was serious.

The sword, which was now clearly recognized as a saber, was still held high above his head. It was the kind of sword one reads about in legends, the kind which is used to chop off the heads of thieves who stole oranges from the marketplace or women who were caught in adultery. The blade of the sword spoke of justice, the kind of justice which would condemn a man to death for taking the photo of a Bedouin and not paying the proper price for such an honor and service.

In life there are moments of serendipity best described as a moment when the unexpectedly delightful happens. It is a moment of good fortune in finding that which is not sought after but which shows up at a proper time and is gratefully welcomed. Among the religious it is known as a miracle. Among the unbelievers it is seen as a matter of good luck.

Suddenly, at the horizon opposite from the point where the Bedouin had first appeared, there came a second cloud, a cloud of golden dust and desert sand which puffed up from the earth as if by its own accord.

"Ichi, nii, san..Ichi,nii,san…" the hot dry air was punctured by this incessant chant. 'Ichi,nii,san."

At first all that could be seen was a white triangular flag with a blood red circle in the center. Nelson could not be sure if it were a surrender, a sacrifice or a victory.

"Ich, nii,san…Ichi, ni, san.." The chant grew ever so closer. The voices became more energetic. It was both an apparition and a mirage. The dust grew thicker and then began to settle. A group of tourists turned pilgrims marched behind the flag held aloft by a man who seemed to be their leader and who was wearing immaculately starched white gloves. His whole appearance was equally immaculate with a white shirt and jacket which seemed incongruous with the untamed desert setting.

"Ich,ni,san…" came the voices in unison.

Behind the leader was an entourage of fifty people. They wore on their shirts and lapels small badges of honor making them part of a selective group and onto which was written their name. Instead of sabers or similar weapons of destruction they carried cameras hung from a strap hung around their necks.

The flag waved triumphantly in the gentle desert breeze as they approached the Sphinx to beg her indulgence to reveal her mystery. If she refused to comply, they would settle for a photo as long as she agreed to supply the background. Together they constituted a group of Japanese tourists who had journeyed halfway around the world from the inscrutable Orient to decipher the mysterious riddles of the equally inscrutable Middle East.

Nelson's Bedouin captor (for surely he could only be described as such) was outraged that his performance had been upstaged. He was now outmatched. He was at his best when there were no witnesses to ruin his act.

With no further word or gesture he returned his saber into its hilt, pulled back on the reins and game a command to Osmar. The camel got up reluctantly to its feet and together they went off in search of another soul to intimidate in the heat of the desert sands. With not even a word of farewell the Bedouin and beast both disappeared into the sea of sand. The camel kicked up the sand floor into a cloud which soon enveloped them both into a mirage of oblivion

The Japanese tourists posed endlessly in front of the Sphinx in groups of twos, threes and fours. Every photo was taken with a broad smile and extended arms bestowing a benediction and the sign of peace. It was as though the Sphinx had whispered the answers to its riddle into their ears and they were giddy with delight.

Nelson, with a sense of relief, glanced over towards the Sphinx, a witness to the folly of men through countless generations and beheld a miracle. Although others have vowed that it was a mirage rising from the desert floor. To the very day Nelson swears that the corners of the Sphinx's mouth had opened into a broad smile.




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