Pyramids are nice; we’ve all seen them. The pyramids, along with the dozens of 5000 year old temples and relics of this massive desert nation, are merely a remnant of a culture long dissolved into the sands of time. Without the accompanying culture that produced these colossi of stone, these monuments, in all their massiveness, feel empty. Egypt (Misr in the vernacular) is now occupied by an entirely different breed of life from the original Egyptians much like a hermit crab usurps the shell of the mollusk.
The majority of Egypt is now ethnically Arab and religiously Muslim. The modern culture is still intimately related to the relics of the old kingdoms but in an entirely different way; modern Egyptians’ association with the ancient wonders is purely and unabashedly commercial. They have no claim to the creation or honor that these timeless piles of stone have given to Egypt yet they cling desperately to their “Egyptian” heritage by painting pharos on papyrus, carving gods of antiquity out of stone, and making little stone pyramids to sell on every street corner to the clueless souvenir hunter. The “Egyptian” heritage seems to bypass the Islamic taboo against art displaying any sort of imagery and, more directly, the creation of idols, which go for 1-3 dollars each if you have any haggling sense (which I now proudly do).
The marketing of Egypt as a cultural destination is quite pathetic, frankly. Imagine going to friend’s house expecting to catch up but, instead, all he talks about is how his house used to be owned by Mel Gibson. He then proceeds, for the entire day, to show you where Mel sat to eat, where he read the newspaper, where he watched TV…etc. and then expects to be paid at the end! This is the tour of ancient Egypt. It is given, by and large, by people with less information than a weekend special on the History Channel who speak little or no English. The true culture lies behind this prop and I was disappointed in how hidden it was. Pictures of common people where met with unpleasant shouting and hand waving and discussion of Muslim culture, home life or current issues were rejected forthright.
So forget King Tut, this is the new cultural identity of Egpyt: Arab Muslims selling stone cats in temples, tainted water, pre-chewed camel food, romanticized piles of stone, and people crawling over filthy cities lying through their rotting teeth.
I recognize this may be one of my more ignorant sounding cultural explorations but, as I have now discovered, travel does not always make you appreciate a culture more. In this particular case the image painted by my ignorance was much more noble and understanding than the cynical one that the true culture sandblasted out of my naivety. So, that being said…
They are MUS-LIM. No joking around here. I can’t believe that Egypt is one of the more liberal Muslim nations. I could not imagine the lives of a conservative Muslim population such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Iran. The Friday “sermons” over the loudspeakers scared the bejeezus out of me. I don’t understand the language but I am a master of intonation and it was not a pleasant vibe. I felt on edge after big mosque assemblies because of the aggressive tone of the mullah being blasted over citywide PA systems. They don’t have clean water but they have a loudspeaker system that sends reverberating readings of the Koran into every dark corner and alleyway. Everyone goes to mosque when there is a calling and 90% of women wear full body coverings. The busses pull over for prayer time, the shops close, and five times a day, every day, I felt like the only person in a 50 mile radius.
They don’t like us (White Europeans/Americans/Australians). I know this first hand. It is also clear second hand as I was following a concurrent news story of several tourists kidnapped in the Egyptian desert. If you followed this story, the kidnappers were shot dead after a high-speed desert chase. Well, I wasn’t kidnapped but I definitely felt the anger. Aside from the constant swindling attempts I received countless evil eyes and jaunts. I began speaking as if I had a poor grasp on English and claiming obscure Eastern European lineage to avoid the well crafted sales pitches, begging, jeering and slyness that these people have honed over a lifetime.
So, my trip itinerary:
I spent several days in Cairo seeing the sights (Pyramids, tombs, etc.), batting off swindlers, growing distrustful, and learning the ropes of how to behave, how to get around, what to eat and where to avoid. I went to the bazaar and got my haggling down to a tee before going out into the wider world. The prices, after obtaining some skill in dealing with these people, can be dramatically cut on an average of 75%. I never paid more than 50% of the original asking price and often paid significantly less. The main trick is nothing you say because these people can talk circles around auctioneers; the real trick is really not caring if you buy the item or not. These merchants can sense if you might actually walk away from their shop or if you are really set on purchasing the item at hand. If they genuinely sense the potential loss of a sale then the prices tumble. My favorite trick was merely to ask “howa maach?” (in my obscure accent) and then to act astonished at the insulting offer and walk away listening for the price to drop with every footstep. This works on anything from mango juice to alabaster vases. Some vendors feel principally opposed to lowering prices for an American and would rather lose the sale, hence the necessity of my Borat-esque dialect. The sad truth is that these people have little food and an abundance of statues, pictures, and genuine junk, which they cannot eat. Because of their hard position, given the opportunity to transform their little sculptures of Anubis into some money for food, they will even take a loss on a bad day. Good fun exploiting the poor (but probably not as much fun as they have exploiting the rich).
