MY SON IS A PROPHET; I'M JUST A NAMELESS BEING

Time? says the taxi driver. I don't know, I say, one hour, two, maybe three ... Inshallah! says the taxi driver and I turn my back upon him and follow the ragged someone through a narrow fence and further into the Cargo Village, which isn't a village, but an endless grey dusty desert crossed by random roads or tracks and scattered with walls and fences and huge grey concrete structures, and somewhere in this in-between, behind one of these walls in one of these concrete buildings the supposed and to the Arabs yet unseen statue of the Prophet Muhammad is kept in his box under surveillance of the Egyptian State Security Service or the Egyptian customs, waiting for me to free and finally destroy him. Inshallah! I wonder if I will ever see that taxi driver again; or my son, who bears the name of a prophet.

We enter a huge and nameless building, nothing but halls, stairways and corridors, and in a corner a tiny office stuffed with a table and three men waiting for the return of the 11th Imam. The wall behind the chief waiter is covered with awards and certificates, this man and in particular this tiny office seems to have won countless international cargo awards and having been constantly praised by Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France, all the old colonial birds. I show him the papers that I have been given, invoices and arrival notes; I am looking for a Mister Mahmoud at Egytrans, The International Export Center Room, No. 101. The awarded awaiting releases a big sigh and rises up and tells me to sit down and picks up the phony part of an old fax-machine from the time of the early Pharaos and calls someone and so on and so on ... we cross other sunbeaten and dusty in-betweens, enter buildings and walk down corridors and finally suddenly here we are, in front of the door to Room No. 101.

I seem to be the long-awaited. A large office, two lines of desks, everyone looks up, and in the middle of the room a glass box with a huge desk and a deep chair, empty since the days of the prophet and Ron L. Hubbard. I present myself, the special envoy of the infidel north. Everyone nods and politely smiles and shows or shovels me into the glass box. But this is a misunderstanding, that's what it is all about. I'm not the Prophet, neither is he, so I just sit down in one of the three chairs in front of the desk. The film crew silently takes place in the other and Mr. Mahmoud in the third, and as the manager of the Customs Clearance who doesn't speak a word English finally enters there is no choice left. And so he sits down in the deep leather throne.

First of all I have to make it clear. This is the reason why I have come all the way from the far north down to Egypt's land: Ages or almost two months ago my contractors up there shipped of a wooden box to Egypt. In the box was a statue cast in pale plaster, the embodiment of Identity and the State Citizen, who was meant to be exhibited in public in a Cairo Culture Center lying on his deathbed and finally dying there in the heart of the Arabian and Islamic civilisation. But at the arrival in Cairo Airport the customs withheld it for weeks claiming this and that, and when they finally decided to release the box and let it be picked up by the addressee, the director of that Culture Center, let's call him Mr. M, they opened the box and then they saw ... yes what did they see? That is the question. Not to be or not to be, but: What on earth is this being?

The Egyptian customs officers immediately called the Egyptian National Security Service, let's call them the NS, and the NS came and they saw and they immediately called the addressee, Mr. M, and asked him to come, and he came and they kept him for two days, and when they finally released him he called my contractors and told them that he had been interrogated for two long days although the questions were very few and always the same: What is this and what is it supposed to mean? But the statue said nothing, and so they had to answer: Satanism! From that rotten state of Denmark! Yet another insult against Islam and the Muslims! A statue of the Profet Muhammad! Why do you want to exhibit it here in Cairo? they asked Mister M., and are you really a true Muslim? Are you a true Muslim? Are you a true Muslim? Or are you a disbeliever? And the answer was: You have only two ways out of this: Either you return it to Denmark, or you destroy it here in the airport.     

This is a misunderstanding, I say to the two Egyptian men in the glass box. Please turn off! Mr. Mahmoud says, and the film crew looks at me and I nod and she turns of the big camera or at least puts it aside, and so we are left with the two micro cameras, the one in my belt, the other hanging like a one-eyed amethyst in the lace around her neck.

We have sent down a box with a statue, I say, the Statue of Identity and the State Citizen. Or so we thought. But in the eyes of the Egyptian National Security, I say, it proved to be the statue of the Profet Muhammad. It is my work, I admit, I have made this statue, and not just with my own two hands, but with my entire body, and so I have come all the way down to Egypt to prove with my own body that this is not the statue of the Profet Muhammad, it is just me, I say. Of course! says Mr. Mahmoud and wavers his hand in the damp air in the glass box, we don't think this is the statue of the Profet or anything political, we, the Egyptians are very friendly people, and in every country there are good and bad people, but we, the Egyptian people are all very friendly. Of course, I say, of course, this is all a misunderstanding! And I take out a black box, a little coffin or shrine at the size of a cigar box, and I open it, and there, on a white silk cloth and covered by two thin silk gloves lies a little hammer. So please, I say, will you take me to the customs and ask them to let me open the box and take out the statue and destroy it with this hammer?

Oh, says Mr. Mahmoud and looks at his throned colleague, the stand-in for Ron L. Hubbard, and this Egyptian Ron L. delivers a long speech in Arabic, and finally Mr. Mahmoud nods and shakes his head. Impossible, he says, the box with the statue is in the customs, and you cannot, ever, get access to that place.

And what if we go to the National Security and ask them to take it out in somewhere in-between? You mean somewhere, some room, which is not the customs, but also not really inside Egypt? says Mr. Mahmoud. Exactly, I say, somewhere in-between. Mr. Mahmoud looks at the local Ron L. and the local Ron L. delivers another long speech, and Mr. Mahmoud nods and shakes his head. The problem is, he says, the box does not belong to you anymore, it belongs to Mr. M, it is his name on the papers, and so he is the only one who can ask for the box, but Mr. M. already from the very beginning rejected this box and asked the National Security to send it back, he never gave the National Security a chance to propose any alternative. Is this true? I ask. And of course it is true. Everyone in this story speaks the truth, the truth and nothing but the truth, no doubt about that, but there are just so many of them, so many truths spoken, and none of them seem to agree. I never met Mr. M, I say, I only spoke to him on the phone, and on the phone he told me that he had been interrogated for two days, and that finally they told him, that he would never ever get the box out of the customs and into his gallery, and that if he didn't want to get into really big trouble he'd either send back the box or destroy it in the customs. Mister Reda was with him at the National Security, says Mr. Mahmoud and nods at the throned man, and the throned man nods. Maybe Mr. M was afraid that he could not explain to the National Security what is the meaning of this statue, says Mister Mahmoud, and so he rejected it from the beginning, and so the National Security thought, why he don't explain the meaning of this statue, maybe there is something mystical about this statue, and so they decided to keep it and not release it into Egypt. Maybe.

So what do we do now? I say. Mister M has to come and be present with the National Security and approve the destruction of the statue, and also the National Security and some environmental organisation has to be present and to approve. Some environmental organisation?! I say. Yes, says Mister Mahmoud. But first of all, he says, you have to prove that you are director of that company. Me? I say. Yes, says Mister Mahmoud, can you prove that? Yes, I say, or ... well ... no. How do you want me to prove that? Ask them to send some approval letter. Who? I say. Your company, says Mister Mahmoud. Tomorrow is holidays, but then Saturday you come with Mr. M and then we go to the customs and ask them to take us to National Security. Okay, I say, Okay ...