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March 11 - Egypt Day One

We were up early for our much-awaited pilgrimage towards the sun. There were eight of us in Egypt, but only six of us left from Moscow - Dan, Molly, Justin (sans beard, since his girlfriend is protif the caveman look), Virginia, Michelle and myself all bundled up for the last time in a while for the (supposedly) short trip to the airport. Megan was leaving a few days after us; she hadn’t come to Moscow since she was entertaining her boyfriend in Petersburg and Claire, Justin’s girlfriend, was flying from her studies in Italy to meet us there.

We lugged our bags from the airport a block to the perehod (an underground street crossing), another block to the metro, and through the “crotch blaster” gates (Instead of turnstiles, the Moscow metro uses posts with sensors in them - if you pass the sensors too quickly or without slipping in a valid card, barriers that seem timed and sized perfectly for slamming into some poor bastard’s crotch come shooting out. It’s funny when it happens to someone else.) down the escalator onto the trains and back out again and to another line and back out again and up a few flights of stairs at Airport station. The entire exercise was made a million times more frustrating and difficult by Michelle’s enormous suitcase, which could hold a dozen normal bags and was, in her words, “absolutely necessary.” Of course, she couldn’t carry it herself, so Justin and I took turns with it. A bad omen for Michelle’s overall contribution to the trip.

We were tired and a little cranky by this point, but we had hours and we’d been assured that it was only a few blocks to the airport from the Airport metro station. Well, it was more than a few blocks, it was nearly a dozen. We finally stumbled up to an “Aero Vokzal” (“Air Station”) and were ready to celebrate and/or collapse when Justin noticed that it wasn’t even an airport. I’m not sure what it was, since it definitely had something to do with air travel, but we had to hire a couple of taxis from there to get us to the real airport. There’s nothing worse than a cab driver who knows you’re stuck. They wanted fifty dollars a cab to get us to the airport; by contrast, I can get from my apartment on the island across town to Smolney for about forty rubles, which is a little under two dollars. We haggled them down to twenty-five a cab, but they wouldn’t go lower and we didn’t have much of a choice. Megan told us later that if we’d gone to the right metro stop, we could have taken a marshrutka for fifteen rubles a piece, a tad over fifty cents. Bleagh.

When we finally got to the real airport, we were almost late but not quite. We got our tickets from the travel agent’s representative, then settled in for the long, long, long wait. The train stations were so well run and efficient and clean and pleasant and spacious and convenient that I guess I expected the airports to be a little less, well, insane. The Russian service industry thrives on a kind of subtle yet monomaniacal misanthropy, and Aeroflot is no exception. We waited for half an hour in line for the first security check, only to sail through the actual check by simply saying, “I have no money (U mne nyet deneg),” the same line you give to panhandlers. We waited longer in line to check in. We waited still longer in line for passport control (Although Justin entertained everyone in line by having a truly bizarre argument in Russian with a five year old in front of us “You are a pair of pants!” “No, you are a soccer field!” “Me? No, you are a horse!”) and doing camel impressions. We waited in line for the second security check. We did a lot of waiting.

Once we finally got through it all, however, the inner airport was quite nice. We picked up a few things at the duty free shop, including an enormous three or four liter bottle of vodka that Justin christened “Captain Boris.” (We never finished the captain, since we didn’t really drink that week - somebody on the housekeeping staff at the hotel got a really nice tip.) The airplane itself was another nice surprise. Aeroflot international flights are definitely up to international standards. It was a little cramped, but no more so than an American flight, and there was a definite lack of fire, chaos, disease, or barnyard livestock onboard in spite of all the stories I’d heard. Once in Egypt, we saw the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen out a plane window. The coast is framed by the Red Sea on one side and the mountain range on the other, making a truly picturesque approach. The flight was uneventful, but when we landed, all of the Russians broke into applause. I guess it’s a Russian thing.

Hurghada was wonderful from the very first moments. When we stepped off of the plane, it was warm outside, but with a very pleasant cool breeze. They loaded us onto a bus for a fifty-meter ride to the terminal, where we joined a crowd of approximately every other person on Earth in a room the size of a small lecture hall. A man from “QT Tours” met us, showed us where to stand in line, and walked us through the rest of the normal airport stuff. QT Tours is a subset of Vann Tours, which is a subset of Partners Arkos, the company we got our tickets from. Or maybe they’re subcontractors, I dunno. All I do know is that it’s odd for a company that specializes in giving tours to Russians to call itself “QT Tours,” since the letter “Q” doesn’t appear in the Cyrillic alphabet and Russians have kind of a hard time with it. The larger group we were with was mostly Russians, business and mafia types. Very few Americans or British ever come to Hurghada, since Western carriers don’t fly there. Mostly Germans and Russians, so we couldn’t forget our language studies even on vacation. Having an American passport was a plus, though, since it got us waved through Customs without even a second glance. They never even bothered to ask us if we had anything to declare. (Michelle’s noxious “Go to hell and tell them I sent you” attitude might have had something to do with that.)

