To understand Egypt, you need to approach it from the desert. With unlimited time, I would encourage a visitor to start with a circuit of the oases to the West, spending endless hours across rough roads through the sands to the main oases, with some time in the White Desert. If that is too much to manage, take the new weekly flight to Dakhla, the largest of the oases, take a long day trip to the White Desert, visit the old town in Al Qsar and the "gardens" nearby, making careful note of how the greenery starts and stops arbitrarily, wherever the water lies. The next day, take the 7 hour long drive to Luxor. While there is a major oasis en route, the greenery disappears quickly as you drive through mile after mile of wasteland. You are in a car - a van, more likely, and it is air conditioned and perking along probably at the 60 km/hour speed limit. Your driver is doing the work and you have nothing to do but look out the window or, when that gets too monotonous, stretch out on your seat and close your eyes. When you open them, 30 minutes or 1 hour later, you will still be in the sands.
Maybe the vista will have changed - rocky outcroppings, blackened sand, scrub or golden sand flat, as far as the eye can see. But it is all wasteland where there is no evidence of human habitation other than the car that infrequently passes you on the road or the ever-present security check points. But beyond that, nothing.
After 6 1/2 hours, the traffic increases and you start to see evidence of life, followed by sleepy villages in the characteristic cubic format of brick houses. You will see a man herding goats. A couple of donkies under a tree. Some turbaned men in dusty robes.
And suddently, it is all green. Not the bits and pieces of green of the oasis, but a solid block of green, interspersed with palm trees and houses. And you start to see water - a canal. And then, of course, the Nile, which makes all of this possible. Now controlled by dams, which prevent its annual floods, it creates the greenery and concentration of people that you see all around you.
Most tourists come to Luxor the other way - flying from Cairo or on a cruise ship along the Nile. They look at the green ribbon on the map and think "this is Egypt" - which is true - but it is much truer when you understand exeperientaly how magical it is rising up from the sands. And I am in a car, not on a camel or a donkey, spending weeks or months traveling almost 600 km.
To see the Nile and the riches it creates after the desert is to have your understanding of Egypt changed, corrected, made more primal.
Arrival
My body lies over the ocean,
My body lies over the sea,
My body lies over the ocean
Please bring back NY time to me.
Bring back, bring back
Bring back my caffine to me...
Ah, the joys of jet lag.
It doesn't matter how many drugs you take to sleep on the plane.
It doesn't matter how many drugs you take to sleep upon arrival.
Your body won't be fooled.
It will be oddly tired upon awakening and then perk up when it is 9AM in New York.
It makes one long for slow boats to Suez.
And winter storms at sea. And sea sickness.
Maybe not so much.
In any case, after a mind boggling confusing flight, on United, which was really Lufthansa except that it was cheaper on United but you couldn't book seats or check in because it was Lufthansa, I got spat out the other end of the time tunnel that is international travel. People ask me how long and are surprised that I don't know. I just get on a plane, get off and change when they tell me too, get off that one and realize that I'm...somewhere. Which is also where the car that is supposed to meet me is - somewhere, but not at the airport. And Cairo doesn't have one of those neat book a taxi here booths, so it is down the stairs to flight with the touts and the taxi drivers. Anyone quoting prices in dollars isn't driving me anywhere so finally an old guy quotes a reasonable price in Egyptian pounds and leads me to a taxi... that has another passenger in it.
Returning from 6 months in Alberta, Canada, where her children live, she's fled the cold for Cairo - a transcontinental snow bird born of the migrations that have split families across the globe, but now with the ability to go visit, which they do. I ask her what her favorite place in Cairo is and she says "the pyramids." No, your personal favorite place. It is a military monument - then she says she was in the war and, when I ask as what, she says "an Admiral" Sp much for stereotypes of 50ish Egyptian women modestly dressed.
As the driver helps her with her bag, another woman gets into the cab. OK, I think, now where? Just up the street, she says goodbye and off I go to downtown Cairo. Which is sort of when it hits me - CAIRO - as I look out the window with a big grin, watching the green lights of Islam, the stores, the minarets. Cairo.
You see, I am oddly jaded about travel. I love to do it, but, because I have done it so much, I don't get excited the way other people do. In fact, I am always surprised at how little anticipation I feel and how mechanical my preparations are - high tech clothing, check, shawls, check, electronics, check... I really have a routine. But sometimes things change.
Take this trip. I almost didn't.
Normally I leave NY on a Thursday night, to avoid Friday night craziness at the airport and to save some money, and I return to NY on a Friday, to give myself two days to get over the worst of the jet lag. So I kept telling everyone that I was leaving on Thursday, October 28, as I obsessively finished up the details for the bathroom renovation that would happen while I was away. Until I sat down to put the finishing touches on my printed itinerary and realized... the 28th is a Wednesday, not a Thursday. So butt got kicked into high gear. Not that I wasn't ready - I was - but I wasn't ready enough. Panic and excessively high activity and a huge sigh of relief that I noticed in time. If you think dreams of sleeping through an exam are nasty, just imagine missing your flight because you got the day wrong.
I know that it is going to happen - when I went to Toronto over the summer, I was deeply concerned that I was going to forget. I didn't - but I did manage to screw up the hostel we were staying at. No wonder the guy at the desk had no record of the reservation. At least the bill for the first night at the RIGHT hostel wasn't expensive.
See what I mean?
In any case, I am in Cairo and, having discovered the right combination of meds, in reasonable shape. I have conversations with my doctor that go something like "OK, I take a sleeping tablet. And some melatonin. What else can I take and be sure that I will wake up in the morning, which is the measure of success in all of this? The answer, BTW, is a shocking pink generic Benadryl. I bet the FDA hasn't tested this combo for long term effects - but, then, they haven't really tested anything long enough so, for now, I am reasonably rested and IN CAIRO.
The ATM by my hotel gladly accepts my bank card and I am delighted that I took the usual pre-departure "security" precautions insisted on by my banks. To wit. Call the credit card company. If it is Amex, you can't call more than 30 days before your return home because their computer won't store it. I guess 6 week vacations aren't allowed. The range of questions "for your own security, mam" is endless - prior addresses (but I've lived HERE for decades, and you noted that I was using my registered phone number), questions about my ancestry, about every identification number imaginable, about places real and places unknown. How much will I spend (which is easy for Amex - not much, because no one wants to pay the fees), so that I PROBABLY won't have a problem. But now, the nice machine spits out 3,000 Egyptian pounds - about $60 - and I am good to go, with cash and my brand new Schwab card that doesn't charge a fee for purchases abroad (but which does charge a minimum of $10 for each cash advance, so I am very happy that my bank card works).
I decide to take it slow, since I have about 5 days more in Egypt than I really need. So the first day, Friday, I decide to go to the Egyptian Museum and commune with Tut.
Now the guidebook says to go early or late, thereby missing the hordes of tour groups. The guidebook lies. The hordes are there when the museum opens, with their bright blue buttons, group #1 and group #2, probably off of some cruise ship, for their half day in Cairo.
I flee upstairs, which is, of course, where they all are, because there lies Tut. Don't tell me how you saw it at the Met years ago. THEY DON'T LET THE GOOD STUFF TRAVEL. I mean, would you lend someone a 300 lb gold inner casket? And the good stuff really, really, is good. Alabaster. Inlaid semi-precious stones. Astonishing, amazing things.
Tour groups, being what they are, they remain in the main galleries, leaving the side ones absolutely empty. Imagine a room with walls lined with statues of the gods of Egypt. All of them, mostly tiny, statues of the same gods, repeated. Some look like Mezzo-American dieties. Enough gods to give the Hindus pause. And NO ONE is in these rooms.
I think back to my childhood, rainy days at the Brooklyn Museum, which has an excellent collection of Egyptian art. Growing up with Egyptian art. And now, these many decades later, in Egypt, seeing Old and Middle and New Kingdom art. Far too much to comprehend. And, for all that here, the knowledge that the best stuff is gone. Not to Berlin or Paris or New York, but stolen by grave robbers thousands of years ago, during the time of the Pharaohs. They tried, they hid their tombs. But when you think about how many people were involved in building the tombs and creating all the art, there was no possibility that they would remain intact. And they didn't, as generation after generation looted the tombs. We're lucky to have anything left.
After a relatively brief visit to the museum (my nom de guerre is not Phyllis Steen without reason), I am gravely disappointed that there is not a good mueum shop. They should work with the Met to develop and sell some high quality replicas. Instead, you can buy books and postcards - and tourist schlock, from the private store on-premises.
Friday seems like a bad day for Islamic Cairo - and it also seems a bit ambitious for my first day in Cairo - so I walk across a Nile bridge to Zamalek, a residential island in the Nile. I lunch outdoors, in a luxury hotel, enjoying the cool, slightly overcast day, reading a history of Egypt on my iPhone's Kindle app, one of my favorite uses of my iPhone. Yes, I know you can buy a Kindle - I've had a Sony eReader for years - but the iPhone is amazing. I have 5 full length books on it and it weighs but a fraction of the eReader's 9 ounces. If you think that I'm exaggerating the importance of the weight, add it to the daily tourist haul - guidebook, map, bottle of water - and see how you feel after 6 hours - or 6 days. And I keep hoping that I'll find an unsecured WiFi, so I can check email and update the Times. But Egypt is not SE Asia and all connections are secured.
After the first of what I am sure will be a steady diet of lamb kebabs, because salad and pretty much anything cold is forbidden if I value my intestinal track, I wander off in search of some recommended shops. It is the perfect kind of mindless travel for a "get adjusted - you're in no rush" day - especially since none of the addresses I seek are on the map. Cairo is a very large city and maps are... high level. And, alas, only in Roman letters - no Arabic - which is also true of my guidebook - so I need to seek out people who look like they speak English and might know where the streets are. I wander with confidence, because Egyptian friendliness is as legendary as is Islamic hospitality to travelers. And I'm on an island, half of which is taken up by a private club, so I can't get too lost.
Eventually I find a few of the shops, the most obscure of which requires almost an hour of searching but does have magnificent Egyptian cottons - at shockingly high prices. Still, it is a pleasant way to have spent an afternoon and I taxi back to the center of town. I don't expect to buy much - from what I've seen, most things are fairly low quality - and some of it isn't even Egyptian - so I will need to search for places that have been quality handicrafts. I have no expectation of finding any vintage textiles or jewelry - there has simply been too much tourism, for too many years, for anything to be left.
At night, Cairo reminds me of Tehran - long shopping streets thronged with people, rivers of cars making pedestrians dance as thick set women in black sail across, undeterred. Cairo is noisier - the Egyptians seem to love their horns - and the variations in woman's attire more extreme.
At one end are women covered entirely, except for a slit for their eyes. They even wear black gloves. In Cairo, there are only a few, about the same as in some parts of Morocco. Many women wear long robes with head scarfs. Younger women may wear above the knee tunics over slacks with kerchiefs. The young women are the most interesting, walking arm in arm with men - maybe husband, maybe boyfriend - wearing tight tops and bright colored scarves. The most surprising look, which I'd read about (not in relation to Egypt) is the wearing of a skin tight flesh-colored top, with,say, a halter top over that. From a distance, it looks like bare skin, which simply isn't possible for an Egyptian woman in public and is decidedly unwise even for a foreigner. Other women wear stretch tops in a variety of colors with low cut tops over those. And sometimes two brightly colored headscarves that would make an Indian proud. Even those who wear kerchiefs differ - most covering their throat but some wearing them the way ultra-Orthodox Jews do, tied behind their head, covering their ears.
Speaking of Jews, my $25 night is across the street from one of the synagogues of Cairo. It looks like Art Deco but it dates from 1905. When I walked outside this morning, to photograph it, a muscular young man came over and indicated that I could not. I had seen the barricades and the guards in a car, but this is a rare time that I've been prohibited from photographing a civilian building. Oddly, the others were the former American Embassy in Tehran, which was crawling with Revolutionary Guards, and the elevated walk way to Federal Prison behind Police Plaza. But since my windows look down upon the synagogue, I shall have my shot anyhow.
Islamic Cairo
I awoke at the unfriendly hour of 4 AM, wishing that I had taken still more drugs (do you notice a theme here?) and lay-a-bed until the decadent hour of 7, at which time I treated myself to a sumptous breakfast of a hard boiled egg, toast and tea. The joys of traveling. Well, the hotel only costs $25/night and isn't at all bad - clean, well located, quiet, staffed by well meaning but not terribly efficient young men - and most Cairo hotels below the ultra-luxury class got indifferent reviews, so this is not a bad choice.
Eggs are always a good choice because they come handily packed in their own container, making them safe almost anywhere. The same is true of live chicken, generally seen being carried by bound feet. Larger animals are an iffier proposition, as anyone who has ever visited the outdoor meat market in the developing world will attest. There are flies. Lots of flies. There is no refrigeration. It is hot. And it is dusty. Always dusty. So... who wants a hamburger?
So I taxied to a famous mosque and did the ole mosque soft shoe - stop at the door, wrap a scarf around my hair and chest, take off my shoes, hand them to the shoe custodian (or, if there is none, toss them into a mesh bag, because there is no way I'm leaving expensive walking shoes with still more expensive orthodics at the entry. I don't care what deity is being worshiped - it is being worshiped by people. Poor people.)
The mosque was from the 14th or 15th century and lovely. I looked back as I left and realized why the Orientalists painted what they did - it is all just too beautiful in its poetic decay.
And then through the underpass to The Khan, the main tourist market in Cairo - which was still closed.
I walked through the market and finally came to a street filled with wonderful buildings - mostly madrassas (Koranic schools) - and, more surprising, with dozens of young women with drawing tablets in hand, sketching. Most wore clothing that was a bit more modest than those on the streets near my hotel, but one wore a tee shirt with no head scarf and another the full veil - although the glove on her right hand had been removed, so she could draw. It was an enchanting sight, the young women against the old buildings in the morning light.
Finally, the market opened and I walked through it, astonished by the complete junk being sold. Sure, there was the jewelry souk, with gold and silver and stones (including, interestingly, knock offs of SE Asian Hill tribe bracelets), with lovely things if you like jewelry, and a number of antique shops, with very ornate things, but the normal run of goods was just awful.
Now, the problem with Islamic Cairo is that there are so many mosques and madrassas and old mansions and, and, and to see, that it is impossible to know what to see first. So I retreated to the first mosque, saw another nearby, and was plunged into the non-tourist souk of Cairo, the stalls that sell vegetables and butchered meat and the black robes worn by the ample matrons all around me and THOUSANDS of people, conservatively dressed, shopping, in lanes with dusty, unpaved streets where space is shared with motorbikes, horse drawn carts, some with large pieces of ice for sale, and one with only three wheels and dust and dust and dust and people and heat and dust. Even for someone who has visited the souks of Allepo and Jerusalem and Damascus, Fes and Marrakesh, this was pure overload. I had forgotten that Saturday is the second day of the Muslim weekend, so the souk would be especially busy.
Along the way, I passed bales of cotton - which the merchants helpfully pointed out were Egyptian - it does not look like the stuff of luxury, stacked in street side stalls - but, then, neither does the silk used to insulate silk quilts in China.
And, of course, I had left my pollution mask at the hotel because yesterday, a Friday (and thus not a work day for many people), spent in the wealthier part of
Cairo, the air was fine, so I thought that there was no need. But the dust of the road and all it contained (don't ask - see Udaipur, India for graphic details) quickly entered my lungs so desert tonight was an antibiotic bought from the pharmacy down the street in hopes of warding bronchitis off - because I have no doubt that this is a burgeoning bacterial infection, the dust of the souk. My love affair with pharmacies in the developing world goes on, even though this same antibiotic, given wrongly, contributes to the resistance sweeping the world. And it is manufactured in Egypt, which is vastly more comforting than, say, China, where the dust of the souk might be in whatever you buy. But I digress.
I took my scarf and wrapped it across my nose and mouth, the way the Vietnamese do to fend off their pollution. I know that this is ineffective but it seemed worth trying. My taxi driver laughed.
