PART V
Shades of Africa
Chapter 24
The Ups and Downs of
Egypt
"...into
that old land that knew all which we know now, perchance, and more..."
Mark Twain
The Innocents Abroad
Into that old land came Mark Twain and the "innocents"
aboard the steamer Quaker City in 1867. And at the end of 1986, the innocents were still
coming, including me.
Ah, innocence is bliss!
Well, something like that. But
innocence could be just a euphemism for ignorance, an excuse for arrogance, or a cover-up
for stupidity. I knew very little about Egypt
except that it had a lot of crumbling sand-swept ruins and that it was all searing desert
except for the Nile, which cut a green-fringed swath through it. Arabs lived there and they were all – remember
how I described them way back in Canada? – “shifty-eyed, balloon-lipped, bearded
thieves and assassins who would slit your throat on a whim and shout,
‘Allah!’” And so I dreaded even
the thought of entering Egypt. But what did I
know about Egypt or Arabs?
(And why did the those images, mostly from stupid
old cartoons, stick in mind?)
Right up until it was destroyed by earthquakes in the 12th
and 14th centuries, my first sight of Africa, in the direction I was currently
going, would have been one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – a lighthouse
that towered 440 feet (134 meters) above the Mediterranean – the Pharos of
Alexandria. In reality, my first sight looked
like a scene out of a spooky cartoon, and we were cruising into it. First there were a few rusty cargo ships, then a
sea of them. There were modern container ships
in this sluggish flotilla, but most of the ships were aging derelicts, many of which
seemed to be running too deep in the water. Seeing
this from the high clean decks of the Espresso
Egitto, I felt as if we were on a regal ocean liner, one that was headed into a
neglectful senior citizens complex for mortally afflicted ships.
And there, behind it all, was Africa. Or was it? It
was flat. The shore looked like a massive
interconnected fleet and these relics were pieces of flotsam bobbing around it. Of course it was not that simplistic nor should I
have been surprised. I guess I had let
grandiose images of “The Dark Continent” build up the illusion that you would
approach a towering, intimidating shore that would bear down on you: This is AFRICA! Beware
those who enter here!
I was nervous but this was exaggerated by some Ouzo I had bought
in Crete. In traveling to a new land, you felt you stepped timidly onto one edge of it,
found and became familiar with solid ground, then traveled across it and came to another
precipice. Then you wanted to hold on to the
now familiar land for reassurance before stepping carefully over into the next.
But if I was a latter-day Odysseus, where was my Athena?
Before we could dock, four Customs men in military uniforms
boarded the Egitto. They commandeered a large room where passengers had
to submit their passports and exchange hard currency for Egyptian pounds. You began handing over extra money with no idea of
what you were paying for. These were men of
few words and even less patience. A tall
muscular man went with vehicle owners down into the dark hold. He clambered over the MAN army truck, a
German-licensed Winnebago and the Land Rovers. He
poked around the motorcycles with a flashlight. He
was looking to match serial numbers on vehicles with those on the carnets. For Melawend, he was satisfied to see that she
looked like the same heavy-laden scooter he saw in my photocopied news articles. (He was getting annoyed that I did not know where the
serial number was, and I didn’t want him stripping her down to find out.) This was the easy part of entering Egypt.
I could write for you a chapter on the labyrinthine bureaucracy I
had to go through to clear Melawend – all the shuttling back and for the between
blue-painted sheds, handing over my documents (worried
that I would not get them back), handing over money (knowing I would not get any back), getting stamps,
getting a crude license plate that was hand-painted in red letters on a yellow background.
(In Aswan, it was demanded
that I surrender two plates – but we’ll get to that bit of nonsense later.)
There were so many “officials” to see here. All of them scribbled something down of some pieces
of paper and would send me on to another official. I
wondered if this was the Egyptian way of creating jobs.
It might have explained why there were so many fees to pay.
As we began the ride out of Customs, all the motorcyclists were
directed to a park by a low outside wall were we were lined up for yet another inspection.
This time, I submitted to unraveling Melawend’s humungus load when an inflexible
official said, “Open.” After two
more forms and some incoherent grumbling later, he said, “Finished.”
I simply left when I was done and rode out into the city that was
founded over 2,300 years earlier by the Macedonian king, Alexander the Great. Now we entered the unfamiliar chaos of the streets
of Alexandria. Since I had Canadian stickers
on Melawend, the first non-official words I heard from an Egyptian came from a taxi-driver
who ignored honking horns to say, “Canada! Number
One!”
(I would test this apparent
bias in Cairo.).
Amid the many scarred utilitarian-looking scooters that filled
the streets, Melawend stood out. With her
sleek maroon faring and big Cycloptic headlamp, she did look like something out Star Wars. This
made me nervous. I bore in mind the Arab
proverb: "Trust in Allah, but tie your camel.”
I promised Melawend that I would stick by her at all possible times.
At first, I was intimidated by all this unforeseen attention. But the people were so friendly. Everywhere, they gawked at us but did so with
smiles on their faces. At one corner, Melawend
attracted a crowd of boys and old men who, as one, were excited to give me directions. At another intersection, an Egyptian executive in a
western business suit pointed the way to the road that would take me across the desert. He said that it was four lanes and was very good to
drive. I had not seen even one
“shifty-eyed, balloon-lipped…" well, never mind that rubbish. My heart warmed to Egyptians as Melawend and I
scooted out of Alexandria.
(Dear
reader: we will be back to Alexandria much later, unexpectedly, so I’ll describe more
of this fantastic city then. In the meantime,
hold on! We are in for a bizarre time in the
land of the Pharaohs!)
You left the city abruptly and found yourself in the green marshy
lands of the Nile delta. The lush fertile land
gave way to thinning stands of palm trees and pine trees that had long feathery needles. I was waved through a toll both for free by two
young guys who smiled at Melawend and her huge orange-covered load. Trees soon gave way to flat scrubby grasslands that
reminded me of eastern Alberta. In turn, this
yielded to barren sand as the Desert Road left the delta, lived up to its name, and headed
straight for Cairo. It was as good a highway
as the executive had said.
