I left the U.S. in mid-June to see the world on my own for the first time. When I boarded my plane in New York, national discontent over an uncertain bailout and a too-long-for-Dick, too-short-for-Richard health care plan was only just approaching a boiling point. I came back at the end of July to find our country in the early throes of Communism, according to some, or Fascism, according to others, or even the Apocalypse. Many worried aloud that the beleaguered American experiment might be rocking on its heels.
It might behoove us to keep some perspective as we debate wealth distribution, hierarchies of need, and what it means to be free. I saw some things abroad that helped calibrate my own.
In Ethiopia, locals explained to me that in 2005, their government had held an election. The opposition had won with almost 100% of the vote in every part of the country that had hosted elections monitors. In the remaining, much less populous areas of the country, the government counted the votes and, unsurprisingly, claimed victory. When the opposition protested, the government had them arrested and jailed. All but the state-run newspapers were closed. Ethiopia’s only telecommunications company, also conveniently state-run, blocked text messaging (that insidious tool of the revolutionary) for two solid years. The government remains in power today. Few expect anything but a show in the 2010 election.
In its countryside, I met Ethiopians who walked seventy kilometers once a week for water, grain and firewood. 9 in 10 Ethiopians face a two-day walk just to reach an all-weather road. Still others will die in childbirth because there are only 2,000 doctors in Ethiopia – a country of 85 million people. Not that the imbalance matters much, since there hasn’t been a public hospital built since the 1950s, there’s no public health care system, the average yearly income is about $100 USD, and the doctors almost all live in the inaccessible major cities.
In Egypt, I booked a trip to see Abu Simbel, Pharaoh Rameses III’s 2,000-year-old monument to himself. The hotel awakened me at 2 AM so that I could join the convoy for the 230 kilometer drive to the site. We had to start so early because foreigners are not allowed to travel unescorted in that part of Egypt: the police surrounded all twenty of our buses, keeping us safe from terrorist strikes. For my train trip back to Cairo, I was required to purchase a first-class cabin ticket – the open second-class seats are considered too dangerous for Westerners.
On the streets of Addis Ababa, a man told me that his father had been murdered by Somali insurgents some twenty years before. I gasped and stopped still as he explained that, in order to provide for his mother and two sisters, he had had to abandon college and thereby all hope of joining the middle class. Somehow I choked out that I was “so sorry to hear that”. I was sure that he would cry.
But he kept walking. “Ah,” he said. “It happens.”
I suppose it does.
To be fair, my trip took me through beauty as well. I watched the sun set over the Pyramids, I bargained in Africa’s largest open-air bazaar, I heard prayers sung in the hand-hewn rock churches of Lalibela; I saw HIV-positive mothers giving birth to HIV-negative children under careful medical care, I toured hospitals built on the ruins of prisons, and I was touched time and again by the kindness of strangers. I saw the sights and heard the sounds of civilizations that were old when Christianity first set foot on American shores.
But by far my fondest memory is of the customs station in John F. Kennedy International Airport at the end of my return flight. “Welcome home,” said the agent, and I nearly cried.
It takes a great shock to make clear the incandescent promise of the things, large and small, that we take for granted. Our air conditioners work. Our water runs. Our votes are counted, our trials are open, our supermarkets overflow with food, and our children, who will be taught to read and do arithmetic, will be limited more by their ability than by their grandparents’ birthplaces. What’s more, we are safe from the violent predations of insurgents – so safe, in fact, with such deaths so unprecedented, that when 3,000 Americans were murdered all at once, we invaded two sovereign nations to prevent a recurrence.
Of course we have things to work on, and of course we differ over the best ways to improve. That’s the essence of democracy. But we’ve got an awful lot to be proud of, and a thriving system that, while slow to adapt, is near unshakeable in its strength and possibility. So if you worry that disagreement over the next steps for an already excellent health care system, or the most effective methods for using tax dollars, constitutes the end of a nation, here’s my advice to you:
Go take a trip.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
No Photos Permitted Inside
...and, perhaps illogically given the clear flexibility of Egyptian Antiquities guidelines, I didn't take any.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
The Great Iron Tortoise
(continued)
At the station, the attendant behind the counter scrawls "Seat 17, Car 13. // Plat. 1" at the bottom of my entirely handwritten ticket. "Platform 1," he says. The top reads, "Train 997. 8 PM." I shoulder my bags and head through the perfunctory security check.
I've figured out the Arabic numbering system, but the digits on the sides of the already-arrived train at Platform 1 don't appear to say anything lower than 1,115. I ask a guy in a station attendant's uniform where I should be. He grabs my ticket, frowns, and says, "Platform 4! Hurry! It leave!", and points energetically to the tunnel under the tracks to the other platforms.
I'm skeptical, so I find one of the omni-present soldiers and ask him what's up. He gestures to his superior, who speaks English, and explains what's on my ticket. The three-star (or so his epaulets proclaim him) frowns and says, "Platform 4!"
