Cairo. A dusty, colonial era hotel off Midan Tahrir with a cobwebbed chandelier and a wooden elevator from the thirties. Sheikhs smoking shisha in luxury hotels. Men with black teeth and dusty robes diving onto moving buses. Women hidden under billowing silk scarves, toting children behind their husbands. Donkeys towing precarious cartloads of fruit through unfiltered traffic. Islamic mosques and Coptic churches, plastic pyramids and papyrus Quorans. Men bending over prayer mats in the street. Women weeping over Christian reliquary.
You arrived in a taxi from hell, weaving in and out of the violent cauldron of cars—some scraping the guardrails at 60 mph plus on a pothole-ridden excuse for a road with no shocks or seatbelt. If your driver stopped abruptly, you’d be under those wheels in seconds flat. But you never stopped.
You had no idea where you were. Strands of colored lights draped from oriental buildings flashed by the windows, and you prayed your driver was taking you to the hotel you’d told him about and not into some deserted alley to take your luggage and your life in the name of Allah or hunger or both.
He had to ask directions from about five locals and drove in what seemed like (and probably were) circles. But you got to your hotel. He tried to raise the price he’d quoted. You paid more than the going rate, but less than he asked you. He protested exactly three times in a red-faced rage, then thanked you warmly, kissing the bills and offering them to Allah before pocketing them and driving off. This was less dangerous than New York, you figured when you finally closed the door on the swirl of new information, but it was a danger you didn’t yet know how to interpret, and so it was more threatening. What were people capable of here? Less? More? The same as “back home?”
A man with a broken leg and a rickety crutch hobbled over to me from the exact opposite corner of the mosque, just as prayers were beginning to resonate through the mystical space: “Aaaallllaaaahhh!!”
“Crypt. I show you crypt.”
“No thank you. Shokran.”
He limped back over the prayer mats, his disfigured right foot flopping in the dusty air, probably broken by his father when he was still a kid so that he’d bring in more cash when they went out begging together. I should have gone to look at his crypt or mausoleum or whatever the fuck it was. He’d made that difficult trajectory just for me. A path he wouldn’t have taken had I stayed in Paris or the United States. A path determined largely by my presence there.
“Hey, Amir. How much did that guy give you for the crypt tour?”
“Are you kidding! He wouldn’t even look at it.”
“What? Those Americans are so damn stingy.”
“Ain’t that the truth. They’re just here to see the pyramids and maybe a mosque or two, then it’s back on the tour bus…”
Some of those guys had probably worked in the same mosque—checking peoples’ shoes, showing off the crypt, turning on and off the lights, sweeping the floors, shaking the rugs—for years, maybe decades. They’d probably continue to do it for decades to come. And for one day I was not only an observer of their daily drama, but a flesh and blood thing-to-be-dealt-with—plunged into their midst without warning or apology. We interacted through a series of rapid gestures, intricate expressions, a few English words and even fewer Arabic ones… all before my hasty departure. I was to their career in that mosque what the late 20th century is to the whole of Egyptian history: a flash in the dark—a split second.
But by being there, in the midst of people as real and complicated as me, I exposed them to my essence as I absorbed theirs. I proposed my reality by putting it, undeniably, in their faces, as I succumbed to their reality, surrounding myself with it, falling into it.
To the whole staff of the Metropolitan Hotel,
Thank you for making our time in Cairo a special one. We will never forget the warm welcome we received from all of you. A special thanks goes to Naguib, who drove us to Saqqara and Giza, and to Amir, who drove us to Al-Fayoum. (We hope that they are able to fix your car, Amir!)
We were extremely touched by the warmth and kindness of all the Egyptian people, and we are recommending to all our friends that they cancel their vacation plans and go instead to Egypt! We are sure they won’t be disappointed.
And so, till we find the way to make another voyage to Cairo: Shokran and Salaam!
The eyes of Islamic Cairo are on the back of your head as you walk through its poorest streets with your American sneakers and your French travellers’ checks. You stand in the dirt of a neighborhood where the language being chanted from the minarets is a language you can’t even begin to understand—a language which is perhaps most beautiful when it spells out its darkest threats and curses and which spits when it tries to be tender. Tears are cried for different reasons here, and familiar gestures mean something else—something older than the name of the country where you happened to be born.