As the miles drifted by, it suddenly occurred to me that I was
beginning my ride across the mighty Sahara – the largest desert in the world. It stretched west to east for 3,000 miles, from the
Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. It was bleak
and empty, except for the incongruous strips of this divided highway and the truck drivers
on them who always honked and waved.
It was hard to believe that the Sahara had looked like the
savannas of sub-Saharan East Africa did today – a lush green area filled with rivers
and wildlife. This was revealed in part
through engravings and paintings left by Saharan hunter-gatherers about 8,000 years ago. Dinosaurs had also thrived in the Sahara region. All that had turned to dust and had blown away or
was buried under these sands. The emptiness
was so complete that there came a surreal feeling of riding through a void between worlds,
like we might well have been on a Star Wars
set.
What also surprised me was that the air was so mild. I expected to be riding under blistering sun, to be
gasping with thirst. But this was winter,
December 31st to be precise. Melawend
had the only thirst – for gas. And where
to find gas in all this unending emptiness? About
halfway to Cairo, I found an oasis.
This was Omar’s Oasis. It
was a long tin-roofed restaurant that had tables and umbrellas outside. They didn’t have gas here. A young guy in a spotless white shirt and black bow
tie held up five fingers and pointed further down the road.
I asked about camping around here. He
went up to a 55ish man who was eating at one of the tables under and umbrella and I saw
him nodding. I got gas and returned. All I wanted was to camp in the desert nearby, but
one of the waiters showed me to a concrete addition that was under construction and helped
me get Melawend onto her centre stand.
“You come eat. No
pay.” he said. “Don’t worry. Your things will be safe here.”
It was late afternoon. I
had not eaten since the morning and the quagmire of Customs and the long empty road had
given me quite an appetite. I was seated in
the restaurant. There were just a few other
customers.. It was a spacious low room of
white stucco, lined surprisingly with knotty pine. The
place was decorated with green, red and blue foil and Christmas hangings. Easy-listening western music played softly in the
background. I had spaghetti and a Sport cola
(made by Canada Dry) and four fresh dinner rolls. With
my stomach full and my wallet spared, I returned to Melawend.
“Shukran,” I said in gratitude as I passed the rotund
owner who was sitting with friends at table outside. He
smiled and waved.
I didn’t bother to unload Melawend. I rested beside her on my sleeping bag, which I
spread over a piece of hardboard on the concrete floor.
I looked out through scaffolding to the darkening sky, feeling so lucky to
be in Africa at last. I also became a bit
apprehensive that scorpions might be lurking about. After
nightfall, I began to feel loneliness creeping in. This
was New Year’s Eve. Around 11:30, the
music inside stopped and I heard laughter. I
decided to go in and bring in the New Year with a cup of tea.
The owner and some businessmen were seated at a table in a
corner. On one of the pine walls, a cloth
bearing “1987” had been hung. Balloons
hung from the ceiling and pillars. Two men at
a table by the front windows were the only other guests.
There were more waiters and cooks than there were guests and they would
congregate at the open counter that separated the kitchen from the dining room. There was much laughter from the
owner’s table. The men arose, shook hands
with the owner and left. The owner walked by
me, smiled and said something to a waiter who abruptly took away my tea. I was brought a big meal and a red candle. I dined on two salads, Kofta (a plate of five rolls
of rolled breaded beef with a garnish of greens), and a plate of macarona bashmil (tubular
macaroni and beef peppered with a brown-coloured spice).
I was given a large bottle of Stella (a native beer) to wash it down.
Near midnight, the waiters lit candles throughout the room. Lights were turned off. The music was turned up – an instrumental
version of “Evita”. There was no
marking of the actual passing of the year. At
12:05, the lights came back on and waiters wished me a Happy New Year. I retired feasted and very happy. I thought of New Year’s resolutions – all
the swearing off of transgressions after you’ve had the pleasure of committing them. My main resolution was to do the best possible job
with my international project.
I was given the same hospitality at breakfast the next morning.
“No money,” the waiter said.
In the washroom, a man reached under the door of my stall to hand
me some toilet paper. I saw this man later and he had eyes that were so crossed, you could
hardly see the irises – I was reminded of the actor, Jack Elam. As I left, there were lots expressions of
"Welcome!" "Happy New Year!" and doubled-handed handshakes. As I drove off, a waiter jumped to attention and
saluted.
Such as these are the Arabs I had dreaded meeting? Aside from some of the bureaucrats, the Egyptians
that I had met so far had been among the friendliest people I had met yet on the journey.
Unfortunately, I had regarded Muslim society as primarily mean
and closed-minded. Egypt was 90 percent
Muslim. Muslims followed the religion of Islam
and the teachings of the Koran which all seemed to me to be a rigid, totalitarian way of
living. And they had
"fundamentalists" that were intolerant of anything non-Islamic and were
extremely violent in enforcing their beliefs. Add
to this that I believed that an underlying mission of most religions was to convert
everyone else to their beliefs – in other words, to take over the world, religiously
speaking. But what did I know about Islam, or
about any of the world's religions?
(Through confrontation and through friendly instruction, I would
learn more about Arabs and Islam further down the road.
For now, here is brief introduction…
Islam comes from the Arabic root salima,
to be safe: aslama, to surrender. Peace means "submission", whether it be
to God or fate, or to the social system framed by the Koran.
The Koran, or Qur'an, literally
means a "recitation" – the word of God in Arabic as directly transmitted
through the Prophet Muhammad. It was laid down
1300 years ago in powerful prose combined with forceful rhetoric and rhythmic cadences. Egyptian tastes, habits, and preferences are
referred directly back to the Koran. In
addition to the revelations, a collection of sayings and actions attributed to Muhammad
was compiled and committed to writing – the Hadith
(traditions). Together, the Koran and the
Hadith guide all Muslim religious and personal life.)
Perhaps
because Egyptians had lived for so long under self-concerned and abusive conquerors, they
clung to their best times – under Mohammed and his successors, the four Rightly
Guided Caliphs, who brought justice, prosperity, and true belief to the land.
I was guzzling formula in my crib when the Republic of Egypt was
born in 1953. From high-school days, I
remembered only the glories of the pharaohs, and the Exodus.
Much of my impression of Egypt had come from those old cartoons I mentioned,
from vague memories of high-school history classes and epic movies, including Cecil B.
