A Visit to Egypt

 A Visit to Egypt

 

My first time in Egypt, indeed in Africa. First impressions arrived on the plane, coming into land at Cairo. There's a lot of desert, but the desert is dotted with strangely symmetrical new developments -apartment blocks and what look like (and probably are) military or police barracks.

 

Cairo airport, airside, might be anywhere, and international arrivals is again international, quite calm, border controls quick and friendly. (Although there’s a forewarning of future ambiguities: the “Duty Free” shop near luggage collection is anything but. Alcohol is sold at a pretty full price, and on top of that is a massive tourist tax, or “duty” indeed.) But once through the perfunctory customs you enter a different, jolting world.

 

My bag was instantly grabbed by an insistent taxi driver. This was confusing, as we had arrangements to be met by a taxi hired by our hotel. My immediate thought was, how had our driver intuited our identities? My second thought was, “oh he's a hustler” and I grabbed back my bag. For the next half hour or so (our arranged driver was late, lost, or at the wrong terminal) harassment by would-be drivers was constant, often disguised as friendly offers to help with telephoning etc. When finally, our real driver arrived, everyone else suddenly vanished.

 

The taxi ride to the hotel on the south side of the city introduced us to the moronic inferno of Cairo’s traffic and its soulless system of major roads. True appreciation of the sublimity of road transport in Cairo would follow in the next days. 

 

There are scarcely any traffic lights, except in the very central area, and road signs and markings are virtually non-existent. Traffic volumes are huge -I would also add, “fast and furious” except when stewing in huge jams. According to the Lonely Planet guide, the cardinal rule is that the vehicle in front, even if only by inches, has right of way. As a result, lanes are a thing of fiction. 

 

There's another terrifying feature of Cairo traffic. It is a direct consequence of the utter lack of provision for pedestrians, except in the aforesaid central areas. No foot paths, no crossings. Pedestrians, from young to very old, must share the roads with the vehicles, moving at whatever speed and often a hand’s width away. The very worst sight is seeing people crossing big multi -lane highways where the traffic is moving at motorway speeds. It is quite a deadly ballet between cars, trucks and often parents carrying children.

 

There's not much cycling in these conditions.

 

By contrast, the metro system is cheap, safe and efficient to use. It is also the place to appreciate non -hustling Egyptian civility. There’s a lot of seat offering, helping hands to get the elderly up, and directional advice. (This can be confusing -the difference between genuine helpfulness and hustling difficult to detect.)

 

The presence of security forces is ubiquitous, starting with police checkpoints and escalating up to discreetly armed guards who accompany tourist groups above a certain size. 

 

At every tourist site you will spot a policeman dozing over a submachine gun on his lap. These are the tourist police, presumably there to reassure us.  Then there are the frequent posts of the militarised “normal” police, perpetually in readiness for riot duty, equipped with helmets, shields and armoured cars.

 

We had our own rather strange encounter with the tourist police. Booking train tickets between Cairo and Luxor proved to be a Kafkaesque process. First, contact with and payment to a UK based travel agency. Second, acknowledgement from the agency of the payment and confirmation of the booking with Egyptian railways. The confirmation emphasised that it is not the ticket. This elusive document must be obtained from an anonymous local individual agent. His Gmail and phone number is given, and delivery is promised. Third, we make contact via e-mail with the unknown agent giving details of our hotel. Fourth, a prompt reply from this stranger to tell us that our tickets are waiting for us in envelopes to be collected from the tourist police office at Cairo station!

 

We set off on the metro in a somewhat apprehensive frame of mind. At an entrance to the large station stood a man in uniform. One of us approached and asked for directions to the police office. “I am tourist police”, he replied pointing to his badge. “Have you come for tickets”? He led us to an office round the corner and swiftly produced two envelopes containing flimsy bits of paper scrawled with travel details. “And now something for me “, he wheedled. Gratefully we readily complied. Was he the booking company’s anonymous agent?

 

If one is tackling ancient Egyptian civilization from a standing start or at best a slow plod, then don't expect to grasp more than a few basic facts. Ancient Egypt, apart from a few cliches of popular western culture, is difficult to comprehend. We in Western Europe are not in direct line of cultural descent. Indeed, Egypt’s wonders were largely lost to us until the 19th century. The Greeks and Romans came to Egypt as conquerors and rulers from about 300 BC and locally adopted Egyptian rites and traditions. But they did not significantly import Egyptian culture into mainstream Greco-Roman civilization that is such an important ancestor for us. 