Allah… There was something to that word which made sense in these gorgeous streets, shrouded in the luxury of silky dust.
O People of the Scripture! Do not exaggerate in your religion nor utter aught concerning Allah save the truth.
The people of this city went to work, hardly complaining. Who were the terrorists? What percentage of these shuffling masses? I took off my shoes and I smelled the incense in the massive mosques. Here in Egypt, the ruins hadn’t been restored, and they were all the more beautiful for it. Violence lurked under the surface as it lurks in any city. But the real miracle was that these 16 million people, balanced near the edge of collapse (just like the people of New York, Paris, Bangkok, New Delhi, Chicago, and Mexico), didn’t fall upon each other. The city functioned as it had for centuries, weaving in and out of itself in an intricate fluctuation of flesh and machinery. The women pushing through the crowd with their scarves and baskets had work to do. So did the men with their carts of sand and fruit. “Coming through! Out of the way!” Life went on and on.
And that was also the tragedy: that the people of Cairo hadn’t all become terrorists, protesting against the poverty which they’d been taught to passively accept, that they continued giving birth to children they could barely feed, that they never questioned their placement among these crumbling Cairo stones.
My letter to the Metropolitan Hotel, translated into French by the computer:
Au personnel entier de l’Hôtel Metropolite :
Merci pour fabrication notre temps au Caire un on spécial. Nous oublierons jamais le chaud bienvenu nous avons reçu de tout de vous. Un remerciements spéciaux vont à Naguib, qui nous a conduits à Saqqara et Giza, et à Amir, qui nous a conduits à Al-Fayoum. (Nous espérons qu’ils sont capable d’arranger votre voiture, Amir!)
Nous étions extrêmement a touché par la chaleur et gentillesse de toutes les personnes du Égyptien, et nous recommandons à tous nos amis qui ils annulent leurs vacances organisent et aller au lieu en Égypte! Nous sommes sûrs ils ne seront pas déçus.
Et donc, jusqu’à ce que nous trouvons le chemin faire le voyage un autre au Caire : Shokran et Salaam!
Back in Paris, French Nationalist Nazi Le Pen had managed to get 15% of France (more than 5 million people!) to support his violently racist agenda. In France, this was not considered fundamentalism or terrorism, it was considered an “unfortunate” reaction to the fundamentalism of other countries and its effect on French unemployment. What percentage of Egyptians had declared such a systematic war against its foreigners? Fifteen percent? Less? More? And how many supporters had the latest American nationalist managed to drum up? Were people even slightly less stupid anywhere in the world?
“Where you from?”
We had quickly tired of answering that question, inevitably followed up by an unwanted visit to the nearest Papyrus shop or an aggressive offer of a taxi to the pyramids. This time it was a persistent teenager. “Welcome in Egypt. Where you from?”
To respond, “France,” was a lot easier than, “I’m American and he’s German, but we live in France which is why we’re speaking French.”
“Oh, you French think you something really special.”
“Well, some do.”
“You like Egypt?”
“Yes.”
“Many tourists stop coming from France, from Germany, from America, but it’s good, no? Très bon, eh?”
“They’re scared because they heard about terrorism…”
“No! No terrorism! No problem. Egypt good. Many tourists. No problem. These are things television say to bring shame on Egypt. They make us look bad…”
“Well, we find the Egyptians very kind; we’ve had no problems at all…”
“Why don’t you come and look my shop? I show you Papyrus for good price…”
“No thank you. We don’t need any papyrus today.”
“But I make you good price! Just look.”
“No, really.”
“You take my card. Just come with me to my car and I give it you.”
“No, REALLY. Thank you. Shokran.”
What were we to these people besides a wallet full of dollars? Did they understand what our money was worth to us back in our rich countries? Did they know of the poverty in Chicago, Paris, New York, Berlin? Did they understand any better than we did the reasons why a thing called a stock market made one currency “stronger” than another? And, by the way, did that flirtatious gleam in their eyes mean they knew we were fags who fucked each other back in our hotel room? Did the concept of homosexuality even exist in their language? Did the guys walking down the street with their arms intertwined make love when girls weren’t available? Were some of the guys who stopped us in the street looking for sex with us too? Did they exchange sex for money? Did they believe that they would go to hell for it? Did they care? Did they believe in their religion as much as a Baptist in Harlem believes in his Sunday school or a Catholic from my home town believes in the Pope’s interpretation of the Bible?