Puzzling!
I trundle back out to the grungy front lobby and find the gentleman who sold me the tickets. "They said platform 4. What's going on?", I ask hopefully. "Platform 1! But go, it will leave in a moment!", he harrumphs before leaving his desk for the station's inner sanctum. I'm lost.
I head back out to the tracks and appeal to a civilian for help. He grabs my ticket. Frowns. Scratches at the marks. Says, "You need to run. Come." And he grabs my arm, and down we go beneath the tracks, through the tunnel, back up to the air at platform 4. Another train! My Good Samaritan hands me off to one of the passengers. This guy performs the by-now-familiar divination ceremony over my ticket and, clearly non-plussed but self-assured nonetheless, leads me three cars up. "This is your seat," he says, pointing to seat 13.
I check: my ticket still says seat 17. "Really? That's....that's great. Thank you." He nods, I nod, and I drop my bags.
By way of background, I made my trip down to Aswan in a 1st-class compartment. I've never been in the 2nd-class cars before, or even seen inside. It's a different world. Where 1st-class has plush seats and is relatively clean, if cramped, 2nd-class has battered, patched, threadbare seats that clearly that well attached to the car itself. It also has plenty of room and a much more jovial, communal atmosphere. Though I paid for a 1st-class ticket, I'm perfectly happy here.
The other vital piece of background -- a tidbit I didn't learn until I ran into a fellow erstwhile Egyptian traveler while in Istanbul -- is that Westerners are not to be sold 2nd-class tickets, and are in fact required to sit in 1st-class. 2nd-class, I was informed in hushed tones, "is not safe."
So bear this in mind, gentle reader, as the conductor scoots through the car collecting tickets. I show him mine. He squints, obviously confused. The man behind me stands up and talks excitedly, likely making a point about the law and my clear Western provenance. The conductor shushes him and then shrugs, as if to say "Who really gives a shit?" He hands me back my ticket and walks on.
The Egyptian attitude toward security never fails to astound. (There are metal detectors and X-Ray machines at all the entrances to the national monuments and antiquities sites. But there are no monitors for the X-Ray machines, and the metal detectors beep plaintively for each person who walks through. It's a tiny one-note ode to good intentions. Or maybe not: The same traveler who told me about the 2nd-class law claims he saw someone get pulled aside after a metal detector only to offer a 10-pound note and pass without scrutiny. Others claim that, much like marijuana laws in the States, the ubiquitous Egyptian security precautions are mainly excuses to investigate anyone the police couldn't nab under other pretenses.)
So the train pulls out. For the first half hour or so, I sit and chat with the gentleman across the isle from me. His name is Musim, and at age 28 he owns and operates his own ore-extraction business. After some involved talk about Egyptian business and the value of a law degree ("I always keep a lawyer on payroll. They make problems go away"), he asks what I do. "I'm a student," I tell him.
"How much does that cost each year?"
"God. Upwards of $40,000. Sometimes $60K, depending how you count."
His eyes bug out. "So you will be rich after you study? You will make that money in your government job?"
"Lord no."
"So you will be poor?"
"More than likely."
"You do not want to make money?"
"It's not really the point. I'm in this to do good, you know?"
He pauses to consider. Then: "We need more people like you in this country."
We chat, first about Egyptian and global politics, then idly, until sleep overtakes both of us. As night falls over the alleged Train 997, we clatter and rattle our way back to Cairo.
At the station, the attendant behind the counter scrawls "Seat 17, Car 13. // Plat. 1" at the bottom of my entirely handwritten ticket. "Platform 1," he says. The top reads, "Train 997. 8 PM." I shoulder my bags and head through the perfunctory security check.
I've figured out the Arabic numbering system, but the digits on the sides of the already-arrived train at Platform 1 don't appear to say anything lower than 1,115. I ask a guy in a station attendant's uniform where I should be. He grabs my ticket, frowns, and says, "Platform 4! Hurry! It leave!", and points energetically to the tunnel under the tracks to the other platforms.
I'm skeptical, so I find one of the omni-present soldiers and ask him what's up. He gestures to his superior, who speaks English, and explains what's on my ticket. The three-star (or so his epaulets proclaim him) frowns and says, "Platform 4!"
Puzzling!
I trundle back out to the grungy front lobby and find the gentleman who sold me the tickets. "They said platform 4. What's going on?", I ask hopefully. "Platform 1! But go, it will leave in a moment!", he harrumphs before leaving his desk for the station's inner sanctum. I'm lost.
I head back out to the tracks and appeal to a civilian for help. He grabs my ticket. Frowns. Scratches at the marks. Says, "You need to run. Come." And he grabs my arm, and down we go beneath the tracks, through the tunnel, back up to the air at platform 4. Another train! My Good Samaritan hands me off to one of the passengers. This guy performs the by-now-familiar divination ceremony over my ticket and, clearly non-plussed but self-assured nonetheless, leads me three cars up. "This is your seat," he says, pointing to seat 13.
