The Cairo Affair

4

1991

On September 20, Sophie and Emmett arrived in Novi Sad desperate for sex, for their rough, seven-hour train ride from Budapest had felt like their first true plunge into authenticity. They’d shared a filthy cabin with a pair of fat old women who ate cheese sandwiches and eyeballed them, and as they waited at the border wailing Gypsies swelled outside their window, reaching up to sell them T-shirts, cassettes, bottled water, and toys. The Hungarian border guards seemed to be waiting for bribes, shooting them looks of scorn as they rifled through their papers, so by the time they crossed into Yugoslavia they were expecting trouble. Yet they received none: The Yugoslav soldiers gathered around to hear their American voices, one telling of a cousin in Chicago, another sternly advising them to mix bad wine with Coca-Cola for a perfect evening drink. Toothy grins surrounded them as the young conscripts pushed in to get a glimpse of the West.

This was when the arousal flickered in them both, and by the time they reached the high marble-and-concrete lobby of the Novi Sad train station, bought dinars at official rates from a surly clerk, and haggled for a noisy taxi ride to the center of town, they were famished for it. They didn’t notice the haughtiness of the desk clerk or the mustached secret policeman watching them from behind a copy of Politika or even the scratches on the inside of their door that, had they been in the mood to notice, would have made them think that someone had been imprisoned in the room for a very long time. They weren’t in the mood to look around at anything in Milošević’s Yugoslavia, not even checking the nighttime view from their window until afterward, when Emmett, naked and satisfied, pulled back the heavy, dusty curtains to look down on a tree-lined street full of sleepy taxis under the tungsten glare.

It was late when they finally dressed and walked around the corner to Trg Slobode—Liberty Square—to mix with dour-looking dark-headed couples peering into sparse shop windows. The city hall was lit up like a cathedral, and the pedestrian avenue was choked with sidewalk cafés. They sat at one and ordered strong Turkish coffees. “Turska kafa,” Emmett read from the menu, and the waitress, a pretty yet bedraggled girl, giggled at his pronunciation. Heads turned to look at them. In that postcoital glow, neither was concerned. They had crossed into the Balkans. Anything could happen, and they were ready to welcome the unknown with open arms.

A tall man, one of a table of three, turned a leg toward them and leaned against his thigh. “American?” Dark eyes, a cigarette gushing smoke around his face.

“That’s right,” said Emmett, chin out, defiant.

“MC Hammer,” the man said, smiling now. “Madonna. Michael Jackson. J. R. Ewing.”

“Yes,” Emmett said, trying to hold back a grin. “All American.”

The man leaned back and waved at the waitress and ordered Lav beers for his new American friends. Soon they had joined the three dark-haired men who turned out to be great fans of America. Voislav had relatives in New York, while Steva had spent a university semester in Pennsylvania. They asked questions, often returning to the most important one: How do you like Yugoslavia? After ten hours, what could they say? So far, so good.

“Come,” said the third, Borko. “We go to disco.”

Sophie hesitated. It was one thing to chat with friendly strangers in an open-air café around the corner from your hotel, but a disco required taxis; it required giving yourself over to the care of strangers. Then she saw the glow in Emmett’s face. This was it; this was what he’d meant when he’d said, To go. To see. To experience.

They were soon stuffed into a tiny taxi, laughing and listening to the men sing old, incomprehensible songs, crossing a long bridge to reach the Petrovaradin Fortress that, according to their hosts, had been built by the Romans. It had been rebuilt and reinforced over the centuries, developing into a winding labyrinth of cobblestone walkways and dark, hidden crevices that led them eventually to an enormous, crypt-like courtyard where, in one corner, a DJ was playing “Birthday” by the Sugarcubes, while in the other corner young people were lined up to buy beer. Crushed plastic cups littered the ground. Filling the center of the courtyard was a heaving mass of sweating young bodies, writhing in some vaguely synchronous dance.

Sophie needn’t have worried about their guides. Voislav, Steva, and Borko were riding a high of exhilaration, having recently been decommissioned from the army and their tenure in the drab, muddy camps where nationalist discord was fermenting. “And then we come back to find out Vojvodina is no longer autonomous,” Voislav told them.

“What?” asked Sophie.

“Vojvodina. Where you are right now. Fucking Milošević took away our political autonomy. Ours and Kosovo’s. It stinks.” Then he raised his hands, palms out, and pushed away everything he’d just said. “I give myself a headache.”

They were in dire need of a breath of fresh air, and to these three young Serbs in the last days of Yugoslavia this meant dance, drink, and travel. It didn’t take long before they’d found three pretty girls—one Serb, one Romanian, and one Hungarian—to share their escape, and by midnight all eight of them had formed a loose circle in the middle of the crowd, jumping and writhing and laughing as the DJ spun, his set list of eighties hits growing more manic as the hours wore on. By one, they were exhausted and drunk, slumped over one of the many picnic tables that lined the long courtyard wall, and it felt to Sophie as if they had accomplished their mission: They had become different people. They had, for one evening, forgotten their anxieties and petty worries. They had forgotten themselves. It was entirely new to her, and with Emmett she became a satisfied wallflower, watching the joy of all the young people around her.

“They look happy, no?” came a voice. A woman’s. Late thirties or early forties, with dark, sultry features. She had taken the seat to the right of Sophie. To Sophie’s left, Emmett had leaned his head back against the dirty courtyard wall, eyes closed.

