Egypt. The cradle of civilization. The land of the pharaohs, the pyramids, the Sphinx. The home of Cairo, the jewel of the Nile. The greatness that was, juxtaposed with the calamity that is. It is a beautiful and awe-inspiring country, but it is poor. And don't drink the water. Don't even look sideways at the water. It will mess you up, brother.
02 April 2004
Flew to Cairo, 3 hour flight. They gave us real silverware with our meal--including (gasp!) a METAL BUTTER KNIFE. Don't tell the TSA. Nabil, our Cairo connection, met us at the airport and got us onto our bus to the Sheraton Cairo, a four-star hotel downtown. Getting into the hotel involved going through a metal detector, which complained about each and every person, but nobody was stopped or searched. Some security system. The area in front of the hotel, outside but covered (and protected by the metal detector), is a shisha spot.
That evening, we attended the sound & light show at the pyramids. Very impressive, though the narration claimed that slave labor was not employed in the building of the pyramids. The workers all had "faith" and were all "part of a vision." Yeah, right.
Nobody seems to know how the Sphinx lost its nose, but these days they blame it on the Mamelukes, possibly because the only other viable culprits are the Arab invaders in 693 or an Islamic cleric, Sa'im al-dahr, in 1378. Better to blame the Mamelukes than finger the Muslims, right?
After the show, we picked up pizza and calzone from one of the restaurants in the hotel and ate in our room. Nice view of the Nile.
03 April 2004
Wake-up call at 2:45 AM so we could make our 5 AM flight to Luxor. Who booked these tickets, anyway? The hotel gave us a box breakfast, but the boxes fell apart by the time we made it to the airport. It was a nice gesture, anyway.
Once in Luxor, we boarded the Nile Ritz, which would be our home for the next few days. We were so early that the rooms weren't ready, so we sat on the sundeck and visited. Since we didn't have our room assignments, they wouldn't serve us coffee or anything. I had to demand that they serve us, and promise to pay for it myself. Sheesh.
We met Matt and Robyn, a wonderful couple from Cairo who were on the cruise with their three kids. Matt and I followed our boys up to the pilot house, where the captain--a man with six fingers on his left hand--let them turn the wheel and honk the horn. He had tea brought out for us, and we sat and visited with him and a few of his mates for awhile. Matt speaks good Arabic, so he did most of the talking.
That afternoon, we met Ashraf, our tour guide, who took us to Karnak and Luxor temples. I bought a soapstone scarab from a street vendor outside of Karnak, much to Ashraf's chagrin, and of course I was the last one back on the bus.
04 April 2004
We were to leave at some ungodly hour of the morning, 5:45 AM or so, to tour the Valley of the Kings. Our boy had a fever, so I was elected (appointed?) as the family representative for this grueling day of touring.
The stuff on the west side of the Nile is all funeral-related; all the life-related stuff is on the east side. The Valley is absolutely desolate. Picture the stark desert valley from any ambush scene in any old Western. The Valley of the Kings is like that, all the way down. I managed to make it in & out of a couple of tombs, taking some pictures against the rules (for my family, dontcha know). Got a great shot of one of the guards down in the tomb trying to catch people sneaking pictures. At least, it would have been a great shot, if it hadn't been too dark and blurry to make anything out.
After VoK, we visited the Temple of Hatchepsut ("hot chip suit") on the other side of the ridge. This temple had been uncovered only a few years ago, which made me aware of the dynamic state of tourism in Egypt--you could visit every few years, and always have something new to see. I wasn't too interested in the interior of the temple, so I climbed a hill and had a look around. It's amazing how green the Nile valley is, and how abruptly the desert begins.
An interesting bit of trivia...there's a smallish village on the hillside near this temple. The inhabitants of the village claim ownership of the land, and they're the ones who initially discovered the temple. The government tried to move them across the river to a government-constructed replacement village, but these folks would have no part of that. When the government sent in the police to forcibly remove them, a firefight ensued. Mubarak recognized that a tourist area was no place for such activities, and wisely ordered the police to withdraw. The people of the village have retained their homes and their land, and the government is attempting to negotiate an acceptable deal with them. My kind of people, those villagers.