I check: my ticket still says seat 17. "Really? That's....that's great. Thank you." He nods, I nod, and I drop my bags.
By way of background, I made my trip down to Aswan in a 1st-class compartment. I've never been in the 2nd-class cars before, or even seen inside. It's a different world. Where 1st-class has plush seats and is relatively clean, if cramped, 2nd-class has battered, patched, threadbare seats that clearly that well attached to the car itself. It also has plenty of room and a much more jovial, communal atmosphere. Though I paid for a 1st-class ticket, I'm perfectly happy here.
The other vital piece of background -- a tidbit I didn't learn until I ran into a fellow erstwhile Egyptian traveler while in Istanbul -- is that Westerners are not to be sold 2nd-class tickets, and are in fact required to sit in 1st-class. 2nd-class, I was informed in hushed tones, "is not safe."
So bear this in mind, gentle reader, as the conductor scoots through the car collecting tickets. I show him mine. He squints, obviously confused. The man behind me stands up and talks excitedly, likely making a point about the law and my clear Western provenance. The conductor shushes him and then shrugs, as if to say "Who really gives a shit?" He hands me back my ticket and walks on.
The Egyptian attitude toward security never fails to astound. (There are metal detectors and X-Ray machines at all the entrances to the national monuments and antiquities sites. But there are no monitors for the X-Ray machines, and the metal detectors beep plaintively for each person who walks through. It's a tiny one-note ode to good intentions. Or maybe not: The same traveler who told me about the 2nd-class law claims he saw someone get pulled aside after a metal detector only to offer a 10-pound note and pass without scrutiny. Others claim that, much like marijuana laws in the States, the ubiquitous Egyptian security precautions are mainly excuses to investigate anyone the police couldn't nab under other pretenses.)
So the train pulls out. For the first half hour or so, I sit and chat with the gentleman across the isle from me. His name is Musim, and at age 28 he owns and operates his own ore-extraction business. After some involved talk about Egyptian business and the value of a law degree ("I always keep a lawyer on payroll. They make problems go away"), he asks what I do. "I'm a student," I tell him.
"How much does that cost each year?"
"God. Upwards of $40,000. Sometimes $60K, depending how you count."
His eyes bug out. "So you will be rich after you study? You will make that money in your government job?"
"Lord no."
"So you will be poor?"
"More than likely."
"You do not want to make money?"
"It's not really the point. I'm in this to do good, you know?"
He pauses to consider. Then: "We need more people like you in this country."
We chat, first about Egyptian and global politics, then idly, until sleep overtakes both of us. As night falls over the alleged Train 997, we clatter and rattle our way back to Cairo.
The Living God
July 8th:
Wake at 2:30. Hotel staff raps on my door seconds later. I dress, grab my camera and head downstairs. My stomach begins to hurt almost immediately; I won't belabor that point in this entry except to say that the day was more suspenseful than would've been ideal, and that you haven't experienced indignation until you've had a bathroom attendant demand cash from you before he'll hand over the toilet paper.
The bus is packed, one of twenty or more in a police-escorted convoy full of tourists. The police are necessary, as it turns out, because this route has been attacked by terrorists before, and for a variety of reasons -- many of them having to do, allegedly, with US funds allocated for Egypt for each American tourist permitted in-country -- the Egyptian government is quite solicitous of American tourists' perception of safety. I'm too tired to notice much beyond the bus' regrettably intermittent air-conditioning, a state of affairs that's almost worse than no air-con at all since one never has the chance to acclimate to either setting.
Two hours' drive gets us to Abu Simbel, Temple of Ramses II. The international political tensions of the '50s led to the construction of an unsurprisingly poorly-planned dam on the Aswan river, which runs directly by Abu Simbel. When the flood water threatened to overrun one of Egypt's prize possessions, they picked the whole thing up piecemeal and moved it 60 meters uphill, going so far as to construct an entire rocky hillside to house it.
And a good thing too, because it's tremendous. You've seen pictures, I'm sure -- three gigantic sandstone effigies of Ramses II, with just the legs of the fourth visible after the torso tumbled in the early 20th century. Two are seated on each side of the entrance to his temple. His favored children stand at his feet, and representations of his best wife, Nefertari, stand miniscule to the side. Lines of captured Asian and African slaves are carven in relief on the side of the entrance, which leads into a thirty-foot hallway flanked by colossal representations of the Gods whose company he joined when he died. Claustrophia-inducing chambers branch off of the main hallway, and all of the walls are decorated with reliefs of his victories -- martial, political, theological and marital. Nothing is carved fewer than five feet off the ground, so even the minimally-exaggerated scales of the represented figures seem superhuman. At the back of the temple another statue of Ramses is seated next to three major gods of the Egyptian pantheon; twice a year, on his birthday and on his day of ascension, the sun's light reaches this chamber, illuminating each figure in turn from left to right or right to left with the exception of the God of Darkness, who remains always shrouded.
