Egyptian dispatch: Feb. 14, 2013

On Tuesday, February 5th, I felt compelled to write the following question on my facebook page, "Why do we have to die?" A little while later Arda replied, "we need to shed our bodies." Two days later she was dead.

Koumaki (above), Arda's parents house cleaner, just called me and he is coming over. I will have to break the bad news to him, and make sure that he does not tell Foullee the porter. He becomes yet another actor in this drama. It turns out that Koumaki knew about Arda's death from skyping Arlen (Arda's brother) and after I let him in I find him visibly upset and crying in the corridor. I later ask him what happens when your wife dies in his Balanda tribe of South Sudan. You have no sex for 7 months, and essentially avoid any pleasurable situations and you do not sleep in the marriage bed for 7 days. He expressed a wish to accompany me to see Arda's body as well as a desire for Arda's computer since the one she brought him in November only has 6 gigabytes of memory and the battery has already died. I'll get Nina to clean up the computer and we'll give it to him. Later in the afternoon he excitedly calls to let me know he has just picked up his new passport and is now free to go to his new homeland in South Sudan after 14 years as a refugee in Egypt. He was especially appreciative because Arda had given him the money for the passport.

I write a long letter to Katarina Marangou, daughter of the Cypriot author Niki Marangou, the other woman who died in the accident.

It's noon and the locksmith from last night has not appeared so I'm trying to contact Chris Minassian, a friend of the family, to get the Armenian locksmith who lives nearby. Later Chris picks me up and we drive over to him. His shop is a couple of steps down from the street. He says he's got some customers coming to his shop this afternoon, so we'll have to come back at 5pm. It'll take about 30-45 minutes for each lock. I'm beginning to think that maybe we'll never get these doors open! Later we pick up the locksmith's assistant and he very quickly opens both the rooms, what a relief. We realize the other locksmith did not come back as he was unable to unlock the doors and had ruined the handle on one of them. We think we are in the clear but now we cannot find the key to the safe and we know that Arda was an expert in this art. It's a mirror image of what this trip has been all about, riddles and secrets within boxes and hidden places.

Have been totally rocking out to the shaabi music of Ortega—it really touches the soul—unbeatable stuff at this moment in time.