 

One has to learn a new cultural language. (Although, ironically, in our post-impressionist, postmodern age there is a superficial and misleading recognition of ancient artistic styles.)

 

 There is the unfathomable intricacy of the narrative and hieratic decoration, both beautiful and wondrous, covering it seems every vast surface to the eye’s and mind’s exhausted curiosity.

The man who deciphered hieroglyphs in the early nineteenth century, Francois Champollion, described them thus: It is a complex system, writing figurative, symbolic, and phonetic all at once, in the same text, the same phrase, I would almost say in the same word.

 

 We are accustomed to images of the pyramids and the Sphinx, the earliest of the monuments. But all the succeeding architecture is also massive and imposing (for the same social reasons as everywhere and in all times in centralised theocratic or imperial states: the weight and grandeur of this crushes YOU and glorifies ME- the King).

 

 Perhaps most awesome: the incredible timescales. Ancient Egypt civilization continued for about 3000 years into the AD period. Traditions and skills altered little over this time until the Macedonian Greeks arrived in the 3rd century BC. Even they brought only incremental changes – for example, a more naturalistic rendering of the human, especially female, form.

 

To the untutored visitor most monuments and images may seem to be contemporary to each other, such is their similarity. But my ignorant assumption was easily shattered. I was in the entrance of a temple under restoration in Luxor and looking at a ceremonial gate about 100 metres away. “Doubtless part of the overall design of the temple’s approach” I thought. The archaeologist who was our guide at this point casually said, “the gate is 1,000 years later than the temple….”.

 

 

I've already described the weird and convoluted prologue to our train journey. The journey itself, from Cairo to Luxor, took about 11 hours. The train was described (to visitors) as a “VIP express”. Neither of these descriptions was very accurate. True, we were in first class, which meant wide seats and good legroom, but the seats and carriages were old and worn. The nearby toilets had no running water of any sort for the first few hours. The train included lesser, very non -VIP classes of carriage and there was much movement of passengers seeking empty seats in first class, while dodging inspectors. Most stations along the Nile were stopped at.

 

 I was seated next to an elderly man dressed in traditional clothing. Intriguingly I noticed that, in addition to an Arabic book, he was also reading one in Italian -a treatise by Pope Benedict on the cult of Mary. Unfortunately, I was too polite to inquire further…

 

Our flimsy tickets were inspected at great length by two men who were obviously inspectors, although wearing little discernible uniform. Towards the end, nearing Luxor, another un-uniformed man asked our destination and to see our tickets. Police? who knows.. it was one of the problems of travelling that one didn’t know whether the person confidently accosting one was some official or yet another chancer looking for a tip.

 

The centrepiece of our Egyptian journey, the reason for being there, was the cruise up the Nile. There are flotillas of cruisers on the Nile, ranging from big three deckers ploughing on at relative speed,

to boats built on the design of traditional dahabiyas. 

The chief characteristic of these vessels are that their only power is sail. In the absence of wind, they are tug towed.  They have a lower deck of cabins, above which is a long, awning -covered upper deck full of comfortable lounging settees.

There is an indoor spacious saloon for bad or cold weather. Although the layout is traditional, the boats are discreetly updated for modern comforts. These include little en-suite shower rooms with hot water and a generator powering ample electric energy.

 

 The passengers enjoy great cooking, the attention of a crew of six and onshore guide for daily stops in the monument -filled Nile valley, which grows lusher as the journey progresses (but with boundaries to the desert becoming more abrupt).

 It is all together a pampered existence for five days and nights between Luxor and Aswan. Indeed, one lives in a perfect Nile bubble.

 

Getting off the boat the bubble is tested by the ubiquitous poverty.

 

 There's a big downturn in tourist visits because of the Gaza conflict. One notices this especially when visiting certain sites where camel or horse and carriage rides are offered. Many, many dozens of equipages are idle, under- bidding for custom desperately.

 

 The great Rameses temples at Abu Simbel 

was our last tourist stop, almost deserted on a warm Sunday afternoon.

Then it was back to Cairo by taxi and plane for a last night in an airport hotel, followed by a flight to London.

 

 On the flight into Cairo from Aswan we descended over an area of slum apartment blocks so close together that residents can almost shake hands with their neighbours. It has been a scandal of urban expansion in Egypt that there have been long periods of completely unregulated development, resulting in dangerous dense building and lack of any infrastructure planning.

 

 Inflation is terrible, unemployment is extremely high and jobs ill- paid. However, there's still a prosperous upper class (prospering from what?) and the well-heeled tourist will be well looked after.

 

…and the sights are truly amazing.

 

March 2024