By 2:30 I was back at the hotel, hot, sweaty and exhausted, with the bulk of Islamic Cairo still unseen. I am hoping to change my plans and skip Alexandria, where it has been raining for days, and instead return to Cairo. This will make for a long stay here - about a week - but this is a city with much to see and, on days when jet lag accompanies the poor traveler, an early retreat to the hotel for a shower and a nap takes priority over a long walk to yet another mosque to wrap my head and unwrap my feet. I will come back, probably with a car, hopefully with a driver who knows enough English to identify the sites but who is not a guide intent on jabbering history lessons in my ear or forcing me into shops where he gets a 50% commission.
After my nap, I went to a famous Cairo cafe - to the more atmospheric branch, near my hotel, according to my guidebook. Now, atmospheric does not mean competent, because it took more than an hour to get and pay for tea, and it would have been far longer had I not been, um... a New Yorker. Then a surprisingly good spaghetti dinner at the Swiss restaurant near my hotel (IT ISNT LAMB KEBAB!!!) and now I sit in the hotel lounge, working my netbook so you can travel with me.
It already feels like the antibiotic is working its magic so now let us pray that the heroine of this tale will spend the coming days with Pharoahs and pyramids instead of with Sudafed and tissues.
TV Teaches
There are two English language TV stations in Cairo - one seems to be all Christian prayers, all the time - and odd choice, given the locale - and the other shows old American movies with sub-titles. So I watch Minority Report and learn about Egyptian culture during the advertisements. For Chili's restaurants. For McDonald's. With fair skinned announcers (is there any other type in countries where skin tone varies?) and none of the women are veiled.
Therefore, if you ask me what an Egyptian looks like, I can say
- a man in a traditional Egyptian robe
- a man in Western clothes with a black spot on his forehead, bigger than a quarter, from kneeling in prayer at the mosque
- a white man, a black man, a man who looks Brazilian.
- a woman with a colorful headscarf and bright fitted clothes
- a woman with a colorful headscarf and a long denim skirt - just like her observant Israeli cousins
- a woman with a colorful headscarf and a long velveteen robe, generally with silvery decoration
- a woman dressed all in black, except for her eyes
- a woman whose head is uncovered, rarely, and only among the affluent.
I am sure that, as I travel to different parts of Egypt, the mix will change. Upper (southern) Egypt will bring the darker skins of Nubia while the women of the oasis will be more conservatively dressed.
Coptic Cairo
I awoke with only the shadow of a cold and a profound appreciation for broad spectrum antibiotics. Off to visit Old Cairo, the home of the Coptic Christians, a people who have lived in Egypt since Christiantity began. But life does not go well for contemporary Copts - in Middle Egypt, there is such violence by the Fundamentalists that the government tries to keep tourists out entirely.
Even in Cairo, the signs of strain are everywhere - and very old.
First, the entrance to Old Cairo is barricaded - you can go by the Metro but a taxi cannot pass the gate. And then, when you are inside the gate, you discover that the entrance to the heart of the area is down stairs, through a heavy, centuries old wooden gate, and then into the old quarter. So life has not been easy for the Copts for centuries - and with the Copts, in centuries passed, lived the Jews, for there is a synagogue dating from the 6th century in the midst of the churches.
The synagogue is beautiful, with inlaid walls and beautiful ceilings (no photos are allowed). While there is a charity box for the poor, I can't imagine that many Jews remain in Egypt - perhaps the elderly who did not migrate at the time of the '67 war, which forever changed the mix of North African cities.
After wandering into old churches, where services were going on, this being Sunday morning, it was time to visit the "other" great museum in Cairo - the Coptic Museum. It is astonishing. And, unlike the Egyptian Museum, uncrowded, allowing me the opportunity to see the astonishing collection of Coptic textiles, most over one thousand years old, and carvings, and icons, and pottery and wood carving - ceilings and the uniquely Egyptian lattice work over the windows. Apparently, the Copts were historically the masters of that craft - and, apparently, the garbage workers, a fact omitted at the museum.
The guidebook says that 3 hours are required for a thorough visit but I am done in perhaps 90 minutes and, after a brief visit to the Hanging Church, which is the most touristy of the lot, I bid farewell to the Copts.
Since I have an enormous amount of time in Cairo - I just canceled my 2 days in Alexandria, at the end of the trip (it is rainy Mediterranean weather), so I will have almost a week in Cairo, which translates to a few hours sightseeing at the start of each day then a mad taxi ride to some affluent part of the city to find a shop recommended in the guidebook.This is more interesting than it sounds - the drivers invariably get lost, so there is a lot of shouting in Arabic, sometimes at me, in an effort to extort more money for the trip (there are no meters; you bargain before stepping in), to call out for directions to other taxi drivers - sometimes while both are driving (hey, Mom - I found something worse than talking on your cell phone while driving!). I get to see parts of the city that lie far beyond the tourist areas, showing me how the more affluent people in Cairo live - and I invariably get to take long walks down obscure residential streets, searching for the shop, because the driver is so frustrated when they finally find the street - and when I refuse to pay more than we agreed to - that I have to walk until I find the building number. When there is one. And when it isn't in Arabic. The numbers increase VERY slowly, so the walks are long but, invariably, I find the shop. So far, I am underwhelmed by the offerings in the best of the shops. They are better than what is in the Khan, but not very interesting or varied. Bedouin embroideries (bags, cushion covers, dresses, shawls), Siwa embroideries, a surprising amount of Central Asian and Indian embroideries and textiles - in fact, one shop that I was in today was featuring embroidered silks from West Bengal. I guess that, while there is an ancient textile tradition in Egypt, the product is the cloth itself and not its adornment.
In one shop in Dokki, on the Western shore, I find lengths of rayon woven in a village in Egypt whose effect is something like ikat, but it is not hand dyed. Still, I buy a few meters and have it hemmed, since the sizes are raw selvage - and I learned my lesson after India, where I neglected to have two bags turned into cushion covers there and instead paid an unspeakable amount to have them modified by my friendly Korean tailor. So I spend the $4 and will have an ironed, finished length available for me tomorrow.
Then back to Zamelek, the island in the Nile, where I saw pricey Egyptian cotton yesterday. I will have a white on white sheet stitched to shower curtain dimensions and then, hopefully, I will find a tailor somewhere who can add button holes for the shower curtain hooks because I can't begin to imagine what the tailor will charge for than in New York. I am surprised that the saleswoman had the sheet put aside from yesterday - but, then, at these prices, I bet they don't sell too much. I would love to buy a set of the beautifully patterned sheets but they are beyond what I'm willing to spend. I am forever spoiled by the prices at Century 21.
After hanging out at a nearby coffee shop in the cool, windy air, it is time for a taxi back to my hotel. Cairo days start off bright and sunny, but the clouds come in as the day passes - but there is never rain, as the brownness of the buildings and the dust give constant testimony to the lack of rain.
The taxi driver agrees to my offer and barrels off - and then it becomes apparent that he has no idea where the street I requested is - or even which part of the city. He demands almost triple the modest fair. I refuse and we argue in Arabic (him) and English (me) while I refuse to budge. The traffic isn't budging either, because today is Sunday, my first work day in Cairo (remember: Friday = Sunday, Saturday = Saturday?? and Sunday = Monday when you're in an Islamic country) so I am unprepared for the traffic. My pissed off driver hurtles down the road until he needs to slam on the breaks and then we sit in the honking jam. The traffic is bad, but far from the worst I've seen - Bangkok gets that honor. Still, when we get to my street, I give him more than I promised and he is all smiles. Taxis are wonderful theater.
"See the Pyramids Along The Nile..."
Well, sort of along the Nile - not on its banks, you understand. Nearby.
First, to Giza, which is really within Cairo these days - and it is the place every tourist in Egypt goes. The only one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World still standing. etc., etc., etc.
So it is perhaps a metaphor for the state of the Egyptian government that this most famous of sites is so poorly administered.
Take for example, signs. There are almost none. There are pyramids, which you can pretty much figure out, and a variety of stony piles and holes in the ground, with lots of stone surfaces in between. But when you want to find something like the Solar Boats, you're on your own. If you come in at just the right place, there are a couple of signs pointing the way. But none at the pits. And certainly none pointing to the museum. If you ask one of the many Tourist Police gossiping around the site, you learn that they speak only Arabic. One of the local hustlers helpfully points - the wrong way.
OK, you're thinking, who cares about Solar Boats? The Nile makes Egypt green but most people could care less about Green boats. Except these are thousands of years old and the one on display took 14 years to assemble. So the fact that the pits aren't marked, much less having those useful signboards in multiple languages that explain what you're looking at is pretty sad. Until you contemplate the pyramids.
So... you've just schlepped, I don't know, maybe half way 'round the world. Maybe just a short hop down from ole' Europe. But, still, you made an effort. Don't you think the Egyptians should at least meet you half way?
You go to the ticket window at the site and pay your $11, then you walk past the Sphinx, all the ways up to the big pyramid, climb up the steps and prepare to go inside only to discover that... you don't have the supplemental ticket that is required. You need a separate one for each of the pyramids you can enter. Now... there's no sign at the pyramid, there's no way to buy it at the pyramid - your only option is to hike back to the entry gate and start over. Or decide that the guidebook is right and that you really don't like steep, tight, claustrophic spaces under 600 tons of rock.
Not only is the Egyptian government ticking you off, they are depriving themselves of substantial revenue - $20 to go inside.Yes, it said it in the guidebook but I missed that sentence. You'd think they'd ask when they're selling it to you. You'd think they'd point it out somehow. Nope. Well, if this is how they handle a simple task tied to one of the most important sources of revenue for the country, let's speculate on how well they've done over the years when there have been natural catastrophies. Yes, you're right - help was supplied by the mosques, not the government. And we wonder why there is a problem with Fundamentalists - and that's without going into detail about the government we've supported for so many decades (hint: the President is grooming his son for his job).
And then there's the matter of the antiquities themselves, which survived thousands of generations of tomb robbers, and subsequent rulers recycling the stone on your monuments, only to be mis-handled by modern administrators of the site. People can, and do, touch things - carvings, for example. Or entryways. Now, Egypt gets 5 million tourists a year and what do they all go to see?
The morning is cool and sunny, with a brisk wind that whips the sand into small storms. By evening I am covered with it, and feel grit in my teeth. Sand hurts when it hits your face at a good speed.
In any case, I wander around taking happy snappies for a while and then it is off to the next site - Memphis, where the King was nothing compared to the Collosus, slumbering silently over the millenia. And then Sarqqa, a huge site with one of the pyramids that was built when they were still learning how (another is at nearby site), and incredible tombs. You wander about until you're overfull with temples and then end with a stop at the fabulous museum on site - because it is well edited. None of the "we have 2,000 of those" approach at the Egyptian Museum. Here, a carefully selected group of artifacts tell the story of one man and his creation - and what a story it is. Imhotep, the world's first architect - and, according to the text - the world's first project manager whose museum has things like the first carved finial and the first stone doorway and the first ... you get the idea. THE FIRST - ever. Before him, all was reed and mud. He started building in stone. And oh, what buildings he built.
After Saqqua, I make the driver find the tapestry weaving school founded by Ramses Wissa Wassef, an architect who wanted to teach village children a skill and decided upon weaving. The boys were busy working with their fathers so the girls learned and, today, produce beautiful pictures in wool or in cotton. The museum on site contains amazing pieces, some of which took 18 months to weave and which tell varying stories of village life, or an oasis, or, in one case, served as art therapy for a woman whose husband used her sizable earnings to buy another wife. The women have workshops on the site, generally two women to a room, who come and go as they wish. The arrangement sounds like the little I know of a basket weaving cooperative in Botswana, where the women's work is sold on-line, for hundreds of dollars.
My driver has never heard of this place but gamely asks and, when we ultimately find it, follows me inside. I'm not sure that he grasps the difference between this school, which was designed to nurture the creativity of village children while bringing sizable economic benefits to the village, and the various weaving "schools" that line the road. But I spoke at length with the daughter of the founder, who now runs the place, and told her about other conceptually similar endeavors, notably Shrujun in Gujurat, India. Apparently, her daughter is fond of India and has been there several times. She will now try to contact Shrujun's founder, which would be a wonderful relationship to have fostered. While the school has a few works in museums in Britain - the American response was predictably snooty - she, like everyone who tries to generate income through crafts, needs outlets, as the piles of tapestries and now batiks in the school's gallery attest. She won't accept a donation so I buy a catalog, tempted by one of the affordable tiny cotton pieces but aware that I will never display it. ( I just strolled over to Marla Mallett's site, which is where I discovered these, and see that she has picked the simplest and most naive of the cotton pieces. There are far more sophisticated ones for sale. The wool ones, too, are unimpressive - I suppose she wants to keep the prices reasonable, but it is too bad, because the things the workshop produces are far superior). You can see for yourself http://www.wissa-wassef-arts.com/intro.htm
Otherwise,the countryside outside of Cairo is a rural place, with lots of donkeys pulling carts or serving as transport. The women are more conservatively dressed, some with a whipple that comes down to their hands replacing their urban sister's headscarves. There are not many sheep in evidence - as opposed to in Cairo,where someone drove his flock through downtown on my first evening. There are also a fair number of horse drawn carts - including one on the highway back to town, which is a surprising thing to come upon when rounding a curve.
Your Flight Departs From Terminal 3
I had booked a flight to Luxor that departed at a civilized hour - 10:45 AM and left for the airport at 8:45, after confirming that my flight would leave from the new Terminal 3. This seemed important to check because, previously, Terminal 1 was domestic while Terminal 2 was international and now Terminal 3 is... a little of both. So, thinking back on all the horror stories of friends trying to fly home from Delhi airport I thought it best to...check.
The taxi is the Cairo norm for a "black and white" - meter that no one thinks to use, because it hasn't been updated in decades, no rear seat belts, the rear seat covered in thin protective plastic that is far beyond what the word "shredded" could begin to describe. We hurtle down the highway and exit at the airport turnoff. Fortunately, I am paying attention because we're about to miss the next turnoff so we swing wildly right at the last moment.
There are signs to Terminal 1 and to Terminal 2 but none to Terminal 3 - which I notice but my driver does not because, I rapidly conclude, he is illiterate, which only adds to the usual Cairo chaos of taking a taxi anywhere unusual. We drive up to Terminal 2, with me protesting -in English - that the terminal OVER THERE looks awfully new. But he talks to one of the guards, who directs him left and around and soon we are at the exit plaza where the typically bureaucratic toll taker insists that we pay the 5 Pound fee even though he knows that we're going to go out and turn around and come in again.
Which we do, and go through another circuit of the same. There is a Terminal 3 sign somewhere en route to Terminal 2 but then the trail grows cold. I have distinct memories of a similar loop at the West Palm Beach Florida airport where I circled several times before noticing a turnoff that was labeled for rental car return.
In any case, we are getting nowhere fast and I really need to get somewhere soon so I take over, which is problematic because no one involved speaks English. Still, a white haired American screaming tends to command respect. I am pointing madly to the terminal across the way, which appears to be unreachable by car and is clearly Terminal 3.
So down and around we go and then there are barricades and barriers and more fits by moi until we end up somewhere that leads to an escalator to where I need to be.
I note, with dismay, that this is also where Lufthansa leaves from, which means that I will get to repeat this on November 19th - at 1:30 AM. This does not portend happy travels.
I check in and am told that I will be traveling Business Class, which is all very nice but the flight is all of 75 minutes and makes me assume that (1) anyone who buying on-line overseas is, by definition, being screwed on price vs. the locals and (2) tour groups go in the back around here, which I know is true because a bunch of perky and paunchy middle aged blonds play follow the leader to the back.
In addition to my boarding pass, I am given a special pass to the Business Class lounge. I smile appreciatively and think WHAT? It is an hour until the flight leaves, god only knows where the lounge is - and where my gate is. If Anna's Law of Embarking holds true, my gate will be the last gate at the most distant terminal. I know that it isn't statistically possible but it is true - I am ALWAYS schlepping to the end of the beyond.
So off I go through security, which is very interested in my nail clippers. I mime clipping my nails. He mimes slitting his throat. I shake my head no. Once again in Egypt I am very re-assured by the high caliber of security. After all, I SAID that I wouldn't slit anyone's throat, didn't I? He takes my bottle of water and I proceed. Through Gates G down the people-mover to Gates F and my gate.