After Cairo I took a bus to the Bahariya Oasis in the Western Egyptian Desert (which is the easternmost region of the Sahara). In the desert there were three main geographical features…sand, sand, and sand. The first type of sand was black and full or an iron ore giving it menacing heat reflecting capabilities and a generally unwelcoming look. The second, and smallest region of my trip, was pink sand with lots of crystals and salts in it. The third, and by far the most enjoyable, was the white sand region which was decorated with thousands of windblown limestone towers that resembled mushrooms. This place was surreal and, under the waxing moon, I have never felt or heard silence and stillness so complete. My mind began to hallucinate sounds to compensate for the genuine lack of stimulus. That is why I am still not sure if the Japanese people I caught sneaking around in the dark with flashlights were phantoms of my imagination. Regardless, the phantom Japanese and I ended up making a fire and swapping language in the sand under a big blue moon. I impressed them with my action photography of the illusive desert fox I had baited with some food.
Leaving the desert with my trusty machine gun wielding escort (necessary for all US citizens due to the danger to the tourist market and the grief it would cause the Egyptian government if an American were abducted) I headed on a long train south to the Sudanese border. Here I visited the manmade Lake Nasser, a big dam (boring), a floating temple of love, and the massive temple of Abu Simbel which depicts four kings (actually the same king just in different degrees of being pissed off) sitting on thrones carved out of the mountainside. The temple appeals to me because it is like a big “beware of the dog” sign, warning those from East Africa coming up the Nile into the pharaoh’s lands that he wunt’ nuttin’ to mess wit’.
More escorts, paperwork, blah blah stuff and then I boarded a cruise ship to take me up the Nile to Luxor. This was relaxing and I was happy to be out of the desert. I was on a ship with ALL (100%) French people so that was a little island of culture. We stopped at another island with the temple to the evil crocodile god. I was really excited to see some Nile man-eaters until I learned that the stupid hydroelectric dam chops up all the crocodiles that try to swim upstream (pretty cool but not as cool as seeing a crocodile eat a swan). The cruise served tainted food and I received the worst food poisoning of my life. I didn’t sleep for over 48 hours because of constant dry heaving and bowel-blasting. I was so dehydrated that I was afraid I would have to get medical attention. Luckily, some of the Frenchies who had taken a liking to me had some emergency electrolytes and vomit-stifling medicine. That was an experience.
When I arrived to Luxor, hallucinating from lack of food and sleep coupled with the stress and exertion of titanic bouts of vomiting, I did more sight-seeing (yay). The Valley of the Kings had some well preserved murals with bright colors and whatnot, temples, statues, etc. FINALLY, I was done with all that crap and then I boarded a 17hr bus to Sinai.
...
I put two spaces between these paragraphs in deference to the bus ride, that unholy beast. Riding that long on a little bus is one thing, riding it with a bunch of smelly, loud, Arabs listening to atonal sitar-flavored-ringtones and watching “musical” films full of screaming people on little buzzing televisions - quite another. My patience is sage-like after being tempered in this hellfire of annoyance.
I arrived sometime in September to a little town called Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula. You may think that Dahab sounds familiar and that may be because it was bombed two years ago killing several locals and tourists and injuring dozens more. I, happenstance has it, stayed in one of the hotels rebuilt after being bombed in 2006, and it was nice! It was so nice, in fact, I can only think that the fanatic bomber was just jealous that people could live so nice while everything thing else around it was crap. Dahab is a diving town full of people earning dive-master certifications. The atmosphere of holiday makers, dive bums, windsurfers, and sunbathers was a world away from the rest of Egypt. I was here for a week and snorkeled the gulf of Aquaba up and down. Just below the surface of the harsh Sinai terrain lies a spectacular aquarium of sea life and coral formations straight out of Finding Nemo.
On a break from the sea a few of us climbed Mt Sinai during the middle of the night in order to reach the top for sunrise. It was a fairly easy climb culminating in 700 stairs up the rock face to an Orthodox Greek chapel on the summit. Pictures of the scenery from the mountain are on Picasa along with other bits and pieces of the trip.
All in all, Egypt was not what I expected. The front that lures so many is really nothing more than empty dazzle. Even the pyramids in all of their gigantic oldness are just a bunch of stones. As Mr. Sorg foresaw: big freaking deal. They are old, they are stone, they are big. Once I made peace with these simple facts and realized that there was nothing much more to expect from these big old stones I was freed from a misconception that seeing these old monuments is enriching or helps me become cultured. The fact is these cultures are dead. You would never get to know someone by visiting the graveyard (albeit you may form some opinions about how loose or frugal they were with money by the size and design of their headstone, how pompous or pious they were by the epitaph, and so on). Likewise, getting culture out of ancient monuments is attempting to transmute bones into flesh. It was an important last trip for this reason: I no longer travel with reliquary in my crosshairs but rather take the current living culture as the focus. It was also just displeasing enough to really make me respect home. Europe, in many ways, was more comfortable and pleasing than home, thus my perspective on the quality of living in the US waned. Visiting Africa was really the widest perspective I have ever achieved as far as understanding the implications of poverty, corruption and fundamental differences in social and religious culture. I would rather live with Barbara Streisand than live in Egypt.
T
