The Nile Confession You're playing Bach to Egyptians, Marcus. They don't even have Bach in their culture. The words hit him like a well-aimed rock, except it was a word-rock and Marcus Delaney was too tired to dodge. He looked up from his cello and found himself looking at a woman who was looking at him with an expression that sat somewhere between amusement and contempt. She was maybe twenty-seven, with dark hair pulled back in a way that said she had better things to do than spend time on her hairstyle and a mouth that looked like it had spent years saying things it shouldn't have. "That's the point," Marcus said. "It's funny." She blinked. "It is?" "It is if you're me. I'm playing the most European music ever composed to people who have been building monuments that make Bach look like scribbling in the sand. It's like playing piano in a volcano." She stared at him for a second. Then she laughed. It was a short laugh, not the polite titter Marcus was used to from audiences of three and a stray cat, but a real laugh, the kind that comes from somewhere you didn't expect. "Okay," she said. "I'm Priya. And you're playing well for a guy who doesn't take himself seriously." "Marcus. And I take myself seriously. I just don't take my audience seriously. There's a difference." "Pity," she said. "You might connect with them." "I'm not here to connect with them. I'm here to make a buck." He nodded at the hat on the ground, which contained exactly forty-seven Egyptian pounds and one euro. "See? Making a buck." She dropped a fifty-pound note into the hat. "For the volcano piano player." Then she walked away, and Marcus played Bach harder than he had ever played Bach, which is not something you're supposed to be able to do, but he did it anyway. She came back the next day. And the day after that. By the end of the week, Marcus was playing Bach at Tahrir Square not because he wanted to make money but because he wanted to see what witty thing Priya would say next. She introduced herself properly on day four. Priya Williams. Art history graduate from Brown. Freelance tour guide because nobody in Connecticut was hiring and rent in Cairo was three hundred dollars a month for a studio that didn't have bedbugs. "So you're a tour guide?" Marcus said, lowering his cello. "You take tourists around and tell them stuff?" "I take tourists around and tell them stuff they won't find in the Lonely Planet," she corrected. "There's a difference. Lonely Planet tells you where the Pyramids are. I tell you why they're there, and who built them, and what they thought about when they were building them, which is probably the same thing you think about when you're playing Bach in a public square: how to make something that lasts." Marcus thought about that. He had been thinking about it a lot since he arrived in Cairo three weeks ago, with two thousand dollars in his pocket and a cello case full of regrets. His band had broken up six months ago. His girlfriend had left him for a dentist -- not a particularly attractive dentist, just a dentist, which made it worse. And now he was in Egypt, playing Bach to Egyptians, which was either the start of something great or the end of something that was never really anything at all. They started walking together. She showed him things that real tourists don't see. The hidden Coptic church near Babylon Fortress, with frescoes that were seven hundred years older than anything in Connecticut. The rooftop near the Citadel where you could see the Pyramids at sunset and understand why people built civilizations around watching the sun go down. The tiny restaurant in Khan el-Khalili where the owner's grandmother made koshari the way it was made in eighteen thirty, and the flavor was the same as it had been for a hundred and ninety years, which Marcus thought was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard. He played for her at each place. Not Bach this time -- he played jazz, things he had written in New Orleans, things his grandfather had played in the clubs of Storyville, things that sounded like the Mississippi River when it's angry and the Mississippi River when it's tired and the Mississippi River when it's just trying to get to the sea. Priya listened. She didn't close her eyes or sigh or do any of the things people do when they're trying to be impressive about listening to music. She just listened, with the focused attention of someone who is used to hearing things that matter. One evening on the Nile, on a felucca that was drifting with the current and not the sail, the wind picked up. It was a desert wind, cold and sudden, the kind that catches you off guard because the desert doesn't believe in warning. Marcus took off his leather jacket and put it on her. She said she didn't need it. "Just take it, Priya." She took it. It was larger than her, as men's jackets tend to be, and it smelled like woodsmoke and old vinyl records and something that might have been New Orleans. She held the edges together with one hand and didn't let go. "You play differently when I'm listening," she said after a while. "Do I?" "Yeah. You play like you're trying to tell me something." "I am." "What are you telling me?" He looked at her. The Nile was dark and the Pyramids were far away and the stars were out over a country that had seen more civilization than either of them and didn't