From bull to bear, Arab stock markets came crashing from coast to coast. Normally, I don’t care much about the stock market. I keep my money in coffee futures and socks.
The coffee futures are a good bet. You buy the coffee from your nearest supermarket and stack the jars on your book shelves for future use. It always works. I invest in tomato futures too, but they stain. The rest of the money goes either in socks or pillowcases. One sock is a weekend in Alexandria. One pillowcase is a bathroom renovation. Three pillowcases can buy your way out of a minor embezzlement. Six will buy you a passport to a medium size island where you can spend the rest of your life spending two socks a month. That’s my retirement plan, or at least that used to be my retirement plan.
When I made a killing in Afghanistan during the last conflict, not a big killing, just a small mayhem that I arranged over the phone, I ended up with six pillowcases that I arranged on the sofa near my bed and began considering retirement. I got myself a little map, and was looking at the names. San Jose de la Mattas, Piedra Blanca, La Deseubierta, Monte Cristi. It read like a manual of the conquistadores. Maybe I’ll buy a little farm near an Aztec village and dig in the backyard for the accidental treasure.
“You cannot do that, said my friend Ali. “You cannot just up and leave, not when the Cairo beautification is up and running. Not when Omar Effendi is being re-valued at half its real price. At least wait for the five story garage under Tahrir Square to finish. Everyone will be there for the inauguration. The governor will ask about you.
I wasn’t convinced. “Look around you, Ali. I said. “All the good guys are gone. Mahmoud is in Paris, Hoda in Chile. Everyone who’s got their hands on a billion or two is gone. Things are changing. The banking loans we used to dig into are getting tighter. Last week, they asked me for collateral. Could you believe it? No, forget it. I’ll buy me a little ranch and call it a day.
Ali insisted. “For Milo’s sake, please stay. He wasn’t playing fair. Milo is his son. He is also my godson. His real name is Mohammad but we started calling him Milo after we concluded a profitable transaction with Slobodan Milosevic. Back in the early nineties, Milosevic needed pillowcases in a hurry, and we had a full shipment of the best Egyptian cotton shipped to Belgrade in a hurry. These pillowcases appeared later on, empty, in a Larnaca five-star hotel, and Cypriot officials are now trying to trace their source. It all goes to show you that being an international fixer can get you into a fix. I really have to go.
But there’s Milo. How can I let Milo grow up with a dad who’s a crook and a mom who’s too busy running from a women empowerment conference in Beijing to a human rights gathering in Madrid? The kid needs a role model. I remember my own role model. I still see him on television, quiet and composed as ever, two rows behind Saddam. Perhaps it’s my time to take care of the young. Perhaps Aztec treasures can wait.
So I took my six pillowcases and dropped them at the desk of the nearest stock broker. By the time I came back from the Bahamas, I’d lost one pillowcase and two socks. Ali lost a bed mattress, I was sure. He was busy in Zimbabwe, attending a conference on water management and rain dancing, when it all happened. Now he was in my sitting room, eyes glued to the screen, watching the indices head south. He was sitting motionless, in gloom. Suddenly, he stood up and ran to the balcony. I followed him, ready to clutch the tail of his Italian jacket before he jumped. But he wasn’t jumping. He was looking at the sky, grinning. Then he started dancing. It’s much worse than I thought.
Sensing my presence, Ali turned, dancing still. Can I get him the stock market chief on the phone, he asked. It was an odd request, but I obliged. You cannot say no to a man who’s either on the verge of suicide or madness. “Just give me half an hour. Half an hour, that’s all I am asking for, he told the trading floor chief. As soon as he hung up, Ali held me by the hand and led me around the balcony in what seemed like a variation on a Zulu dance. I haven’t danced since Chad but I did my best. Here we were, two men hopping up and down the balcony, one of tapping on a plastic tray, the other whirling a placemat high in the air.
The next day, everyone read about it in the papers. Following a brief discontinuation of trading, shares mysteriously picked up. Ali claimed it was the dance. I had my doubts. But somehow he managed to get it in everybody’s head that it was him who turned things around. “The ministry want us to give dance lessons, he told me. “If not for Milo’s sake, do it for the chamber of commerce. Think Doha, man. Think Dubai. The sky is the limit. You cannot leave now. Suddenly all the gold of the Aztecs began to pale.
