While on my recent travels through Egypt during the "revolutions", I met up with an old Goruguayan alumnus of Hernia High School that I haven't seen in over a decade, Abdullah Jafaffrey. He lives in the heart of Cairo. He married an Egyptian woman almost as long ago and took up residence overseas immediately.
When at school with him, I remember how he obsessed over Egypt. He listened to The Bangles constantly, grew a ridiculous Pharaoh beard and even became a notorious slave with a penchant for whipping. He helped my father build the extension. And we didn't even pay him!
He loved everything about Egypt. But he could never go. His parents could never afford to even take him to Gorway let alone out of Goruguay. So there he would sit after school, miserable, in his sandpit. Aged 17. Dreaming of his foreign destiny.
As he grew into an adult and took his first job, he raked in the cash as a race promoter at the Fistanbul speedway. But he raped himself financially, with his Egyptian obsession and multiple pyramid scheme memberships.
My old friend was to find success ultimately when he saved his future wife from choking at a 2 Michelin-Starfished restaurant. They were at opposite ends of the room as she took her third mouthful of hake. As she spluttered and turned blue, Abdullah was swift to her rescue and punched her in the belly to double her over and cause the hake to go back to the lake. Its called the Heimfist Maneuver. Its quite famous.
Anyway it turns out she was an Egyptian horse wrestler of notable wealth. He cringingly jokes now that they met over an "a-sphynx-iation".
So his dreams were played out for real?
Almost. You see his obsession with Egypt is rooted in an ancient story.
The story goes that the very first Pharaoh was from Goruguay. He was a mystical man of magic who according to legend believed he had brought back to life the corpse of a deceased and even more ancient, and fossilised coelocanth. The coelocanth was of impressive magnitude. The size of a modern bungalow perhaps. It appeared killed in battle by some mighty jaws.
He did so by casting a magic spell that was given as a divine gift one gloriously sunny day, through the medium of clouds-that-look-like-things.
Regardless.. the coelocanth is written to have taken him to Egypt. On the journey it allegedly told him the secrets of the laws of the dead before turning upside down to show off his now twice-dead belly off the coast of Africa.
The unnamed mage took his new coelocanthic knowledge and used it to bring scavenger-ravaged corpses in the desert back to life and carry him to his destiny.
He reached a city, razed to the ground. Dead people everywhere. Something told him this must be the place for him.
He took the darkness in his brain and cast the spell.. but nothing happened. He could not reanimate the people who he foresaw as the workmen of his new palace.
After many days of frustrating spell-casting, he was met by the cause of the initial destruction.
The army of Aldo had arrived and imprisoned the Son of Goruguay.
The most ancient cuneiform tablet is a bit sketchy at this point. But scholars say that on his imprisonment, the Son of Goruguay continued to cast magic, trying to raise some other dead prisoners but failed. It was not until the 5th day, when he was mercifully fed, that the tide and realisation began to happen.
The guards served him a camel beak. It didn't look very nice. It was very furry and raw. It still had teeth and stuff. Not especially appetising.
Even after 4 days he still wasn't so desperately ravenous that he would eat such a thing.
He did however keep it.
He was to bide his time until the guards changed. And when they did, he placed the camel beak onto his own face and told the new henchmen that there was some mistake. That he was not a prisoner. The guards checked their lists and sure enough, there was no record of a Mister Camelbeak. So they let him out.
But one guard saw that the beak was a ruse, and challenged him. In the excitement he was slain by his own initiative and in desperation, the Son of Goruguay uttered one more time, a spell dictating a law of the dead.
He gazed at the dead guard, but nothing..
And then in a moment of bizarre intensity, the camel beak flew from his face and gored through the remaining guards like some kind of goaty piranha..
Had he brought back a dead camel face from the afterlife??
Many an enemy he slew with his mighty beak.
The Son of Goruguay took a rest. His anxiety relief had made him bleed with hunger. But there was nothing except the deadly camel extract, and that looked a bit too lively to enjoy.
So he cooked up a few guards and shamelessly cannibalised them.
Aldo appeared. Fat and mighty.
He had brought with him an enormous army of 10,000 Aldrones to destroy this one awesome Goruguayan. They set upon him quickly with sticks and a boomerang.
They smashed his camelly friend to pieces in moments.
The Son of Goruguay tried to reanimate his beak with the incantations.. but it was too mangled for any real damage.
And when all seemed lost.. when Aldo himself held the boomerang to the throat of Goruguay's son..
The leftovers from the cannibal cuisine sprang to life and annihilated Aldo and all 10,000 Aldrones.
The Son of Goruguay sat with his recycled allies in victory. He realised two things.
Firstly, he had not brought anything back to life. Not ever.
His magic released spirits from another dimension that possessed the bodies of all these creatures.
And second, and most importantly.. the vessels of possession had to be food..
The cannibal Son of Goruguay went on to bite many dead Egyptians, and build a mighty conurbation with central (and massive) pyramid. He passed on his knowledge in a book called the Necronomnomnomicon, but this was his downfall.
It was used against him and he was overthrown by a flat bread pocket, containing wildebeest meat.
Well-meaning forces tried to destroy the book, but it appeared impossible. It was thereby according to legend, entombed at a secret location and watched over by the Egyptian Guards of Goruguay for centuries.
Anyway.. I digress..
So I am here with my old schoolfriend Abdullah Jafaffrey. The one who obsesses over the Necronomnomnomicon.
Who obsesses over it while living in Cairo during the revolution.
Who hates Mubarak.
I've seen a lot of stumbling, bleeding people out there. And Mubarak is gone...!
Abdullah Jaffafrey lives in a pyramid-shaped mansion he says he built himself in the richest part of Cairo. He never goes hungry, he is never short of money, he has the woman of his dreams and twenty seven children. His wife doesn't work.
Jafaffrey himself hasn't been to work in many years..
I asked him the question. He said no.
I asked him if he remembers that time I didn't tell anyone at school that he'd peed his pants, and left a puddle under his desk.
He showed me the cover.
I intend to go back next summer and photocopy a few pages when he's asleep.