DeMille's The Ten Commandments. I understood that life had not changed much for the
fellahin (native peasants or laborers) in
thousands of years.
I had not appreciated that this was a country that had been
occupied by invaders since the time of the Pharaohs. It
had been a conquered nation when Christ walked the earth.
In fact, since the Pharaohs had been defeated by the Persians in 332 B.C.,
until the revolution in 1952, Egypt had been under foreign domination – Persian,
Greek, Roman, Arab, a brief venture by
29-year-old Napoleon, Turkish,
and, the last to go, the British.
For the 72 years prior to 1952, Egypt had been under puppet
monarchs manipulated by the self-serving interests of the British. The 10,000-acre delta became mostly fields of
cotton to feed the mills of Lancashire. Grain
to feed the Egyptians had to be imported. (When I was there, Egypt was next only to Japan and
the Soviet Union as the biggest importer of food.)
Promises to leave Egypt were broken when war threatened the security of the
Suez Canal, Britain’s vital shipping link to the east.
International sanction for their illegal occupation was given when the
French gave acceptance of British rights in Egypt in exchange for French rights in
Morocco.
Ironically, it had been an Englishman, Thomas Edward Lawrence,
“Lawrence of Arabia”, who helped mobilize the Arabs to victory over the
Ottomans, arriving triumphantly with the Arabs in Damascus ahead of the British army, and
then helping the Arabs in their strive for independence.
The Arabs finally rallied and went to war in an unsuccessful
attempt to stop the establishment of Israel. The
Egyptians blamed their puppet rulers and began a revolution in earnest. A military coup in 1952 ousted the playboy monarch
and the British occupiers. The republic was proclaimed in 1953 and was led by a
revolutionary commander who became its first president, Gamel Abdel Nasser.
So, as mentioned, I was guzzling formula in my crib when
independent Egypt was reborn. And on this first day of 1986, riding the Desert
Road to its capital, I turned another year older.
Just let yourself imagine this: New Year’s Day – you're
racing along the Desert Road on a heavy-laden motorscooter, crossing the Sahara Desert to
Cairo! Last New Year’s Day, this journey
still seemed like a dream to me; two years back I might have suggested that you were nuts
if you had told me I would be here now. Well,
I was here now, riding with the wind, getting honks and waves from the drivers of
lumbering old trucks on a beautiful day on the road to Cairo.
Imagine!
I kept scanning the horizon for the peaks of the Pyramids. As we neared Giza, I saw powdery quarries of white
rock. We passed a military area with barracks,
target practice areas and empty buildings that were possibly used for anti-terrorist
training. The road was converging with the
Nile and there were trees here, the same feathery long-needled pine trees that I had seen
outside Alexandria.
And there they were, at least the peaks of the two tallest
Pyramids, rising up from the plateau on the western edge of Giza. The Desert Road came to an end at Shari al-Ahram – Pyramid Street – at the
base of the hill that led up to them. I
couldn’t resist – I turned Melawend right and went up the gentle slope at the
north end of the 100-foot-high plateau, rounded a curve to the left and came immediately
upon the base of The Great Pyramid of Cheops. It
was mag-nificent!
(Even if you were standing in the parking lot at its base.)
(Note: The Egyptian name is Khufu; Cheops is the Greek
name.)
"Of course we were besieged by a rabble of muscular
Egyptians and Arabs who wanted the contract of dragging us to the top – all tourists
are. Of course you could not hear your own
voice for the din that was around you...for such is the usual routine." This was Mark Twain's experience in 1867 as he told
it in The Innocents Abroad.
“Come,
my good friend.” a man said to me. “I
take you on horseback around the Pyramids. Very
cheap.”
When
I took my eyes from off the Pyramid of Cheops, I saw the proliferation of horse-trotting,
camel-riding, tourist-stopping guides who descended upon you with their offers. But there were not as many as Twain apparently
encountered, nor were any of them offering to drag anyone to the top (a popular adventure
in Victorian times, but climbing the Pyramids was now illegal). These fellows were in fact a rather orderly and a
friendly lot. The cameleers were dressed in galabiyahs. (These were long gowns or robes. They are also known as jellabas, but any Egyptian I talked with called
them galabiyahs). They also wore flowing scarves
or bound headwraps. Some of the hawkers of
horses and donkeys wore western windbreakers.
I
needed to find a camp. Venzie had given me a
map that showed Canal Street running off this road up to the Pyramids, which was also the
main road into Cairo. But the map was in one
of the saddlebags. I did not realize there
were two Canal Streets, running parallel to each other.
I rode up one beside a fetid canal. I
stopped to get out the map but was immediately surrounded by half a dozen children who all
began saying “Hallo!” and marveling at Melawend.
I was concerned they might see the camera equipment at the top of the bag
and so I just rode back to Pyramid Street, looking for the Canal Street that would lead to
the camp Venzie had mentioned. I stopped about
three miles on toward Cairo. Traffic of
mini-buses, taxis and people walking the streets was getting thick. I pulled off. I
soon had company.
“We’re
on our way into Cairo to find a hotel,” said Don Travers. He and Murray Bielder, the two Canadians on the big
BMW’s, had pulled up behind Melawend.
My
budget allowed only for camping, so I wished them well.
I knew that you had to check in with the local police when you stayed in a
place so I backtracked and found a tiny station on Pyramid Street near the Pyramids.
“Welcome
to Egypt," said a lean young officer.
As I was getting registered, I met a young stocky
German guy who had also brought his motorcycle to Egypt.
His name was Rainer.
“It’s
all perfectly mad here,” he said. “All
these papers. It’s bullshit.”
The
officer just smiled and kept scribbling.
In
a small tourist office, a jolly woman in a headwrap told me of the second Canal Street and
the two campgrounds I would find along it. This
second Canal Street was also a main road to Saqqarah.
The first campground was about a mile and a half off the main road. The secondary road led through the worst squalor I
had seen in my life – crude homes along a shaded canal that was shallow, polluted and
reeking. A woman was washing clothes in it
while another dumped filthy gray water into it. But
as Melawend and I rode slowly along the bumpy road, the people along the way smiled and
waved, not in the tourist-patronizing way but with the warmth of friendly neighbours
– they continued to do what they had been doing.
