NEEDLING

THE ALEXANDRIAN MYSTERY

Today I had three rooms at the hotel with Egyptian Copts. One of them asked me if I could find the Coptic Orthodox church in Paris. Apparently there’s a famous priest who preaches there. He told me the name of the priest. I found the church and the phone number for him. It’s far outside of Paris, though, and I’m not sure how he’s going to get himself there. There’s pictures of the priest shaking hands with Pope John Paul, with the French president Chirac, with Italian prime minister Berlusconi. The five Egyptians are not only Coptic, they’re also cops in Cairo, even though they look like normal forty to fifty something a bit overweight dads out on holiday… which is certainly the case unless you have an over-active imagination and nothing to do for twelve hours straight. Other than the address and phone number of the church, they also wanted to know where they could buy scuba-diving gear and remote-control toy boats. The one fellow who has the room to himself… they have three rooms : two twins and one single... The one guys who gets the single, he’s the one that spoke to me, told me he was Coptic and so on. I’ve never met a Coptic person that I know of, and there’s something mysterious about it to me. Maybe it’s because it’s one of the oldest organized Christian church in existence, that they have the oldest monasteries around, that they’re from Egypt, or probably because I don’t know anything about them. I don’t know. Anyway, there’s got to be a story in here somewhere. Some mystery that links one back to the burning of the famous library in Alexandria to some murder in the Parisian banlieue.
“I’ve always wanted to visit the monasteries there,” I said.
“You know about the monasteries?”
“I know… I know… not really, I don’t know anything except that they seem mysterious to me, being that they are some of the oldest monasteries in the Christian world.”
“You come to Egypt, there’s no problem, I can show you around.”
“Really? I thought they were basically closed to most everybody.”
“Well, they’re closed and they’re not closed. I have lots of friends who are monks, so, if you want, I can show you.”
“Well… thanks… if ever I come to Egypt, I’ll look you up.”
In the mean time, I spent the afternoon looking up addresses for them while they were out strolling about the city. Seems like I got gipped in the process. Well... there was nobody at the hotel, and it gave me something to do. It also got my curiosity going. I think I might go pay a visit to the church myself, to see the famous priest in action.