When we finally finished in the airport, it was dark and downright chilly outside. We walked to some busses that were supposed to take us to the hotel, and had to fend off the most avaricious would-be porters I’ve ever seen in my life. I was walking towards the rear, not really paying attention, when I noticed that my bag was suddenly a hell of a lot lighter. When I looked up, another guy was carrying one of the handles. He wasn’t trying to take it, really, just taking some of the load off. Still, living in Russia makes one a little leery of strangers, so I pulled the bag back. He rattled something off in Arabic, and actually started to try to pull the bag away from me. When he realized that I spoke Russian (I use Russian with strangers whenever possible, since I don’t like standing out as an American), he told me that it was his job to carry bags “without pay.” I didn’t really believe him, but it took me a few minutes of tug-of-war to get my bag back. It’s just as well, since “without pay” is apparently Egyptian confidence man cant for “without pay until we get there, at which point I will shout abuse at you until you give me at least five dollars.” That’s what happened to Michelle, but she’s tough. She just shouted back until the poor sod left her alone. Picked the wrong girl to pick on, I guess.

I did get taken for a ride, though. When we got to the busses and loaded our bags, a man I thought was the driver walked up with a huge wad of money in his hand and said, “Dengui p’zhaluista,” or “Money please” while pointing to a ten dollar bill. I figured it was the fee for the bus - actually, he told me it was the fee for the bus - so I paid up. I noticed Dan yelling at me, but couldn’t hear what he was saying over the bus’ engine, and the clever bastard just pointed at him and then again at the money, telling me that I was supposed to pay for Dan, too. Since he had paid for visas I owed him anyway, but fortunately he stopped me before I gave that bastard more than another five. Of course he had been shouting that the busses were free. I’d like to think that rather than being stupid and getting robbed I paid fifteen dollars for a priceless lesson, but I’ll be damned if I can think of what that is. Don’t ever trust anyone, I guess.

I can’t say it worried me much - we were in Egypt, and that was all that mattered. Egypt.

The hotel, the Lillyland, is on a stretch of highway south of Hurghada lined on one side by hotels and on the other by a desert filled with unbelievable mounds of trash. There were nice clean pristine patches of desert, too, but everything near the hotels was like a landfill. Once the bus turned into the hotel, though, everything was copasetic. There was a huge gate fronting the road, which led into a short road back to the main hotel. Inside the lobby we surrendered our passports and got our room keys, but only after fending off more avaricious porters and negotiating a metal detector. Virginia said later that one of the big fat Russian guys we thought were mafia waited by the metal detector until no one was watching, then slipped around it. Nice to know our fellow tourists were well armed.

The rooms were laid out in a kind of village behind the lobby/administration building, centered around the outdoor pool, beach, restaurant, café, bar, theater, indoor pool, med clinic, convenience store, and shopping complex. It was a full service resort. Our room was off to one side, on the edge of the complex facing the road out to the highway. The rooms, except for the triples, were one room with an attached bathroom and a nice little porch; sliding glass doors were the only way into or out of the rooms. The triples had a couple of bedrooms and a couple of porches. Justin and Claire had a room to themselves, Megan had a single (since she was arriving late), Dan and Molly and Ginnie had dibs on a triple, leaving me to room with Michelle. I was less than pleased. Michelle is not exactly an easy person to get along with, much less cohabitate with, but what could I do? I pondered murder, but it didn’t really seem to fit with the whole “vacation” theme. I got a cot from the hotel staff and we all trundled off to dinner.

The meals were a lavish spectacle. Breakfast and dinner were paid for, and there was plenty of food to tide one over through lunch. It was a huge buffet-style spread, with “international” food and a few Egyptian staples. It was delicious. We were all tired of Russian food, with its emphasis on quantity over quality, strength of taste over tastiness, its reliance on sour cream (smetana), pickled everything, dill on everything, and garnish everywhere. The restaurant meals, therefore, were a welcome break. Every night we ate to bursting, and reveled in the sheer conspicuous consumption of it. Ginnie showed off her artistic side, turning plates of food into sculptures of farm animals and funny faces. Quite the talent.

After dinner that first night, we retired to Dan and Molly’s room to socialize. We sat on the porch and talked and made shadow animals long into the night, then hit the sack for a big day on the town.

March 12 - Egypt Day Two

Didn’t do much today. Just signed up for the two optional excursions (Desert Safari and Cairo; I really wanted to see Luxor, but it was too expensive), lay on the beach, and enjoyed the warm weather.

We chartered a paddle boat from the hotel and tooled around the bay for awhile. The water was beautiful, and we had a great time just paddling around and diving off the back. Justin and Claire walked along the beach along the side of the bay; Justin in his normal exuberant style managed to stomp on a sea urchin, and spent the rest of the week limping along. [postscript: Justin got his revenge. Before we left he found the urchin and bombarded it with rocks from the beach. That’ll teach it.]

After another superhumanly huge dinner, we told each other that we’d go back to our rooms for a bit to clean up and relax, then meet up at the triple room to chat and have a good time. Of course, after that much food, we all fell asleep instead. It was kind of a theme for the week; almost every day we’d make plans to get together late at night to hang out and chat, and we almost always wound up passed out after dinner instead.

March 13 - Egypt Day Three

Today was the desert safari excursion. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I would never have thought it would as unbelievably wonderful as it was.

