The Last Bull of Cairo

James stood on the balcony of the Marriott, nursing his third scotch and watching the orange sunset bleed across the Nile. Below, Cairo's chaotic symphony of car horns and street vendors drifted up—sounds that should have felt foreign after three weeks in this ancient city for the biggest merger of his career. Instead, they'd become the soundtrack to his unraveling.

Forty-seven years old, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt something genuine. His marriage existed in the polite exchanges between business trips. His daughter called only when she needed money. And here he was, closing the deal that would make him partner—a title he'd spent two decades chasing like some mythical prize.

"You look like a man who's forgotten the question," a voice said behind him.

James turned. An Egyptian woman in her sixties stood there, holding a tray of small clay figures. Hotel staff, probably, though she carried herself like someone who'd watched empires rise and fall.

"Excuse me?"

"The sphinx," she said, setting down the tray. "Tourists come to take pictures. But the real power isn't the monster—it's the riddle. Ask the wrong question, and you never reach the answer you need."

James almost laughed. A philosophy lecture from hotel help. But something in her eyes stopped him—the weight of something seen and survived.

"What's your question?" she asked.

He stared at his reflection in the glass doors. "I don't know."

She picked up a small statue—a bull, powerful and poised, horns tilted toward something unseen. "In my village, we believe the bull represents the part of us that refuses to be tamed. The part that knows what it wants and takes it." She pressed it into his hand. "Maybe you've been answering someone else's questions."

The clay was warm, as if it had been waiting. James thought about the merger documents in his room, the partnership vote next week, the emails from his wife asking when he'd be home. The life he'd built so carefully that he'd forgotten to ask if it was the one he actually wanted.

"How much?" he asked, reaching for his wallet.

"Gift," she said, already walking away. "Some riddles you have to solve yourself."

James stood alone as the last light faded from the sky, the bull heavy in his palm. For the first time in twenty years, he didn't reach for his phone to check the market. He just stood there, finally allowing himself to ask a question that had been waiting all along: what if it wasn't too late to want something real?