Next, it was on to an alabaster shop, where the proprietor had some of his employees demonstrate the process of handcrafting alabaster jars, and then gave us an opportunity to purchase some of his wares. I'm pretty sure that Ashraf receives some sort of kickback for taking his groups in there. After our day of touring, our bus headed back to Luxor to join a caravan that would take us to Esna, where we would catch up with the boat, which supposedly would be waiting for us on the other side of the lock at Esna.
The bus caravans were started back when travel in Egypt wasn't exactly safe, and tour companies would hire armed escorts to get them safely through the countryside. The escort service is now thoroughly bureaucratized, and guards are required even though everyone insists that the country is perfectly safe. Safe from rogue bandits, maybe, but what about the government bandits?
The boat wasn't through the lock, which was OK since I wanted to see the mechanism anyway. My sick son seemed to be feeling better, so we went up on deck and caught the lock-traversal action.
05 April 2004
I glanced out our cabin window in the morning, and saw a couple of sailors from our ship (one guy is to be married in a few months) smoking a homemade shisha onshore next to the ship. I wish I had a decent diagram of how he put that thing together.
We visited the temple of Horus in Edfu, which was built circa 300 BC on top of the ruins of another temple from 1200 BC. Edfu is a small, very crowded city. Our tour group made our way through masses of people, horse-drawn carts, carriages, taxis, and buses--with no injuries, amazingly.
On to Kom Ombo, which is known (at least regionally) for its sugar cane, hibiscus, and henna. The temple there has an interesting engraving that depicts Marcus Aurelias (so it is thought) and Ptolemy exchanging a set of surgical tools. The Egyptians apparently enjoyed quite advanced medical techniques, at least prior to the Islamic crusades. It is interesting to see the deletorious effects of a few thousand years of Islamic rule.
On the way back to the ship, we stopped at a snake charmer we'd seen earlier, who was playing with some cobras. He claims to have a spiritual power over snakes, and villagers call him when they have a snake in or about their house that they want removed. He catches cobras, pulls their fangs out, and lets tourists take a picture with a cobra draped around their neck--for a price, of course. I asked him how long it takes for their fangs to grow back, and he said the snakes die within a few days due to the amount of handling they receive.
That evening, we were supposed to wear traditional Egyptian dress to dinner. I hadn't found anything that grabbed my attention in the limited amount of shopping time we'd had, so I wasn't planning to take part, but Matt wrapped a pillowcase around his head like a turban, so I did the same. I think I looked more pirate than Egyptian, but at least I tried.
Had opportunities to visit with Matt and Robyn at different times during the day. It is always a bittersweet thing to make such good friends on a trip like this. I know we will meet again, but I--rather selfishly, perhaps--hope it's on this side of heaven.
06 April 2004
We were all wiped out, so we skipped the tour of the Philae temple and the Aswan dam, and slept in. It was quite refreshing to just hang out on the ship, enjoying the sights and sounds of Aswan. Later that day, we rented a felucca, or sailboat, with our new friends and explored some of the sights of the Nile around Aswan. Walked around the Aswan botanical garden island, which was initiated many years ago by an Englishman. Quite beautiful.
07 April 2004
Had a short visit with Kaled, the service manager on the upper deck. He is a Coptic believer with three kids, Miriam (11), George (6), and a 1-year-old. Disembarked the Nile Ritz and checked into the Hotel Basma, which is located atop a hill near the Nubian Museum in Aswan. We took a carriage ride around Aswan, with Samil as our guide. The horses were pretty gaunt, and we went through several areas of town where we could see the abject poverty of this place.
