This. Changes. Everything.
Mitri the Scribe was once the highest-paid servant of Pharaoh Unas in the 24th century BC. He was the guy you went to if you wanted a temple built, or a letter written, or if you needed a funny idea for a personalized license plate. Now he sits in the middle of a room at the Cairo Museum, unmoving, unblinking.
But very much alive.
Really, this is a story about a tour guide. I promise I’m going to get back to Mitri, our Lord and Savior whom I met in Egypt, but first I want one of my favorite scribes of all time to illustrate a point I want to make about the delicate relationship between a tour guide and their tourists.
Mark Twain once wrote a whole passage in The Innocents Abroad about how to piss off your tour guide and, as a former tour guide myself, I found it hilarious.
He notes that tour guides get off on the astonishment of tourists and this is true. The most delicious sound in the world to a tour guide is a gasp of admiration from a crowd. We know that gasp is for some marvelous spectacle we’re showing to you but we secretly take a cut of it for ourselves to buff up our own egos.
In one of the funniest travel passages I’ve ever read, Twain and his friend, “The Doctor” (Doctor Who?) decide to stop giving their tour guide the satisfaction.
“Ah, genteelmen, you come wis me! I show you beautiful, O, magnificent bust Christopher Colombo! — splendid, grand, magnificent!”
He brought us before the beautiful bust — for it was beautiful — and sprang back and struck an attitude:
“Ah, look, genteelmen! — beautiful, grand, — bust Christopher Colombo! — beautiful bust, beautiful pedestal!”
The doctor put up his eye-glass — procured for such occasions:
“Ah — what did you say this gentleman’s name was?”
“Christopher Colombo! — ze great Christopher Colombo!”
“Christopher Colombo — the great Christopher Colombo. Well, what did he do?”
“Discover America! — discover America, Oh, ze devil!”
“Discover America. No — that statement will hardly wash. We are just from America ourselves. We heard nothing about it. Christopher Colombo — pleasant name — is — is he dead?”
“Oh, corpo di Baccho! — three hundred year!”
“What did he die of?”
“I do not know! — I can not tell.”
“Small-pox, think?”
“I do not know, genteelmen! — I do not know what he die of!”
“Measles, likely?”
“May be — may be — I do not know — I think he die of somethings.”
“Parents living?”
“Im-poseeeble!”
“Ah — which is the bust and which is the pedestal?”
“Santa Maria! — zis ze bust! — zis ze pedestal!”
“Ah, I see, I see — happy combination — very happy combination, indeed. Is — is this the first time this gentleman was ever on a bust?”
I‘ve been lucky enough to travel to Egypt twice now and I’ve never been able to pull off a Twain level of indifference there. I went once when I was 15 and again when I was 27. I had the same tour guide both times because I can’t imagine going with anyone else. No one would have the same energy, no one is as much of a lunatic (and I mean that in the most loving way)- as Egyptologist Emil Shaker.
Emil is well-known and well-loved throughout the tourism industry in Egypt. I know this because he somehow managed to get us into every ancient temple, every museum, every pyramid, every tomb -before or after operating hours when no one else was around.
Stoney-faced security guards light up when they see him and drop their giant machine guns to their sides. Egyptologists pull him in for a hug, slap him on the back, and then proceed to pull DO NOT ENTER signs aside for us.
It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.
Let me tell you, there is nothing …nothing… like watching the sun come up over the Temple of Philae (aka Temple of Isis) in Aswan when you have the entire island to yourself and the call to prayer is echoing across the Nile. You run your fingers over hieroglyphs carved into the walls by someone thousands of years before Jesus or Muhammad were even born and you get to connect with the images and the energy without the distraction of the hundreds and thousands of tourists who will swarm the place in a couple of hours.
It’s pure magic …Even with Emil shouting,
“HELLOOO! Friends! Come here! You listen to me talk first and then you explore and you activate your souls!”
The first time I went to Egypt, Emil brought us to the Cairo Museum after-hours and basically just set us loose. I get teary just thinking about it.
Back then, the museum was a mess in the best way. It was like climbing through your grandma’s attic if your grandma had raided a thousand Egyptian tombs. Hardly anything was labeled, statues leaned against walls, artifacts were piled on top of each other, dust everywhere. It was a treasure trove of actual ancient mysteries.
At one point, I turned a corner and a young employee poked his head out from behind a statue. I jumped and he smiled brightly. He asked if I wanted to see some mummies.
Abso-freaking-lutely, Stranger.
I followed him into a dark room filled with wrapped mummies under glass cases. I gasped (to the young employee’s delight) and crouched down to stare into the face of none other than King Ramses II. He wasn’t labeled but I recognized him. He’s got one of the best mummy faces out there. Peak mummy face.
I have zero chill when it comes to Egypt. Here’s how Mark Twain would have handled the situation:
“See, genteelmen! — Mummy! Mummy!”
The eye-glass came up as calmly, as deliberately as ever.
“Ah, just so. Frenchman, I presume?”
“No! — not Frenchman, not Roman! — born in Egypta!”
“Born in Egypta. Never heard of Egypta before. Foreign locality, likely. Mummy — mummy. How calm he is — how self-possessed. Is, ah — is he dead?”
“Oh, sacre bleu, been dead three thousan’ year!”
The doctor turned on him savagely:
“Here, now, what do you mean by such conduct as this! Playing us for fools because we are strangers and trying to learn! Trying to impose your vile second-hand carcasses on us! — thunder and lightning, I’ve a notion to — to — if you’ve got a nice fresh corpse, fetch him out! — or by George we’ll brain you!”