Was there really less freedom in Muslim Egypt than in a country like France or the USA where you had “the freedom to be who you wanted to be” provided you had the money to escape from your small town to disappear into a big city’s lonely ghetto?
Those were questions based on the references of my life, references which were practically insignificant here in Egypt where English was the language of authority, money and tourism but not communication; where Western media was edited by authorities of the oldest university in the world; and where people found a way, nevertheless, to interact—physically, emotionally, even vibrantly—without the values, categories, religion or culture of that other part of the world where I came from.
Letter to the Metropolitan Hotel, translated back to English by the same program:
To the whole personnel of the Metropolitan hotel:
Thank you for manufacture our time to the Cairo an one special. We will ever forget the hot welcome us received of all of you. A special acknowledgements go to Naguib, who conducted Saqqara us and Giza, and to Amir, who conducted us to Al-Fayoum. (We hope that they are capable of arranging your car, Amir!)
We were extremely touched by the heat and niceness of all the persons of Egyptian, and we recommend to all our friends who they nullify their vacations organizes and go to the place in Egypt! We are sure they won’t be disappointed.
And therefore, until is the path make the trip an other to the Cairo: Shokran and Salaam!
Farmers worked the irrigated banks of the Nile as their ancestors had done for 50 centuries, maybe longer. People used too much sugar, smoked too many cigarettes, let their teeth rot. The vertebrae scattered among the pebbles were human vertebrae, mixed with shreds of Pharaohnic pottery. Everything flaked away into the same desert dust—bowls, jars, houses, stones, and the bones of the people who’d shaped them all—just as all the religious texts ever written had promised they would. Eventually, the texts themselves would disintegrate, along with the rest of earthly matter. The only thing we knew for certain about our destinies was down there in the sand.
I was standing on the base of the Great Pyramid as millions of other people had done for dozens of centuries.
Back in San Francisco, Dan was probably taking his AZT pills or maybe he’d given them up entirely. He was lying, perhaps, in the arms of his lover Mike, or maybe in the arms of someone else, or maybe between two men at the same time as Dan and I once lay together with Thomas on the floor of our Jones Street apartment, touching each other slowly and wondering at the contents of each others’ infinite eyes. Who paid the rent on that apartment now? And where was Thomas? I’d last bumped into him in the center of the crowd in Central Park at Stonewall 25, and his lips had tasted so good when I kissed him hello… What did Stonewall mean to those Egyptians pounding on those old rocks down there?
A man in a long gray robe blew a whistle and told me to get down. “No climb.” I hadn’t made it up more than a few steps, but, anyway, that was enough for me. What I really wanted to know was just what did they wear under their robes? I would have loved to ask him, but a camel was making its way towards us.
“You take camel?”
“I don’t like camels.”
“I give you good price.”
“No.”
“Do you know the price?”
“Don’t want. No camel. Camel bad.”
Was Dan a symbol like this camel was a symbol? When a tour bus rolled down Castro Street, did the people inside snap a picture of him holding his boyfriend’s hand? Would he be featured on some TV documentary as an AIDS victim? Was he already playing that role in my mind? Was Dan “My Sick Friend Back in the States who Needs Me”? Could anyone so far away be anything more specific to me than a symbol?
“This good camel. Nice camel.”
It was a nice camel. It was cleaner than the others I’d seen, and it didn’t have that nasty smirk on its lips like so many other bad examples.
“Yes, nice camel. No money.” I pulled out the bare lining of my pocket. The camel moved away. Where did these camel guys come from, anyway? Had their ancestors been in the business for centuries, selling rides to Greek and Roman tourists long before the birth of Christ?
We met Hassan when Naguib, our taxi driver, dropped us off at the door of a horse and camel stable and turned us over to him. We turned down the animals at once, but there didn’t seem to be any way of turning down Hassan: “This is Sphinx. Some persons say Napoleon broke nose, some say…” We knew all that and much more than he could possibly explain to us in his limited if functional English, but without getting downright nasty, there was no choice but to let him go on.
I decided I’d try changing the subject as often as possible to see just how much about “the real Cairo” I could pump out of him in the two hours the universe had allotted us together:
“What do the pyramids mean to the Egyptian people?”