Later that evening, I went to the market on my own to find a drum for my son. Found a nice drum, and bought an oud too. It was a very cheaply made oud, so I looked around until I found a fairly nice-looking one, and spent two hours talking Mustafa down from 850 pounds (exchange rate is about 6 pounds per $) to 200 pounds with trade-in. He told me his grandfather had opened a music souq, but the tourist trade wouldn't support it, so he had to start selling trinkets and non-musical stuff--and it saddened him so much that it put him in the grave. I told him that I couldn't even make an offer on his oud, because I couldn't pay his price, and I didn't want to dishonor his grandfather's memory. It just got deeper from there, two hours' worth. What an experience!
All of the shopkeepers wanted to know where I was from. If I spoke only the few Arabic words I knew, I could keep them guessing for awhile. They liked the fact that I was an American...they're not so crazy about American policy, but they like Americans. "You don't like bin Laden, I don't like bin Laden," said one. I replied, "I guess he's bad for business everywhere." He nodded vigorously.
08 April 2004
Wake-up call at 3 AM to make our early flight back to Cairo, where we returned to the Sheraton. As a birthday party for Jenna and me, our new friends joined our group in the Harrison suite and we ordered out for pizza. Not until the pizza had been delivered to the metal detector did we learn that the Sheraton forbids bringing in outside food. The manager didn't seem to care that he was spoiling a little girl's birthday party, and he didn't seem to be intimidated by Jim. I attempted to take the pizza through a service entrance, but was foiled by the guards there, so Rosalie met us around the corner with some large duffel bags and we smuggled the pizza upstairs that way, right under the manager's nose.
The Neufelds gave me a very pretty decorative jewelry box, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I'm not much of a jewelry box kind of guy, but this one is definitely a keeper.
09 April 2004
Visited the Egyptian museum in the morning. It would take literally months to spend just a few minutes looking at each item in the collection. My son loved the Tutenkhamen display, of course. The overwhelming thing to me is that they're building a new museum facility near the Giza pyramids, which means they're going to have to move all of that stuff. Ugh!
After the museum, we headed for the pyramids. Emil was our tour guide, and Ashraf was our guard. The American and British embassies had requested that tour groups of their citizens be accompanied by an armed guard. So, if any terrorists want to kill Americans or Brits, all they need to do is look for a group that includes an Egyptian wearing an ill-fitting suit that bulges out at weird angles. I asked Ashraf if the full-auto under his jacket was a Heckler, and he said yes, but he wasn't allowed to display it in public. He would be in major trouble, he said, if he even showed it to me.
My boy and I went inside the smallest of the three pyramids (Mycerinus). We could have explored the Great Pyramid, but they wanted 100 pounds apiece for that one--and only ten pounds apiece for the small one. Same floorplan, according to Emil, so we opted for the efficiency tour. They pipe air down into the burial chamber, but it's still pretty stuffy down there. The main shaft is at a 20-degree angle or so, and you walk on a plank with metal-covered crossboards for traction. The shaft is only about four feet high, so you have to stoop (unless you're a five-year-old), and almost wide enough for two people to walk abreast. About halfway down, the shaft enters a small antechamber, where you can stand up, and then it's into another shaft, like the first, that eventually opens into a larger chamber, with the burial chamber down a ramp to the right. It's very interesting to see, and somewhat unnerving to consider the massive pyramid above and around you.
Back on the bus, Emil, also a Coptic believer, expounded on the prophetic nature of the ancient Egyptian religion...he said that there were really only three primary gods that they worshiped: the sun god, his wife, and his son. The other various gods were "sub-gods" of one sort or another. Emil claims that the Egyptians were thus used to the idea of a trinitarian godhead, and so the concept of the Father, Son, and Spirit--three in one--was easy for them to accept.
Egypt is a fascinating place, with so much history carved into its walls and buried in its hillsides that one could spend a lifetime here and yet have lifetimes of learning left. Perhaps the Father had reasons other than physical safety for sending Joseph, Mary, and Jesus to Egypt for a few years. Perhaps He wanted Jesus to learn about the land that had both sheltered and enslaved His people, the land that was so inextricably linked to Israel. Perhaps the Father wanted Jesus to feel that connection. If you visit Egypt, you can still feel it even today.
Posted by jon at April 18, 2004 02:59 PM