The clothes that people wore were amazingly clean, especially those of young
girls who wore dresses that were almost florescent in colour. Still, I was apprehensive. A little boy leaned toward the road and said
“Hallo…money?” I found the walls of Saharamar Camp but didn’t bother
to look inside. Besides, I found it was too
far to walk back to the main road to catch the mini-buses that took you into Cairo.
The
second campground was at Harrania, about three miles off the Shari al-Ahram. This was Camping Salome – called Salma –
a walled compound on a parallel road just off the main road.
There were the same rugged vehicles here that I had seen on the Espresso Egitto.
I went to a large, multi-coloured, heavily patterned tent, a sheik-style
tent similar to one I’d seen in magazine article about an interview with Mohamar
Ghaddafi. This tent served as a restaurant and
bar. Here I met the owner of the camp,
Sa’id Moussa, a trim handsome fortyish man who had been educated in Europe. He wore English equestrian boots. He looked at my growing portfolio of articles. Venzie and Don had told me they had paid three
Egyptian pounds per day to stay here with their van.
“A
quid…plus fifty for the showers… Shall we say, one-fifty per day?” Sa'id
said.
I
had my first home in Egypt.
I
set up camp under some pine trees off the parking lot and took a New Year’s Day
self-portrait. While I was doing this, Rainer,
the young German I met at the Police station, pulled in on his 500cc Yamaha dirt bike. He asked Sa’id about prices and he left. A short time later, a convoy rumbled in. They were all here! – the German couple and
their bouncing baby boy, Garfield and his two companions, the couple with the
white-painted army truck. We had a festive
reunion. But conversation soon drifted into
German.
I walked around
the darkening camp and met a Dutch family. Reg,
the father, was tall, lean and gray-haired, a younger version of the American actor, James
Coburn. Lia, his wife, and their two young
sons and little girl had been travelling in Israel and Jordan and were heading for
Nairobi. Reg's brother lived there. They were travelling in a dark green converted
World War II fire truck that had six wheels. They
were friendly and quiet-spoken, almost too kind, like people who all too easily have
misfortune come their way
I
walked over to the bar tent and talked with Sa’id about travel in the Sudan.
“It’s
definitely not for your scooter!”
Rainer
came back at this time and he talked with Sa’id.
They spoke of people they each knew – other travelers. Rainer stayed.
He was happy-go-lucky and always punctuated his speech with
"perfect" expletives: “They are perfectly mad!” He was from a small town near Mannheim and planned
to travel all over Egypt on his well-used 500cc Yamaha.
(It would die
in Cairo, be dissected in camp and shipped back to Germany in pieces so Rainer would avoid
loosing a bundle on his carnet.)
Salma
Camp was a popular staging area for all manner of expeditions into Egypt. I felt safe here.
(But when I turned in at night, from
here on, I would put keys, wallet, passport and other small valuables in my pants pockets,
roll up the pants and put them inside the foot of my sleeping bag.) When a tour group from St. Catharines, Ontario came
in (remember the girl I met while photographing Big
Ben?), well, I wanted to get out as soon as possible and see the real Egypt. First, I had to attend to my diplomatic mission in
Cairo.
I
awoke to culture shock the next morning, early morning.
At 4:45 a.m., I was awakened by what sounded like a loud mournful cry. Booming on unseen loudspeakers, and seeming to echo
from everywhere, were the rippling cries of muezzins: “Allaahu Akbar, Allaahu Akbar”
("Allah is Greatest, Allah is
Greatest"). This was Adhan,
the Islamic call to prayer.
"This is Islam," I said aloud. "This
is Egypt."
It
was a far cry from the jets of Athens. At
least it was human.
At
the intersection of the sand-filled lane that led to camp and the main road, ten of us
piled into a mini-bus for the ride to the connecting bus at Pyramid Street. I was the only foreigner. There was a boy, an old man and a 50ish woman. The rest were young men, most of who wore scarves
over their heads and long trench-like coats of various dull colours. Two of them wore galabiyahs. On the radio, I heard the first of the tinny,
high-pitched instrumental music, and even higher-pitched female singers that would provide
the familiar background sound of my journey from Egypt through Nepal. As we rumbled off, I sat with the old man and the
boy in the back seat. They helped me take off
my heavy daypack. It was 15 piastres for the ride. I passed a 25-piastre note passenger-to-passenger
to the front, not expecting to see any change. The
driver tucked the money into a pouch on the visor. Ten
piastres were returned to me the same hand-to-hand way.
I met with the same kind of friendliness on the equally packed mini-bus into
Cairo.
As
with any new city, I was intimidated by what I saw. Here,
it was the dirtiest, most crumbling and congested urban environment I had ever seen. The road buzzed with minibuses – Toyotas,
Mazdas, VW’s, Daihatsu’s, Mitsubishi's, and Nissans. Taxis were old black and white Peugeots or Hyundai
Pony’s. There were dusty Chevy and Ford
pickups, Chevy Caprice Classics and Mercedes with tinted windows. I thought: A
car wash might do fabulous business here. Billboards
were art, not photographs. For the first time,
I saw animals in the streets – donkeys, bulls and goats. There were new unsafe-looking buildings. Three had
primitive scaffolding around them – 10 stories of lumber lashed together. Buildings
seemed almost monotone – all gray cement, mortar and red brick that would be
plastered over. I saw the minarets of mosques
and in a park, I saw the head of a giraffe poking its head up amid the trees.
We
reached the terminal – just an open area that was crammed tight with mini-buses and
milling people and vendors sitting on the pavement nearby with all kinds of goods for
sale. The honking of horns, the droning of engines and the din of a thousand foreign
voices assaulted the ears. This was
Maydan-at-Tahir – Tahir Square – probably the busiest, dirtiest, most congested
and convoluted crossroads in the world, I imagined. It
was big and torn up and had no logical pattern or order to it – no wonder there was
all that honking! Gray buildings that looked
as if a stiff desert wind could easily topple them surrounded it. Garish billboards that were attached to them –
including Coke, Fanta, and 7-Up – lent colour. It
was strange to see Coke displayed in the familiar red and white logo but with Arabic
words.
(Now, as the Coca Cola company celebrated its 100th
anniversary, Coke was being sold in 160 countries after starting out as a tonic made by
Dr. John S. Pemberton of Atlanta, Georgia.)