“Some think they are not more than pile of stones. But I see them sometimes, and I think I see them for the first time. When I see them this way, they don’t look to be rocks.”
“No, they look soft. Like a sponge.”
“Yes.”
Paul took our picture from a nearby hill, where another tourist camel was bearing down on him. “Picture, picture??”
“I dreamed of coming to see the pyramids since I was a small child,” I told Hassan, “but I had no idea then that the Muslim culture was every bit as fascinating as the Pharaohnic one as I am in the Pharaohs or that I’d be visiting as many ancient mosques in Egypt as pyramids and tombs.”
“What do you think of Islamic religion? Many tourists think it is only terrorists and bad things.”
“Well, we only hear about the terrorists at home, and not about the good points…”
I watched him cringe, like I was stating my opinion and not the one I’d heard about. If only I’d had a few years of Arabic so I could be the one butchering a language. It’s a lot less dangerous to search for basic words than to simplify complicated sentences. “From what I’ve already seen in my first days here, Muslims seem to be good people.” American clichés are always a safe bet when dealing with people who barely speak English, since they usually provide just the touch of flattery required.
Hassan told me he was studying Islamic religion at Cairo University where he had to fight with the rich kids for the best seats in class. He drank and “had a girlfriend”—which seemed to mean he had an active sexual partner—though through his own interpretation of the Quoran, both were forbidden.
“You have to live!” He wanted to go to New Zealand one day because he had another girlfriend who lived there. “Egyptians like to fuck… too much.”
Hassan said the worst tourists were the English, followed by the French. The Japanese were fascinated by everything they saw, he said, and they nodded vigorously at his English commentary, but when he asked them, “Do you understand?” they didn’t even understand the word “understand.”
American soldiers were Hassan’s favorites. They liked camel rides, and they tipped accordingly. They talked about the babes they’d fucked at rowdy beer bashes back home—stuff that seemed like freedom to a financially restricted young Egyptian.
Hassan was working his way through college by forcing his tour guide services onto people like them, people like me. People who came from all over the world to see the pyramids and who found themselves led around the desert by a Muslim in a dusty robe.
On a nearby hill, three Australian girls formed a pyramid with their bodies. One lay on the ground as the base, the others leaned over her, giggling, to make the sides. Their Egyptian guide, who spoke English with the accent and expressions of an American jock, took their picture with the Great Pyramid off in the distance—fitting it snugly inside the frame formed by their bodies. “Oh, that’s gonna’ be a good picture!” They all got back on their camels and rode off laughing.
The universe had put us together like that on a dreamy desert stage—Hassan and me and Paul and the Australians in the distance—to act out our pathetic human drama. We’d come to that spot—me, the giddy Australians, the stuffy Brits, the arrogant French, the trashy Americans, the showy Saudi Arabians, the orderly Japanese, the vulgar Italians—as people had for centuries: to contemplate our own deaths. The pyramids had, after all, been built as an escape from the inevitable, and people the world over wanted to see how the greatest masterpiece in the history of the world had failed. How many stones would it take to actually reach heaven if these enormous structures weren’t enough? What kind of burial chamber would be impervious to thieves and decay?
Hassan took us back to the taxi, and we gave him fifty Egyptian pounds. “Oh, that’s really nothing, you know for several hours with private guide. I must pay the stable, and I must pay my school…” We finished with sixty. “You happy?”
“It’s just that, well, it seems that you’re only interested in what kind of money I can give you.”
“No, you must not give me something if you not happy. Are you happy?”
“Well,…” It was only a couple bucks more than the price any guide book said was correct, but he’d have obviously worked me for whatever he thought I’d fork out, like I was just another one of “those foreigners” with a pocket full of money. Not exactly the basis for an equitable, friendly understanding. But what did I really understand about what that currency meant to Hassan?
“Okay. Yes, I’m happy.”
“Okay.”
With a little prying, we learned that Naguib got a discount on parking rates by introducing us to Hassan. Hassan got a cut from whatever we might have paid to the horse and camel people too. Since we went beastless, he’d have to fork over some of what we gave him to the stable… Or so he told us. It’s not like we could go verify any of this with any sort of better business bureau. The tourist police dotting the landscape were there to stop blatant violence. This was much more subtle, much harder to escape. Money took on such a different meaning that it lost all meaning. I didn’t care so much that I was parting with mine. I just wanted to understand why I was parting with it and who was going to get it in the end. But who dares argue about economics with the direct descendants of the people who created civilization?