Eight of us sit in Business Class and, when the flight arrives in Luxor a short while later, we deplane, get on the bus and are whisked towards the terminal, cattle class not being allowed on the special bus. Of course, all this means is that we have a longer wait at the terminal until our baggage arrives - but I quibble. Business Class has been... special.
The hotel driver meets me and we go to a nearby residential neighborhood, which is where my hotel is located. It is run by an Irish woman who moved to Luxor with her adult son and, I soon discovered, his hot pink haired girlfriend. The place is lovely and homey, with the owner playing quite the Irish mother. I have a suite complete with a kitchen - me, who has debated how to repurpose my kitchen at home - gym? closet? - but it is there, along with Orientalist tapestry and a wonderful Egyptian wood dining set.
After I unpack, I wander into town, which is perhaps a 10 minute walk in the 90 something degree heat. November is the start of the "high" season for tourists and the temperatures are reliably below 100 degrees. But it is a dry heat.
My first goal is lunch, so I try to find the places on the map in the guidebook but come up empty. I stop for water and some cookies to keep from starving and notice that, along with ketchup and mustard flavored Doritos (!), this shop sells Twinkies. This is about the last food group that I expected to find in Egypt, let alone across the road from the Luxor Temple, but there it is. The owner over-charges me for the water and cookies and, as I sit there scarfing them down, feels guilty of failing to offer Islamic hospitality to a traveler and hands me a chocolate bar on the way out. It tastes like wax.
After walking back down the street and up the other side, I see nothing that I would be willing to eat until, just ahead, I see that beacon of hope for travelers everywhere - McDonald's!
Before those of you who never really leave home snort with derision, let me explain the role that those international standbys - McDonald's, KFC and Pizza Hut play when you're somewhere funky. The food is recognizable and safe. And, outside of America, with a bit more of a resemblance to real food. I will never forget my delight, when looking for dinner two days upriver in Borneo, to find a KFC right next to my hotel. And that was in the 1980s, but KFC was already deeply ensconced in the Malay soul because the Kuala Lumpur airport was bedecked with KFC banners - as was the building overlooking the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, which also boasts a large Coca Cola sign, if memory serves.
In any case, I join a bunch of other Anglophones inside and order my new favorite - Spicy fried chicken sandwich, plain, i.e., not drenched in mayo, a horrible thought in the tropics, and minus e-coli ridden lettuce. As I chew contentedly, I notice that McDonald's has goodies for sale. A package of assorted toys for $13. McDonald's tee shirts and, in your choice of three colors, terry bath sheets with the word McDonald's and pictures of pyramids and camels. Now, I was looking for something tasteless to go with my being-renovated-as-I-write bathroom, and this, rather than an alabaster Pharaoh's head - or other body part - might be it. Until I glance at the other wall, which is offering tee shirts and matching bath mats with a drawing of a Big Mac that say something along the lines of "you look at me like I'm just meat." O....K.... I wonder what Corporate thinks of this?
Unable to avoid sightseeing any longer, I go out to find the Luxor Temple which should be, by all accounts, right in front of me. And there does seem to be something that seems like an excellent candidate but... in unison now... there is no sign. No "You hare here" poster. So I walk this way - nope, that's a mosque and I don't have a headscarf - and that way, and then back again, but this time along the Corniche where, finally, there is a sign. This in a place whose sole economic engine is tourism.
I buy my ticket and walk through the metal detector, which chirps as the men nearby talk away. The norm in Egypt is (a) metal detector doesn't work or (b) metal detector works but no one cares or (c) x-ray machine works but no one looks at what is being scanned or (d) you place your items on the working x-ray machine, the man says "if you like" and he looks away as your bag goes through, and as you set off the metal detector when you step through. THIS in the city where 47 tourists were killed by terrorists in 1997 and where it took the police one hour to arrive. For those of you who wonder why I stay at small hotels, I can only respond that they're cheaper and more interesting and THEY ARE LESS LIKELY TO BE TARGETS. I mean, absent the recent attack on the UN Guest house in Afghanistan, do you ever hear of terrorists blowing up HOSTELS? No - they go for the ultra - luxury jobs.
All of this reminds me of the current Red Sea terrorist alert, which singles out "destination resorts" on the Red Sea - and the commercials I kept seeing for Beyonce's first appearance in Egypt on November 6. In a Red Sea resort, of course. Now maybe I'm old and cranky but, really, after Mumbai, and Jakarta, and Bali, how can people keep being so careless with their lives? The government has Egypt locked down tight by corrupt and incompetent police and you're going to ignore high terroism alerts for a holiday is a big Red Sea resort. I'll stick with my Irish woman in the back streets of Luxor, thank you.
In any case, into the Temple in the late afternoon light, with tour groups from every point of the globe being led like so many multi-lingual sheep to see this and this but not this. I wander around, seeing the place with my camera. Some of the carvings are astonishingly intact and beautiful, as are the huge lotus columns in the late afternoon light. I meander down the avenue of the Sphinx, with hundreds of small ones along both sides of the path. And the slanting sun picks out the details of the walls and the columns and the statues and bathes them in golden high relief.
As I am leaving, with more buses arriving like clockwork, I notice the deserted outer side of the Temple, facing the Nile. No one is there and the huge wall of inscriptions is illuminated by the sun. I will never understand tour groups, which will favor historically important sites over those that are beautiful at a particular time of the day.
I walk along the Nile, taking pictures of felucas against the rose-tinged sunset, because sometimes taking pictures of pretty sunsets is simply the right thing to do.
It is now 5 PM and I would like a drink somewhere pretty - but the town seems deserted. The bars at the 5 star colonial hotel overlooking the Nile are empty, as are the tourist cafes in the center. Where ARE all the tourists? Tucked away at 5 star hotels somewhere, I suspect. On their buses. Certainly not in town.
Discouraged, I decide to wander the tourist souk, even though I know that I will be hassled and there is nothing to buy. Or even to look at. I have never seen a country where there is nothing remotely tasteful to buy. And this isn't a Manhattan snob's opinion - the Irish woman says the same. The Bedouin embroideries, which normally would interest me, have all the hallmarks of factory production - lifeless, uniform design.
I wander back to my hotel, anticipating a problem crossing the train station because, for some unknown reason, they started cracking down on who enters two weeks ago. I can't help but wonder if someone is planning to blow up a train. But I can't be fearful in the land of the Pharaohs.
The Corner of Street of the Sphinxes and Street of the Tour Buses
It feels like I have been in Egypt forever until I fire up my iPhone at breakfast and discover a bleak message from my contractor - the floor tile, which he needs, um, tomorrow... hasn't been delivered and the plumbing fixture drama is continuing. Back up to my room to get the netbook and I start firing off emails - to the tile saleswoman - and, with a much nastier tone, to the plumbing salesman and his boss. I point out - and firmly believe - that things are falling off their trucks, which is why the packing slips say delivered but they haven't been. Since my contractor and I both think he's jerking us around, the gloves come off and "that thing that rhymes with witch" makes an appearance. My emails to the big bosses bounce back, undelivered, so I try them separately. One brother doesn't clear his mailbox.
Two hours later, I head out for Karnak Temple, the spell broken by realities demands - and my boss wonders why I don't want an international Blackberry to keep up with work emails.
Now, the guidebook advises an early start, before the site is flooded with tour groups. But I'm not a morning person and the time I spent project managing meant that I rolled in at noon to a parking lot filled with tour buses big and small. Well, it turned out that noon was perfect timing, because all the groups were heading out to lunch. This is Persopolis, redux - there, I had the site entirely to myself while here there were knots of tourists, but not the sea that greeted me when I entered.
Speaking of entry, the metal detectors and X ray machines at the entry are entirely unmanned and those at the inner entry unenforced.
The oddest thing about the entry to Karnak are the row of sphinxes - these have ram's heads and hold statutes of ancient men in front of them. I am sure there is some explanation that doesn't revolve around bestiality but I don't know what it is - something else for me to learn.
Soon I am wandering the Temple, struck by how much remains - first carvings and then, when I'm exploring corners that tour groups bypass, I discover paint - ceilings and, here and there, the upper reaches of the walls. I am entranced. The longer I spend, the more I want to stay, wandering here and there, looking at things in the shifting light.
I describe my photography as "picture taking behavior" because I rarely look at the final shots. This description has special resonance because I am reading Temple Gradin's book Thinking In Pictures. She is a high functioning autistic with a PhD who specializes in designing humane systems for handling cattle. Her book talks about the different ways austic minds function - she "thinks in pictures." Thus I reflect upon the difference between me and all the people on tours, with guides or reading from their guidebooks to know where to look. They are focusing on what I call "the history lesson" which interests me not at all. I focus on what has survived and delights my eyes. They are more likely to be verbal thinkers while I,although no slouch for words, am doing exactly what she describes - using the camera to upload images into my memory bank. It is such a different way of perceiving the world.
I enjoy books on cognitive styles because there are ways I can learn and things that I can't, which used to mean I was dumb even though everyone knew that I was really smart. These books explain the differing profiles of how minds work and to encounter similarities here is unexpected. Since the Egyptians used hieroglyphics, a picture language, I wonder how autism manifests itself in countries that use pictorial languages, like China and Japan. But, at the moment, it gives me a new understanding of why I travel the way I do and why the way most people travel is of so little interest to me.
And then there's the history of Egypt I just finished, by a prominent Egyptologist, who mocks the "historical fiction" that passes for fact while pointing out how often someone's name was chiseled out of the rock and replaced by someone elses and that the chronologies make little sense, at best. So I'm not sure what all these guides, who speak with such certainty, actually know. I prefer to have the general idea of it all, formed when I was 10, looking at artifacts in the Brooklyn Museum, now seen where they come from, decades later. I could not have imagined this on those rainy Saturday afternoons. But, then, I could not have imagined most of my life then.
There are no meaningful signs, so I miss the Outdoor Museum (an odd name, since all of Karnak is outdoors). I discover this when I am back in the main building, re-reading the guidebook, so I trek back to the entry, where the guard accuses me of lying that I'd already been in, I offer to show him my photos.
The Museum is, off course, to be found by following the signs to the WC. I pay the separate entry fee (there's no consistency to this) and wander, alone, amongst small, perfect buildings. One has the original paint on most of the figures who are, appropriately, red skinned, this being Upper Egypt, close to Nubia. Other buildings have small scale, beautiful carvings set here and there into the walls - all that remains but...
Finally, hunger drives me from the site at 3PM. There is some part of my brain that connects to the light and shadows and carving and camera until I am intoxicated.
After lunch, I seek out the snack shop in the center of town because it has free WiFi and it is now business hours in New York. The owner of the plumbing supply shop, and his untrustworthy salesman, have responded, so I know that I've done what I can to escalate the case of the missing shower head (I've told the contractor to buy another one if this is going to delay things. Disputing charges on Amex is empowering.)
Of more concern, there is no email from the tile saleswoman, so I send another email, regretting my urgency.
I then wander into McDonald's and discover the murals on the upper floors - one is of Ronald McDonald with the Spinx or some such and I frame it so the real Luxor Temple is part of the shot. You just can't make this stuff up. I also notice a very soft, English language sound track explaining their hygienic food handling processes - which is, of course, the reason I'm here.
Having whiled away some time in a fly free space (flies are the bane of my existence here. They don't care, at all, about DEET,), the drug seeker I am goes back to check email and the tile woman has responded. Now this is important. I tell her my schedule and, by the time I return to my hotel, there is an email scheduling the delivery for tomorrow. WHEW! I so did not want to spend my vacation hasseling suppliers.
The hotel is serving dinner tonight - they don't every night - and I sign on. Soon I am confronting a 3 course, 15 dish feast of mezes, soups and salads, all prepared so a tourist can eat them. I make myself stop and mourn the fact that I can't take the leftovers to my room - there is a refrigerator, after all. I would gladly eat these leftovers for the rest of my time here. Of course, while I eat I am catching up on old Sunday NY Times Magazine articles and the one I am working my way through concerns an experiment on the benefits of calorie restriction. Poor choice.
Go West, Young Man: Thebes
Nothing like an afternoon in the great Thebian necropolis to understand what "hotter than Hell" means - and I am here at the beginning of November, when it is... cool(er).
It is hard to explain the enormous barrenness that is Thebes - hilly wasteland blasted by the sun. It is impossible to imagine men laboring, for centuries, to build and decorate these tombs.
Since the tour groups hit the Valley of the Kings in the morning, I arrived at noon, to an almost empty site and a relentless sun. I am now in full tourist regalia - Quick Wick khaki pants, a slightly over-sized SPF 50 white shirt, with sleeves atypically buttoned at the wrist and collar popped up to protect the back of my neck. And, to complete the look, one of those awful wide-brimmed khaki hats. But, as the Australian government advises, "slip, slap, slop" - slip on a shirt, slap on a hat and slop on sunscreen. Considering that I am fully clothed, it is reasonably cool - or as cool as clothing gets at High Noon in Thebes.
Thebes can't make up its mind what the ticket rules are, so you buy some at the old ticket booth near the Colossi of Mannon and others at the entry to the site. My pockets are stuffed with tickets and small bills because, as is typical of developing countries everywhere, no one has any change. The ATM spits out 200 Pound notes (~$40) which make most locals whine for small bills when they see them. In response, I break 200 pound notes wherever possible, so I have the endless 1 Pound coins needed for tips and access to toilets. The only advantage that Egypt has is that no one cares that the bill has been torn and taped back together or is decidedly raggedly. Money is money, which makes things so much easier.
The Colossi sort of stand there, with ruined faces, by the side of the road, a quick stop en route to more important places. As I am leaving, two huge tour buses pull up. A close one.
Now, for all sorts of good reasons, you're not allowed to take photos inside the tombs - so imagine my surprise when I take a photo of a map of the site which, atypically, not only shows where things are but also their dynasty, how steep the access is and whether a given tomb is wheelchair accessible - and a man bearing a repeating rifle or something stubby, nasty and lethal tells me to hand over my camera. I try to point out to him that there is no prohibition on taking photos outside the tombs, but there are limits to how much you're going to argue with a muscular man with a large weapon in an authoritarian regime. I check my camera as I watch a Russian tour group stroll past, swinging cameras.
A ticket, bought at the site, allows you to pick three tombs to see - but some of the major tombs are closed - for rest. You can't blame them. These tombs survived because they were out in the dry, lifeless desert air for centuries. Now, warm bodied, water vapor and carbon dioxide emitting humans are wandering through in great numbers. Nefertiti's tomb, in the Valley of the Queens, if permanently closed because it was damaged by tourism.
In any case, the wall paintings are extraordinary - you can take my word for it or look them up on-line, because there will be no snappies to show. While I am awed by the colors, my experience of being in a place that I can't photograph is fundamentally different than a place that I can.
From Kings, we go to the great King Queen, H....., which is beautiful, depite being defaced after her death by a successor Pharaoh - they often did that. I am uncomfortable here, knowing that 47 tourists were killed here in 1997. It is a discomfort akin to what I felt at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai in February, although there, because the horror was new, the security was tight. Here, it is shockingly lax, which only adds to my discomfort.
Once you leave Kings, the tour groups fall off sharply. There is the odd German or other group but most do Kings and then on to Karnak and/or Luxor - it is the only way to "do" Luxor in a day. For me, this is unimaginable - not only do you miss much of what there is to see but it has to all blur together from sheer sensory and physical overload.
Then on to the Valley of the Nobles, where I see bas reliefs of astonishing delicacy - the faces full of expression and each hair detailed. Unfortunately, I discover that I have bought a ticket to only one of the tombs, so I am not allowed to see the other two on my list. Now, again I must admit that the fault is mine - the guidebook said that you needed a ticket to each tomb - but when I said "Valley of the Nobels" at the ticket office, I got a ticket, and not a question "which one?" Needless to say, there was no sign. The stupidity of the Egyptian government is just overwhelming. There I am, at a site, willing to pay to see things I've travelled thousands of miles to see, but my only option is to drive back several miles to get the right ticket. You'd think they could get one of the numerous people working at the site to sell tickets with some semblance of accountability.