It's mind-blowing.
There's an argument, I suppose, that the graffiti all over the site detracts from the grandeur of these immortal ruins. I'm not sure I agree -- seeing the dates and names carven in chests, on walls, in the figures of the almighty gods themselves, I'm reminded of the fallibility of all things, and of the generations of explorers who fought their way to this site and, exhausted and amazed, put their names among the superstructures of the righteous as if to say, "I, too, exist!"
What I don't like is the tourists -- greasy, sweaty, corpulent, near-translucent, sunburned about the neck, posing like the King Tut dancers we all loved on SNL, complaining about the infernal heat and panting heavily after hauling themselves off the bus -- and the E-Z-Serv, anodyne unmistakably tourist culture that's grown up around this greatest of monuments. Not all the tourists look or act this way, obviously, but I've been in Ethiopia or Egypt for two weeks now and I could count the overweight people I've seen on one hand. Yes, Western-style living has its advantages, but it's easy to see where the stereotype comes from. And enough of them carry such an economy-distorting disposable income that their interest brings with them lines of palm trees, phalanxes of stores and tchotchkes and ice cream shops that sell their wares at five times the normal price. The Temple feels caged, a prisoner held thousands of years from its own time to entertain the idle whimsy of the moneyed classes. Ramses' legacy is deracinated, bereft of the cultural context that would lend credence to his efforts or validation to his dreams of immortality. He is diminished before us.
I don't know why the caged bird sings, but I can guess why he might throw himself against the bars until either impact or mercy set him free.
I'm awed and shell-shocked at the same time. Some of this might be dehydration; I slurp desperately at my water bottle and head back to the bus.
2 hours of cramped driving later and we're back in Aswan, which Wikipedia describes as the driest town on Earth. We've run the gamut of local sights, sounds and tastes, and I decide that I've had my fill of Egypt. A quick trip to the internet cafe, where the kids are still playing Halflife over the LAN, yields me a ticket to Israel. I grip hands ceremoniously with D., say farewell, and hop what turns out to be a 15-hour ride to Cairo.
Wake at 2:30. Hotel staff raps on my door seconds later. I dress, grab my camera and head downstairs. My stomach begins to hurt almost immediately; I won't belabor that point in this entry except to say that the day was more suspenseful than would've been ideal, and that you haven't experienced indignation until you've had a bathroom attendant demand cash from you before he'll hand over the toilet paper.
The bus is packed, one of twenty or more in a police-escorted convoy full of tourists. The police are necessary, as it turns out, because this route has been attacked by terrorists before, and for a variety of reasons -- many of them having to do, allegedly, with US funds allocated for Egypt for each American tourist permitted in-country -- the Egyptian government is quite solicitous of American tourists' perception of safety. I'm too tired to notice much beyond the bus' regrettably intermittent air-conditioning, a state of affairs that's almost worse than no air-con at all since one never has the chance to acclimate to either setting.
Two hours' drive gets us to Abu Simbel, Temple of Ramses II. The international political tensions of the '50s led to the construction of an unsurprisingly poorly-planned dam on the Aswan river, which runs directly by Abu Simbel. When the flood water threatened to overrun one of Egypt's prize possessions, they picked the whole thing up piecemeal and moved it 60 meters uphill, going so far as to construct an entire rocky hillside to house it.
And a good thing too, because it's tremendous. You've seen pictures, I'm sure -- three gigantic sandstone effigies of Ramses II, with just the legs of the fourth visible after the torso tumbled in the early 20th century. Two are seated on each side of the entrance to his temple. His favored children stand at his feet, and representations of his best wife, Nefertari, stand miniscule to the side. Lines of captured Asian and African slaves are carven in relief on the side of the entrance, which leads into a thirty-foot hallway flanked by colossal representations of the Gods whose company he joined when he died. Claustrophia-inducing chambers branch off of the main hallway, and all of the walls are decorated with reliefs of his victories -- martial, political, theological and marital. Nothing is carved fewer than five feet off the ground, so even the minimally-exaggerated scales of the represented figures seem superhuman. At the back of the temple another statue of Ramses is seated next to three major gods of the Egyptian pantheon; twice a year, on his birthday and on his day of ascension, the sun's light reaches this chamber, illuminating each figure in turn from left to right or right to left with the exception of the God of Darkness, who remains always shrouded.
It's mind-blowing.
There's an argument, I suppose, that the graffiti all over the site detracts from the grandeur of these immortal ruins. I'm not sure I agree -- seeing the dates and names carven in chests, on walls, in the figures of the almighty gods themselves, I'm reminded of the fallibility of all things, and of the generations of explorers who fought their way to this site and, exhausted and amazed, put their names among the superstructures of the righteous as if to say, "I, too, exist!"