A Baksheesh Line could trace each of the three hundred American dollars which I converted and spent during my eight days in Egypt—the exact path of each fraction of each cent right down to the names, professions and annual incomes of the people who finally pocketed my piastres.
If it was tempting to get all mystical and romantic about standing on the actual site of the birth of society, it was important to remember that this is where the problems had begun, and where none had ever been resolved.
There was a nightly light show at the pyramids: thirty pounds to get in. The Arabic prayer music from a nearby ghetto battled with the soundtrack to “Cleopatra” for our attention.
“The pyramids are the greatest achievement ever accomplished by man!” boomed the speakers.
Which, sadly enough, was more or less true, meaning that the last 50 centuries or so of history had done nothing but create a little laser technology for this tacky, corporate-sponsored, energy-wasting, tourist spectacle. When the Sphinx changed from blue to red then back to yellow, all the flashes in the crowd went off in a burst of “oohs” and “aahs.” This would be exactly where I’d plant my bomb if I were a terrorist, I thought. Spare the pyramids and the residents of Giza, but don’t leave a single tourist standing, not even me.
Forgive them father, for they know not what they do.
Paul left me in the hotel one night to go and smoke shisha. In the street he met Ihab.
“Where you from? Al so! Deutschland! Gut!”
They went to a café and talked about Germany. What kind of beer did they serve in Germany? How much did an average German family make? How had their currency gotten so much stronger? How did you say shisha in German? Were German girls really easier? Could he borrow twenty Egyptian pounds till later?
O ye who believe! Lo! many of the rabbis and the monks devour the wealth of mankind wantonly and debar from the way of Allah. They who hoard up gold and silver and spend it not in the way of Allah, unto them give tidings of a painful doom.
Paul came back to the hotel after they promised to see each other again. Ihab wanted to meet me too. I said I didn’t want to. I wasn’t interested in discussing American business, girls, films and money. Paul said I was being closed-minded. I agreed. Closed-minded meant not letting in any old piece of information into my already overloaded receptor. That seemed sensible behavior given our eight-day status as Western tourists in a third world country. We didn’t understand Arab culture well enough to know what kind of problems we could expect when it was discovered we were a same sex couple. I didn’t want to explore questions like “Where do you guys live?” “Where do you work?” and “How many girlfriends do you have?” till I knew more about what answering them meant.
I knew I was being a coward, but I was only willing to be courageous if I had the intention of investing more than a week in this experience. Explaining our same sex relationship to an Egyptian would take months not minutes. And how could we really develop any sort of genuine communication with someone while hiding that essential aspect of our lives? Yet it seemed impossible to make even the most distant reference to homosexuality when the Egyptian censors had removed all suggestion of it from books and films, on the grounds that it was the primary offence against God, at least according to the most popular reading of the Quoran. Queers undoubtedly existed in Egypt, even without western references, but in what form? As a statue of Akenaton, the Drag Queen Pharaoh, back in the Egyptian Museum? As a quick, pre-marital fuck in a hammam? As a warped, Western eccentricity brought about by an extravagant capitalist lifestyle? It would take time to learn how to communicate about such things. We’d have to find a new vocabulary. Hell, we’d have to learn Arabic for starters. I was sure it was all possible, but it would take more 5time than we were allowing ourselves on this visit.
Paul went out with Ihab a couple of times while I stayed at the hotel watching Arabic television.
“I need to fuck at least once a day,” he proudly confided in Paul. He liked to party. I told Paul that I wouldn’t be tempted to spend my free time hanging out with a party-hardy guy whether he was Egyptian, German, Dutch or American. Paul thought he was really diving into the local life or something. He didn’t seem to be bothered that Ihab was probably known by locals as the guy who lured in tourists with his English skills, working them for a couple of pounds or a piece of pussy or maybe even a piece of ass…
On our last night, Ihab insisted on coming with us to the airport. Muslims were not allowed to buy alcohol in stores since it was against their religion, but we could buy it and pass it on to him. “Don’t worry, guy, I have money!”
O ye who believe! Strong drink and games of chance and idols are only an infamy of Satan’s handiwork. Leave it aside in order that ye may succeed.
