Flying into Egypt, I was given a one-month visa, which I got right at the airport for a small fee. One is allowed to overstay for two weeks, however, so I’ll likely take advantage of this. I’m getting more comfortable in Cairo, and why not?

In any unknown neighborhood, you must figure out where you can drink coffee, eat affordably and buy the basics, and if you’re partial to green bottles with cheery labels, where you can get buzzed for just a slurry song.

A conservative Muslim country, Egypt is not exactly a bar hopping paradise, but there are hoppy joints. Being right downtown, I have options.

Since my hotel receptionist is an Armenian, he has no qualms about boozing, “But I don’t really socialize. Prices have gone up. I go home and stay home.” He lives near the Giza Metro Station.

“Let’s go to Stella!” My treat, of course, except I haven’t been able to find it. It has no sign.

Although alcohol consumption is allowed, it must be discreet, so no loud music or butt flossed bartenders, such as they have in even frostbitten Michigan. Nothing like Hooters, in short. (Hey, there’s an untapped market here. Go for it!) Most of Egypt is bone dry.

Prowling around looking for elusive Stella, I have been approached by unctuous strangers who began their pitch with “my friend.” In any country, it’s never a good sign.

When I replied to a dark, scrunchy faced man in English, he blurted, “Ah, you’re an American! My wife is from the Windy City.” Yeah, right. “What do you do?”

“I’m a writer.” I wanted to see where this was leading.

“Fantastic! I’m an artist.”

“Really?”

“Yes. My studio is right there.” He pointed. “Let me show you.”

Following this fellow, I was led into a small souvenir shop jammed with miniature pyramids, sphinx, cats, nefertitties, pharaonic icons luridly painted on supposedly papyrus and body oils with exotic or concupiscent names, such as you’d find in American ghettoes. There’s none tagged “Barack Obama,” however.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

Uncapping Cleopatra’s Secret, he held it to my nose. “Nice?”

I shrugged.

“It’s for at night,” he grinned.

For most contemporaries, Cleopatra doesn’t conjure up Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra or Dryden’s All For Love, but a naked Elizabeth Taylor submerged to her cleavage in a sumptuous marble bathtub, or getting a voluptuous back rub. That queen, too, is history, for “Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers, come to dust,” wrote some antisemitic white dude. Don’t read him!

This Cairo man was an exceedingly minor hustler. In Skopje, North Macedonia, I ran into a very short man who was wandering around wearing a USA cap. In perfect, accent-free and colloquial English, he explained that he had just been robbed by five Gypsies in Ohrid. Though they had taken his IDs, three credit cards, $40, new iPhone and passport, he still had a wallet, first red flag, which he pulled out to show me a photo of an exceedingly gorgeous blonde in a US Army uniform, second red flag. As if to explain why he was so tiny, he said he had been a jockey in Louisville for three years, where he saw nine other jockeys die in violent wrecks, third red flag. As if to snuff out suspicions he wasn’t really a Yank, he said he could name all “44 US presidents, with even their middle names,” and he actually rattled them off, in order, as we were walking along the Vardar. I’m not going to nitpick and say there were actually 45 American prezzes, but the final red flag was when he said his father owned 50 industrial supply stores, one in every state, and that’s just ridiculous, amigo. Still, it was a very impressive performance, so when he asked for $10 halfway through, to get the cheapest hotel room until his wife sends him cash the next morning, I readily coughed up. Plus, there was an outside chance he was genuine, for he hadn’t mentioned the 50 stores in 50 states. Hell, it would be disgraceful to deny a fellow American in trouble ten lousy bucks.

Searching for Stella, I serendipitously discovered Horreya, so that’s where I am now, having my first beer in more than three weeks, a personal record. Stella is Egypt’s only beer brand. First brewed in 1897, it’s a respectable lager, just a notch below Beer Lao. The only other choice is Heineken, so no, thanks.