From there, it is on to the Valley of the Workers - actually, their town - with three newly discovered and quite amazing small tombs just above them. Groups are not allowed in them because the rooms are so small - only a few meters in each direction - but the painting is extraordinary - walls, ceilings.
At this point, I have spent 4 hours in Thebes and I am done for the day. I can't imagine trying to see more. There is no way to absorb it. And the heat reflecting off the ground and the walls of the tombs and the valleys is enervating. Despite my taxi driver's protestations of undying love for me (don't ask - I have no idea. When he inquired about my family situation I told him that I was the divorced mother of three. Not as creative as I was in Kashmir decades ago, when I claimed 7 and a Chinese dentist husband, or in Syria, where I shamelessly passed photos of my friend's sons around the bus, but just simpler than explaining "single" in a culture where that concept doesn't exist.)
My driver, Hassan, who speaks good English in endless cliches, says he teaches primary school in the morning and drives a taxi in the afternoon. Given what teachers are paid in many countries, this is entirely possible, assuming that morning classes end quite early, since I hire him at noon. He quotes me a very reasonable fare and agrees to my pre-conditions (no shops, no tea, no going off to pick up another passenger while I am at a site). This, and a few other very reasonable fares and prices that I've been quoted, makes me think that tourism must be really, really bad this year. Yes, there are a lot of groups, but I can't tell whether there are more or less than normal - and drivers like Hassan are unaffected by group tourism, which is controlled by large agencies.
The West Bank differs noticeably from the East Bank, where the town of Luxor is located. Here, people not only get around by donkey cart, they also use camels for transport - and I don't mean tourists. The villages are filled with square block houses with brightly painted doors. Here and there is some greenery, but it is noticeable more in its absence.
Since I've spent so much time in Asia over the years, most recently India, I am struck by the lack of personal transportation. Aside from animals, there are a few bicycles,some motor scooters and some cars - but shared mini-vans are, by far, the main form of vehicular transport. While I never did figure out what was going on in Vientianne, Laos, where there simply was no traffic of any kind, the fact that most people don't seem to own any type of transportation in Egypt's #2 tourist destination provides an insight into the horrific state of the economy, which enables Fundamentalism to thrive.
The other difference I note in Luxor is the absence of black prayer marks on men's foreheads. I haven't seen any here, while I a fair number of men in Cairo had them. I'd love to know more about the social dynamics at work here.
I take the ferry back across the Nile to Luxor, which is really a charmless town. Neglected until the 19th century, it is now receiving too much attention from a government intent upon cleaning up the place. This has meant the demolition and relocation of the souk, so it is now 100% tourist tacky (think Mulberry Street in Little Italy) and the demolition of a large swath of buildings between Luxor and Kanark Temples. Apparently, the plan is to have an open plaza between the two - architectural wonders like Tienamen Square and the parking lot below the Patola Palace in Tibet come to mind - but there is some,,, disagreement... about what to do with the mosques that are in the way. I think there might also be an evangelical church slated for demolition but the politics there are profoundly different.
Now that I have seen the three principal complexes in Luxor, I am glad that I saw one on each day. Even though it meant that I had lots of spare time to kill, it gave me an opportunity to appreciate each one. In all honesty, Thebes deserves two visits - a four hour visit is exhausting - but at least my mind had time to reflect upon each site.
Tomorrow I will overspend on a mini-bus tour organized by my hotel to two extraordinary temples north of Luxor. I am sure that I could have found a less expensive option, but I am too lazy to shop around to save $25 or so and there really is no way to see these places except with a car, so I force myself to make peace with breakfast at 6:30 AM and a long day in a bus, with an Egyptologist guiding us through the sites. and a packed lunch - given the available options, I'll have eggs for breakfast and for lunch. Yum. Fortunately, there will only be a handful of us and I doubt that there will be any large tours.
Abydos & Dendera Temples
There are two temples, very different than the ones in Luxor, that are a few hours north, so seven of us from the hotel piled into a mini-bus to drive 2 1/2 hours to the Temple of Seti I, Abydos, a cult center for Orisis. It is a large, stunning roofed complex with stunning paintings and carvings dating from ~1800 BC. I had warned the guide, who was chatting with someone I took to be a self-styled Egyptologist, that I would be more interested in photographing the site than in listening to his explanation - and the proved true. He stood in the front hall and talked for about 20 minutes; the lovely couple without the cameras were heard asking for dates. I totally tuned out then they got to the "mystery" of the helicopters carved into the ceiling. There's a whole New Age deal about this temple, and Oom Seti, who was Irish, and also these helicopters. I'm with the author of the very entertaining history of Egypt I just read: Pyramystics.
I detached myself from the group and roamed the halls, photographing the many things there were to see. I don't really understand how they can, appropriately, be worried about the deleterious effects of flash while having all the walls lit from below with fluorescent bulbs. I mean, light is light. Because spots were chopped out of the roof above, to let in light, and there are fluorescents below, I have no idea what the photos will look like and suspect that I'm in for a lot of PhotoShopping if they are to look like anything at all.
Most of the figures were clearly and obviously destroyed - or, in a word, defaced - everywhere in the temple. The destruction was limited to figures - fruits and objects were untouched. According to the guide, this was done by the Copts, who used this temple for their own rites. It never fails - regime change and there goes the art. Sometimes it is a statue of Stalin or Saddam Hussar, sometimes it is Pharonic carvings, sometimes the Buddha loses his heads in Borobudur, Java.
We went to the back of the temple and viewed a large subterranean area that was flooded by 3 meters of water. The Egyptologist had been involved with buying a pump - which was there, turned off. I don't know the details but rising groundwater is a problem in several places in Egypt - the woman at the tapestry school outside of Cairo had serious problems with it, there are problems in Luxor and now this. I should read up to understand what is going on but it looks pretty disastrous.
As I chat with the guide and the Egyptologist about how hard it is to buy the right tickets to places, I am told that, at the pyramids in Giza, there was no way to buy a ticket to go into the pyramids at the entrance the driver took me to, by the Sphinx. Apparently, those tickets are sold only at the ticket office at the other side of the site and, since the number is sharply restricted, there is no possibility of anyone who is not on a tour getting inside. My guidebook had said to come early to get in within the quota but was mute concerning which ticket office had to be used.
The other thing that the Egyptologist, my guide and I gossiped about was the banning of all photos in the Valley of the Kings and the very stiff fines imposed, on the spot, by the Director of the site on anyone who transgresses (roughly $10 per photo). I am sure that the world of Egyptologists is small and the gossip juicy, but the two of them agreed that the Director of Antiquities, or somesuch esteemed person, didn't want photos of what was going on. In fact, they said that a famous hotel in Aswan was closed not for renovation, as the guidebook said, but because there was an interesting find on the lawn and the Director didn't want guests taking home souvenirs. They also agreed that the nicer the camera, the higher the fine. Apparently, this cat and mouse game has been going on for some time with tricks like disposable cameras, switching memory cards and all sorts of things being used to circumvent the policy. On the way back, I warn one of the Indonesian woman, a PhD student in Rotterdam with a huge lensed Nikon SLR not to be tempted when they go tomorrow. She laughs and says that she will take one photo inside. I warn her not to, because they might take her camera and, since she obviously is not wealthy, she can ill afford a large fine.
The guide tells me that, in this part of Egypt, it is more common for women to have prayer callouses on their foreheads and some old women have green tattoos on their foreheads and chin. I don't know about Egypt, but there is a long tradition of facial tatoos on Berber women across North Africa and this is in the neighborhood, albeit Bedouin and not Berber, but I am sure these tribes' share customs.
The guarded caravans that the government required to prevent terrorist attacks have recently been eliminated. The guide said that, for all the years they were in existance, the tour buses traveling in them spent their time passing each other, until they were at the front of the line, behind the military vehicle. It really does make you wonder about human behavior behind the wheel.
The Egyptian government is so protective of tourism that, when a woman feel off of a temple roof, they closed all roofs that did not have parapets. They were unwilling to deface ancient guildings by putting up guard rails so they simply closed all the roofs. A similar attitude was on display this year, when a woman was grievously injured during a balloon ride in the Luxor dawn. Every balloon was pulled out of the air, the operators sent for training and now, months later, they have just begun to fly again, but are limited to a single 45 minute flight each day. In the past, each operator had two, 1 hour flights. The flights, which were the object of many discussions on TripAdvisor.com, resumed only 3 days ago. I would have liked to see dawn that way but I didn't know they were going again - and now I am leaving Luxor.
Four members of the group are a blond British American couple and their two young children. When I ask them where they're from, she replies "Jerusalem" which is an interesting response because she did not say Israel. As we talk, she tells me that her husband is in charge of humanitarian relief in Gaza for the British government - a difficult task, to say the least. Later in the day, when the daughter, who looks to be about 4 years old, falls asleep, her brother, who is probably 6, explains to his father how she will be up all night because she napped earlier and now is napping again. The father pats his son on the back and says, to himself, "You're too young to be worrying so much about other people." Given his work, the tenderness and implications of this comment stay with me for days. It is a special burden that he carries.
We now drive to Dendara, a cult center of Hathor from pre-dynastic times - which means we're talking really, really, really old cults - but a relatively new temple, dating only from 125 BC. This, too, is fully roofed but the joy here is that it is being cleaned and, in one section of the outer court, the original colors shine brightly. The guide says that they do not know how to make the colors that were used in Pharonic times but, while I have seen little bits of color here and there, in this place are entire sections of ceiling and walls. While the guide informs his rapt audience, one of the guards sees my interest in the restored section and allows me through the barricade to photograph from up close. All that for a tip of 20 cents. We walk through the various halls, which are quite interesting, with stylized goddesses everywhere, including huge reliefs on some ceilings. Upstairs is a mummification room - it took 72 days, and the walls are a veritable "how to" of paintings. Viscera out, into special jars, heart in, because it will be needed in the next life. Unfortunately, I think "brain" goes with the viscera, the the next world may not be terribly intellectual. One blackened zodiac ceiling is a replica, provided by the French, who have the original in their museums. This is one of those arguments with no right answer - should countries be forced to give all this stuff back? In the new museums there seems to be a level of conservation that will preserve these ancient wonders, but at the sites, there is no end of touching walls as you crawl down through the floor to see a subterranean room. And, if you look carefully at Luxor Temple, you will see some early 19th century graffitti caved by Europeans who came here when all was forgotten. So, had it been left where it belonged, it might well not have survived. As I said, there is no answer.
By 5PM, the tour is over and I steel myself to go to the tourist souk to find some Egyptian CDs. I asked the guide for recommendations and, while I decided against the highly recommended pop music, I did buy some Egyptian drum and oud music and another belly dancing CD - I really prefer Persian belly dancing music to Arabic but, given the current festivities in Iran, I don't think I'll come across anything new soon. My tour mates had been off wandering and we all run into each other at McDonalds, which is both pathetic and easy if you don't feel like exploring to find your next meal. Remembering the refrigerator in my room, I order an extra meal, to eat on the road tomorrow.
By this point, I need a break from sightseeing and I suspect that, after a day spent driving to the oasis and another day back, the last thing I will want to do will be to get into a car to drive to Aswan, seeing some minor temples en route. So I book a flight to Aswan for a mere $60 with thoughts of spending some time out by the pool and in overpriced restaurants because I booked myself into a luxury hotel since there seemed to be a lack of viable options. And now I am glad that I did, because I can use a few days of pampering myself. I am sure that I will do sightseeing in addition to the pre-dawn flight to Abu Simbel but at least I will come back to some place luxurious. The places I've stayed, and will return to in Cairo, are fine but rather basic and I need some place pretty to hang out. I simply can't do 21 days of sightseeing. Still, I am glad that I spent four days in Luxor because today's temples were worth seeing, because they add a different dimension to Pharonic times.
Midnight At The Oasis
6 PM, actually.
I left Luxor at 9AM by mini-bus, which meant that I had 6 hours to figure out all the possible ways I could lie down. The thing about traveling through the desert is that there are miles and miles with NOTHING to see.
You quickly leave the "city" of Luxor and enter a flat wasteland, where there are no buildings, no trees, nothing, for miles upon miles upon miles, hour after hour. The landscape changes from flat to odd stone mounds, back to flat, distant hills but complete and utter wasteland. You can read about how the Nile gives life to a narrow strip of Egypt, you can see it on a map - but not until you drive through it, for hours upon hours, can you understand how barren the rest of the country is.
Until you come to an oasis, which we do after about three hours.
Palm trees rise out of nowhere, suddenly, islands of green and life. And just as quickly, they stop, and you are back to the wasteland.
The road is black tarmac across the wasteland, broken every 45 KM or so by military checkpoints. The driver says "Ameriki" and license plates are written down and off we go again. Each of these checkpoints, in the middle of no where, is staffed by two men, except the one near Bagdad, the first oasis from Luxor, which has three. Just before each of these, the driver puts on his seat-belt. As we leave, he takes his off.
When we stop for the Baghdad checkpoint, an obviously important man in traditional robes and a white turban around a red cap gets in after some discussion with the driver. The driver puts on a tape of what sounds like a fire-and-brimstone Imman, in honor of his guest, who is addressed as Haji. Now the interesting thing in all this is that I am never acknowledged as existing, my permission is not requested, and the fact that I have hired the taxi is irrelevant. Haji (a man who had made be on a Haj to Mecca) gets out at the next oasis and we drive on. The driver puts on pop music.
An endless number of hours later, we arrive at Daklah Oasis and the Desert Lodge, an eco lodge that is positioned on a hill overlooking an ancient town. Everything is local materials, sustainable, solar powered and done to WHO standards. In other words, no water in plastic bottles but something locally distilled instead. True mineral water, with the mineral content listed on the label.
The hotel is built like an oasis town, with two story mud block buildings clustered around walkways. When you walk up to the edge of the bluff, you look down over the town and the surrounding hills. The light is beautiful.
There was a misunderstanding about what I was paying for - I thought I would have a car while I am here but learn that I need to hire it separately. Since this is yet another hotel that charges in Euros, I am concerned because cars are not cheap to hire in Egypt. Fortunately, the price is in Egyptian Pounds - cash only at this hotel, so I need to find the ATM in town - and is only $30 for a half day. But without a car you are stranded - yes, a bike is possible, but let's get real.
Even though I had been told that the hotel was full the night before, it seems like the only other guests are a modestly sized German tour group who will leave tomorrow. Some seem to be repeat visitors to this hotel. I'm a bit confused by the affection some tourists seem to have for Egypt - on TripAdvisor there are people who have been to Luxor 20 or 30 times.
After taking a politically correct shower, I apply DEET to every exposed body surface, shuddering at the owner's likely reaction to chemicals and foil sealed towelettes. Feeling reckless, I drink the coke I brought from Luxor. I then go out to take photos of the dramatic sunset which lights up the hills. I watched the light as we neared Daklah and the quality of the light is just striking.
It turns out that the hotel is full. There are two groups of painters - one from Germany and one from Switzerland - who spend the day in a studio outbuilding somewhere on the grounds. I had been told that there would be a folkloric show and I was surprised by the quality of the group, from Kharga Oasis. They perform dances of Dakhla and Kharga - the first, a dance enactment of young people meeting at the river and getting married. It is both extremely professional and very witty. The second performance, a dervish extravaganza, is extraordinary. One man dances and spins for easily 20 minutes, manipulating props including two huge skirts, one of which becomes a giant pinwheel. The final act is Bedouin flutists encouraging the Germans to dance. Some sure-fire audience participation techniques never fail.
I had heard that there were two Americans at the hotel - young women from NY who just graduated from Columbia School of Architecture and received a grant to travel for a month, studying North African and Levantine architecture, traditional and modern. They are, justifiably, concerned about what the job market will hold when they return - the best I can think of is "at least you didn't major in journalism." I'd read in today's Times that the actual unemployment rate is 17+%. It is a truly terrible time to graduate.
Car to the Qasr
8AM seems to be the standard breakfast time for the mix of eager beaver and middle aged insomniacs that are staying at the hotel so there is no sleeping in today. And I have a car coming at 9 to take me 'round Al-Qasr, the town at the bottom of the bluff whose origins lie in Roman times.