Cairo
was chaotic and, to my Western sensibilities, dilapidated – I had an impulse to
forget my mission and race up the Nile toward Kenya.
(But things
were to improve tremendously in Cairo. In ten
years – 1997 – a $1-billion French-built subway system, modeled on the Metro in
Paris but done in polished Egyptian motifs, was opened in Cairo. It would eventually carry 1 million passengers a
day, the same number of visitors that came here annually.)
“Change
money?” came a boy’s voice. “Good
rate.” His "r" reverberated.
I
hunted for the embassy and found it on a side street that was blessedly quiet. But ignorant me, this was Friday – the Islamic
equivalent of Sunday – the embassy was closed.
Back
at Tahir Square, even amid all the chaos, I met Rainer.
We went to a tiny restaurant that had sawdust on the white and blue tiled
floor. We talked over bowls of rice,
chickpeas, lentils and black things that looked like rabbit droppings. Food was cheap. At
a bakeshop, Rainer treated us to baklava, which seemed a likely legacy from years of
Turkish domination. This Egyptian variety was
a triangular pastry wedge filled with a date paste – delicious! These would become a much-sought-after staple of my
Egyptian diet.
We
made our way the north side of Tahir Square, to the Egyptian Museum, a Neoclassic building
of ochre limestone with a wrought iron fence. I knew only that this museum housed the
world’s greatest collection of Egyptian artifacts.
I had been annoyed in Paris and again in Italy at seeing huge bits of
Egyptian heritage so conspicuously out of place. I
shuddered to think of all the world's national treasures imprisoned in foreign museums
– but then how were nationals of a country to see artifacts of a foreign country if
some were not allowed to be exported? (Make
copies.)
All
of Egypt’s movable treasures might have been lost if not for the man responsible for
the creation of the museum I was about to enter. This
was the French archaeologist Aguste Mariette who officially started the museum in 1858. In the mid 1800’s, Egyptian pashas were more
interested in selling Egypt’s treasures than keeping them and so a lot of them ended
up in European museums. Some of the best
treasures went to Paris. In 1867, the French
Empress Eugeni asked the pasha to give her the entire collection. The pasha referred her to Mariette, the
museum’s director, who flatly refused her. He
made it his mission to see that none of the museum’s possessions would ever leave
Egypt. His mission had been successful to this
day.
“Are
you a professional photographer?” said a middle-aged man inside the admissions booth.
I
knew that they wanted an extra 10 Egyptian pounds on top of the three-pound admission if
tourists wanted to take pictures inside.
“I
am,” I said.
Big
Mistake,Tom.
“That
will be 500 Egyptian pounds,” he said. And
there was a big smile on his face.
“I
won’t be taking any pictures," I said.
I
had lied.
I
paid the three pounds admission and played dumb as I walked in. A guard stopped me.
“Do
you have a camera?”
I
should have said no. I had to check it in and
leave it here. But I still had two more
cameras in my daypack. Inside the museum, I
saw lots of people taking pictures. Some were
using video cameras.
“Egypt
is perfect bullshit!” Rainer said.
Once
inside, Rainer and I went our separate ways.
To
conserve money, I had sneaked my cameras in. I
also felt this was just a glorified tourist trap and that the fees were a big rip-off. But in the company of designer-dressed tourists, I
had to remind myself that Egypt was a truly a poor country and it was worth far more than
this bit of baksheesh you had to pay the government for the privilege of taking
photographs of some of the world finest ancient treasures – not copies, the real
McCoys!
Here
in this echoing cavern, were some of the greatest treasures yet found in Egypt. One could easily succumb to hyperbole in describing
them in the detail many of them deserved. And
I could have used a few days at least just to take it all in – there were over
100,000 pieces jammed into its dim halls and rooms. The
museum relied heavily on natural lighting so that you had dark passageways, such as the
one that was lined with shelves of sarcophagi, making it look like a neglected and
over-populated mausoleum. 1700 pieces alone
belonged to the Tutankhamen collection. An
early 1980’s insurance estimate placed the total value of some of the museum's major
pieces at $13 billion.
For
me, this was National Geographic territory. In
unadorned displays, I saw so many artifacts that I had seen on the glossy pages of the
Society’s magazine. So in a way, actaully
seeing these artifacts was like living childhood fantasies.
In Room 42, for example, I finally saw the badly split wooden statue known
as Sheikh-el-Beled, a life sized image of a round-bellied man from the Old Kingdom (5th
dynasty). In Room 32, I found the seated
statues of Prince Rahotep and Princess Nofret, their limestone bodies looking unnaturally
fresh from the 4th dynasty. Even then,
Egyptians had a preference for fair skin, as the Princess was delicately painted yellow. A
painted pink and white headband encircled her black-braided wig. The Prince was painted red with a Clark Gable
moustache. The ancient Egyptians also flattered their pharaohs, especially those of the
Old Kingdom, with statues that often bore little resemblance to the real person. They were considered gods and were depicted as
beautiful and serene. Who was to say that
Rameses II looked as good as Yul Brenner?
(Have you ever
noticed that Hollywood stars are usually better looking than the real-life people they
portray? Can't you just see Tom Cruise playing
the lead in this story?)
A
young guard, lurking in one of those dimly lit hallways came up to me and looked around,
not wanting to be seen talking to me.
“You
want I take you to new exhibit, not open yet?” he said.
“Very big exhibit.”
“Where?”
“You
come.”
He
led me to another unlit room. Are there no electric lights in this place? It was acrid with the dust of new plaster. There were big and small things draped in
plaster-colored sheets, statues, I imagined. Some
were uncovered but had boards leaning against them. He
stepped behind one of the statues. He looked
around again.
“You
give me five US dollars,” he said.
“For
what?”
“I
bring you here. You look around. No one else.
You have first look.”
Though
his uniform made him look authoritative, like a policeman, his nervousness was growing.
“I
have children. I work but I make little
money,” he said. “You give me
American money now.”
Why
was I so naïve at to think he brought me here as a favour?
Right from Alexandria, I had seen so many “working” people, so
many people given some kind of job for the sake of having some employment, that wages
surely had to be low. But I was dawdling and
he was getting very anxious.
