LUXOR, EGYPT

To the extent that we were using hashish &/or tobacco together or separately, one might assume there were periods when we lived in a thick dullness abiding the intensity from our brand of liberty, to its other extreme--a void, whence the harsh Arabesque sun of Ifriqqa shone past the CLARITY and into the mishap of confused reflections e.g. at the Tea House, presuming as I was, some dot of angst would color an otherwise unhealthy unknowing.*** There is a boulevard stretching toward the trainstation, our admittance to this village-town, & to the other side our pension, which we'd hoof down away from every day wondering at what non-paying wonders we would have divulged to us in our hikes around the village. It had a Banque Leumi (sp?) (wrong fact here, THIS bank happens to be Israeli--whoops!! ...everything else is as it was.) there on it, at which one Sunday we had our travelers cheques cashed. Everything seemed off from the current of modern access, as 80% of all you could see was submerged, but seethed. Toward my freedom of youth I'd admonish myself that big fish authorial entities would in fact show me how little they cared what sensitivities I contained in the contra-bearing for others in my path. Like the governmentally controlled bank we passed each day. The mosque on the other side of the side of the village where we stayed was another such place. A Midnight Express scenario played out in my mind, as much as I could think about it, while considering entering the mosque, which we did--& formidably w/SHOES. We actually looked around for some object to pilfer from it, however there was nothing within and still I would not have gone thru w/ it. By the coffee/tea house before the boulevard & closer to our youth hostel, the Titi Pension, the place was called Television-Cofe, Mahmud the owner told us that Jimmy Carter had been right by his place one day only a few yrs before, & then commenced to scatter a few glasses full of water out into the sand-ridden road? to keep? the dust down. Far from re-allaying a sense that this was memorialized space, it seemed as if this little African man looked to the promise of an immense cosmic polity which would help people & lift them up--and this was part & parcel the powerspot we sought & could sanction (merely his humanity, that is, not the content of his beneficent agitation--"Wow, J. Carter!" --I don't think so.) Power spot. No longer wearing his jelabiyah, Mahmud in his suit about the same day we were to leave, he was off to Cairo toward the granting of a loan. His securing a future was in his eyes, a certainty beyond the correspondence w/ us that was neither here nor there toward his ends... He was comfortable in his own skin & was beating the odds. We left Luxor w/ hope for him.