The old, abandoned part of Al Qasr is a series of cubist mud and straw buildings, mostly homes but also a mosque and a madrassa. This town uses one of the common techniques for thwarting invaders: low doorways across many of the streets, not only making it impossible to attack while mounted on horse or camel but also while standing upright. There are variations of this technique in central Turkey and in Pharonic tombs and temples - witness yesterday's how low can you go limbo at Dendara.
The old city reminds me of the casbah's south of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, with lots of interesting shadows in long corridors.
The new city contains an active pottery and forge, where the fire is kept hot by a man working huge old bellows. For whatever benefits the oasis gardens bring, this is a very poor town, out in the middle of nowhere, largely cut off from anywhere. The women attempt to sell baskets they have woven but they are utilitarian.
We then drive to "the gardens" which arise suddenly amongst the sands. We go to a friend of the drivers, where I am plied with huge oranges, fresh off the tree, which have an amazing smell and with dates. I am shown the mango tree and the pineapple bush. Then I am introduced to the cows - the flies are intense. They're bad even at the hotel, but NOTHING like what they are amidst a bounty of fresh manure.
When we leave, I attempt to thank the owner in the time honored Egyptian manner - by shaking his hand with a few Egyptian pounds of baksheesh pressed into his palm - but he refuses it. This is true hospitality to a guest.
The primary vehicle around the oasis is a two wheeled donkey cart driven by boys or men, never women. The men wear either Islamic caps (rarely), headscarves or brimmed hats woven from the local palm fronds. They generally wear the long Egyptian cotton gown, which is cool and meets Islamic standards for modesty. I find it much more graceful than the women's black velour robes.
As we drive out of the oasis, the driver stops and pulls up a bush that is growing - PEANUTS! - now, I know that peanuts are a plant, but I'd never seen one - nor had I ever (attempted) to eat a fresh, unroasted peanut. Don't. There is a reason that they boil them (in the South) or roast them everywhere else. For lack of a better metaphor, I would say that they taste... green.
Then back to the hotel for a lazy afternoon reading. There are only 5 other guests, the Swiss painters, so the hotel is oddly quiet. I had assumed that I would kick back from endless tourism in Aswan but this may be the needed break. I have the ability to do absolutely nothing for days at a time, which unnerves hotel staff who are accustomed to guests dashing madly too and fro. But I have been doing that since I arrived and, before I left, I was working until midnight on the trip and the renovation, so I am glad of some quiet time.
I check my email - $4 per half hour! - and note the sign "please cover the computers when you are done to keep the sand out." I tell my contractor that I had a vivid and unpleasant dream about... floor tile... just before I awoke this morning and tell him that I hope the job is going well. I really don't want to come home to what I saw in my dream - a mis-match of cheap Chinese floor tiles and futile attempts to reach a tile dealer. You never know what your subconscious is up to, because the renovation could not be further from my mind, now that the last delivery problems appear to have been sorted out.
After sunset, which comes surprisingly early, the wind picks up. It howls and,this being the desert, deposits sand on you is you sit still for even a few minutes. I think about the two young Americans, who are camping this night, and my email to someone in Cairo who encouraged me to spend time in the desert "Force 10 gale when we camped in Tunisia in '78" - I am very happy to have windows I can close because this is a very, very strong wind. It is absurdly early to be tucked into my room, but I have lots to read and lots of music. I hope to reduce the electronics still further on my next trip, but, on this one, I have dual eReaders and dual music libraries, thanks to the endless capabilities of my iPhone.
The man who staff Reception (which I should note, sits absurdly beyond unused metal detectors. Who, exactly, is going to schlep out here to attack? And how would metal detectors prevent anything? Everyone's got a camera - and more) and I have been chatting and today he decides that I need a name in Arabic. I point out that my last name, Stern, translates to star, but he wants to stay with my first initial, so I become Amany, which means "wish." I think of Alex giving his daughter "cloud" as her Chinese name, which seemed depressing until I heard his rationale, that clouds are fluffy white things free to go wherever they want in the sky. (Had Alex been Jewish, he would have thought of clouds as grey, depressing things, which is why I was so surprised at his choice of name.). In any case, I shudder to think whose wish I might be but wish I now am.
I hate the hotel mineral water, which leaves my tongue feeling coated. On short order this afternoon, I drank a club soda, Pepsi and a beer in an attempt to quench an odd mouth thirst. There is not an un-ecological plastic bottle of normal water for many miles, I fear, so I thinks club soda is me for now. Whining aside, this being an organic Swiss eco lodge means that it is perfectly safe to eat the salads and mezzes, which are delicious. The amount of food served is enormous and the sense of a balanced Western diet odd - meat with pasta and potatoes? This is up there with the Dutch meal I had years ago - meat with potatoes and a vegetable - which was a second order of potatoes. However, the hygienic standards means that I can eat "foul" for breakfast. That's short for foul mandemas (?), the bean paste dish that is the staple of the Egyptian diet, with falafal for breakfast. Plus some salty feta type chese - all foods I'd be afraid to try in most restaurants.
It is now 8:45PM. I have done the laundry, a traveler's nightly chore. But traveling with "engineered" fabrics is different in Egypt - they dry in a flash in the desert air. I have been wearing the same (freshly laundered) long sleeved white shirt every day while sightseeing. I have another - but this one is always dry in the morning, so why bother changing? Even socks, the bane of the travelers existence, dry quickly.
After The Storm
The wind howled all night. It kept me from sleeping and jolted me when I woke briefly during the night. I had shut all the windows facing the wind, but still it came through the spaces in the frames. I was very, very glad not to be camping, knowing how small a tent can feel on a dark and stormy night.
It was cool and breezy when I went to breakfast, a feast of small dishes that could amply feed a family of four. I skipped the foul this morning, which came submerged under a 1/4" of oil. I am sure that it is all very healthy, but it is not the way I want to start a day.
After breakfast, I deposit myself in a seating area under a woven roof, which keeps it cool in a way that a plastic roof would not. Here, breezes come through the open sides while the warm air rises through the roof. The entire structure is wisely built along the shady side of one of the buildings, so it never gets any sun. The background music, five times a day, is the beautiful Muslim call to prayer, which echos across the town.
I am very lazy, not even venturing to the edge of the bluff to take photos. Now and then I lift my camera and take a shot as the light changes but I know that should get up and take a few steps, but there is nothing compelling enough to make me do so.
In mid-morning, I am joined by three people from Holland, one of whom owns another eco-lodge in the area. They tell me, without hesitation, what a mistake I made not spending a night in the White Desert, which is an additional three hour drive from here - but it would have been very expensive to do without joining a tour, because the car from Luxor cost 120 EUROS. 98% of the people who come to this hotel are European, which I think is the case for the desert circuit in general (Siwa Oasis excepted), so last year the company that runs the hotel and the cars changed from dollars to Euros, which makes the whole thing vastly more expensive for an American, now that the dollar is at record lows against the Euro.
While talking to them, I learn that there is now a weekly Dakhla / Cairo flight - it started last week. I tell them that they should post this information on TripAdvisor.com and learn that they have no idea what it is. We adjourn to the "Internet Cafe" and I show it to them. They look up the hotel that the couple stayed at in Cairo, at the suggestion of an Egyptian friend - apparently, quite the horror. They are very interested to see all the horrible reviews of the place on TripAdvisor, especially when I point out that it is ranked 105 out of 122 hotels in Cairo - not a good thing. I also show them reviews of another place, owned by the same woman that owns the eco-lodge, I think, and she is very pleased by what they wrote about the food - until I point out that the review is from 2007 and the two recent reviews are more measured in their comments.
This woman will now look into getting her hotel online and I suggest that she try to become a "destination expert" for the area, after explaining what that means. To be on the safe side, she takes my email address, in case she has questions. It is so interesting to see people's understanding of the power of the on-line world transformed, as it was for these people, who are probably the same age I am. They simply do not know how vastly access to information has changed and how democratized it has become, to the point that I no longer bother with hotel reviews in guidebooks, vastly preferring on-line reviews instead. Of course I warn them that they will read "I loved it" and "It was horrible" reviews of the same places, which will make them crazy, but, overall, it is an astonishing resource.
I then check email and find a question about... grout... and some observations about my wall tiles from my contractor. I give him the best advice that I can, which concerns something that is almost impossible to put in writing, and tell him to use his best judgment. I did detailed designs to the extent that is humanly possible - and then some - but now some of the realities of the job are coming up and, even if I was there, I'm not sure that I'd have answers. In any case, being here, with desert vistas and interesting sites to occupy my mind, I am able to let go and remind him that, at the end of the day, all we're talking about is a bathroom. He is too good a craftsman to do a bad job and roaming around Egypt makes obsessing about whether to use sanded or unsanded grout on one part of the floor absurd. If I have learned nothing else in life, it is that you plan as best you can and then you need to take it live and see what happens. Of course there will be problems - witness my "failure" to go to the White Desert - but, in the totally of things, who cares?
A large German tour group has just arrived. I assume that they are on an oasis tour because some of them wear traditional checked headscarves Arab style while the rest are in the requisite khaki hats and vests. They are uniformly broad beamed and toting amazing amounts of luggage. One of them checks into a room near where I am sitting and immediately begins to scream into her phone. The tranquility of sharing this 32 room hotel with only an handful of Swiss painters is gone.
The hotel is designed to resemble a village, with 4 rooms to a 2 story building. There are archways and latticed windows so the overall aspect is very charming. From speaking to the Egyptian owner of this hotel and its affiliated travel agency and the Dutch owner of the other eco-lodge, I have learned how involved this lodge is in the local area - educational programs, social programs. I have been wondering how much of the money a hotel like this brings in filtered down to the townspeople, because the staff is not large and there are only a few tourists like myself to hire drivers. There is no tourist infrastructure in the town - no cafes, not even a place to buy bottled water - but I am guessing that, with the new flight, more of that will happen. I could be selfish and lament the coming changes, because this is the last relatively untouched part of Egypt - but the people here are poor and increased tourism will bring affluence, even as it will corrupt the local mores.
I am comfortably settled in my room, reading, when suddenly I see... a living scarab moving across the floor. A huge, armor plated beetle, a creature that will prevent quiet dreams (OMG. What it gets into the bed????). I know that I should squish it with a shoe but that makes me queasy - my shoes are in a sorry enough state, covered with desert sand and tomb dust. To now have dead beetle on the sole... So I look around for a weapon and settle upon the woven waste paper basket. I bring it down with all my might. And the damn thing keeps moving. Again and again. Pieces of the beetle come off - feet, parts of the shell - but still it moves. Finally, I kill it, leaving the basket where it lays, and return to my seat, with my chest heaving as I gasp for air.
And I was worried about... bedbugs?
Are we there yet?
We left the hotel at 8:30 in the morning; I braced myself for the long drive ahead: six and a half hours in a van is not something to look forward to.
The driver has a friend with him, a young man named, unsurprisingly, Mohamed. For some reason, we take a different road back - I didn't know that there was another option - or that the road we started out on went up to Aswan. I might have gone directly there from Dahkla had I known it was possible. According to the map, that road does not exist, so I didn't think to ask.
There's not much you can do in a van for hours on end, especially when the landscape is mostly barren desert. In some places, it stretches flat, to the horizon, so I spend hours prone, flat on my back, with a large silk chiffon scarf stretched over my head to keep off the fly - there is ALWAYS a fly - which otherwise lands repeatedly on your face and your nose and your lips.
The driver is joined by a friend who accompanies us to Luxor. No room for a stray Hajji now. They rotate through their tapes: Egyptian pop, which I like, the unavoidable Celine Dion, who accompanied me for 19 days in Iran, and then... the mad Imann, as I have come to think of him, starting slow and working himself up to tones that clearly don't auger well for a non-believer.
On the way out, I had asked the driver to turn down the volume on this tape, but now I have a new tactic. I pull out my iPhone and play... gospel music. Loudly. I have enough to last a while. And then, when that runs out, I sample Klezmer, the music of the Eastern European Jews, or I put it on "shuffle" and am treated to a sampling of the Marvellettes, or some such girl group, singing "Mashed Potatoes" and other Golden Oldies. It gets surreal, the juxtaposition, as we speed across the desert.
I loaded my phone with 3GB of music by ordering all the songs I have - 9,000+ - and starting with the smallest file sizes and working up. This gives me many more songs than the 3GB on my netbook, which was a more directed, and more familiar, sample that I took. But, what I did not realize until this trip, the iPhone technique ends up heavy with oldies, which had strict time limits imposed upon them. There is not, for example, the stray Indian raga, which often runs for 20 minutes. So all sorts of strange things, that I own but never listen to, are now one of the soundtracks of this trip. And once again I think how unimaginable this all would have been if you had told me about my life when these songs were hits.
We pull up to my hotel at 3:30. Even though I have done nothing but lie down, I am exhausted. But I am determined to see the Luxor Museum, which opens at 4PM, so I head out and arrive just as it is opening. There is a large tour group in line ahead of me so I make it a point, when we enter the museum, to head somewhere that they are not going, specifically, the well recommended video narrated by Omar Sherif. Then out to the galleries that have simply the most astonishing Pharonic art that I have seen - statues, reliefs, objects from Tuts tomb (a chariot!) weapons and jewelry. Even sandals and baskets that survived the millenia. A friend told me that the Brooklyn Museum was involved with this project, which makes a neat symmetry for me, having beheld my first sarcophagus there so long ago.
This is one of the "new" museums in Egypt, like the Coptic and the one at Saqqua, and they are wonderful, because they are well edited and well lit. The quality of the statues is beyond anything I have seen and there are two mummies on display, in darkened, quiet rooms, respectful of their place in history. One, that lay for over a century in a museum in Niagara Falls, Canada, is of Rames, and the story of his re-discovery and honor filled return is quite interesting. After all, an ancient King is being returned to his land.
When I have finished, I cast a hopeful glance at the gift shop. I would love a reproduction of some of the treasures inside. But I find only the same touristy crap that is everywhere in this country and toy with the idea of going online to the Metropolitan Museum shop to see if they have something more satisfactory.
Bone tired, and hungry, for I have eaten only a hard boiled egg and some flaps of bread, I return to my hotel for dinner and an early night, since my flight to Aswan leaves at 7:30AM.
Nubia
As soon as you step out of the airport, you notice the difference. The taxi drivers vying for your custom are Nubians - tall, thin dark skinned men. It is not that African blood is missing elsewhere it Egypt - you see traces of it in people everywhere - but here, you know that you are moving into a different culture.
Even the hotel, which is a true 5 star, set on an island in the middle of the Nile, speaks of Africa. While the dominant motif on the furniture on railings is of pyramids, inventively styled, the fabrics in my room have African patterns, their colors neutered to make them acceptable to package tourists.
And what a room it is, with two balconies overlooking the Nile - the one where I now sit, writing, that lets me look north, and the one now drenched in sun that faces Aswan full on. It is warm but breezy on my balcony and I have no real desire to move, as I watch the feluccas sail on the river. November is the earliest time in year to come to Aswan - in summer, it can reach 55 degrees C, which is too hot to even contemplate.
There is not that much to see in Aswan - the obligatory pre-dawn flight to Abu Simbel, the Nubian Museum, maybe some tombs, a couple of islands, the tourist souk - so with four days here I will alternate between my balcony and the pool, which is just fine, because yesterday's drive obliterated the day of rest in Dakhla. And from here I go to Cairo, which will be interesting but in no way restful.
The riverside of these Egyptian cities are uniformly known as the cornice, and, in Luxor and Aswan, this is where the cruise ships dock. I can see them from my perch - they are parked four abreast, which means that most people will sleep with generator noise, the smell of diesel fuel and no view of the very river they're on. While some of the boat look nice, others look decidedly funky from the outside. I will get my Nile experience while I'm here, by hiring a felucca for an hour of two. I won't see the village life on the banks of the Nile, but I can't imagine spending a week on one of these ships. I can't imagine that they're fully booked, which must make the experience all the stranger, because they are sizable vessels.