We started early in the morning, when a few Jeeps pulled up to the hotel. There were three or four cars, some of which were already full from other hotels. We slipped in with the Russian tourists, but the guy in the full Nike track suit driving our car figured out that we were Americans pretty quickly. He was excited, since he doesn’t get a chance to use English very often, and for the rest of the day he took good care of us. His name was Alex; we found out later that he owns Saif Tours (an incredible misnomer, there’s nothing safe about them), which ran the safari, and he was a blast. He threw an arm around me and told me to sit up front with him and the other driver, and everyone else filed into the back (which was just a couple of benches bolted on to the floor running the length of the car). As we were leaving, a couple of guys with big, professional video cameras came running out of the hotel and vaulted up on the roofs of the cars. We pulled out and hit the highway, bumper to bumper with the Jeep ahead of us, the cameraman sitting on top grinning at me the whole way.

After a few minutes on the highway (with Alex racing the other Jeep down the road, occasionally driving on the wrong side of the road or swerving around donkey carts) we pulled off onto a dirt road and stopped. We waited there for about twenty minutes for the rest of the convoy. Molly passed the time dancing to the tape deck of one of the other cars and getting to know some of the Russians in the group. One of the big fat Mafia types was with us; he told Molly that he lived in the south and was here on vacation. When she asked what he did for a living, he got very quiet, looked at her for a minute, and said, “Manager.” He never did say what he was a manager of. There was a woman with him, whom I gave fifty-fifty odds of being either wife or mistress, and some kids at the hotel, but the little ones didn’t come along on the excursion. They were both actually pretty nice people.

Once the other cars showed up, Alex jumped in the car and got us going again. I was lucky to be up front, because it was the ride of my life. We literally raced across the desert offroading upwards of 100 kilometers (60 miles) an hour. We bounced so hard I had to keep one hand on the ceiling to keep my head from knocking, but the best part was the enthusiasm. All of the drivers were obviously having a great time, shouting and singing along to the wailing Arabic music from the cars and gesturing to each other. Alex loved to let another car pull ahead of him, then rev the engine and, still going fifty or sixty miles and hour, run up behind the other car and touch bumpers to give the people in the back a thrill. The looks on their faces were hilarious. Other times, it was a simple race to see who could top a ridge or cross a flat first. Sometimes, Alex or another driver would pull up next to another car and the diver would chat with the guy in the passenger’s seat for a minute or so, close enough to kiss, without ever slowing down. Alex’s favorite trick was to swerve in close to another car, reach out and bang on the side with his hand, gradually speeding up until he could give a high five to whoever was in the front seat. The view from the front seat was spectacular. The pictures are pretty sedate, until you look at the dust plumes and realize how fast we were going. We won almost all of the races, which might have had something to do with the fact that all of the drivers worked for Alex.

When we finally got where we were going, we pulled into a Bedouin village on the edge of the mountain range. I’m sure the village is just used for tourists, but it was impressive all the same. It was a collection of small, open stone buildings and a few wooden huts. All of the other guests on the safari were pulled off into small groups, and went through the village on mini-tours through set stations. Alex pulled us off to the side, gave us a little shady spot all to ourselves, and said that we wouldn’t have to sit “with all of those others.” He brought us tea, and told us to wander around at out leisure and to look at anything we wanted. We really got the royal treatment. We chatted with a couple of the drivers, Claire took a hit off their hookah (some kind of rose tobacco), and we poked around the village. Molly and I followed a little boy and his goat to the edge of the buildings, where two Bedouin women were making bread. We didn’t share any languages, but they gave us all the bread we wanted hot from the griddle, and it was incredible. Molly made friends with the village dog, a yellow mutt who loved to play. Molly, ever obliging, played with him all day long. Of course, when he wasn’t eating bread from her hand, he was eating camel dung from the ground, but Molly didn’t let that spoil her fun.

When we’d seen the village, we started hiking through the desert. Not far from the village was the well, which was unbelievably picturesque. I’m not sure if the well was really used or not, but it was in the middle of a clear, sandy patch at the base of a stony hill, with one wind-swept stunted tree shading it. It was really something to see. I went hiking away from the well, and wound up in the pass in the mountains. I got a good ways into the pass, but finally it was too choked with rocks to go any further. The sun cut through the channel in the rock, and I could feel the difference in temperature going from the sunlit pass to the shadows under the ridge. I could almost feel the pressure of the light from the desert sun. I sat and watched a train of camels circle then enter the village, and decided to come back.

It was a good thing that I did, since it was time for the requisite camel rides. The Bedouins who used the village acted as mahouts, leading the camels while tourists rode. One of the guides was a girl who was maybe eight years old, dressed in bright flowing robes. She was incredibly cute, and she knew it. She’s pose with her camel for all of the tourists, leaning against the saddle with a tough look on her face. When she was guiding the camel, she’d tie the lead rope around her waist since she wasn’t strong enough to pull the camel against its will. If the camel gave her trouble, she’d punch it in the nose to keep it in line. She was definitely one of our favorite people on the trip.

Camel riding is definitely an acquired taste. Granted, we were only kind of riding, since the guides were pulling the brutes, but it’s still a bouncy experience. The saddles are only marginally more comfortable than riding bareback, and camels don’t have suspension. Mounting is easy, but dismounting has a trick to it. The trick is that the camel drops to its knees, meaning you fall about six feet and land with a hard leather saddle between your knees. It’s a little startling at first, and it feels a lot like being kicked in the butt. The rides were a great experience, though, and it reminded me more than a little bit of being pulled on a donkey on the ranch in Mexico when I was a kid. I named the camel I was on “Don’t Pull Me” after that donkey.