The second time Emil took us to the Cairo Museum, it had changed drastically. Someone had tidied up. Gone were the piles and the dust and the ambiguity. Everything had a place and a label. Cairo itself had grown significantly in the last 12 years (the current population is 19.5 mil), and tourism is doing better than ever. So it shouldn’t have surprised me that the museum had gotten a spruce-up, but it was still a little disappointing. Especially when we discovered that Emil couldn’t get us in after-hours this time around.
Damn, he’d spoiled us rotten.
As we waded through the heavy crowds, Emil chose key statues and artifacts to point out. One woman in our group began to cry at the sight of King Akhenaten’s uniquely personal temple art and Emil wrapped an arm around her to share in her emotion. But, as much as I was excited to be back, I still felt like I was missing some of the old magic of this place.
…Until we stumbled onto this guy:
I’d never seen such a life-like Egyptian statue before. You could almost see him breathing.
Emil snapped his fingers and gestured for me to give him my phone. I handed it over and he shined the flashlight into the statue’s eyes.
They glowed.
We all gasped. (A tour guide’s delight.)
“Statues in Egypt used to have eyes” he said. “Many, many of them did. It is said that these glass-and-crystal eyes are so beautiful, so realistic, that modern ophthalmologists still cannot duplicate them today. It is impossible. Ok? Come. HELLOO! Come!”
He shuffled us over to a pair of statues and lit up their eyes as well:
“You see? Eyes. As real as yours or mine. Look.”
He turned us around and we were face-to-face with this charmer:
“Look!”
I was looking! I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing!
EYES?! All along they all had EYES?! I always thought this was the style:
That far-off, pupil-less gaze always gave the statues a quality of being between worlds- eyes eternally open and closed at the same time. You could walk right up and examine their faces so intently, so intimately, because they weren’t looking back. They were too busy seeing what we might only see in death.
But not these statues.
These statues had such an electric quality. They were alive. And they were staring right at us.
Can you imagine? At one point in history, all the statues in Egypt stared at you like that!
My head was reeling with the implications. This was rocking my whole world. And that’s when I turned and saw…
Him.
“Ok? Come! HELLOO! Come!”
Emil began to drag us out of that amazing room, but I couldn’t look away.
I was looking at a person, not a statue. I’d never experienced anything like this before in my life. I was seeing ancient Egypt through a whole new dimension. I felt like all I needed to do was reach out and brush the clay from his face and he would blink and his cheek would be hot to the touch. Either he was here or I was there but one of us was outside of our space-time and acknowledging the other.
I was having a deeply existential experience.
I snapped the photo above and ran to catch up with Emil and the group.
“Why don’t the other statues have eyes anymore?” I asked breathlessly.
Emil was looking around, trying to make sure we had everybody. His answer was distracted- “People break them, steal them. A statue is a house for a dead person’s soul. You take the eyes, they cannot see.”
“So if someone didn’t like a person who had died, they’d steal their eyes?”
“Exactly.”
“And then the soul would be trapped in their own statue without a way to see out forever?”
“Yes.”
So Egypt was just filled with blind souls trapped in statues??
I pulled up the picture I’d just taken on my phone. “Who’s this?”
“Him?” Emil shrugged. “A scribe.”
“A scribe?” I squeaked, my heart pounding. I’m a writer. This is is fate. I’ve connected with a soul from the past and he’s calling me to his fellowship.
“If he still has his eyes, that must mean he was well-liked,” I mused aloud.
Emil ignored me — “HELLOO! COME!”
“What can you tell me about him?”
He nodded at my picture. “That one’s a drunk, look at his eyes.”
What?
I looked down at the picture in shock. No. He was a little sad-looking, perhaps. Or tired. But not… ok… on second inspection, he looked maybe a little inebriated.
Perhaps under the influence of divine inspiration?
“He’s a joke,” Emil said with a chuckle. “We joke about him. The drunk scribe, gonna fall over any second. OKAY! COME HERE! Everyone here?!”
Tourist astonishment and awe, dashed against the rocks by the very tour guide who was supposed to covet it. Emil flipped the script. Mark Twain would be proud.
I don’t know if Mitri was drunk (I found his name with a Google search). I’ve certainly never heard of a drunk statue. But I’d also never heard of a living statue unless we’re talking about Doctor Who again. I suppose you can look him in the eye and make a determination for yourself.
You may be thinking- So what if he’s drunk? Further proof he’s a scribe!
Yeah, I know. It’s just… when you make a trans-dimensional connection with someone, you hope it’s less of a Rick and Morty situation and more of a Moses and the Burning Bush kind of a situation.
Can you imagine if God had been drunk when he ambushed Moses that day?
“You gotta go back, Moses. You gotta go back. We’ve got loads of stuff to do, Moses. hick Gotta turn the water all gross and the goats gotta get sick and I’ve got a bunch of bugs and frogs and shit on backorder. Don’t… don’t ask questions. …Who set that bush on fire?”
Perhaps I hadn’t made a connection with the deified soul of a long-dead kindred spirit. I’m sure I’m not the only white lady to go to Egypt and imagine statues were waiting for me. It’s an unflattering character flaw. I mean, at least I know I wasn’t Cleopatra in another life, but still… There’s probably a balance to be struck between my flights of fancy and Twain & Company’s merciless apathy.
I think intellectual enthusiasm is still ok, though, right?
The statues in Egypt used to have EYES, you guys.
How cool is that??
*UPDATE: Several people have asked me how to contact Emil. He works for Quest Travel. Have fun!
Oh, what a refreshing morning read! Worth many more views, Amen. @Thank you!