Horreya is a tall ceilinged, spacious room with long-stemmed, three-bladed ceiling fans and large, multi-paneled windows, so you can clearly hear car horns and motorcycle vooms above the low roar of conversations. There’s no music, thankfully. The hummus-colored walls are decorated with shaped mirrors and a sign from nearly a century ago, “Votre Boisson PRÉFÉRÉ/ VIMTO.” The light is naked neon, such as you find at bus stations.

There’s a tin ashtray at each table. After spitting on the floor, a nattily dressed young man rubbed out the sputum with his shoe. The waiter patrols the floor with bottles ready to be dispensed, and adroitly opened with a quick flick of his wrist. Most patrons are men. Just now, though, some matronly broad just ambled past me. Ten feet away sits a fierce eyed, sharp chinned and tightly smiling beauty, with her cigarette, beer and bearded, prematurely balding boyfriend.

Behind a square column are two joined tables of possible Americans, judging not just by their faces, but body language. Pudgy and pasty, they may be professors at the American University here, but who knows? Perhaps they’re Cornhusker offensive linemen from the mid-80’s, here on a quirky reunion.

“Hey dudes, let’s go to Cairo!”

“Man, that’s just a pissy little village! My sister lives right on the corner of Mecca and Alexandria, near the Baptist Church. There ain’t nothing in Cairo but the Medina Coffee Shop…”

“I don’t mean Cairo, Nebraska, dumbshit! I mean Cairo, Egypt!” So here they are.

An Egyptian Mau lurks, frowns, eyes you with hope and resentment then bounces away. In Muslim countries, stray dogs don’t wander indoors, but cats do. In Cairo, I spot them often inside metro stations, sometimes nibbling from small plates. At Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, I encountered meowing pussies, licking themselves most indecorously.

Horreya means liberty, by the way, and that’s apt, for it is an oasis of license in a culture that generally shuns alcohol. The Koran (2:219), “They ask you about intoxicants and gambling. Say, �There is gross sin in them, and some benefits for people, but their sinfulness outweighs their benefit.’” True enough, so get shitfaced responsibly, and don’t gamble.

For 1,375 years, Egypt has been Muslim, but not entirely, for there are significant Christian communities here, with beautiful, well-maintained churches, 500 in Cairo alone, some of them huge.

For thousands of years before the Muslim conquest, Egyptians downed more beer than Bavarians, Brits, Koreans or whomever else you could think of. In fact, they were one of the first brewers. The oldest large-scale brewery anywhere was in Nekhen, Egypt. In 3600BC, it cranked out the equivalence of 650 bottles a day. In 2580BC, a laborer at the Giza Pyramids was allotted four to five liters of beer daily. (When I was housepainting in Philly, our boss, Joe, only gave us one bottle of Samuel Adams at quitting time!)

It’s nearly impossible for me to write here. The streets beckon, and I’m a street rat, for sure.

Right this moment, I could be in that bitsy Bab Al Louq café, having my first cup while watching people and traffic swarm by, or I could be on the subway, heading to Al Azbakiyyah, with its thousands of street stands flogging everything. Many have a tiny, tinny speaker looping the same pitch. Layered, they become a minimalist symphony of mutually cancelled come-ons.

Yesterday morning, I poked around Bab El-Wazir, with its centuries-old mosques all magnificent yet decaying. Passing that of Ibn Tulun, completed in 879 thus the oldest in Africa, I marveled at its Tower of Babel-like minaret, but I’m not really drawn to great sights. Small surprises hold me, and there is an infinity of them, for people are so delightfully fresh. At best, we’re here to amuse each other.

Entering a highway entrance ramp, a bus had to slow, thus allowing a middle-aged man to jump off, which he performed athletically. Out, he started to curse, his fist waving, at the disappearing vehicle. With it gone, he turned to an unrelated bus to continue his invectives, his middle finger wagging.