“It’s nice to see,” she told the woman.

“It is hysteria,” the woman told her, her accent so deep and rough that Sophie imagined it could cut wood. “One last dance before end.”

Sophie laughed aloud. “You’re getting more from it than I am.”

“Because you cannot to understand,” she said. “You are American.”

“Then why don’t you explain it to me?”

“You would not understand. You must to know history.”

“I went to Harvard, lady. I think I can manage.”

The woman arched a brow, nodded, and then began to speak. She spoke not of these people dancing in front of them, but of the Turks and the Field of Black Birds, of Roman history and medieval times. She talked of the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the mistakes of which would eventually lead to the First World War, and by this point Sophie lost track, treading in a sea of loose facts. Later, once they had returned to Boston and gained some perspective, she would see that this was part and parcel of extremist thought the world over: the heaping on of selective trivia that only a computer could fact-check in real time, the raw accumulation of unverifiable anecdote that could create a new reality. Sophie knew this, but in that open-air disco there was something hypnotic about this woman’s unabashed conviction. Emmett had woken and was sitting up straight behind Sophie, listening intently. There was no cynicism in this woman’s attitude, just the pure, untainted light of absolute knowledge. She understood everything, and nothing would ever get in the way of her worldview. It was seduction, pure and simple: This woman seduced them with her long fingernails, her two-pack-a-day voice, her wrecked grammar, her sultry eyes, and the feeling that she was the last woman on earth who knew everything.

She said, “Serbs been humiliated through history. Usually, by others, but sometimes by first sin of humanity, its own government. We been too bashful, you understand? Too forgiving. It’s time for Serbs to take his place on historical stage. Tesla, greatest of scientists, was our genius. Tito was one of world’s great leaders. We make most soulful music, and we know this world better than Americans. Forgive me, but this is true. We are brave and strong. We done with humiliation. This is our decade.”

Her name, of course, was Zora. A name that sounded like something out of Buck Rogers.

History would later prove her wrong about nearly everything, but in 1991, drunk on their newfound authenticity, there was no way to know this. Zora was right about one thing, though: “The war just starting. In Vukovar you can to see it. It’s small now, but will grow. We are happy—you see?—to get rid of Slovenes, but Croats want to steal our coast. Who pay for those beaches? Bosnia is next. There will be fire—believe me—and fire will purge Yugoslavia of everybody except most loyal.”

She was mad, certainly, but it was a kind of madness Sophie had never been introduced to before. Zora was no longer dismissing these ignorant Americans—she seemed, instead, to be holding out a hand, inviting them to join her. “Sofia,” she said, leaning close, hot breath on her ear and long red-tipped fingers squeezing her wrist, “you are beautiful. Beautiful girls understand better than beautiful men. It is in soul.”

Sophie was shaking her head no. “I don’t believe in the soul.”

Zora pulled back in surprise. “That a woman with as much soul as you, you don’t believe in it?” Then she leaned close and kissed Sophie heavily on the lips. Sophie didn’t know how long it lasted, but she remembered the taste of cigarettes, the dampness of saliva.

From somewhere far away, Emmett was saying, “Well.”

Then it was over, and Zora was licking her lips. “You believe. I taste it.”

What had happened? Where had they ended up? It had all felt so innocent and simple and happily naive, and then Zora had stepped into their lives—both their lives, for now she was reaching across to clutch Emmett’s forearm, pulling him close so that their three heads formed a small huddle. She noticed that Emmett’s mouth had formed a twitching, longing smile, but Zora didn’t give him the kiss he obviously expected. Instead, she spoke to them both.

“You want to see? You want to know?”

What was she talking about? Did it matter? Emmett said, “That’s why we’re here.”

While Sophie didn’t know what was on Emmett’s mind—a ménage à trois, perhaps—she knew what was in her own head: a small boy on the Charles Bridge, throwing her Lenin into the river. Yes, she wanted to know what even the small boys in this part of the world knew, the thing that had escaped her all her sheltered life.

Eventually, Zora drifted off into the crowd and disappeared. They asked their new friends about her, and Borko said he’d heard about her. “Dangerous—you know, criminal friends. I don’t know what she’s about, but you want to watch out.”

By the time they got back to the Hotel Putnik at three that morning, famished again, they made exhausted love in their uncomfortable bed. Afterward, they discussed their night, still dazzled by the intensity of it all. They didn’t know what to make of Zora, but doubted they would ever see her again. They would stay the week, then they would take the long train ride to Vienna to catch their flight home. In fact, the joy of that night had tempered Emmett’s urgent desire for the real world. The funland of throbbing bass drums and hot flashes on the dance floor had been so liberating that they both suspected they would need the entire week just to absorb it.

But plans are best left on the cutting room floor, for it was during their dismal hotel breakfast that Emmett looked up from his toast and, eyes widened, said, “Oh shit.”

“What?”

There she was, pulling up a chair to sit with them. Zora looked clean and fresh and hungry enough to eat them both. “Sofia, Emmett, I want you should meet my friends. I think you are not ordinary Americans. I think you can to appreciate our beautiful country.”

Neither answered at first. Sophie was remembering Borko’s warning: Dangerous—you know, criminal friends.

Zora said, “You look worried. Why? This is wonderful thing. I invite you into my country. This is not land of discos. It is land of families and friends and great love. And …” She paused as something occurred to her; then she smiled and held up a long-fingered hand. “And I promise not to be bore. No politics. You are my guests.”