After we’d finished seeing everything in the village, we piled into the vans for another short little trip. We went a few miles over into the mountain range, up a broad sandy approach to one of the peaks. It was a short climb from there to the top of the mountain; the string of people climbing and walking along the trail made me feel more than a little bit like a supplicant on a pilgrimage. When we got to the top, we strung out along the peak to watch the sunset. I can’t possibly describe how beautiful it was. The sun went down over the mountains, and the rocky desert looked so pure and clean and wonderful that it was a powerfully spiritual experience. I’ll count myself a lucky man if I see the like of it even just one more time in my life. It was a little bit melancholy, though; Dan and Molly and Justin and Claire went off as couples to enjoy the experience. It was the kind of thing you should really see with someone close to you to fully appreciate it. There was a German woman sitting by herself near me, and I think she was feeling more or less the same thing. I kind of like to think that we bonded a little bit.

The sun is supposed to set quickly in the desert, but I felt like I had been sitting there for days by the time it got dark. The catharsis was refreshing, and I was sad to leave when we mounted back up for the ride back to the village. Once we arrived, we all went in as a group to eat the meal that they’d been cooking for us inside. I’m not too familiar with Middle Eastern cuisine, so suffice it to say that is was good, good food. We ate three or four platefuls apiece, chatted with Alex some more, and enjoyed more special treatment (we were first to be served, first to get seconds, first for everything).

After dinner we drove back to the hotel, which was a much more peaceful and sedate ride. We stopped halfway back, and Alex turned off the headlights and took us onto a small dune to look at the stars. He tried to teach us the Arabic names of some of the constellations, but the language barrier got in the way. We were a bit distracted, since we weren’t really dressed for night in the desert and were pretty cold. We were happy to get inside, and happy to get back to our rooms, but that day in the desert is one of my strongest and most pleasant memories of the entire time I was abroad. Out of all of the cathedrals and monasteries I visited, that mountain was probably the most spiritually significant place for me, and I was deeply gratified by the experience. The time I spent traveling was something beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. I know for a fact that I’m a different person now than when I left, that I’ve changed after what I’ve seen and felt. That night in the desert was a large part of that, partly because I was ready for a spiritual experience. In a way, I guess, the mountain came to me.

March 14th - Egypt Day Four

We didn’t have anything special planned for today, so we decided to hit the town. Ginnie and Michelle had been the day before, while the rest of us were in the desert, and Justin and Claire wanted to go by themselves later, so Dan and Molly and I walked out to the road to hitch a ride into the city. We hired a cab and rode north to the city of Hurghada proper; we were told that the original city had been based on trade around a nearby port, but with the growth of inland cities the highway and tourist trade were more important now. Most jobs in Hurghada are based somehow on the tourist industry, so we didn’t have any trouble with languages. Almost everyone spoke either English or Russian. We were dropped off in the middle of the marketplace, and we started to wander. There were police everywhere, dressed in a nondescript black uniform with no real patches or badges. The assault rifles slung across their backs were enough to tell people they were the man.

We figured out the ground rules pretty quickly. Looking at merchandise, making eye contact with the vendors, smiling or breathing were invitations to be harangued by vendors. Shops were everywhere, from blankets spread in alleys to large, air conditioned tastefully decorated stores. Molly was sharp enough to dress pretty conservatively; although she must have been hot in slacks and a long sleeve shirt, she’s well-traveled enough to know that its better to follow local customs and grouse about how unfair they are in private. Still, if she walked more than a few paces ahead of Dan or me, she’d get dirty looks and at least once a motorist honked and yelled at her. She didn’t let it bother her, though; the only thing that really disturbed her was when we walked through the non-touristy part of the market and saw butchers slaughtering animals. Truth tell, it almost put me off of meat. It was awfully hot and unsanitary to be butchering meat outside, and the sounds were a little, well, offputting. The real kicker was the man sleeping (I hope) underneath a butcher’s table, covered in flies.

We lived, though the chickens didn’t, and found our way back to the more cosmopolitan section of the city. I’d love someday to go back and study the way the market was organized. Barkers were everywhere, trying to get us to come to their shop and see their wares. If we didn’t see anything we liked (or, more often, weren’t willing to pay the incredibly inflated prices), they’d encourage us to go to their ‘friend’s’ shop. At one of these ‘friend’s’ stores I saw the owner slip the first guy a handful of costume jewelry as he ushered us in. The stores shared customers, staff, and apparently merchandise in some kind of complex pattern. I don’t know if it was an official arrangement, or just swapping customers in exchange for a little gratuity, or quite how it all worked, but it was a well orchestrated and rehearsed process. At one of these stores, a barker asked us to go look at his friend’s merchandise; when we demurred, he promised us that we’d find something we liked. We went in, and found some unbelievably pricey silver jewelry and plates and such. Molly was ticked. She stomped outside and found the barker, and told him that she didn’t like the shop. That didn’t seem to bother him very much, but she was insistent.

“You promised us that we’d like that store. I didn’t like it,” she said.

He looked a little askance, and without looking directly at her, said, “It’s a very nice store . . .”

“It’s too expensive!” she snapped. “Now you owe us something.” That took him by surprise.

“All right,” he conceded. “Come to my store and I give you something.”