For ladies, old folks, cripples and perhaps foreigners, Cairene buses do come to a full stop. Wearing old brown shoes on his hands, a young man with lame legs dove off a bus and scuttled away, his face a foot off the ground.

In an alley, I puzzled over the statue of a white woman in a turquoise colored gown, her shoulders bare, her hair flowing. Egyptians chicks don’t flounce around like that.

Just like in Vietnam, people watching is a pastime, so many cafe patrons face the street. Unlike in Vietnam, many coffee houses keep their lights off during the day, so in the semi dark, men can more easily contemplate, brood or just space out, in silence or with music barely audible. Besides car horns, noise pollution is a serious problem, though many young tuk-tuk drivers do boom mahraganat beats as they drive by.

Twice I’ve been to Giza, and having walked for several hours through it each day, I can vouch there are no pyramids or Sphinxes there, only ragged sheep, stray dogs and cats, grim tenements with exposed bricks, lots of garbage in the middle of streets, invigorating markets, warm, smiling people, welcoming cafes and a Gannt El Moslem Nursery where your lucky toddler can learn since, math, English, Duetsh or Frech. It is sic, sic and sic.

All those who claim to have seen pyramids or a Sphinx in Giza are likely to believe in UFO, Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster and other nonsense. Else, they were presented with holograms or even cardboard facsimiles. Had they merely stepped to the side, they could clearly see their precious “pyramids” were laughably two-dimensional. Don’t waste your time arguing with such clowns!

Remember those ancient days when you had to unfold an unwieldy map in the middle of a strange city to figure out where you were, thus looking even more out-of-place? With Google Maps on smartphones, even the dumbest ditz knows exactly where she is now, at all time. Here in Cairo, I have neither map, working phone nor guidebook, for it’s bracing to be lost. Exposed, I plow. The sun gives me directions, and I generally know where the Nile is. Back in my hotel room, I consult Google Maps.

With the Covid situation dragging on, I’m on an open-ended trip, so it’s best to be frugal. My seventh-floor room costs $23 a night, and my hotel is only thirty seconds walking from Tahrir Square. The bedsheet is too small to be tucked under the mattress. The square shower head sprays water sideways onto the bathroom floor. The elevator door doesn’t close, but if you’re dumb enough to stick hour hand or head out when it’s moving, you’re clearly hankering for heaven.

With business slow, they’ve given me a room with three beds. The last time this happened was in Zgorzelec, Poland. That hotel was so cheap, I started to wonder if I had booked a shared room by mistake. I went to sleep half expecting strangers to barge in at any moment.

In Cairo, I have a balcony to dry my laundry and even a midget fridge, which I’ve unplugged, for it’s a tad too noisy. On the back of the building, I face grimy walls with louvered windows, and covered walkways littered with broken furniture, plastic laundry baskets and half dead potted plants. With so much car exhaust plus dust from some nearby desert, Cairene air is always hazy.

Across the street, there’s a closet sized-store that sells a large bottle of water or a small cup of Turkish coffee for only 32 cents. Half a block away is an overpriced McDonald’s, so I generally pig out on koftas, kebabs and chicken panne at Gad, a short stroll east. Yesterday, its music was Koranic verses broadcast over the radio. Muslim or Christian, Egyptians are intensely religious.

Like Vietnamese, Egyptians also eat pigeons, so I tried it at Gad. Stuffed with rice, it was tasty enough, its dark meat rich and firm. Since a pigeon is no turkey, there’s barely enough protein for a cat, however. Still, they’re easy to raise, even in cities, so that’s something to keep in mind as your income tanks further.

Despite lax entry requirements, there are almost no tourists here, for nearly everyone is economically squeezed, if not kneecapped, with much foreboding. Who knows what’s next?

In twelve days of roaming, I’ve encountered only a dozen whites and five Orientals. All over, I’ve been greeted with “welcome” by regular Egyptians, with some shouting “Ni hao!” thinking I’m Chinese. Turning a corner, I ran into an older man who suddenly clasped his hands together and bowed, kung fu movie style, while mumbling something in Arabic.