care about either of them at all. "I'm telling you," he said, "that I came to this country with two thousand dollars and a cello and no plan, and so far the best thing that's happened to me is a woman who criticizes my choice of composer." She laughed. "I don't criticize your choice. I appreciate the irony." "Same thing." "No," she said. "They're not the same thing. Criticism comes from dislike. Appreciation comes from paying attention. There's a difference." He nodded. "There is." In the bazaar in Luxor, an Egyptian merchant offered them scarves. He was a small man with a large mustache and a grin that suggested he had sold things to people worse off than Marcus and Priya and was not intimidated by either of them. "Ten dollar for two," he said. Marcus blinked. "Ten dollar for two scarves?" "For you, ten. For anybody else, thirty. You, friend, have the face of a man who knows the value of a deal." Marcus haggled. He haggled the way New Orleans haggles, which is to say he haggled with enthusiasm and flair and a certain theatrical quality that made the merchant laugh despite himself. They settled on eight dollars. Marcus bought two scarves. Priya said: "You didn't have to." Marcus said: "I wanted to." She didn't say anything else. But she took the scarf and wrapped it around her neck and wore it for the rest of the afternoon, and when Marcus looked at her, she caught his eye and didn't look away. Jake, Marcus's roommate from New Orleans, showed up two days later, and he was everything Priya was not: loud, obnoxious, and completely unable to read a romantic atmosphere if it bit him on the ass. He had come to Cairo visiting friends, had heard about Marcus from a mutual contact, and had tracked him down with the persistence of a dog that has found a bone it intends to keep. Marcus introduced them. Jake looked at Priya. Priya looked at Jake. Jake said: "You're the lady who tells Marcus what to play?" Priya said: "I'm the lady who tells Marcus the truth. There's a difference." Jake said: "Good. Someone's got to." For the next three days, Jake was between them like a wall. He told stories about New Orleans that were probably embellished. He asked Priya questions about Egypt that she answered with the precision of someone who had spent years studying things that other people just passed through. And Marcus watched them talk and realized that he had been in Cairo for a month and this was the first time he had felt completely, entirely present in his own life. Then Priya got the email. A museum position in Boston. Real pay. Real benefits. A desk and a library and other people who took things as seriously as she did. She read it on her phone while they were sitting at a café on the Nile. Marcus was playing a soft melody on his cello -- no audience, just the river and the wind and Jake, who had stopped talking long enough to listen. Priya read the email, and her face did something that Marcus had learned to recognize: it closed. Not dramatically. Not with tears or shaking. Just a slow, quiet closing, like a door that has been open too long and finally decides to shut. "What is it?" he asked when he finished playing. "Nothing," she said. "You just looked like you'd seen a ghost." "I have. In Connecticut. Their name was Academia and it didn't want me." "Did you get the job?" "Maybe." She looked at him. "Marcus, I got an offer in Boston." He set down his cello. "That's good." "It is." "You should take it." "I might." "You might might?" She smiled. It was not a happy smile. It was the smile of someone who is trying to decide between two good things and knows that choosing one means losing the other. "What would you do?" he asked. She looked at him. "What would I do if what I wanted and what I should were the same thing?" He didn't answer. He didn't need to. The next morning, they went to the Valley of the Kings. Jake stayed at the hotel. Marcus carried his cello. Priya carried the scarf he had bought her. They stood in front of Tutankhamun's tomb, and the light from the flashlights made the walls glow with colors that had not been seen in three thousand years. Birds and gods and pharaohs and priests and everything that matters and everything that doesn't, painted on stone by men who knew they would die and decided to make it beautiful anyway. "I don't believe in destiny," Priya said. Marcus looked at her. "I don't either." "But?" "But I believe in good companies." She looked at him. "And you," he said, "are a good company." She was quiet for a long time. The tomb was quiet. The desert was quiet. Even Jake, wherever he was, was quiet. "Boston is a long way from New Orleans," she said. "Yeah." "And New Orleans is a long way from Cairo." "Yeah." She adjusted the scarf around her neck. "I might need someone to play music while I pack." Marcus smiled. "I charge extra for packing music." "Then charge me double." He picked up his cello. He played a soft melody, something he had made up on the felucca that night, the one about a woman who criticized his choice of composer and changed everything. She listened, and the desert wind picked up, and for a moment, just a moment, the two of them stood in the Valley of the Kings and played and listened and knew that this was not the end of anything. It was the beginning of the second movement. ======================================================================