Pharaoh Read Online Free PDF Page B

through all these ups and downs. Bob might have been able to think up some merciful lie that would have helped him through today. But he was leaving for Egypt, warm sun and work. What luck.
    Blake stopped when his legs refused to hold him up any more, when he realized that if he fell into the snowy slush that muddied the street, the cars would run right over him. He imagined that the judge was probably just then leaving the courtroom and the empty building to go back home, where he had a wife cooking, kids sitting in front of the TV, a dog, definitely a dog, and a Christmas tree covered with balls.
    And yet, despite all this – the snow, the judge, his wife, the cars, the balls on the Christmas tree, the divorce and the whisky in his black coffee – despite all of it, his instinct had guided him – like an old horse returning to the stables – to the university. The Oriental Institute library was just a few blocks over on his right.
    What time was it? Two thirty. He wasn’t even late. All he had to do was go up those stairs to the second floor, knock on the door of the rector’s office, say hello to the old mummy and the dean, and stand there like an imbecile and listen to their bullshit, then offer up his resignation, which they, given the circumstances, would have no choice but to accept. And then shoot himself in the balls, or the mouth, what difference did it make? No difference at all.
    ‘W HAT ARE YOU doing here at this late hour, William Blake?’
    It was all over. He’d lost his job, the only job on earth that had any meaning for him, and he would probably never get it back. And someone had the gall to ask him, ‘What are you doing here at this late hour, William Blake?’ ‘Why, what time is it?’
    ‘It’s six in the evening. It’s freezing cold and you’re blue. You look like someone on the verge of death.’
    ‘Leave me alone. Just forget you saw me, Professor Husseini.’ ‘No, sorry. Come on, get up. I live just a couple of blocks away. We’ll have a cup of hot coffee.’
    Blake tried to refuse, but the man insisted. ‘If you’d rather, I’ll call an ambulance and have them take you to Cook County, since you’re out of insurance. Come on, don’t be an idiot. Thank your lucky star that only a servant of Allah could be out at this hour instead of at home with his family around the Christmas tree.’
    O MAR AL H USSEINI ’ S apartment was warm and had a good, somehow familiar, smell.
    ‘Take off your shoes,’ Husseini said.
    Blake did so, then dropped onto the cushions placed around the living room, while his host went into the kitchen.
    Husseini mixed a handful of coffee beans with some cloves and a bit of cinnamon and the room filled with a penetrating fragrance. He began to crush the coffee in a mortar with a changing, drum-like beat, accompanying this musical pounding with the motion of his head.
    ‘Do you know what this rhythm is? It’s a call. When a Bedouin crushes coffee in his mortar, the sound that he makes travels for great distances and anyone who is passing, anyone wandering through the solitude and immensity of the desert, knows that a cup of coffee and a friendly word are waiting for him in this tent.’
    ‘Nice.’ Blake nodded, slowly beginning to recover. ‘Moving. The noble servant of Allah sounds his wooden mortar in the urban desert and saves from certain death the stupid loser abandoned by the cynical and decadent Western civilization.’
    ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Husseini. ‘Some coffee will make you feel better and put a little blood in your veins. I swear you were about to die of exposure when I found you. You probably didn’t even notice, but at least two of your old colleagues passed right in front of you without even condescending to saying hello. They saw you looking dazed and half dead from the cold, sitting on a slab of frozen stone, stiff as a piece of dried cod, and they didn’t even ask you if you needed any help.’
    Well, maybe they were in a