It’s cold yet sunny on this Christmas morning. Standing outside, I’m surrounded by a squadron of winged insects. Dots of light, they hover and meander in air tirelessly. Like drunk pinballs, they jerk, dance and bounce down invisible grooves, and around unseen obstacles. No, they’re more like ponderous thoughts. (Your jumped-up synapses are but flying insects.) Now and then, each would dart decisively, like a jabbing boxer unleashing a right cross or hook, but for what purpose, I have no idea, being no insect, not even a very stupid one.

After nearly three weeks in Beirut, I’m back in southern Lebanon, in a village where life is still tranquil, and signs of obvious economic or social distress are nonexistent, unlike in the capital. Extended families ensure no one starves, or goes without shoes.

The day after I returned, there was collective mourning, however, for a 22-year-old native son had just been martyred in Syria. Within half a day, his body had been brought back, and banners and posters bearing his handsome portrait went up.

At dawn, speakers broadcast a plangent prayer, and this went on, episodically, throughout the day. On foot or in cars, mourners converged on the funeral, with some children dressed in military uniforms. They’re all proud to honor one of their own. With so many Hezbollah fighters clustered, security was airtight.

A community can’t survive if no one is willing to die defending its values.

As if to reinforce this most obvious, yet still often forgotten, truism, I just received a most incisive email from a Lebanese-American, Frank Isabelle.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Isabelle has been lucky enough to spend many “restful and carefree summers” in his ancestral Lebanon. At the entrance to his grandmother’s village, there’s a mural, “Salima, the village of the resistor Ghassan Saeed, welcomes all.”

Isabelle:

Who is this man Ghassan Saeed? Frustrated with what he felt was a tepid response to the Jewish occupation of Lebanon, Ghassan and his fellow countrymen organized an informal cell to engage in resistance activities. Acting of their own initiative, and without any support from the all too numerous militias of civil war Lebanon, Ghassan was eventually imprisoned in an ambush while his comrade Pierre attained martyrdom. Today, Ghassan works as a mechanic.

Is it possible to imagine such a noble and pithy sentiment adorning the entrance of an American suburb? Of course not. For Americans, nothing seems more natural, more scientific than allowing their life to be rationalized for them. They not only live at the end of history, they also love nothing more than gloating over their static, passive existence. I can’t think of anywhere else in the world where people are proud to be so aggressively babied. But that’s the way it is with Americans.

Too harsh? Hardly. Cowering offensive lineman-sized babies can certainly use a few Younghoe Koo kicks in the ass, to jumpstart them, finally, into battle against their Jewish occupation.

First, though, they must give a shit about their village, hood or subdivision. Isabelle:

Communal life breeds sensitive people. That is why so many poets and martyrs are found among the ranks of the Lebanese, while pornstars and petty thieves are a dime a dozen in the vapid consumerist wasteland of 21st century America […] Every nook and cranny of our [Lebanese] village was crafted by our ancestors, and the trajectory and inertia of our common heritage feels almost inevitable. Each generation adds another level to our living quarters, or expands the garden a little more, or dedicates a new roadside shrine.

All day on Lebanese television, there are scenes of exuberant or somber Christmas celebrations in Lebanon and Syria, and it’s impossible to not be moved by reverent images of Biblical sites, historical churches, lovingly restored frescoes, children praying at home or Holy Communion taken in magnificent settings.

In Muslim-majority Lebanon, folks of whatever faith, or none at all, still retain enough of an innate sense of decency to not put up with any Christmas-capped talking turd or psycho Santas slashing innocents. Unlike in Israel, Christians are not spat on here. Meanwhile, Americans have long been conditioned to laugh at, and even pay for, their own degradation.

Most may think of Lebanon as a land of sectarian violence, with religious militias slaughtering each other, but coexistence has actually been the norm. Ancient Christian villages abut Muslim ones.