So we followed him through a web of alleys and narrow streets and wound up at a very nondescript shop with, in my opinion, much better (and cheaper) wares than the first place. Mostly stoneware, with a few blankets and cotton shirts for variety. He took Molly’s hand, and asked her if she knew anything about henna. He fished the tools out of a basket under the counter, and began to henna Molly’s hand while Dan watched and I browsed the store. I found a very starkly handsome stone bowl, and argued over the price while the shopkeeper inked a very intricate design on Molly’s forearm. I had read up on Arabic numerals before we left the hotel so that I could read pricetags, and I was sure that he was inflating the price from the sticker on the bottom of the bowl. I found out later that I had been reading it wrong and he was right, and felt terrible for doubting it to his face, but we walked out of that store very happy. Molly had a very artistic flowing and flowering pattern inked into her skin, and I got a good deal on my find. As we were leaving, I heard what I thought was music and poked my head around the back door of the shop; I almost stumbled over two men kneeling in supplication and prayer. Aside from some airport employees as we left the country, those were the only people I saw in Egypt at prayer even in the bustling city.

We found another cab to take us back to the hotel and went home for a good meal and a good night’s sleep - we were supposed to be up at two a.m. the next morning for the Cairo expedition. The experience in the city was extremely interesting. I’d thought that Russian culture was profoundly different from my American lifestyle, and in its way, it is. Just one day in an Egyptian city, though, threw a new perspective on things. As alien as Petersburg seems at times, it’s infinitely more familiar and homelike than Egypt. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

March 15th/16th - Egypt Day Five and Six

The telephone got me out of bed, but I didn’t really wake up until the girl on the other end started yelling. I was disoriented enough that I still don’t know if it was Ginnie, Megan, or Claire, but someone was telling me that I was supposed to be on the bus right now! and where was I?! and everyone’s waiting!!! I guess I overslept, but I might as well blame it on Michelle: she ignored the wakeup call. Or turned off the alarm. Or something. Anyway, we were really late for the bus. I grabbed everything I thought I’d need for the day excursion and stuffed it into a bag and bolted for the lobby. QT Guy (the man who met us at the airport) was not amused, and neither were any of the people already on the hell bus. There was the usual assortment of Russians and Germans, but at least I wasn’t the real focus of their irritation. Michelle was even later than I was, so I got to pretend that I was perfectly on schedule and I was as put off as they were.

The hell bus was, well, the bus from hell. The seats were built for underweight Oompaloompas, and I physically couldn’t sit normally in one of them. My legs just wouldn’t fit. Although the bus was crowded, my friends let me have a double seat to myself so that I could sit sideways in some measure of comfort (or at least lessened misery). The bus eventually set out and, after picking up some more passengers at another hotel, motored North towards Cairo. The scenery was really very beautiful, once the sun rose, but I had levered myself into a semi-reclined position and drifted off into a pain-induced hallucinatory coma. I didn’t really wake up until we got to the rest stop from hell, which was actually rather pleasant (except for the food and the bathrooms).

Finally, we got to Cairo. Our first stop was to pick up Dinah, our tour guide. We got our own guide to speak English to us, which was really great of the tour company. We talked to her at length over the course of the day. Apparently, she’s a doctor (or possibly a medical aid) and practiced in Britain, since she couldn’t practice in Egypt. She said that she spends some time every year in Egypt, and works as a tour guide to pay bills while she’s at home. An odd arrangement, but she was a great guide. Aside from pointing out the normal touristy things, she answered most of our questions about Egypt as a whole, the language, the culture, the whole kebab.

One of the first things she explained to us was the rationale behind the skeletal buildings we saw everywhere. As we drove into Cairo, it looked like downtown Belgrade. Highrise apartment buildings were open to the elements, with naked girders and superstructures. People obviously lived in the unfinished parts of the buildings, though; Dinah explained that completed buildings are subject to a special tax. Unless the owners or the occupants were reasonably affluent, then, it’s apparently common for residences in that part of town to be left perpetually “under construction.” It means that poorer families live in half-finished buildings, but I suppose that’s better than living on the street. We saw plenty of that.

The other nagging question she solved for us was the rationale behind the tent on every corner offering freshly slaughtered meat. It was like the entire city was host to a butcher’s convention. In a way, it was; Dinah told us that it’s a special Muslim festival that’s celebrated by slaughtering and eating meat. A kind of three-day meatfest. I think it sounds like a pretty good idea. It gave the city a particularly . . . unique bouquet for the day we were there. Not unpleasant, just kind of “ripening goat carcass”-ish.

We had lunch at a wonderful little downtown café, with the pyramids looming in the background. It must be nice to have that kind of view out your window every day, but I suppose it’d lose its charm after awhile. Heading to the pyramids after lunch, we passed over the Nile, which was a little anticlimactic. Nice, but not the kind of thing they stop the tour bus for.

What they do stop the bus for is the Egyptian National Museum. The museum was fantastic - it’s an enormous building, stuffed to the gills with artifacts and exhibits that are just unbelievable. The smallest side room would be the centerpiece of almost any other museum in the world. A bit limited in scope, of course, but the variety of holdings even in a museum dedicated to ancient Egypt surprised me. There was the expected smattering of canopic jars and burial accoutrements, plus Tutenkhamen’s regalia, but there were also wonderful exhibits of art and sculpture that really impressed me. We didn’t have much time in the museum, but Dinah did her best to show us everything important without skimping on the running commentary that gave everything a nice context.

After the museum, we moved on to the real reason behind the trip - the pyramids. We stopped at the edge of the plateau (the pyramids overlook modern Cairo from Giza, outside of town) to admire them from afar and to get a sense of their scale. After we’d oohed and ahhed and taken a few pictures, the bus drove us down into the sea of tourists at the foot of the monuments.