“Change
money?” he said. "I give you good
rate."
I
felt sorry for him.
Some
tourists wandered into the room. He left to
usher them out. I simply followed them.
Such
a huge place filled with important historical artifacts could make you feel so small and
intellectually intimidated, especially if you didn’t know much about what you were
looking at. My mind felt unready for all this
input – there was just too much to see here. I
had to choose the obvious – what was at least somewhat familiar – and so I went
upstairs to the second floor to see the Tutankhamen collection.
The
main exhibit was in Room 4. There was a sign
that said only 25 people were allowed at one time but there were at least 50 in the
relatively small room. I maneuvered my way in
and abruptly saw what was for many the quintessence of Egypt, the feature item on most
Egyptian travel brochures – next to the Pyramids and the Sphinx – King
Tut’s exquisite Death Mask. Photographs
are wonderful things. They take you to places
and let you see things you might never see in person.
But it was humbling to see this icon of ancient Egypt in three dimensions, close
enough to touch if it (had not been for the glass case that barely enclosed it). The image was one of serene, supreme power with a
hint of arrogance. It was was awesome in its
artistry and craftsmanship. I wondered if even
today’s techno-superior craftsmen could duplicate this in all its shining splendor. And it was in showroom condition, as it were. This was truly a form of immortality.
I
was puzzled as to why it stood so openly in the centre of the room (just to the left of
centre, as I recall). There were few
informative aids to tell you about all the things you were looking at in the room,
including the mask.
I’ll look
it up later; just take it all in for now.
The
mask was life-size and made of beaten and burnished solid gold. You could see the reflections of tourists in its
face. The eyebrows and eye lines were of rich
blue lapis lazuli, the eyes themselves were quartz and obsidian, and the stripes of the
headdress were of blue glass as was the inlay of the plaited false beard. On the headdress, there was a vulture and the
cobra, side by side over the forehead. These
symbolized the king's sovereignty over Upper and Lower Egypt. The hieroglyphic text on the back of the mask
contained a chapter from the Book of the Dead relating to mummy masks. It represented Tut as the sun god Ra in order to
secure for him a solar afterlife. But I
suspected that all this modern-day adulation was an unexpected and unwanted part of Tut's
afterlife.
Yet
some of the incomparable riches he took with him were here.
The wrapped body alone had been overlain with 143 pieces of jewelry,
including 17 gold collars, 15 gold rings, 13 bracelets, a gold cobra, gold sandals,
protective amulets, a sheathed solid gold dagger, gold finger and toe coverings. Even his penis had its own gold covering. All this was lying over the mummified Tut in the
highly ornamented innermost (3rd) coffin, itself 296 pounds of solid gold.
In
halls and other rooms, you saw more of the things Tut had indeed taken with him – the
eight-foot-high canopic shrine, completely covered in gold leaf, which contained
Tut’s mummified internal organs. There
were the chariots, the guilded couches and the rigid, uncomfortable-looking gold throne
where Tut had put his divine butt. Like
everything else I had seen, it was highly detailed, and here in gold leaf on the back
there was a relief of Tut sharing an intimate moment Ankhesenamun, his queen.
But
Tut was minor king. He was just an
eight-year-old kid when he came to power, and just eighteen when he died. I could only imagine the treasures the tomb of
Ramses II must have surrendered to its plunderers.
The
museum had been mind-boggling in the quantity and the quality of artifacts it held and
their significance to Egyptian history. I had
come totally unprepared for all this. If I
had, I know that I would have had a greater reverence and respect for what I had seen. And I would have come back a few times. I had deluded myself into thinking I could read up
on things just before I arrived: read up on Egypt while in Greece, check out India while
in Kenya… I found that I could not afford
guidebooks – specifically ones that were written independently (not by tourist
boards) e.g., the Lonely Planet guidebooks. And
I did not have the time, or at least did not make the time to visit libraries. The text in brochures was trite and biased and
their photo illustrations omitted shadowy outlying details.
So I was dizzy with cerebral overload by the time I left the echoing halls
of the museum. Going back into the
mind-blowing cacophony of Tahir Square did not help.
I
would never really become use to the noise, the dirt, the crowds, the general chaos and
the strangeness of the streets of Cairo (though
seasoned by subsequent travels in other chaotic cites, I would love to go back!). I much preferred the view I got of this dusty city
from a seat 590 feet up in the revolving restaurant (immobile then) atop the concrete
lattice walls of Cairo Tower. From here, I
looked southwest to Pyramids that rose at the edge of the desert over nine miles away. Looking the other way, across the Nile, I cringed
at the bleak sprawl of dusty gray and brown city that had hardly a green leaf anywhere. It did however have "aerial farmyards"
– families kept poultry, sometimes goats on their rooftops. I saw Nasser's vast circular edifice, the broadcast
station topped by a square office tower. It
stood across the Nile at Balaq. The building
contained 43 radio stations and 11 television studios and accommodated a staff of some
10,000 – more people than were employed in broadcasting by all the other Arab and
African countries combined! I looked down on
the spartan new hotels and apartments and the tide of congested buildings that pushed them
up against the banks of the river. I shivered
when I imagined myself in the midst of all that.
Cairo
was a western name. For the Cairene in the
street, and for most Egyptians, this was Misr which was also the Arabic name for Egypt. The name Cairo was derived from
"Al-Qahirah", a district of the metropolis that was the name of a city built
here by the 10th century Tunisian invaders. This was misunderstood by medieval
Italian merchants who took it and spread it throughout Europe as the name for the entire
city. "Al-Qahirah" was adopted
because media usage of the name.
As
in many urban centres throughout the world in the 2nd half of this century,
there was mass migration to the city – millions of fellahin moved to Cairo in search of jobs and a
better life. The population now (1987) was 9
million – up from 600,000 in 1900. At 4.5
percent, Cairo also had one of the highest birth rates in the world.
There
was no corresponding development in municipal services.
It had decrepit public services and amenities, inadequate public transport,
frequent power outages and an overblown bureaucracy. Almost
a quarter of Cairo's entire working population was registered government officials,
working in the civil service and public sector companies.
Decisions were delayed for months to decades.
Multiple agencies were engaged to see plans through. Corruption was endemic due to poor pay –
bribes were regarded as legitimate perquisites of office.