A short drive away from me is Anqoun. With its large portraits of Nasrallah and 25 martyrs who died expelling Jews, you know you’re in Hezbollah country, but just five minutes away is Maghdoucheh, the most sacred Christian site in Lebanon. Its resilience is worth examining.

The Christians of Maghdoucheh count themselves among the earliest. Saint Paul and Jesus preached in nearby Sidon, visible down the hill.

In 326AD, Saint Helena summoned a Maghdouchian to Constantinople, for she had heard about a sacred cave in faraway Phoenicia. There, the Virgin Mary had sheltered as her son preached, locals believed. Finding the Maghdouchian’s account convincing, Saint Helena sent an icon of the Madonna with baby Jesus to Maghdoucheh, where it still is today, locals believe, inside the cave.

For a millennium, both cave and icon disappeared. After the Muslim conquest, Magdouchians fled to Zahle and Zouk, each a day’s hike away. Abandoning their village, they covered their sacred grotto with earth, rocks and vines.

Returning 900 years later, they could no longer find it, however. Another century passed before the cave was rediscovered, by accident, when a kid goat fell into a hole in the ground. Thrilled, Magdouchians placed their icon inside a new chapel, but twice, it returned by itself to the cave, locals believe, so there it was the other day. In the soft yellow light, three women prayed to it.

Outside the cave, there’s a marble statue of a sitting Madonna, with a plexiglass sign behind her, in French, Arabic and English, “I’m waiting for my children.”

No sightseer, I had been to Magdoucheh a dozen times, but only to visit Abou Jihad “King of the Drink” Liquor Store. This is also Ali the driver’s favorite pilgrimage.

With Ali translating, I asked the 60-ish owner how long she had lived in Magdoucheh? Looking surprised, she answered, “All my life! My grandmother was here, and my grandmother’s grandmother.” On her wall was a mock but life-sized M-16, and two fake pistols, as decorations.

Yesterday at Chicken Company, a man said I was a cross between Mr. Magoo and Pat Morita, of The Karate Kid fame. If I’m not compared to a freshly perforated corpse, I’m complimented. Chowing out with his hijabed wife and mewing toddler, dude was perfectly groomed, with each black hair impossibly sculpted.

What can I tell you, I love fried chicken, so Chicken Company is the best restaurant in the world. “EAT CHICKEN CO AS IF YOU WERE TO DIE TOMORROW,” blares an English diktat on its wall. Don’t be fooled by its formica, fast-food harshness, or the polyester outfits of its associates, this is fine dining, sez moi.

Eating cheap fried chicken on a bridge under a slight drizzle in New Orleans has to be one of my most satisfying memories. Travel worn, I was a mess.

Granted, Chicken Company’s rice, roll and french fries are rather blasé, but, doggone it, perfection must always be tempered, tinted or farted upon by at least a smear of crap, to remind us we’re still on earth.

Draped along the Mediterranean, Beirut is a legendary city with Roman, Crusader and Ottoman ruins, French colonial buildings and dozens of bars with history, thus character, so I should be elated, but I’m in a serious funk, man, because this elegant place is so sadistically degraded. The last time I felt this way was in Kiev in 2016, because Ukraine, too, was going through war and economic collapse.

There are too many beggars here. Men, women, old, young, some trailing kids or lugging a baby, they are all neatly dressed, thus still dignified. Most know only one English phrase, “one thousand,” meaning 66 cents at the official rate, but just 15 cents in purchasing value. The cheapest sandwich costs 4,000.

After I had already given a woman several thousands, she hounded me for two more blocks, tugging my arm at times, until I gave a bit more. Today’s Beirut reminds me of Saigon two decades ago.

Wandering around, boys under ten try to sell stems of flowers. Teenaged boys offer shoeshines with a soft-spoken “please” in English. Old men and women push facial tissues to cars at intersections. Near the bus and van terminal, I walked by a little girl sitting by herself, on cardboard. On a leafy median strip facing a hospital, I encountered a black African mother, with two kids, relaxing on stacked mattresses, their home.