Seeing the pyramids was a wonderful experience. While it didn’t have the deeply personal resonance of the desert safari, I feel good that I’ve done one of those things you’re supposed to do before you die. We had the chance to go inside the pyramids, but we demurred. There’s nothing left inside them, so it seemed ridiculous to waste the time when there was so much to see on the outside. We climbed as high as we could without getting hassled by the camel-mounted police, took rolls of film of each other, and took turns being harassed by the locals.

By ‘locals,’ I don’t mean Egyptians. I mean the people who earn a living burning tourists around the pyramids. My own experience was pretty mild. I walked to the edge of the plateau to get a picture of the skyline over the Sphinx’s head, and was followed the entire way by a kid who was maybe ten years old riding a camel. He kept riding into my shot, yelling that I needed a picture of him. I didn’t bother, since he obviously wanted to money for the privilege, but he finally haggled the price down to nothing. So to keep him quiet I took a picture (which turned out pretty well) of him striking a pose with his camel. Naturally, the price shot back up to five pounds, and he wanted to be paid. I wasn’t about to pay the little confidence man, so I walked back to the busses. He followed me the whole way, screaming in at least three different languages. Three or four even younger kids took up the banner, and I was seriously worried about getting my pocket picked by the time I got back to the bus from hell. As we got away from the edge of the plateau, though, other beggars and camel-ride hucksters chased the kids off; I guess they were chasing business across somebody else’s territory. It was irritating, but nothing compared to what Ginnie and Molly and Megan went through. A crowd of kids, who were pinching and grabbing at them the whole way, chased them all the way to the bus. Cultural relativism is one thing, but there’s no excuse for that kind of thing. QT Guy seemed pretty incensed that people would be that crude, but Dinah just kind of shrugged it off. The ladies didn’t let it bother them, though. By the time we got to the Sphinx everyone had more or less forgotten it.

The Sphinx was amazing. We drove around the plateau in the bus and came around the front. The Sphinx sits with its back to the pyramids, more or less facing the city. Approaching it from the front, with the Sphinx staring at you with the pyramids over its shoulder clouded in blowing sand, is the closest I’ll ever come to being Indiana Jones. Dinah explained the story behind the Sphinx. In a nutshell, it started out as an outcropping of harder stone uncovered during the construction of the pyramids. The ruler at the time had it worked into a ritualistic guardian/monument to his rule, and it’s commonly believed that his face was the model for the Sphinx’s features. It’s been there so long that thousands of years passed during which the locals had no idea where it had come from. I think she said that its name means “fear” or “terror” in Arabic, but I’m not sure that I remember that right. She mentioned that the story of Napoleon’s soldiers shooting off its nose isn’t true. Slaves, taken as children from Eastern and Southern Europe, rose up hundreds of years ago and took power in the region. They were responsible for defacing the monument, according to her.

At the foot of the Sphinx is an old, ruined temple that was used for veneration. The temple is completely gone, worn away by time and thousands of years of visitors and robbers; all that’s left is the stone foundation, the walls and pillars that made up the rooms, and indentations in the floor marking where altars and idols stood. The ceiling is gone, so the effect is a small stone canyon cut into the ground, since the temple is below ground level. There’s not really anything to see here, since it’s just the basic foundations that are left, but the temple felt older than anything else we saw in Cairo. It was so worn and used that it just exuded a sensation of age, even with crowds of tourists coursing through it.

Coming up and out of the temple, we found ourselves on a low stone wall that ran parallel to the Sphinx. To be so close to it was just unbelievable. Dinah showed us how to “kiss the Sphinx” (if you stand facing the Sphinx in profile, a photo makes it look like you’re face to face with it) and told us more about its construction and preservation efforts. The Egyptian government is trying hard to restore and preserve the monuments as much as possible, but with such a huge influx of tourists it takes all the money and resources they can muster just to prevent any further degradation. Frequent sandstorms and the tourist traffic take their toll on the projects the government does carry out to preserve the sites; in the end, there just isn’t enough money to give all of the monuments, temples, and pyramids the full attention they need.

We were pulled away from the Sphinx earlier than we wanted, since the tour bus had a strict schedule to keep. As we were leaving the temple, Dinah slipped a fistful of cash into the hand of what looked like a random guy standing around the entrance. She explained, in a roundabout way, that he was a kind of guard or minder at the site. When she had a group coming by after hours or when the site was closed, he’d let her take them in anyway. In exchange, he got a nice little tip whenever she came through with a group. That kind of deal is apparently pretty common. As we left, we thought we might be seeing more museums, but they had other plans for us. We were taken first to a rather pleasant papyrus shop, where a Ghanian woman did a demonstration of how papyrus is made and what makes it different from paper. It was just a sales pitch, really, but it was still kind of interesting. I bought a pair of small papyrus prints, but forgot them at the hotel when we left the country. We got bored quickly in the shop, and moved outside to sit on the steps in the breeze. That was probably the most pleasant part of the excursion - the picture of us resting on the steps is the best shot I have of the friends I traveled with. After the papyrus shop, we were taken to a perfumery, a jeweler’s, and a handicraft shop. Each one was more boring and pointless than the last. None of us could afford the few things that seemed worth buying, and most of it was just crap. The tour company obviously had a deal with the stores to take patrons by at the end of the excursion. The Russian mafioso didn’t seem to mind shopping at all, but we got a little testy. In the perfumery in particular some of us got downright Ugly American. It was embarrassing, but we were all frustrated that they’d cut our time in the museum and at the pyramids short so they could scratch some shopkeeper’s back. Irritating, but our night was just beginning.