What I don't like is the tourists -- greasy, sweaty, corpulent, near-translucent, sunburned about the neck, posing like the King Tut dancers we all loved on SNL, complaining about the infernal heat and panting heavily after hauling themselves off the bus -- and the E-Z-Serv, anodyne unmistakably tourist culture that's grown up around this greatest of monuments. Not all the tourists look or act this way, obviously, but I've been in Ethiopia or Egypt for two weeks now and I could count the overweight people I've seen on one hand. Yes, Western-style living has its advantages, but it's easy to see where the stereotype comes from. And enough of them carry such an economy-distorting disposable income that their interest brings with them lines of palm trees, phalanxes of stores and tchotchkes and ice cream shops that sell their wares at five times the normal price. The Temple feels caged, a prisoner held thousands of years from its own time to entertain the idle whimsy of the moneyed classes. Ramses' legacy is deracinated, bereft of the cultural context that would lend credence to his efforts or validation to his dreams of immortality. He is diminished before us.
I don't know why the caged bird sings, but I can guess why he might throw himself against the bars until either impact or mercy set him free.
I'm awed and shell-shocked at the same time. Some of this might be dehydration; I slurp desperately at my water bottle and head back to the bus.
2 hours of cramped driving later and we're back in Aswan, which Wikipedia describes as the driest town on Earth. We've run the gamut of local sights, sounds and tastes, and I decide that I've had my fill of Egypt. A quick trip to the internet cafe, where the kids are still playing Halflife over the LAN, yields me a ticket to Israel. I grip hands ceremoniously with D., say farewell, and hop what turns out to be a 15-hour ride to Cairo.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Cairo to Aswan
Looking backwards a couple of days, written while overlooking the Blue Mosque and the Aya Sofya in Istanbul:
July 6:
I've spent at least an hour now watching the tracks at the Cairo railway station and I've only just seen my first train. In spite of this lack of activity, or perhaps because of the bottleneck, the quays are packed like sardine cans. Women, children, men, soldiers -- of whom there are many, though most bear the sleepy expression of men not given serious duty -- all crowd the stone benches and gritty floors. Many sit with their legs hanging over the lip into the track space. Others wonder unconcernedly across the tracks to the station for a drink, navigating with ease the scrap metal, shattered bricks and consumer jetsam spread between the tracks. When finally a train does pull in, it's discharged its passengers and taken on a new load literally before it pulls to a halt: the doors open as the first car of the train reaches the station, and people climb into and out of open doors and windows as though they're being chased. I don't envy the weak or uncoordinated their fight to board, let alone for seats.
D., my Australian fellow traveler, and I have joined forces to head down to Aswan for the next couple of days. Aswan's a small town a ways down the Nile, possessed of the usual complement of shoreline restaurants, spiffy hotels, and beckoning bazaar streets. We'll stay there for the evenings and hop a tour bus for the 250 KM trek to Abu Simbel, home to Ramses II's temple to himself.
It's a good thing we've got so much to look forward to, since pretty much all this train's got going for it is fitful air conditioning. Bugs crawl happily into and out of grates, the seats don't recline, the private cars are hardly private, and when the conductor offers us different seats he grins expectantly and rubs his fingers together: "Baksheesh?"
We settle in to sleep for the 12-hour ride.
July 7th:
16 hours later (yeah, 16) we reach Aswan and are met by an emissary from the hotel, who swiftly negotiates a cab for all of us. D. and I check in, grab a couple of single rooms, desperately flip the air conditioning on to combat the 40 degrees Celcius ambient temperature, and grab lunch across the street. It's Kirshi (sp?) -- a uniquely Egytian, as far as I can tell, blend of lentils, three kinds of noodles, rice, tomato sauce, crunchy fried onions and, for the more adventurous, a murderously spicy sauce to taste. Delicious!
We walk through the bazaar, steadily less patient with the shopkeepers who leap up at the first sign of attention and ask what you're looking for. It isn't possible just to browse: let your eyes rest too long on one shop and you'll be whisked away on a five-minute tour of all of the owner's wares, then press-ganged into a purchase by a man who cannot stop smiling. I've never said "No, thank you!" so firmly or so often in my life.
D. suggests that Egyptians must view bargaining as an extension of ordinary conversation, in contrast to the Western view of money talk as a separate and vaguely discomfiting beast. Looked at this way, the pushy vendors are marginally more tolerable, but it's still enough to put you off shopping for awhile.