Even the well-heeled are being squeezed. With capital controls, only so much can be withdrawn each week. Since this causes all sorts of problems, some have vented their rage on banks. Earlier this year, dozens in Beirut, Sidon and Tripoli were torched, so now, many banks are boarded up, with just a door slot, or even steel plated. These flat surfaces only invite more angry graffiti, and look at this smashed ATM, with red paint splattered on it. The handsome central bank is defaced with black curses, some quite high up, which means the vandal had to climb on its steel grills, perhaps. Its two surveillance cameras failed to deter.

Armed with assault rifles, soldiers guard government buildings, embassies and even some banks, mosques and churches. They man roadblocks. Armored vehicles are casually parked at certain corners. After a while, you hardly notice the concrete barriers, concrete sentry boxes, concrete pill boxes, anti-tank barriers, boom barriers and razor barb wire, for they’re just part of this urbanscape, along with the trendy cafes and hipster bars. Steel, concrete or plastic barriers are arrayed in front of buildings or stores to shoo away car bombs.

At the Al-Omari Grand Mosque, I stared at a pushed-in window, with its aluminum frame concave, its glasses broken, and several of its wooden panels, with their cool, modernist slits, simply blown away. Before it was converted into a mosque in 1291, this was a church built by Crusaders in the 11th century.

The port explosion four months ago damaged thousands of homes and businesses, including 165 hotels, with most still not reopened. At the five-star Le Gray, there’s a large banner, “STANDING STRONG / TOGETHER WE SHALL RISE AGAIN / SEE YOU SOON.” Most nearby luxury shops are shuttered. Entire streets are barricaded by razor wire-topped concrete slabs, to keep out looters. The misleadingly-named Beirut Souks shopping center is a ghost town. The poorest can’t even replace their blasted doors.

In all of Lebanon, there was just one Vietnamese restaurant, Le Hanoi, so I called, just to make sure it was still open, but all I heard was recorded piano music.

Days later, I found myself walking in that direction, so why not, I kept going, even under a slackening hailstorm. Drenched, I was finally at that address, but Le Hanoi was still awol, so I called again. Presto, a man answered!

“Are you open today, brother?” I said in Vietnamese.

“Yes, we are.”

Wonderful! I beamed. “I’m standing right at the corner, but I don’t see your restaurant.”

Oddly, he said nothing for several seconds. When I heard a man’s voice again, I repeated, “I’m at the corner, brother, but I don’t see your restaurant.”

“Wrong number,” this second man said in English.

“Oh, I’m sorry!”

Traveling is not just a shifting of the body, but a reorientation of the mind, so here in Lebanon, I can’t help but think about Islam, because I’m surrounded by Muslims, and the fajr call to prayer wakes me each dawn.

Iran’s most advanced missiles are called Fajr, by the way, a mere coincidence, I’m sure. Dispatched to Hezbollah, they have been used to rouse Jews.

Before Lebanon, I was in North Macedonia, and there, my friend Alex would refer to Muslim calls to prayer as “Tarzan five times a day.” As a Christian, Alex resents Muslim encroachment onto his physical or mental space. There is a turf war there, with churches and mosques springing up to assert each camp’s territories. Some old churches are even marked by new giant crosses to declare, “We’re still here.”

In 2016, Israel banned three East Jerusalem mosques from broadcasting their fajr calls to prayer. Netanyahu explained, “I cannot count the times—they are simply too numerous—that citizens have turned to me from all parts of Israeli society, from all religions, with complaints about the noise and suffering caused to them by the excessive noise coming to them from the public address systems of houses of prayer.”