As I take out the various things I've photocopied about Aswan, I find a page about Luxor that I'd missed - and with it, apparently one of the more fabulous complexes on the West Bank, Rames III. It is in my guidebook but one of the downsides of not going on a tour is that sometimes you just screw up. Of course, the downside of going on a tour is that they spend 7 hours on the West Bank, which is just an unimaginable amounf of time for me.
The Corner of McDonald's and Mosque
The best place in Aswan to get a felucca for the obligatory sunset hour on the Nile is at the dock in front of McDonald's, which sits on the riverside like the fashionable cafes. It is a three story, free standing building, with a copious outdoor terrace that gets way too much diesel exhaust from the cruise ships parked nearby. After contemplating them for a while, I have come to think of the cruise ships as trailers in a trailer park, because they are blocky and parked as tightly as cars in a lot.
I got off to an early start, thinking that Pilae island, and the temples on it, seemed to be the most interesting thing in Aswan. Unfortunately, that proved to be the general consensus because I saw dozes of tour buses disgorging passengers. This is the problem with traveling in Egypt - you want to avoid the "mad dogs and Englishmen" mid-day sun, so you go early - and run into the groups. Or you go late - and run into the groups, whose basic itinerary is get off the boat, onto the buses, tour somewhere, then reverse the pattern. Because they are so insulated from the reality that is Egypt, they dress in the most inappropriate manner possible, both for the heat and the culture. Shorts are common and so are tank tops for women, which has the double wammy of revealing parts of the body that should be covered (underarms) and exposing the wearer to way too much sun. So you start to see women with shawls over their heads (because they didn't bring hats) and over their shoulders. While my get-up is distinctly unattractive - frumpy would be a step up - it suits the climate, with my broad brimmed hat and long sleeved shirt.
In any case, Philae is insane, simply packed with tourists, to the point that you need to wait in line to go into some areas of the temple. I try to go into side areas, but this is not large enough for that to provide relief. Actually, it isn't even Philae Island, which was submerged by the dam. It is one of the many temples surveyed and dis-assembled stone by stone and then re-assembled on a neighboring island, after all sorts of advanced engineering to shape the island and prevent it from flooding. Then they re-built everyting. The story of the High Dam and the flooding of Nubia is quite extraordinary., with 20 countries bringing technical expertise to bear to move and re-construct the temples. Because there were more temples than places, museums that were part of the UNESCO effort ended up with extraordinary artifacts, such as the temple of Dender at the Metropolitan Museum.
After barely an hour, I flee - or attempt to. There is a narrow footbridge off to where the boats are parked and the press of people coming and going creates gridlock. Given the general state of security in Egypt, I think "target" and notice that there is another footbridge, to the private boats, like the one I hired, that is completely empty and there stands my pilot.
The Nubian Museum is en-route to town so I stop and learn that the pyramid symbol that decorates the hotel is Nubian, because it is replicated on gates at the museum and surrounding buildings. While the museum is new and well designed, after the Luxor Museum it is hard to meet the same standard. Still, I find the dioramas of Nubian villages perhaps more interesting than the antiquities (childhood at the Brooklyn Museum redux), because the women wear long lace dresses over their regular dresses and their veils are trimmed with about 1 inch of patterned bead-work. There are Nubian villages scattered around Aswan but, having checked them out on line (one of the downsides of You Tube), they didn't look especially interesting - when it is hot, it takes a lot to motivate me.
While there are some more tombs on the West Bank, I am more interested in going to Kalabsha Temple, which the guidebook describes as both the largest temple in Nubia AND completely untouristed. The guidebook also quotes a strangely low sum for a drive out to the dam. I hail a taxi, we negotiate a price - and then he takes me to the Kalabsha Hotel, on the edge of town. I explain to him where I'm trying to go, he has no clue and I tell him to take me back to town, where we disagree over the fare. But 30 pounds is far too high for so short a trip.
I is getting on noon and I am hot and hassled by the incessant "boat?" "where from?" "taxi?" that accompanies any stroll in an Egyptian tourist town so I flee to the balcony of my hotel room and snooze in the breezy shade.
Then, at 3, it is off to the docks to try to negotiate a reasonable felucca fare. I fail completely - for the fare in the guidebook, I am offered a ride in a motor boat, which is simply... wrong. It needs to be a felucca.
Finally, I agree to pay twice the rate for an hour's sail and we head out onto the river, where the boatsman immediately tries to shake me down for an extended trip. If the guidebook is right, it should cost $5 for a one hour trip around Elephanta Island. He is claiming that it takes 90 minutes and wants almost $40. I pass, and we sail around Kirshner's Island, which is chock-a-block with groups for their end of the day boat ride and sunset views. Kirshner's Island is filled with exotic plants and formal gardens and looks both lush and beautiful. It was someone's gift for winning the Sudan, and has been carefully preserved.
As we sail, the pilot plays Nubian music - on his cell phone, which everyone has. They are the square, clunky devices seen in the Indian countryside but they are quite widespread. In any case, the music is wonderful. That means that I"ll go back to the awful tourist souk and buy a couple of CDs. To date, this has been the best souvenier. I've already acquired 3 Egyptian CDs: oud, drums and belly dance.
When we come around the end of Kirchner's Island, we are somewhat becalmed so the boatsman needs to tack from side to side across the channel, to find wind. It takes a long time to go a short distance when you're zigging and zagging. Since there is only one boatsman, when he needs to adjust the sail or various other things, he hands the tiller to me - certainly a way to build muscles.
When we return to the dock, I adjourn to McDonalds, where I notice that the female staff wear red headscarves to match their red and yellow uniforms. In Luxor, I did not see any women working but here, and in Cairo, I do. In fact, there are female wait staff at the hotel, which only makes sense since it is Swiss.
Even when I leave McDonald's to return to my hotel, it is in my mind, because the boat dock for my hotel is at a corned with a minaret - and a McDonald's sign.
This will be an early night because I have a 5:55 AM flight to Abu Simbel in the morning. The taxi will be waiting for me at 4:45AM, which is an unimaginable time for me to be anywhere, let alone flying somewhere, with a planeload of tourists, to see some statues and then, at 9:25, to fly back to Aswan. I booked an overpriced taxi through the hotel because I doubt that there are many roaming the streets at that hour.
I am not looking forward to trying to go to sleep at - let me figure this out - 9PM. Ick.
Because It's There
The alarm went off at 4AM, which is an hour I much prefer when approached from the other side (having stayed up all night), but I have a car, and two flights, waiting, so it is hi ho, hi ho, it is off to Abu Simbel I go - knowing, full well, that I am spending all this energy, time and money to see something that will take, oh, 45 minutes, tops.
Now there are all these nauseating books with titles like "Everything I Need To Know In Life I Learned In Kindergarten" or some such. My book would be called "Everything I Need To Know I Learned Working At An Alternative School For Acting Out Adolescents", which is pretty much the philosophy behind Abu Simbel. Rames, the original "Big Man" erected the original "I'm the biggest, I'm the baddest, and this is MY country" scare crows in the ancient world, warning everyone coming down the NIle in the old days.
Of course, given who Rames (I , II and III) is, how on earth did he end up being the name of a brand of... condoms (oh, Google, where is WiFi when I need it? I so want to check this).
In any case, the flight is 45 minutes long, a mere aerial hop, going down right after we went up - and seeing, through the windows, that we're going to miss sunrise. Egypt doesn't have Daylight Savings Time, so sunrise and sunset come early at this time of the year. Which JUST ISN"T FAIR. Why get up at this insane hour to fly somewhere that sunrise is a BIG DEAL and... miss it? If I feel this way, how do the people who flew up from Cairo feel? THEY got up at, oh, 1:30 AM.
We land and take the shuttle bus 5 minutes to the site. Coming at us out of the parking lot are tour buses. Not a stream of tour buses but a veritable river. And, like Lake Nasser behind it, a stream that will never go dry because there is a lake of tour buses in the lot, and more arrive constantly. Which makes me wonder: what time did these people get up if they drove from Aswan, saw the site and now are leaving - at 7AM.
This is the most expensive site I have been to - a $15 entry fee. $10 is more common at the major sites. Egypt is not an expensive country but sightseeing puts a real dent in your wallet.
The site looks exactly the way I expect the site to look - the problem of sightseeing in an age of photographs and Web sites. The most interesting thing here, as it was at Luxor Temple, is the 19th century graffiti. Abu Simbel was hidden in the sands for millenia and re-discovered in 1810. The Europeans who came to visit did not have guards at the site preventing them from taking photos inside (there were, after all, no cameras. Or guards.) So these folk climbed up and carved their name and the date here there and everywhere - on Rames beard, for example. However, for all the damage these early tourists did, I am sure that the mass of tourists streaming in and out and inevitably touching the walls will create far more damage.
After 45 minutes, I'm more than done - there are only two temples to see, Rames and Nefertiti and, by this point, I've seen more hieroglyphics and cartouches and carvings of Harthor and Isis and Orisis than I ever imagined existed, so I wander out to the parking lot to look for the shuttle bus and sit in the shade, watching tour buses arrive and depart. Soon, other people from my flight join me - they, too, are taking the 9:40 AM back - but they are having a certain problem... going with the flow. They are absolutely programmed to be at an airport 1 hour before a domestic flight, even though this is not, oh, Heathrow or Frankfurt and has only two gates. And then two German couples arrive, who are beside themselves with needing to find the bus. We talk and I tell them that the plane is not going take off without its passengers and that this shuttle happens day after day after day - but they cannot rest. Soon their anxiety has the whole group up, out of the shade, standing in the parking lot and... waiting. Finally, they talk people with a private minivan going... somewhere... to drop them at the airport and they invite me along. We pull out of the airport and see the shuttle bus on its way in, as expected.
Atypically, they take screening seriously at the airport and actually scan you when the metal detector goes off. This creates problems for one of the German women, who has a knee replacement, which she tries to explain as the wand buzzes madly over her knee. And I get an idea for a new travel product for aging Boomers - take the Point It! and Kwikpoint idea and create one that shows where you have metal implanted in your body: knees, hips, chest staples... I'd need to do some serious research, and figure out the illustrations but I'm sure that this would make life so much easier for a growing number of travelers. Hmm...
As I sit in a stupor on the flight back to Aswan, I wonder why I went to Abu Simbel and ultimately the only answer is... because. Because I'm in Egypt and how does one go to Egypt and not go to Abu? Because it is a remarkable feat of conservation and reconstruction. And because... it is there.
I land in Aswan at 10:25 and my sole priority is... food. I had a protein bar for breakfast, passed up the ham and cheese sandwiches for sale in Abu Simbel (ham? In a Muslim country?) and I am now ready for what, body time, would be a late lunch. I have the driver drop me at McDonalds. What, you say, again? Well, let me plead my case.
Egypt, like many traditional countries, does not have a restaurant culture. Meals taken at home. Period. Maybe the men adjourn to a cafe for tea, coffee and a water pipe, but that's about it. Which means that restaurants are designed solely for tourists, translating into repetitive menus, too much food, too many things on the menu that a traveler won't risk it they value their stomach and too many meals of lamb kebabs, chicken and rice or bad spagetti or pizza. Maybe. So a friend chicken sandwhich or a McArabia (kofta or chicken) is not a bad option - it is clean,simple and manageable. I discuss this with a Canadian couple, who share my prejudice - none of us ever eat fast food at home, but here, we're driven to it. In fact, we're dying for a really good salad but that is a death sentence. This couple thinks me incredibly brave to be traveling on my own and I find it incredibly odd that they don't know the name of the hotel they're moving to tonight, from the boat. To each his prejudices.
Even though it is an incredibly beautiful day - cooler with a wonderful breeze - and thus a perfect day for sightseeing, I feel like I have jet lag so I go back to my room and attempt unsuccessfully to nap. At 2 PM, I wander back out and take a boat over to Kirschner's Island, the garden island next to the one my hotel is on. I figure that I will have an hour to see it before all the boats pull in for sunset and I do. It is much more beautiful than I imagined, with multicolor flowers and bushes. Even more, it is perfectly maintained - a rarity in Egypt.
While Aswan, the town, has nothing to recommend it, the more time I spend on the river, the more wonderful it becomes. There are islands to see, all of which much, unfortunately, be reached by private boat. This means you need to negotiate with the boat men, who, when they have you on their boat, immediately try to upsell you or to find ways to cut short your trip. No matter what the guidebook says, there seems to be no way to get a one hour ride for $5. I don't like the boat men, who are street wise and cynical hustlers for all sorts of good reasons - poverty, insane competition - but even so, it doesn't make you want to spend more time on the water. For the intrepid who take three or four day sails between Luxor and Aswan (toilets not included), the guidebook helpfully notes that, while there are honest sailors, there are also many perverts and thieves amongst the crews. Some things are constants in the world.
As I look more closely at the people, I notice that it is more modern than Luxor, with young woman wearing colorful headscarves and bright clothing, not as tight and with the peek-a-boo coverage seen in Cairo . And prayer callouses have re-appeared on men's foreheads. In my room, a discrete paper disk under the glass on my desk indicates the direction of Mecca, for daily prayers.
After dinner at 4PM out by the pool, I retreat to the balcony outside my room and then, because it becomes too cool after sunset, to my room, where I write this while watching BBC and CNN news. Interspersed in reporint on the on-going carnage in Pakistan are advertisements for vacation spots I've somehow overlooked. Wonderful Romania. Be treated like a start on Turkish Airlines. Visit Baku, Azerbajain in 2010, Islamic Year. Discover wonderful Pozen, Poland. And a brief snippet on Iraqi tourism visiting some fair to begin the process of marketing its "cradle of civilization" sites, pointing at Croatia as a model of what is possible to achieve. IMy plan for Coptic Christmas in Ethopia in 2011 seems positively mainstream.
I had planned to sleep with the doors open but Egypt's legendary (non-malarial) mosquitos soon found their way inside. With the doors closed, the room was stuffy, so I turned on the A/C, to its warmest temperature and, as always, proceeded to freeze any portion of exposed skin .
Kalabsha Temples
There are tombs of a bunch of folks on the Western side of the river, but I've reached the "no more tombs" phase of this trip so I/m off to Kalabsha Temples, the largest freestanding Nubian Temples. Since it is beyond the High Dam, it was relocated to its current spot by German engineers in 1970. And, the best thing, it isn't on the tour group itinerary.
The site is wonderful, sitting on a rocky promontory romatically overlooking Lake Nasser. There is one main temple, and several other tiny chapels and ruins. While I have seen better carving and better painting, there is something very special about being alone at a site so you can feel its mystery. We found this in Siem Reap, home to the famed Angkor Wat temple - and thousands of Korean tour groups. While the famous temples overwhelmed us, there were small places we went to where the magic of the forest setting and the ruins made them very special. Such is the case with Kalabasha, especially on a cool, windy, slighty overcast morning.
In addition to the temples, and the usual grafitti, there are the stones laid hither and yon, pieces of the world's greatest jig saw puzzle, awaiting their mates, which might have been re-used as building materials or which might still be buried somewhere nearby. The caved stones that line this path are interesting because they are much more primative than the rest, but there is no explanation for this in the guidebook.
Since I have driven along the road south of town a number of times already, I speculated that the customers of the enormous papyrus and alabaster shops that line one portion of the road would be tour buses, and today I see that this is true. There are clusters of them in front of several shops, a veritable boat load of innocents being fleeced by their guides who receive up to 50% commission from the shop owners. This is one of the oldest and most prevalent cons in tourism and I can only imagine how much these people are paying for the usual tourist crap - much of it made in India or China. The shops are filled with the cheapest quality Indian shawls and handbags and I would not be surprised if the tee shirts are made in China. I'm guessing that the Pharonic towels, all of which have Egypt printed in large type, and some of which mis-spell Tut, are probably Egyptian.
As I travel around Egypt, I am struck by the almost absolute lack of craftsmanship, as opposed to, to coin a word, souveniermanship. There is no craft, and there is no design. It makes no sense, in a country whose visual heritage is so rich, that everything for sale is of a quality below that found in Times Square. Yet the cottons in my hotel are beautiful interpretations of Nubian designs, and the wall paper at McDonald's is an abstraction of hieroglypics. Admittedly, both were created for foreign, multi-national companies able to pay for talent and to commission modern takes on ancient designs. But surely someone, somewhere in Egypt could develop interesting, higher quality things to sell. I am sure that understanding the reasons that have prevented this from happening would make an interesting, and depressing, study.