We walk and drink liter after liter of water while we burn the hours before our 2:30 wake-up call for the Abu Simbel bus ride. On a whim, we hop a motorboat ride across the Nile to the tombs that fill the hills overlooking the town. In this, as in all things service-related for foreigners in Egypt, we succeed only after extensive negotiations with the boat owner. Once across the river, we find that the tombs closed at 5 PM, and it's already 6. "No problem," say the older, clearly unaffiliated civilians hovering mischievously at the entrance. "We the chiefs of the Tombs. Have keys. You want to visit?" Maybe we could have hit up the tombs after hours. We're struck by the facial illegality and the hassle of it all, though, and so we pay a nominal bit of baksheesh to a nearby guide to take us up and over the tombs to the stone hills that provide a vantage for the river and the city. He obliges, and we slowly rise above the Nubian Village on this bank (vehemently separated from the Arabic town on the other side of the river), its appearance that of a tide of buildings lapping against the sudden desert. We scramble upwards and are rewarded with the promised view, rock promontories providing a steady spot on which to rest and bask in the distance and the evening sun. A few pictures with just us and the guide and we head back down to the boat, across the river, through the streets and to the hotel to sleep before our early morning.
July 6:
I've spent at least an hour now watching the tracks at the Cairo railway station and I've only just seen my first train. In spite of this lack of activity, or perhaps because of the bottleneck, the quays are packed like sardine cans. Women, children, men, soldiers -- of whom there are many, though most bear the sleepy expression of men not given serious duty -- all crowd the stone benches and gritty floors. Many sit with their legs hanging over the lip into the track space. Others wonder unconcernedly across the tracks to the station for a drink, navigating with ease the scrap metal, shattered bricks and consumer jetsam spread between the tracks. When finally a train does pull in, it's discharged its passengers and taken on a new load literally before it pulls to a halt: the doors open as the first car of the train reaches the station, and people climb into and out of open doors and windows as though they're being chased. I don't envy the weak or uncoordinated their fight to board, let alone for seats.
D., my Australian fellow traveler, and I have joined forces to head down to Aswan for the next couple of days. Aswan's a small town a ways down the Nile, possessed of the usual complement of shoreline restaurants, spiffy hotels, and beckoning bazaar streets. We'll stay there for the evenings and hop a tour bus for the 250 KM trek to Abu Simbel, home to Ramses II's temple to himself.
It's a good thing we've got so much to look forward to, since pretty much all this train's got going for it is fitful air conditioning. Bugs crawl happily into and out of grates, the seats don't recline, the private cars are hardly private, and when the conductor offers us different seats he grins expectantly and rubs his fingers together: "Baksheesh?"
We settle in to sleep for the 12-hour ride.
July 7th:
16 hours later (yeah, 16) we reach Aswan and are met by an emissary from the hotel, who swiftly negotiates a cab for all of us. D. and I check in, grab a couple of single rooms, desperately flip the air conditioning on to combat the 40 degrees Celcius ambient temperature, and grab lunch across the street. It's Kirshi (sp?) -- a uniquely Egytian, as far as I can tell, blend of lentils, three kinds of noodles, rice, tomato sauce, crunchy fried onions and, for the more adventurous, a murderously spicy sauce to taste. Delicious!
We walk through the bazaar, steadily less patient with the shopkeepers who leap up at the first sign of attention and ask what you're looking for. It isn't possible just to browse: let your eyes rest too long on one shop and you'll be whisked away on a five-minute tour of all of the owner's wares, then press-ganged into a purchase by a man who cannot stop smiling. I've never said "No, thank you!" so firmly or so often in my life.
D. suggests that Egyptians must view bargaining as an extension of ordinary conversation, in contrast to the Western view of money talk as a separate and vaguely discomfiting beast. Looked at this way, the pushy vendors are marginally more tolerable, but it's still enough to put you off shopping for awhile.
We walk and drink liter after liter of water while we burn the hours before our 2:30 wake-up call for the Abu Simbel bus ride. On a whim, we hop a motorboat ride across the Nile to the tombs that fill the hills overlooking the town. In this, as in all things service-related for foreigners in Egypt, we succeed only after extensive negotiations with the boat owner. Once across the river, we find that the tombs closed at 5 PM, and it's already 6. "No problem," say the older, clearly unaffiliated civilians hovering mischievously at the entrance. "We the chiefs of the Tombs. Have keys. You want to visit?" Maybe we could have hit up the tombs after hours. We're struck by the facial illegality and the hassle of it all, though, and so we pay a nominal bit of baksheesh to a nearby guide to take us up and over the tombs to the stone hills that provide a vantage for the river and the city. He obliges, and we slowly rise above the Nubian Village on this bank (vehemently separated from the Arabic town on the other side of the river), its appearance that of a tide of buildings lapping against the sudden desert. We scramble upwards and are rewarded with the promised view, rock promontories providing a steady spot on which to rest and bask in the distance and the evening sun. A few pictures with just us and the guide and we head back down to the boat, across the river, through the streets and to the hotel to sleep before our early morning.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Getting Lost. Finding Myself.