“We can’t leave the airport once we’ve passed through security,” I pointed out.
“Yes, yes! No problem.”
Paul was already agreeing.
“Well, if you want to do it, Paul, you can, but I feel really uncomfortable about it. First of all, I don’t like to mess around with airport security. Secondly, I feel that when I’m in another country I should respect the local culture.”
“But it’s just for the party. You know, ‘Party, party!'”
Dude.
“I’m not sure that not having alcohol is one of Egypt’s biggest problems. In fact, I think even we‘d be a lot better off without it.” I was getting fed up with the horny teen. If it weren’t for the Egyptian accent I’d have sworn he’d graduated from my high school.
Satan seeketh only to cast among you enmity and hatred by means of strong drink and games of chance, and to turn you from remembrance of Allah and from worship.
“Anyway, Ihab, I’m not going to be the bad Western tourist who exports what is considered by many to be ‘evil’ into a culture which has been functioning just fine without it for quite some time.”
Paul changed his mind once I put it that way: “Yes, I think we must think of your customs here. You told me before that you follow some of Islamic teachings but not others, so I don’t know really which are important because I am not Muslim…”
“Okay, okay. So let’s just forget it,” he said without a touch of irony, having already forgotten the idea, it seemed.
Say: The evil and the good are not alike even though the plenty of the evil attract thee. So be mindful of your duty to Allah, O men of understanding, that ye may succeed.
He still wanted to come with us to the airport. I was sure this was going to turn into a final plea for the booze or something worse. He was probably the fundamentalist of our nightmares, plotting an airport action with me in the starring role of First Victim.
He hopped in the front with our driver, Amir. We sailed past the Islamic colors of Cairo, making the same trajectory we’d made the night of our arrival only in reverse. Those strings of Christmas lights hanging off the minarets and mosques were illuminating places we knew and had been to. Some of them had names and stories. They were a part of our lives. We knew when we passed through one neighborhood and into another and when the taxi was going in the right direction. We were saying goodbye to a city we’d lived in for slightly more than a mere moment of our lives.
The taxi arrived suddenly, not feeling like a taxi anymore, but like Amir’s car.
Well, like Amir’s cousin’s car. Amir’s car was getting repaired somewhere outside Giza since it had broken down two nights before on our way back from Al-Fayoum. He’d flagged down a turbaned guy in a truck who kindly hauled us forty kilometers through the desert with nothing but a tattered old rope tied to his bumper…
Amir jumped out at the airport entrance with tears in his eyes. He hugged us both, kissed us on the cheeks. Ihab too. The alcohol project was long forgotten. They were both gushing with sentimental tears, severely exaggerating the importance we’d held in each other’s lives. It was a sentimentality only exacerbated by the technology and capital which had allowed us to whip in and out of their country in a matter of days to form such instant relationships, only to break them off before they could reach their infancy. We all indulged in the sweet sadness. Soon we were dragging our bags into the airport as they drove off—before any of the absurd fears on either side of the culture gap could be realized.
But what exactly had we meant to them?
O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.
“You can be dropped just about anywhere on the earth and find a way to adapt,” said Paul as we crossed the Nile on a bridge we’d grown used to braving on foot after only a couple of days in Cairo.
My mother dropped me in Chicago.
Paul’s mother dropped him nine years earlier in Stuttgart.
Dan was dropped in New York.
Derek was dropped in Alabama.
I presented Derek, Dan, and Paul to my parents, and each of them, in turn, presented me to his. Though stuff like dowries, wedding feasts, and religious marriage ceremonies was never mentioned, these informal meetings between parents and their sons’ boyfriends always take on a sort of ritualistic quality, riding in on centuries of unspoken tradition.
While some boy in a tribal New Guinea village was learning how to put on his first penis gourd, I was comforting Dan’s mother in her Upstate New York kitchen, telling her about treatments that existed for HIV-related infections.
And while some little girl in Cairo was having her clitoris cut out in some back alley as her mother plugged her ears to block out the screams, I was spending Christmas in Germany with Paul, who translated my broken French into the language he’d always spoken with his family.
My life, as it turns out, had every bit as much of a pattern—or lack thereof—as anyone else’s. It made as much sense, shared as much routine and ritual, and was steeped in as much tradition as anyone’s life on the planet. I was no more or less modern for being American, for being queer, for being a writer…