College graduates, who applied for a government job, automatically got
one, provided he or she did not demand useful work (this was unproductive work that paid
about $60/month). There were too few
commercial and industrial enterprises to absorb the flood of young educated people. So you had government offices that were full of
young idle officials who spent much of their time drinking tea or coffee and making idle
conversation with people waiting to see their superiors.
These officials, in turn, employed an army of dependants who supplied them
with refreshments, ran errands, carried messages or acted as bawabs in the ministerial
lobbies. This resulted in relatively low
unemployment – and employed people were less likely to challenge the political status
quo. That was what was going on down there in
that sprawling congested metropolis that was to be the "Paris of the Nile".
Standing
in Cairo Tower, I then looked up the greenish-blue waters of the Nile – the river of
Egyptian pharaohs, of daring explorers, the longest river in the world at over 4,000
miles. I followed it with my eyes to where it
disappeared into the depths of Egypt. I was
always nervous about the road ahead, yet equally anxious, now, to leave Cairo.
A
few days later, Don, Murray, Rainer and I were taken by J. M. Scott-Harrison, an old
friend of Don's who now worked at the embassy, to the camel market in the Imbaba district. Except for the parked vehicles, it was a step back
into time, to a wonderful, chaotic place of camels, donkeys and horses, of men puffing on
hookahs and drinking chai. There were flea
markets where you could buy many local items, from bright colored cotton fabrics to
Egyptian daggers. I watched two Egyptian men,
dressed in galabiyahs, as they haggled over coils of new rope.
The
camels were the main attraction. Most hobbled
about remarkably well on three legs. One
foreleg was bound at the knee to keep the animal under control. One camel, however, had had enough prodding and
parading and obedience performances. With leg
unbound, he bolted out of the market. With a
wide swinging canter, he made good his escape down the street. His cameleer followed in hot-tempered, fast-footed
pursuit, slicing the air with a bamboo cane and what must have been Arabic profanity. Bystanders cheered the errant camel and made good
sport of his pursuer. The cameleer grabbed up
his galabiyah, jumped into the back of a compact Datsun camel truck and ordered the driver
to take up the pursuit. The rebel was cornered
and captured without a fight.
From
time to time, I would touch upon the quieter local life in Giza. On the first Canal Street, I came upon some men in
galabiyahs and headwraps who were sitting at a table on the sidewalk and playing a game
that looked like backgammon. On man wore
western clothes and sat in a wheel chair. He
noticed that I was starring at the stump of his right leg.
“This
was done to me by a land mine near El Alamein.” he said. “I was just a boy when it happened.”
Murray
and Don took off for a tour of Sewa and El Alamein. The
latter was where, after a week’s fighting, Montgomery defeated Field Marshall Rommel,
“the Desert Fox". It was one of the
decisive battles of World War II that signaled the end of Adolf Hitler. But the carnage continued to this day.
Rommel
had called the battlefield of El Alamein the “Garden of the Devil” – where
his troops had laid millions of land mines. The British planted still more. Egypt had more live land mines than any other
country in the world – almost 20 percent of the world's land mines were buried in
Egypt. With 17 million German, Italian and
British mines, plus those of the Arab-Israeli wars buried in the Sinai, a total of 22.7
million mines were hidden beneath 284,000 hectares of Egyptian desert according to UN
statistics.
(In 1993, 3
Israelis died while touring Sinai just 15 km from popular Red Sea resort of Sharm el
Sheikh on a road clearly marked as safe – victims of mines planted by their own
soldiers during the occupation of the Sinai. Six
months earlier, two Americans honeymooning in Sharm el Sheikh were killed when their Jeep
struck a land mine. Most casualties of mines
are among the Bedouin villagers who lived near El Alamein.
The International Committee for the Red Cross says that there are currently
more than 119 million active mines scattered through 71 countries. The UN estimated 800 people were killed by mines
every month, another 1,200 were maimed. Between
1981 and 1991, the Egyptian government cleared 11 million mines between Alexandria and El
Alamein where resort hotels and luxurious houses were being built. The mines remained in the Bedouin hinterlands. Clearing the remaining mines was estimated at $200
million. In a 1997 report, 8,300 people had
been killed by the forgotten mines since the 1940s (figure by Egyptian Foreign Ministry).
As we know,
one of Princess Diana's last crusades was to help rid the world of these lingering hidden
destroyers.)
One
day, a man came into camp who, to me, looked to be the image of old and modern Egyptian
combined. His name was Amer Abu Khamis. He was more than just a cameleer at the Pyramids;
he would become my best Egyptian friend. He
looked a bit like a swarthy version of the Ernest Hemingway that Paris knew in the 1920s
– the moustache, the strong rounded features, and the manly zest for life showing in
his smile and his gestures. He was usually
dressed in a fine-quality gray galabiyah and white headdress. Amer sought out tourists in the camps, not
only for his business, but because he genuinely wanted foreigners to enjoy his country and
to take back favourable impressions of its people.
“You
come and we eat together at my home,” he said.
Riding
Melawend, I would sometimes follow him as he rode on his camel, Hassan, through the
crowded, dirty and confusing streets of Giza to his large house. We would sit on the floor in the living room and
eat meals that often included camel meat, cooked by his lovely wife Samira who was always
dressed in traditional flowing clothes. When
he would have several people over, we would sit on the floor around a huge bowl of rice
and meat and dip our hands in to get our fill. Amer
would provide Egyptian clothes for guests and share drags on a large ornate hookah. When I would leave Cairo for side trips, I would
leave my gear at his home. He had had a German
guest who had gone to Somalia three years earlier and had not returned.
“As
you can see, his things are still here,” Amer said.
“I do not know if was arrested or what.”
On
the walls of this room there were framed scenes of ancient Egypt painted on pieces of
papyrus. Others had text from the Koran
printed in Arabic. But what got my attention
were the photos on the wall. They showed Amer
at the Pyramids – one was an excellent black and white portrait of Amer with Hassan. Another showed Amer at a festive family gathering. He was wearing a white a galabiyah, a big smile on
his face. His arms were spread wide. Another frame held an article from Expressen, “the daily newspaper of
Scandinavia”, with photographs showing Amer with King Carl XVI Gustav and Queen
Silvia of Sweden at the Pyramids where he took the royal couple on a tour.