July 5 (Sunday)
Confession time: I love shisha. Contemplative, dignified, and uncontaminated by pretension (cigars, anyone?), designed to share, as varied and nuanced in its way as any wine or coffee, some quality time with a hookah brings me great peace. It's hard to imagine rushing anywhere while the coals turn slowly white and the smoke dissipates lazily like a dream you once had. I feel a little like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland -- wise, contented, enigmatic.
I'm writing these words while sitting outside a street cafe somewhere behind the Khan el-Khalil, Cairo's street market district. Tea, shisha and the hubbub of the street keep me company. An early start, several hours of satisfied wandering and a cab ride brought me to the entrance of the market. The gate itself is heavily guarded and barred, but pedestrians are allowed through without a second thought. On either side, timeless mosques with indubitably 21st-century sound systems call the people to noon prayer. The Imam's clear voice rings out over the square, dancing around each note and making the streets reverberate with the word of God.
It's a shame the bazaar -- or at least the one street of it that I see -- is such a tourist trap. It's filled with the same kitschy crap you can find at any stall in Cairo -- carven pyramids, cat-headed effigies of golden Gods, cheap shoes, hookahs, men who call you friend before asking where you are from, telling you about their friend in America and then demanding that you come see "something you won't see anywhere else in Cairo!" -- which would be true, I suppose, if I were a one-day tourist and hadn't seen anything else at all in Cairo. As it is, two separate vendors have already performed the same trick for me, lighting a match in a bottle of perfume while hinting darkly that we would both die together if it contained a single drop of alcohol (it doesn't, of course, being of a pure local recipe; all breathe a sigh of relief). Perfume stores like this one are hardly novel. I walk quickly through the packed but somehow half-hearted market street, carefully noting the trash in the corners, the children pushing carts of bread, the New York City-style t-shirts ("You can LOOK, but you can't TOUCH") on occasional display, and I take the first random turn I can. Then another. Then another. Quickly, gratifyingly, I am lost in the back streets of Cairo.
For a time these streets get smaller and smaller, more and more trash-filled -- the air sours and emaciated kittens forage for food in the rubbish and offal -- and at one point I am alone in a dingy, filthy alleyway that looks like all of its residents, touts and passers-by were raptured away in a long-gone moment: streamers hang greyly, garbage leans against the wall like tired beggars, and there is silence. I walk on.
Soon the streets reopen, gaining in width and verve and shedding the thick coating of detritus that marked the streets furthest from the beaten path. Old but serviceable cars beep and rumble around corners, dodging pedestrians every few feet. Vendors sell drinks and hookahs and falafel. Backwater mosques that look 1,000 years old beckon the traveler into their tenebrous worship spaces. The streets shine through their thick coat of dust, resplendent in the sunshine. Footsore and thirsty, I claim a seat at this quintessential streetside shisha bar to smoke a bowl and sip exquisite (if, regrettably, bagged) tea. Shops and street traffic jump to life as the afternoon wears on. Someone turns on a stereo; the area fills with the bouncing, infectious rhythms of popular Arabic music, all drums and chanting and, bizarrely, a touch of funk guitar. Everyone smiles and laughs, frequently in my direction. Two gentlemen invite me to sit with them, but I wish to write and so indicate my thanks but stay in my seat.
This part of Cairo is thick with the juxtaposition of age and modernity. Islamic latticework, grungy but evocative, climbs up many of the buildings. The streets are sized for walking, not cars. Chisel-marks are apparent in the squared blocks that support many of the buildings. Button-down shirts over wifebeaters (do we still call them that?) are more common than robes for the men. Jeans are ubiquitous in the younger generation while older men tend to wear slacks -- rarely well-laundered -- with a belt and a good shirt. The women all wear headscarves, rarely chadors. Here, as elsewhere, the children are giddy and adorable.
Rested, I walk for hours more. The busiest streets are lined with colossal walls that would have been appropriate for repelling an army 2500 years ago. Smaller make-shift walls hide the seas of slum living from casual passers-by, or perhaps from those who wish not to see. I come to the Ring Road, Cairo's answer to DC's beltway: On one side are trees and roads and apartment buildings; on the other, the dry and brittle clay-colored desert that must be Old Cairo, or maybe Islamic Cairo. It stretches for miles left and right, and in the distance to the sun-baked cliffs that demarcate the City by towering impassably over it. In front of me what might have been houses are now just four walls contiguous with the next structures, rows and columns in every direction. The sand is parched, the plants desiccated. In the distance the dwellings rise several floors off the ground and the undulating corpus of the eastern city is punctures in places by the triumphant spires and domes of mosques, each topped with a skyward crescent moon. I bake in the sun and slurp down my sixth liter of water for the day. Standing on the bridge over the ring road, I turn left and see posh hotels; right, the accumulated dwelling places of the last millennia. Awed, I descend to the street and catch a cab back to my hostel.