The touts have latched on to the word "hassle" and so their patter is "Come into my shop. No hassle" as they continually hassle each passerby. They quote absurdly low prices that are forgotten as soon as someone expresses an interest. On the Corniche, the combination of felucca touts, horse car touts, bottled water touts is just endless. Since there is nothing to see in town and no interesting cafes, I spend my free time on my island, at the hotel, watching the boats on the river and listening to the call to prayer echoing, slightly out of phase, from mosques across the city.
As I prepare myself for four days in Cairo, with the noise and dust and press of cars and people. And with only my cheap hotel room to retreat to when the street overwhelms.
But not quite.
Egypt is playing Algeria tonight for some stage leading up to the World Cup, which I know because the American Consulate in Egypt sent out a warning to avoid Nasser City in Cairo, the site of the game (Since Mumbai, I've starting registering with consulates when I travel. One never knows.).
As I try to go to sleep around 11PM, in anticipation of an early flight, I hear Aswan erupt, with sirens and horns and chants and cheers that go on and on and on for at least an hour. Now realize that my hotel is on an island in the middle of the Nile and I am hearing this. The Nile is not that wide, but, still. Egypt is not unique in this - years ago, I was in Rome when they won an important match and it was much the same.
Cairo
I am back at my cheap hotel, but, having just, by pure chance, read The Man In The Sharkskin Suit, a true story of an Egyptian Jewish family and their eventual flight from Cairo, the streets have new meaning. The synagogue across the street from my hotel is where the author's parents were married. The long-past-its-splendor cafe, Goppi's, is right down the street from my hotel, a street mentioned by name. So I see layers of a life and of a time that is quiet recent. I also see the story of friends of mine: my Syrian Jewish friend in college and the odd ways of that community, my friend now who is the son of Levantine Jews. This is the story of al of their lives, of wealth and privledge and then of emigration and chaos and poverty - and success.
I have errands to run that will take me to the wealthy areas of Cairo, which means that the taxi drivers will be utterly and completely lost, because these areas are outside of the center. I approach one taxi, who quotes a high price and is unwilling to bargain. Then another - a white taxi with black stripes - and, when I ask how much, the driver points to his meter which, like the car, is new (the black and whites are old and battered; there are also white taxis, but I don't know if they all have meters). So off we go, to find a shop in Ma'adi and oh, what an expedition it is. We go hiter and yon, with him getting out, asking directions, driving some more, asking more directions - while the meter ticks at clearly the correct rate. Finally, we find the shop, which has lovely things - and I tell him that we now go to Dokki, across the Nile - but this time, I have a map from the shop, which I had been to before.
Dokki, too, requires shouted questions but we find the shop without too much trouble (everything is relative) and I go in to pick up a length of beautiful Egyptian cloth that they had hemmed for me. I decide to buy another, in different colors, because it is cheap and very sensual. I don't know what I will do with either of them other than having them join the small stash of textiles at the top of my closet bought in various countries to be used some day. Maybe.
And then to Zamaluk, the large island in the Nile, to find the shop that sells Egyptian cotton sheets, which I have been to before and know just how hard the street is to find. But, by this point, the driver and I are a team - he knows that I am insane, and I know that he is patient and hard working, as well as honest. He speaks just enough English - and I have all the addresses written in Arabic.
It is 5 PM and I have been on the go since 7:30 AM, so I dismiss the driver and tip him well. The total cost of his services for 4 1/2 hours is $20 - with tip. I ask him if he wants to meet me at 9AM tomorrow and, when he agrees, give him my mobile number. Not only is this insanely cheap, but it is truly ?no hassle: - no bargaining with every time I flag a taxi.
The primary reason that finding things in Cairo is an endless series of stop and asks is that there are no adequate maps - in any language - and certainly no bi-lingual maps. I have bought the best English map that I could find - it is huge - but it still leaves out many streets. Since I have an Egyptian SIM card, and local calls are very cheap, if we're really lost and if the phone number I have is correct, I call and hand the phone to the driver, so he can ask for directions from the shop. This is the only time that I have GIVEN a cell phone to a taxi driver.
My Footprint guidebook, which is my preferred series, does not have place names in Arabic, which is a real problem. It means that every night I make a list of places I want to go on an old spiral reporters notebook and, in the morning, I have someone translate it into Arabic. Pretty much, if it isn't on the list, I'm not going there. I have even had them translate the hotel address into Arabic because their card is in English - as are the cards for several of the high end shops I'm going to. I ask them to write their address, too, in Arabic. This is all very strange and I think about creating an iPhone app like the one someone did for the Beijing Olympics, which has all sorts of places and turns into taxi cards. It wouldn't even need to be that elaborate - it could simply be a list of names of all the hotels and sites and addresses of interest to a tourist in a city. If I really wanted to be helpful, I'd add a photo of the building, at least for landmarks, since that makes finding them so much easier. Although I'm not sure that you could tell one mosque from another that easily. Or one Buddhist Wat either.
Islamic Cairo
Islamic Cairo is vast, dense and confusing. There are so many mosques and madrassas and mausoleums that even the most tireless traveler, which I am not, needs to be selective. Since I saw a few places immediately south of the Khan when I was first in Cairo, I decided to focus on the area around the Citadel today.
The Citadel has many places to see, but only two that are of interest - one mosque for the view (I don't bother to go in) and another which iw exceptionally beautiful (If I ever edit this, I'll add the name). While tourists are expected to take off their shoes, women are not required to cover their heades. This is interesting. You see some women on the street whose heads are not covered - they might be Christian or liberal Muslims. So, on one level, why should a Christian need to cover their head in a tourist mosque - but on another, why shouldn't they? In any case, I cover mine and spend some time doing one of the things I love most - looking at and photographing old Islamic architecture.
From the Citadel, we go to another pair of mosques - or maybe mausoleums - it all blurs. I go into only one, the much older of the two. Here, too, women do not need to cover their heads but they need to be modestly dressed, because one woman is wearing a green (the color of the Prophet) satin robe. I think I had a dream about this once, long ago. It,too, is exquisite and the 19th century mosque next door fits in remarkably wellv- looking at the minarets, I would never have guessed that it is so new.
I don't go in for two reasons - shoes off, scarf on gets tiring, I'm trying to avoid burn out - and all of these admissin fees add up - fast. The Citadel was 50 pounds ($10), this mosque is $5 and so it goes all day. The stash of pounds I've been carrying around is fast diminishing - and I'm not really shopping or paying for much, other than the odd McChicken sandwhich, with cash. I've probably spent a couple of hundred dollars on admission fees.
Then to a Sufi dervish temple, being restored by an Italian Egyptian team and described as a respite from the streets. I must be missing the respite part, because there is only a mournful garden.
Even though these are historical monuments, they are hard to find - and would be incredibly difficult for someone who doesn't speak Arabic. And then there's the geography of Islamic Cairo - tiny, narrow streets, with cars and donkey carts and horse carts. And, everywhere, the Egyptican favorite - driving backwards, often for a considerable distance. This is the only city where you manage to make it across homocidal streets, thinking you're safe - and discover that the car next to you is backing up where you're standing at surprisingly high speed. Traffic in Cairo is dense and aggressive - cars seem to speed up when they see you, seeming to come as close as possible to you, while you frantically try to cross the street.
Overall, whether you are in a car with a driver or walking, Cairo is simply exhausting. There is no respite. This is true of other cities, where the only comfortable place is a five star hotel, but Cairo makes even Bombay and Bangkok seem laid back.
Exhausted by 3 PM, I have the driver drop me - today's cost, with tip, was $18. I collapse in my room, which is odd since I've been in a car all day.
And now the big question -- I don'd know whether I can stand any more mosques, I've seen all the tony parts of town and most of the fancy shops - so what on earth do for the next two days? I could spend them hanging out at a five start hotel, which is both comfortable and souless, but I need to come up with something, for I am reluctant to let the driver go. I don't know whether I'm up for the City of the Dead - and certainly not alone, from what I've read. And this only means more mausoleums.
As I search on-line for options, A shop at the Four Seasons Hotel is mentioned. In addition to the usual luxurey brands, it apparently sells thousands of scarfs. Now this is interesting, and not only because I have a minor scarf obsession. Rather, head scarves are such an integral part of an Egyptian woman's wardrobe that it would be interesting to see what is for sale.
While we in the West think of Islamic headscarves as black, or maybe white, wraps, the reality here is very different, even for middle aged women. Deprved of the abiiy to color and still their hair in publicm, they express themselves with scarves, which, if they are young, match the bright colors of their clothing and, if they are older, have more subdued patterns. The young modern women often wear two, in different colors so their heads are wrapped in large, colorful habadashery, so different from the severe whipple or tight headscarf. And great care is taken to match their wardrobe. All of which proves that there are ways to get around even the strictest rules. And many of these women wear make-up, so the overall effect is quite colorful and attractive. Except, of course, for the black phantoms who float throught the street, with everything but their eyes covered in black.
The streets in Cairo is frantically busy even at 9:30 PM. Yound men. Families with very yound children. Shopping, walking on the main streets, buying icecream from the fabulously busy pastry shop nearby which, like many Middle Eastern bakery shops, sell pastries identical to those I ate as a child. The shop also sells ice cream and there is a crowd because the night is warm. I long for some but intestinal prudance rules.
Unlike this pastry shop, which clearly sells high quality goods, breadships selling brown pita bread, breadsticks and other staples are everywhere in the city, laid out on the sidewalk, uncovered and unprotected from the auto fumes, dust and pollution, the constants of life in Cairo and every major city in the developing world.
I retire to my room and design tomorrow's schedule. I have an errand to run that will take me back to Dokki - I hope the driver remembers the way - then some shops to check in Zamalek, then to the famous Khan market, which mostly sells the same tourist crap as everywhere in Egypt. I had walked through it once, before it had really opened, and it really deserves a second look. Plus I might like to buy some Egyptian inlay - allegedly mother of pearl but really plastic. Still, it looks nice (today I found a real wood carving shope but the prices were extraordinary and there was really nothing I need.
Off for the nightly charging of the electronics, which I must rotate because I brought only my dual plug/dual voltage surge protector.. Travel where you will - you are still a slave to your gadegets.
As I write this, I have Grade D Arabic movies playing on TV - my choice has narrowed to American Evangelicals in English or this. I could simply open iTunes and play music but Arabic TV is so much more entertaining.
For example.
No matter how the men in the family are dressed, normally the woman will have her headscarf on - in the house. Now, everyone knows that this is absurd - all the shapeless dresses and headscarves are for the public realm. In private, if shop windows are any indication, women wear lacy underwear in all sorts of colors and tight, sexy clothing. I know that the upper classes often dress very elegantly under their coverings but I lower and middle class Egyptian women run... cushiony... so it is a bit frightening to imagine them in these outfits. In any case, whether in Egypt or years ago in Iran, people find this strange compromise non-sensical, but it the norm on TV shows and commercials alike.
For some reason, in these movies, where everyone looks like they're wearing 1970's attire but has cell phones, few if any of the women are wearing headscarves. I'm not quite sure what is going on culturally with these, which seem to be .... lightly scripted. For example, a bunch of 20 somethings is running around a clearly low budget set screaming, pounding on doors, holding curved knives and finding a lot of bloody dead people. I have no idea, but the high pitched screams are entertaining. Obviously, I'm not well plugged into the Cairo nightlife.
Another 1970s touch that you see in a fair number of taxis is really, really gross, icky fake fur - in, say, a greyish color. It covers the dash board, the seats. Even when this stuff is brand new you don't want to go near it - and it hasn't been new in quite some time.
Cairo - Day 7
I have been in Cario for FAR too long. It isn't that there aren't still things to see - there are - but this is such a difficult city to navigate, on foot or by car - that I have lost interest in exploring the city.
Crossing the street is a competitive sport. Here and there are traffic lights, or traffic police, which seem to be obeyed, but then there are the cars that speed up when they see you crossing, either aiming for you, trying to get as close to you as possible or simply ignoring you. Then, because the street you're trying to cross is clear since the intersection is grid locked, you think you're safe as you get to the other side - only to realize that you're in the path of a car that is backing up RAPIDLY from a half block away.
Now, New Yorkers have been known to drive in reverse for a little bit, but they have nothing on the Egyptians, who do it with considerable frequency, in all sorts of places,and for considerable distances. My otherwise sabe driver thinks nothing of trying to back up down a narrow street with cars coming at him. Avoiding traffic is the impetus for this, and that is a perfectly valid reason for almost anything.
Moving right along, it appears that headlights are optional, because, oh, 5% of the cars have theirs off, or are driving with only faint parking lights. So... you're trying to cross an insanely busy street. You think you see a break in the cars, you start to move - and then you pull back as you see the motorcycle (with 4 people on it), the van, the car, whatever, barreling down the street with its lights off.
And when you get on the streets, at least downtown, where my hotel is located, they are narrow, thronged with people and, at night, stores set up stands in the street. Mothers out for the evening stroll slowly together, with children filling in the scant available space. Then wooden pushcarts come out here and there, with clothing for sale.
The streets themselves are in what would generally be considered to be a ... poor... state of repair. Ghastly probably comes closer. There are concrete tiles sticking up hither and yon, the odd bit of sand, and the curbs with short, nasty metal bits sticking up to keep cars from drivng up over them. As if they could, because the curbs are often 18" high. But those low barriers are really something to pay attention to because they could cause a nasty fall into a rapidly turning car.
So you take a taxi, and leave the aggrivation to the driver. Except the traffic is so bad that you can't just sit back and close your eyes. There are no lanes, the exhaust fumes and cigarette smoke and dust is extreme (I am routinely wearing a carbon filter mask. I no longer care what anyone thinks - the air is just too awful. I figure that if the Chinese and Japanese can walk around anywhere on earth with gauze masks on when they have the sniffles, why can't I wear a nifty, flesh colored job that makes me look like something out of a Pharonic carving? In spite of this, I am getting that old "I've got something wrong with my bronchial tubes" feeling so I've just started another course of antibiotics. While the TV is filled with ads for soap to prevent H1N1 and the country is in a reasonable state of panic about it, my problem is bacterial, beause the city is just so dirty.)
When I say "Cairo is dirty" I don't mean piles of litter or trash - the streets are swept. The problem is that it never, ever rains in Cairo and it is surrounded by huge expanses of desert. The buildings are covered with decades of brown dusty dirty and, after a day of wandering, so are you. Now, I don't normally wear white shirts, so I can't compare how quickly they get dirty in New York with the deal here but I doubt that I it is even close. I wear a white shirt, to block the sun and keep me cool and, by 4 in the afternoon, it is incredibly dirty. And so are my hands. I have alcohol cleanser with me but when I wash my hands, which I do as often as possible, they are always dirty in a way they never are in New York.
The more you think about it, the more you realize that there is no solution, absent climate change that makes Egypt wetter, which is unlikely. How do you clean an enormous city when there is never any rain? I don't mean the streets - I mean the buildings. Think of what Manhattan would look like if it had spent a couple of hundred years in the Hamptons.
I am sure that no one in a huge, sprawling, poor city like Cairo thinks about anything as absurd as cleaning any of its buildings, let alone all of them. And that just isn't how things work here. It is more like the way things work in even the weathiest parts of Indian cities. You own your half of a floor, or whatever, and are free to do with it what you like. Your neighbor is equally free to do something entirely different with their flat - not only inside, but when enclosing the terrace. Or deciding where to dry their laundry (guess) - so many buildings resemble patchwork quilts. The old, grand ones downtown have uniform exteriors, which are often quite imposing, but they were constructed when Egypt was a colony so European mores held sway.
So here I am, trying to figure out what to do until my flight leaves at some obscene hour on Thursday morning. I can't hang around my $25 / night hotel, for fairly obvious reasons. There are no cafes anywhere near my hotel. And I have this lovely driver showing up every morning at 9, so I have to figure out where to go. I know that I could dismiss him, but having a driver at my disposal in Cario is just too much of an inexpensive luxery to give up.