After we’d made the shopping rounds, we pulled out on the same hell bus we came in on. I wasn’t paying attention as we left the last store and almost boarded another tour bus, but Molly and Dan stopped me. Later, I almost wished they hadn’t. Just as we were leaving Cairo, the bus driver crested a huge speed bump (or maybe a curb) by hitting the gas as hard as he could. About four hours later, I woke up from a fitful sleep; I couldn’t figure out what it was at first, but someone pointed out that there was a rhythmic thumping coming from just under our seats. The bus stopped, and the driver and guides got out (sans Dinah, who stayed in Cairo) to look around. When they got back on the bus, they looked less than pleased, but we pressed on. The bus stopped and the inspection tour was repeated a couple of times in the next hour or so, but we kept going until we got the rest stop from hell. This was the same stop we’d visited on the way down, and the tour company definitely had some kind of arrangement with them. That shadowy you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours arrangement that kept cropping up. The shopkeepers in the bazaar had deals with each other, Dinah had an arrangement with all of the monument people, the tour company had a hand in all the pots; normally it was nothing to worry about, but this time the bus driver had pushed too far too hard on a bad tire to get to the rest stop he had a deal with. It was an inside tire, so there was no way it could be fixed easily, but rather than stopping outside of Cairo where he’d torn it on the bump, we wound up halfway between Hurghada and Cairo. The guides’ cellphones wouldn’t work this far out of a major town, so there wasn’t much anyone could do. We didn’t know any of this, of course. They told us it was a simple rest stop, and we trundled off inside to get a snack and use the restroom (free, since the kid taking money at the door wasn’t working late).

A couple of hours went by before we fully realized what was happening. We’d figured out that the bus wasn’t running fairly early on, but we didn’t really know what was happening until about midnight, when someone looked around and realized that most of the Russians were gone! The tour company had called from the rest stop for another bus, but it was a smaller taxi that showed up and took everyone it could fit. The guides didn’t bother to tell us that everyone else was leaving. In retrospect, I can understand why. There wasn’t room for us, and if someone had to stay at the rest stop for another few hours, better the young college students than the elderly couples that made up most of the rest of the group. We weren’t in an understanding mood, though. We were tired, hungry, angry, and pretty fatalistic about the whole thing. We wound up watching the movie Speed subtitled in Arabic on the tiny little TV inside the rest stop, while others tried to sleep on the bus. It was getting cold outside, though, and no one had really brought warm enough clothing to sleep on an unheated bus. It squatted by the road, leering at us the whole time. The guides got us a free dinner apiece, but our appetites were spoiled by the horrible, evil thing that had stranded us there.

Another hour or so went by before the second “bus” arrived. It was also a taxi, basically a minivan. There were the eight of us, plus three or four Russians who had also missed the first bus. Among the Russians were a young woman and her daughter; Dan and Molly had met her on the first bus and already hated her, although I never did learn why. They did learn that her husband was an American diplomat, and she was here on vacation. She kept fobbing her daughter off on an older woman who might have been her mother; the little girl must have been miserable, but she never complained that I heard. We did. There simply weren’t enough seats for everyone on the bus. A few people dug their heels in and insisted on another taxi, but we realized that we couldn’t split the group up and ask a fee people to spend another three hours in the rest stop. No one there spoke decent English, of course none of us spoke any Arabic - in a word, we were stuck. Well, I was stuck. In the front seat, with the driver and Michelle. It was a carnival of fear and misery. When we finally pulled out, everyone else was crammed in the back. I could hear them arguing about who got a seat and who had to crouch; there wasn’t even enough room to sit on the floor back there. I was in the middle in the front seat, sitting on the folded down armrest. The driver spoke only a very few words of English (unfortunately those words didn’t include “left” or “right”) and no Russian, and Michelle was in full bitch mode. The driver had the windows rolled down so that he could smoke. That irritated most of us, since it was cold and the smoke stank, but I thought better of trying to ask him not to smoke. It was about three a.m. by this point, and I wouldn’t have cared if he was snorting cocaine as long as it kept him awake.

Ironically enough, the Russian woman with the daughter was snorting cocaine. I didn’t know about it until after we got back, since I was up front, but they said that every so often she’d pull a compact out of her purse, pile some powder on the back of her hand, and snort it up. With her daughter sleeping right next to her, of course. I didn’t see any of it, but I had my own concerns. The driver’s music (the ever-present wailing Arabic tapes scattered on the dash of every car we saw or rode in) bothered Michelle, and she kept bitching about it. Her solution to the language barrier was to speak English slowly, condescendingly, and loudly, but we finally got her to understand that at that point, she had to be quiet or we’d pitch her overboard. The driver had enough on his mind. Every time we passed another car on the narrow two-lane highway, each driver would flash their brights two or three times then turn off their headlights! I can only assume that the point is to keep from blinding the other driver, but it scared the hell out of me. A pair of headlights would float up out of the desert over the horizon, explode into bright light a couple of times, then wink out. A few seconds later, the car would whiz by us in the opposite direction. I didn’t have any trouble staying awake for the three hours it took us to get back to Hurghada.