Confession time: I love shisha. Contemplative, dignified, and uncontaminated by pretension (cigars, anyone?), designed to share, as varied and nuanced in its way as any wine or coffee, some quality time with a hookah brings me great peace. It's hard to imagine rushing anywhere while the coals turn slowly white and the smoke dissipates lazily like a dream you once had. I feel a little like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland -- wise, contented, enigmatic.
I'm writing these words while sitting outside a street cafe somewhere behind the Khan el-Khalil, Cairo's street market district. Tea, shisha and the hubbub of the street keep me company. An early start, several hours of satisfied wandering and a cab ride brought me to the entrance of the market. The gate itself is heavily guarded and barred, but pedestrians are allowed through without a second thought. On either side, timeless mosques with indubitably 21st-century sound systems call the people to noon prayer. The Imam's clear voice rings out over the square, dancing around each note and making the streets reverberate with the word of God.
It's a shame the bazaar -- or at least the one street of it that I see -- is such a tourist trap. It's filled with the same kitschy crap you can find at any stall in Cairo -- carven pyramids, cat-headed effigies of golden Gods, cheap shoes, hookahs, men who call you friend before asking where you are from, telling you about their friend in America and then demanding that you come see "something you won't see anywhere else in Cairo!" -- which would be true, I suppose, if I were a one-day tourist and hadn't seen anything else at all in Cairo. As it is, two separate vendors have already performed the same trick for me, lighting a match in a bottle of perfume while hinting darkly that we would both die together if it contained a single drop of alcohol (it doesn't, of course, being of a pure local recipe; all breathe a sigh of relief). Perfume stores like this one are hardly novel. I walk quickly through the packed but somehow half-hearted market street, carefully noting the trash in the corners, the children pushing carts of bread, the New York City-style t-shirts ("You can LOOK, but you can't TOUCH") on occasional display, and I take the first random turn I can. Then another. Then another. Quickly, gratifyingly, I am lost in the back streets of Cairo.
For a time these streets get smaller and smaller, more and more trash-filled -- the air sours and emaciated kittens forage for food in the rubbish and offal -- and at one point I am alone in a dingy, filthy alleyway that looks like all of its residents, touts and passers-by were raptured away in a long-gone moment: streamers hang greyly, garbage leans against the wall like tired beggars, and there is silence. I walk on.
Soon the streets reopen, gaining in width and verve and shedding the thick coating of detritus that marked the streets furthest from the beaten path. Old but serviceable cars beep and rumble around corners, dodging pedestrians every few feet. Vendors sell drinks and hookahs and falafel. Backwater mosques that look 1,000 years old beckon the traveler into their tenebrous worship spaces. The streets shine through their thick coat of dust, resplendent in the sunshine. Footsore and thirsty, I claim a seat at this quintessential streetside shisha bar to smoke a bowl and sip exquisite (if, regrettably, bagged) tea. Shops and street traffic jump to life as the afternoon wears on. Someone turns on a stereo; the area fills with the bouncing, infectious rhythms of popular Arabic music, all drums and chanting and, bizarrely, a touch of funk guitar. Everyone smiles and laughs, frequently in my direction. Two gentlemen invite me to sit with them, but I wish to write and so indicate my thanks but stay in my seat.
This part of Cairo is thick with the juxtaposition of age and modernity. Islamic latticework, grungy but evocative, climbs up many of the buildings. The streets are sized for walking, not cars. Chisel-marks are apparent in the squared blocks that support many of the buildings. Button-down shirts over wifebeaters (do we still call them that?) are more common than robes for the men. Jeans are ubiquitous in the younger generation while older men tend to wear slacks -- rarely well-laundered -- with a belt and a good shirt. The women all wear headscarves, rarely chadors. Here, as elsewhere, the children are giddy and adorable.
Rested, I walk for hours more. The busiest streets are lined with colossal walls that would have been appropriate for repelling an army 2500 years ago. Smaller make-shift walls hide the seas of slum living from casual passers-by, or perhaps from those who wish not to see. I come to the Ring Road, Cairo's answer to DC's beltway: On one side are trees and roads and apartment buildings; on the other, the dry and brittle clay-colored desert that must be Old Cairo, or maybe Islamic Cairo. It stretches for miles left and right, and in the distance to the sun-baked cliffs that demarcate the City by towering impassably over it. In front of me what might have been houses are now just four walls contiguous with the next structures, rows and columns in every direction. The sand is parched, the plants desiccated. In the distance the dwellings rise several floors off the ground and the undulating corpus of the eastern city is punctures in places by the triumphant spires and domes of mosques, each topped with a skyward crescent moon. I bake in the sun and slurp down my sixth liter of water for the day. Standing on the bridge over the ring road, I turn left and see posh hotels; right, the accumulated dwelling places of the last millennia. Awed, I descend to the street and catch a cab back to my hostel.
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