Amer would prove his friendship several times. Once was after I purchased three thick exquisite
hand-made wool carpets very cheaply.
"How do I send these home?" I said.
“You
must not send them by mail,” Amer said. “They
will never arrive.”
But I thought I had a way to
do it, possibly for free.
(We’ll get to the part where I take
them to the Sinai and then to Alexandria to try to get them shipped home. But it was Amer who ultimately gave them to a
tourist who would take them as luggage into Israel and then on to Paris where they would
remain locked in someone’s apartment for over a year before they were finally shipped
to the tourist in Canada. I would meet this
tourist and her fiancé at the Valhalla Inn in Toronto and be presented with the carpets
after their own odyssey. These carpets will
take on significance as we go along… For
now, I had found a trusted friend in Amer.)
As cliché as they are, how could one go to Egypt and not visit
the Pyramids? But before you can touch those
crumbling monuments to human engineering, you are welcomed in by many patronizing tour
guides, as mentioned.
“Where are you from?” a guide asked.
I told him.
“Ah, Canada! Number
One!”
I thought that if I had begun waving our flag, he would have
personally carried me anywhere I wanted to go. But
now who was being patronizing?
I assumed that the size of your wallet was estimated by the
country of your origin. And to gain your
confidence, the hawkers always had relatives living in your country. Based on the welcomes and the conversations with
shopkeepers, cameleers and sellers of horseback tours, black market money exchangers and
dealers in various tourist and personal services, it might have been assumed that half the
population of Egypt had moved to Canada. There
were brothers in Vancouver who were successful doctors, so many cousins in Montreal that
now had French accents, and Toronto must have had an Egyptian equivalent of Chinatown.
This whole theory of the Egyptian / Canadian familiarity and bias
was shattered however, when I said I was an American.
“Ah, America! Number
One!”
And what if I said I was from Israel? I did not even try.
Before I met Amer, I
negotiated a ride on a camel with a slim, dark young Egyptian cameleer in a white headwrap
and a blue western windbreaker. His name was
Farage. It would be unfair to the bargaining
process and to the guides who depend on this work for their living to tell you what I
paid. It was best to ask other travelers, or
to look for the sign that was posted near the edge of the market at the base of the
pyramids, near the Sphinx, to see a recommended fee schedule. If I could have afforded it, I would not have
bothered dickering. After all, how many times
in your life would you ride on a camel, let alone ride one around the Pyramids?
But I also can’t leave you hanging
like that! (Besides, these were the
prices in 1987.) I had heard prices as high as US$30 for an hour’s
ride quoted to some tourists. An English guy
told me he paid $20.00 for one hour on a horse. But
that crude sign suggested an hour on a camel would cost about $1.50, a day would cost
about $5.00.
(My suggestion: be prepared
to bargain – that's part of the mutual fun of it – and use your own discretion.)
“Money?” Farage said.
“No problem.” Occasionally,
he would turn and look up at me on Hassan, a bit concerned that he was doing well for me. "Are you happy?" "If you are happy, I am happy."
He meant we could talk about money later. There was a rivalry between tour guides. Having customers in tow gave them pride among their
peers.
Farage’s seven-year-old camel, (another Hassan) was lying on
its stomach, its legs folded under. Farage
motioned for me to get on. This was done
almost as easily as you would get onto a horse. Hassan
gurgled heavily and was about to turn his head toward me – I had heard camels had
foul breath and were notorious for spitting. Farage
imitated Hassan’s sound and Hassan heeled like a reluctant but obedient dog. Then in a flash, I was hurled hard forward and then
backward as Hassan got to his feet. I think
some cameleers love to see the reactions on their customers faces at this bit of local
culture shock. Farage smiled. He then led me on what must have been a tour that
went back to ancient times: a slow, plodding circuit around the main pyramids. We went down the ancient causeway to the Sphinx and
back, and then out to the dune where you got a view of all nine pyramids. Out there, I met Farage’s father, Abu Awash,
who posed against this backdrop as his own camel kissed him.
Farage gave me a white headdress and I did my Lawrence of Arabia thing
on Hassan for my own camera.
(But be aware that
cameleers are not the best picture-takers – in the photo, Hassan's legs were cut off
below the knees. It might be better to have
someone in your party take the photos.)
In the end, we settled on a price that was far less than what he
asked. And like anyone who has worked for
someone, Farage sought a written reference – I was pleased to write one out on the
back of one of my business cards.
In Charlton Heston's book, The
Actor’s Life, I had seen a photo of Heston and his wife Lydia sitting atop the
Pyramids (photo taken by son Fraser) in 1965. Heston
said this climb was something he should have done ten years earlier. He said that it was "very special, putting my
feet in the troughs worn there by the millions of feet that've climbed before me in the
five thousand years since it was built, polishing with the sweat of my palm the gleaming
handholds men have worn in the time-carved stone. The
view from the top was deeply stirring for us…"
As mentioned, it was now against the law to climb up the Pyramids
– tourists had died after they slipped and fell down the crumbling blocks. But Farage encouraged me to climb one of the lesser
pyramids of the queens for an elevated shot. This
was one of the three pyramids beside Mycerinus’ pyramid, the 3rd of the
three great pyramids. I climbed the one on the
right facing Mycerinus. Though they looked
almost indestructible, upon closer examination, the pyramids were slowly turning to dust. Grains fell with each of my footsteps. I slipped twice.
While Farage squatted below, I got my photographs. I tried to envision the Pyramids as they were,
originally covered with polished Tura limestone with joints so fine they could hardly be
seen. They must have been truly awesome in
their white virgin beauty, before they were stripped.
(PHOTO - for
scale, note two people sitting at the base of the pyramid, lower right. Enlargement
of section showing couple below.)
Of
course the massiveness of the three largest Pyramids is one of their greatest attractions. For this narrative, I'll focus on the Great Pyramid
of Cheops as I would later go inside it. Since
it was completed around 2500 B.C., it has been vandalized, gawked at, bored into, measured
and subjected to many theories as to its construction.
I could fill the next several pages just with tales of the dealings with
this massive pile of stone blocks.