Being in Lebanon forces me to think even harder about Israel, naturally, and not just because Jewish jets fly over my head several times a day. For two generations already, Lebanon has been warped and menaced by Jews, when not outright destroyed by them, with its cities bombed and civilians massacred. In every village or neighborhood, there are public portraits of men, mostly young, who died fighting Jews, and the closer you get to Occupied Palestine, the more numerous these faces appear.

Once the jewel of the Middle East, Beirut is still dynamic, incredibly, though much battered, with Beirutshima the latest assault against it. Gloating over their likely handiwork, Jews rejoiced at that calamity. As with the Holocaust and 9/11, the truth will come out, because it can’t be smothered forever by Jews with their meaningless charge of “anti-Semitism.”

There is no buffer zone between Israel and Lebanon, just a concrete wall or, even more incredibly, a wire fence. From Lebanon, I can see Jewish farms, orchards and houses, but no soldiers, or even people, just a yellow tractor moving in the distance.

At these dicey settlements, the laborers tend to be dark Ethiopians and Yemenis, for Ashkenazim just aren’t desperate enough, though they will be soon, God willing. With a second passport, many are already prepared to become your neighbors.

On the Lebanese side, houses, shops and cafes rush right up to the border. As Jews keep out of sight, Lebanese go on with life.

The border wall is filled with murals and graffiti, with several depictions of Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock, and there’s even a model of it at a traffic circle, next to the wall. A smoking tank painted by “Sara” is accompanied by this taunt, “Merkava / Pride of Israel.” There’s a portrait of a saluting Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. In southern Lebanon, this Shiite Party of God is the de facto government.

In Aadaysit Marjaayoun, there’s a billboard showing the Iraqi Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the Iranian Qasem Soleimani and the Lebanese Imad Mughniyeh. The first two were assassinated by the USA, the last by Israel. The Jewish state is a stone’s throw away.

Even standing on tiptoes, I can’t see Jerusalem. I’m heartbroken. I came to Lebanon primarily to board a cheap van from Sidon to Jerusalem, and inshallah, perhaps that can still happen, and not next year but by Christmas.

In 621, Mohammed was carried from Mecca to Jerusalem by a buraq, a winged animal that’s smaller than a mule and larger than a donkey. As if that isn’t cool enough, that same night

Mohammed also met Adam, Idris, Moses, Jesus, Abraham and Allah Himself, on different tiers of heaven. (God was on the 7th floor.)

Mosh’s conduct is most fascinating. When Mohammed told Moses that Allah had commanded 50 daily prayers for Islam, the Jew boss urged the first Muslim to haggle it down to 25, then five, but even that was deemed too onerous, so go back and Jew Allah some more, Mosh urged. Mohammed couldn’t do it, “Now I feel shy of asking my Lord again.”

In Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky mentions an Ivan Kramskoi painting, “The Contemplator,” with its solitary figure standing in the cold, transfixed.

The master then riffs, “If you nudged him, he would give a start and look at you as if he had just woken up, but without understanding anything. It’s true that he would come to himself at once, and yet, if he were asked what he had been thinking about while standing there, he would most likely not remember, but would most likely keep hidden away in himself the impression he had been under while contemplating. These impressions are dear to him, and he is most likely storing them up imperceptibly and even without realizing it—why and what for, he does not know either; perhaps suddenly, having stored up his impressions over many years, he will drop everything and wander off to Jerusalem to save his soul, or perhaps he will suddenly burn down his native village, or perhaps he will do both.”

After endless contemplation, and a lifetime of hoarding impressions, the thoughtful man springs into action by destroying his past and going to Jerusalem, where he will be saved, or so he thinks. According to the Midrash, God Himself must go there before entering heaven, “I will not come into the city of Jerusalem that is above until I first come into the city of Jerusalem that is below.” Is there a greater geographical idée fixe?

After trekking 2,000 miles, 13,000 Crusaders reached Jerusalem in 1099. After an eight-day siege, they entered it to slaughter roughly 40,000 Muslims, Jews and even Christians. Kill them all and so forth.