I have made out my itinerary, but there is no one at the hotel desk who knows enough English to translate the addesses, so I plan on imposing on the staff at my first stop, which is way out in Dokki to advance the shower curtain project to its next step. We get out there without any problem and wait for the shop to open officially at 10. It is open, but not officially, so I need to wait for whoever is going to arrange the tailoring to come in. When she does, she calls the owner, who isn't in today, and we discover that we have.... mis-communicated. She thought I was bringing in fabric I had bought there while I was trying to be very clear that it wasn't that fabric. In any case, they promise to try, but don't know what the tailor's schedule looks like - and I need it by tomorrow, preferably not at the end of the day, because I need to quit early and finish packing and try to nap before my flight.
Then we're off to the Tentmaker's Bazaar in Islamic Cairo, which is the last covered bazaar and has more interesting wares than the kitsch in the Khan. The traffic is horrible and then gets worse as we drive towards the main north/south axis of the souk. I'm not really expecting to buy anything, even though the work, which is all applique, can be very good and affordable.
There are perhaps three dozen shops, stalls, really, and I spend time looking at what each sells. The overall designs are the same, mostly a kind of Islamic floral design in all sizes, colors and levels of complexity. There are a few Pharonic pieces, and more Islamic calligraphy pieces. Here and there are embroidered patchwork pictures of people in the countryside, some of which are very, very good.
I love calligraphy. Japanese (Chinese, not so much) and the highly stylized Islamic script. The last time I was in Istanbul we were at a major tile works and I briefly considered buying the most becauiful mural. At first, all the calligraphy looks alike but, upon closer inspection, you see which workmen (and they are all men) are talented and which merely know the craft. I find one shop where the work is very, very good and, so surprisingly inexpensive (especially compared to the absurd prices I was quoted in Coptic Cairo), that I buy three pieces. Soon the Ganeshes in my office will be joined by Sufi and Kulfic pieces. I think the Lao skirt will be rotated out.
I want to go to a major mosque mausoleum complex towards the north of Islamic Cairo but the traffic is so dreadful that I tell my driver to head to a mosque at the far south, which is a bit out of the madness and closer to my hotel. It is getting on 3PM and I am tired. He goes somewhere - other than being in horrible traffic in Islamic Cairo, I haven't a clue - and eventually, he points out that we're at the Northern Walls, which we drive pass, I snap a few photos out of the window, and we're done.
He has my notebook, with my list of places to see in English and Arabic. While waiting for me, he obviously goes through to figure out where the next place will be and he had seen this. Since the call to prayer had sounded, which makes mosques off limits to tourists, I'm assuming he decided to head to the walls. Or maybe he did it for some other reason - we don't have a language in common to discuss this. But it is one more site crossed off my list and eventually we end up back at my hotel, with plans to meet in the morning.
Now, I'm exhausted after a few days of this - and he deals with this traffic and craziness every day, because he is, after all, a taxi driver. The Amerian cousin of a friend who I had dinner with was surprised by how little I'm paying him - and I'm overtipping him wildly. She was hoping that I wasn't being taken too badly but now realizes that I have a better deal than she has ever heard of in her three years in Cairo. She lives and works in one of the affluent edges of the city, but, overall, I can't imagine how ANYONE can deal with Cairo on an on-going basis. It is simply too exhausing.
I have to figure out where to go tomorrow. I don't have the endurance for Islamic Cairo and there's not enough to see elsewhere. Some major museums are under renovations - in fact, I don't know whether the mosque complex has re-opened - and I also don't know that I'm motivated enough to attempt an exemplary mausoleam in the City of the Dead, a cemetary on the eastern side of the city that is home to many tombs - and 1/2 million people, who need housing and so have turned the cemetary into a slum village, complete with stores and schools. So I'm contemplating a small museum of Islamic ceramics in one of the upscale parts of town - see what I mean about being absolutely desparate for something relaxing to do? Maybe I'll have lunch at the Marriott, even though there is something insane about keeping a driver waiting for 60 minutes while I eat. But, at $18/day, maybe not insane.
I also learned that the synagogue across the street from my hotel, which they won't let you photograph, is actually open - but at 10 and my driver comes at 9, so where will we spend the hour until it opens. See what I mean? Complicated.
Knowing what I know now, I would tell people 10 days, 2 weeks, tops, for Egypt. I realized after I booked (which China blew up, for the second time), that I was going to have 4 or 5 days too many in Egypt but I didn't realize just how relentless this city is.
Whatever.
My Last Day With The Old Queen
After Googling madly, I decided to see whether two major Cairo sites had re-opened from restoration - the Islamic Museum, which apparently has been one disaster after another and may never reopen, and the Qalawun mosque and mausoleum complex, which is supposed to be spectacular and almost finished. Neither is open but my driver, who has grown very comfortable with my sightseeing list, points out that we're right by the Beit Al Suhaymi mansion, which has has been restored. It is enormous and magnificent. There is a floorplan, which focuses on when each section was added and not what is where, let alone how to get to the various floors and courtyards and what purpose they served. So I wander around, through doorways, up stairways and back down, discovering an Arabian Nights bedroom whose ceiling has shaped insets of colored glass, as does its bathroom and off, in another direction, is the privy. There are formal reception rooms with magnificent inlaid marble fountains, wooden screens so the ladies can watch without being seen - and a gaggle of young art students, looking for something to draw today (this is the area they were in when I first came to Cairo). Some of them focus solely on the geometric designs in the doors, sitting with rulers and measuring instruments in addition to their sketch pads.
I spend a long time and know that I have missed any number of rooms, but seeing each and every one isn't that important - especially since most are bare of furniture and rugs.
I decide not to go to the Khan - I walked through it when I first arrived, know just how tacky Egyptian trinkets are and am done with shopping, so off we go to Dokki, to collect the almost done shower curtain. I decide not to inspect it to ensure that it is right - I will do that in New York - because what exactly would I do if it is not? One very expensive, and irreplacable sheet rendered useless. I have now been in this shop four times and continue to be amazed at their prices - very high quality clothing made from wonderful Indian and other imported fabrics but, still close to New York.
Lunch outdoors at the Mariott on Zamaluk - horrible service, absurd prices but a nice place to kill an hour. Then back to my hotel and across the street to see the synagogue, which, to my surprise, is open daily until 3PM. This is unexpected because you can't stand in front of it, you can't take a photo of the exterior - but you can go inside, without a security check. You need only leave your passport with the policeman in the guardhouse.
The synagogue is beautiful - Art Neauveu - an obviously wealthy congregation built it. I am surprised that the curtain covering the Torah's is green embrI oidered velvet, because green is the color of The Prophet, of Islam - I guess that, in those pre-extremist days, green had less symboilism and, perhaps, was a sign of how assimilated into Egyptian colonial society the affluent Jews of Cairo were. While it is beautiful, I find it extremely sad - there are perhaps 80 Jews left in Cairo. It is the same at all of these grand, abandoned synagogues - America, Canada, Australia, England and Egypt have swept up the bulk of the world's Jews, with small communities in Western Europe. But left behind, in memory of the vibrant and varied cities that spawned them, are these synagogues, standing empty and unused.
The guy at the desk suggests that I have the taxi pick me up 3 1/2 hours before my flight, because who knows what the traffic will be to the airport - at 1AM. Normally, I would have insisted on 1:30 for a 4:30 AM flight, but tonight is the Sundan / Egypt soccor match and Cairo already is insane. Egyptian flags are everywhere - flown from buildings, hung out of cars, afixed to taxis. Young men drive around waving them. And everywhere, people blow their horns in a DA DA DA DA DA rhythm, which only increases as the day wears on. By game time, at 7:30, the country will be in a fever pitch. If Egypt wins, the city will go wild. If it loses, I'll be at the airport very, very early. But there's no convenient nap time for a flight at that hour and, with Lufthansa's check in policy - only within 23 hours of your last flight boarding - I'll check in at the airport, especially since I have a small bag to check. I am carrying on the few things I've bought, as is my practice, and checking s nylon bag filled with dirty clothes, maps and other odds and ends.
Then, to tempt the gods, I placed a Fresh Direct order, for delivery Friday morning - a girl's gotta eat. My contractor said that all but two things are done - the fault of the fixture's shop, which didn't deliver one and delivered the other broken. Now to hope for safe and timely flights and to sleep, perchance to dream, on-board.
But I do need to eat dinner, so I venture into the unbelievably quiet streets of Cairo. There are no cars. There are no people. EVERYONE is watching the soccer match. You walk down the street and see groups of men clustered around a TV in an alley, screaming when a shot is missed. I decide upon McDonald's, because I want a couple of things to take with me on the flight, since I'm not sure exactly what meal I will be served between now and when I land. I kind of doubt breakfast at 4:30 AM. Maybe a snack before we land in Frankfurt at 7:30 AM, but probably not anything that constitutes a meal. Then I leave for NY at 10:30 AM, so I have two protein bars, the food of travelers everywhere these days, and now two fried chicken sandwiches.
In McDonald's, they have propped a TV on top of the trash bin and everyone, including the manager, is sitting around watching. The only customers are three young gay Egyptian men. Egypt was tolerant of homosexuality for hundreds of years, a period that ended within the last couple of decades as Islamicism swept the region. It is such a change for this country, which hosts the largest film and TV industry in the Arab world and is thus the source of all those horrible movies I've been watching.
Back at the hotel, the guys who work here are glued to the TV. When I ask them who is winning, they say "Algeria" - unlikely, because they're playing the Sudan. They beat Alegeria last week.
Now, when I think of the Sudan, I think "Africa" and when I think "Africa" I think "dark skin." But if Sudan is the team in the white uniforms, which I am pretty sure they are, because the other team is wearing black and red, two of the colors in the Egyptian flag, then why are there tall, light skinned players? I know the answer to that: hired guns - but of all the depressing fates in life, being a pro athlete for the Sudan is pretty sad. I mean, do you actually need to live there, at least some of the time? Before things got bad in the Sudan - and they are very bad - the Lonely Planet guidebook described it something along the lines of "there's famine in the south, war in the east..." and that was before things went awry.
I decide to watch the game in my room - I need to do something between now (9PM) and my 1 AM taxi, and reading means that I'm draining the battery on one of my eReaders, a problem if I can't sleep. So I flip through the channels - the evangelicals are at it, as always - and cannot find the game. I can't find much of anything, actually, because there seem to be only two or three channels. I have lost the Egyptian movie channel which was particularly inane tonight - during one of the dance scenes there is a modestly attractive blond who simply can't move, who they keep cutting back to - and am not settled in to watch a French film subtitled in Russian. Now that's a combination I've never considered before. Unlike the Arabs, the French are brooding and depressive, which is exactly what I expect them to be. But now a news show is on, so I am testing my horrible college French by trying to get a grip on what they're talking about - the grippe, in fact. There is some H1N1 vaccination disaster - now that sounds familiar - and then we cut to the Irish soccer team, which is playing France tonight. There is simply no escaping the sport. You really do need to wonder why America failed to adopt this sport, picking instead the bizarre American football, where huge players hurl themselves at each other and end up with brain damage.
________________
Memo From Cairo
A Nation’s Shaken Ego Seen in a Soccer Loss
CAIRO — Of all the events in contemporary history, it is the soul-shattering military defeat of 1967, when Arab armies lost land to Israel, that some Egyptians have pointed to for comparison as the nation struggles to come to terms with the debacle that followed their loss to Algeria in a soccer game.
Losing the critical game last month to secure a spot in the World Cup was bad enough. But the aftermath, first anti-Algerian riots then a long period of unprecedented hand wringing, has laid bare a nation struggling to come to terms with its diminished standing, said political analysts, writers and academics, as well as Egyptians who attended the game in Khartoum, Sudan.
“The comparison with 1967 has a specific significance, the defeat of ’67 weakened Egypt as a country and within the Arab world,” said Hassan Nafa, a political scientist at Cairo University. “It broke Egypt.”
With all the challenges Egyptians face — more than half the population lives on less than $2 a day — nothing has mobilized public opinion in recent history quite like the events that occurred in Sudan. Egypt thought it would beat Algeria and earn a World Cup berth for the first time in 20 years. It approached the contest more like a nation going to war than to a soccer game.
When it lost and Egyptian fans left the stadium, many said they were chased down and harassed by Algerians, and some suffered minor injuries. But, most of all, they said they were deeply offended and left feeling helpless.
“How can Egypt, the Arab symbol of strength, be humiliated like this in the streets of Khartoum?” asked Ahmed Tarek, 33, who runs an Egyptian advertising agency in Sudan. “And if we are really a strong country, why aren’t we doing something about it? Nobody had ever insulted the Egyptians to this degree. This issue revealed so many things, it woke up the people.”
The government weighed in heavily, going all the way to the top with the president, Hosni Mubarak, giving an emotional speech before Parliament in which he said, “I want to say in clear words that the dignity of Egyptians is part of the dignity of Egypt.”
The streets of Cairo today are filled with lighted billboards of Egyptian flags and signs that say “proud to be Egyptian.” Television talks shows and daily newspapers have been busy with discussion about Egyptian identity, while commentators have lamented the final collapse of pan-Arab unity. The Ministries of Information and Foreign Affairs have publicly criticized each other in connection with the soccer crisis. Relations between Algeria and Egypt became so strained that the Arab League asked Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, to mediate.
But the national trauma was so profound and so prolonged that the discussion began to shift, and not as the government had tried to guide it: to rally around the flag, and the leadership. “The leader who uses power and oppresses his citizens and forges their will in elections cannot convince anyone when he speaks about the dignity of the citizens,” wrote Alaa al-Aswani, the best-selling author and social critic in the Nov. 24 issue of the newspaper Shorouk.
Instead, people focused on domestic failings that until now were largely tolerated, or swallowed: A ferry that sank leaving 1,000 Egyptians lost at sea; universities ranked among the worst in the world; an Egyptian border guard killed by the Israelis; Egypt’s longtime culture minister losing to a Bulgarian as the new leader of Unesco; and now Algerians desecrating the Egyptian flag.
“The Real Meaning of Egyptian Dignity,” read a headline in a biting column in the Dec. 1 issue of Al Masry Al Youm, an independent daily newspaper. “Our dignity,” wrote Amar Ali Hassan in that article, “is here and not in Khartoum and we must seize it now before we bid it farewell forever.”
Over time, the object of most people’s ire has shifted from the Algerians to the government, which many have started to accuse of exploiting the defeat for political gain, even as they continue to ache over the personal loss of pride.
In the weeks since the soccer loss, people continue to write aggressively about the event. There have been newspaper columns attacking the government’s failure to manage this and every other crisis, columns attacking the way Arab countries treated Egyptians, columns calling for Arab unity, and columns examining the history of Arab relations and the history of Egyptian-Algerian relations.
The government has long looked for a rallying point to drive loyalty to the state, and thought it found that in the Algeria match, social commentators said.
But what has emerged, instead, is a surge in nationalism wrapped up in anger — and despair. “If we are infuriated, it is not over soccer, to hell with the game, we are infuriated over our dignity,” said Hamada Abdullah, who lives in Daqahalya, northeast of Cairo. “We love this country and don’t want to be humiliated whether from the authorities inside or from other people outside. We feel oppressed and constrained and unable to do anything.”
There are two large lighted billboards displaying the Egyptian flag posted along the heavily trafficked October 6th Bridge, a name that itself speaks to Egypt’s longstanding search for pride. The bridge was named for the day in 1973 that Egypt, Syria and other Arab nations attacked Israel as Jews observed Yom Kippur, the holiest observance of the year. Egypt crossed the Suez Canal and for four days had the upper hand before Israel pressed the Egyptian military back.
The initial success was enough to be seen as a victory, a salve to the humiliation of 1967, when Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula. Egyptians are hoping that they can once again find their way back, wrote Ibrahim el-Bahrawi in the Dec. 1 issue of Al Masry Al Youm.
Comparing the loss in 1967 with events in Khartoum, he wrote, “The Egyptian dignity which was wounded by the behavior of the Algerian thugs as they chased after the peaceful Egyptian fans in the streets of Khartoum will rise once again across the nation.”
NY Times December 10, 2009