Odd as it sounds, as unpleasant as the drive was it was also one of the most beautiful experiences I had in Egypt. Every so often, as we droved along with the beach invisible in the night on our left-hand side, we could see the light from huge bonfires. Sometimes they were close enough to see the fires themselves, and the people standing around them as silhouettes. The driver tried to explain what was happening, but neither of us could understand the other. Later, I learned that it was part of the Muslim festival that we’d been told about in Cairo. The drive was a real test of endurance, but the image of those bonfires lighting our way home will stay with me for the rest of my life.

We finally got back to Hurghada, and after the drive had dropped off our resident cokehead and her family in town we managed to guide the driver to the Lillyland. It wasn’t easy, since we weren’t really sure of the way and he couldn’t understand us, but we got there. It was light by this time; we’d spent the entire night traveling in incredible discomfort. The lobby of the hotel was an incredibly welcome sight. The hotel staff insisted that we take boxed dinners that had been prepared for us when they realized that we would be late, but food was the last thing we wanted to see. Bed, though - when I saw my cot I though I was in heaven. I told Michelle that I didn’t care if the mountain was coming to Mohammed, I was going to sleep and I didn’t want to be disturbed. Since she had her own bed on the other side of the room, I thought I was in for a few hours of well-deserved rest. More the fool I.

We’d had a little trouble with our bathroom all week. The shower had no curtain (common to most Russian and Eastern European hotels, too) so the bathroom flooded with every shower, the toilet ran, and there were never enough towels, but I really never cared. If the bathroom was flooded or there wasn’t enough hot water, Dan and Molly and Ginnie had offered more than once to let us use their bathroom. That was enough for me. Michelle decided she had to shower before she went to bed, and I guess the hot water cut out on her. I woke up when she came storming out of the bathroom and snatched up the phone. She called the front desk and screamed, literally screamed, at the poor bastard who answered the phone for a couple of minutes. She eventually got bumped up to the manager, who sent some plumbers over to look at the shower. I decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and didn’t mention that I hadn’t really had any sleep for more than twelve hours, and I’d spent three hours folded into a pretzel in the cab, that I was exhausted, or that the damned shower could wait until later. Instead, I pretended that I was asleep. I figured she’d get the hint. More the fool I.

The plumbers showed up, and Michelle greeted them wearing only a towel. In a city where Molly got shouted at for walking down the street by herself wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, I couldn’t believe that Michelle would be foolish enough to not change clothes. The repairmen were consummate professionals, though. I already knew that they couldn’t do anything; the hot water wasn’t coming into our room, so it was pointless for them to be there. Everyone but Michelle knew that they’d been sent round just to placate her. So they banged around in the bathroom for a while, then came out and said, yep, there’s no hot water. I thought Michelle would take the hint and let them get on with their jobs and let me get on with my nap. More the fool I.

I’ve never seen anyone as full of rage as she was. She screamed and shouted and griped and bitched and moaned, from the repairmen all the way up to the manager. By the time I realized what she was angling for, it was too late. She was demanding, with absolutely no tact or discretion, that she be given a new room. She at least had the consideration to tell them that I was perfectly happy with this room and that she was the one who needed new accommodations. She wasn’t being selfish, she understood that I really was perfectly happy with the room and that I didn’t want to move. It was our last full day in Egypt, and moving was not something I wanted to waste time doing. Resistance was futile, though. She got her way, but they wouldn’t let me stay. If she moved, I had to move, and she was moving. She did get us separate rooms, which I appreciated more than I can say. I gathered up all my things, and Megan helped me move across the compound to our new digs. We had been put in what must have been the only rooms open, which were exquisite bungalows on the edge of the resort. They must have been for long-term renters, but we had them for the night. They were wonderful rooms, and I loved having a room to myself, but the way we got it was noxious to me. Michelle had been so rude and so prototypically Ugly American that Megan and I went to the management later and apologized on her behalf. They were never anything less than gracious and accommodating; if I ever go back to Hurghada, I’m definitely staying there. Especially if I happen to be traveling with a raving psychotic.

After we finished moving, I went down to the beach and just floated in the water for what felt like hours. It was cathartic, purifying; I started out edgy, irritated, and worn to the bone, but when it was time for dinner I walked off that beach as calm and collected as I’ve ever been. Michelle and I never really did get on friendly terms, but I shouldn’t be too harsh on her. She was under a lot of stress, and she handled it in what was, to her, the simplest and most direct way. Not the way I would have done things at all, but in the end, maybe I’m too passive and too proud of being patient and accommodating. She did get what she wanted, while I had been content to shower in cold water in a flooded bathroom. I can’t really say which is better. I can say this - even after the hellish trip from Cairo, I refused to use the shower in the new room. It was a matter of principle.

March 17th - Egypt Day Seven

We loaded up all of our bags and headed back to the airport. Waiting for the plane to Moscow was meant several hours in the terminal in the middle of an enormous crowd, but we managed. We met Lev and his wife, an elderly couple who were just finishing their vacation. He had been a sailor in the Soviet period, and apparently has an iceberg named after him. He was very talkative, and we passed the time chatting with them. We heard about their children and grandchildren, and generally got back into the habit of speaking Russian.

Once the plane finally arrived, the flight back home was entirely uneventful. Once again the passengers all applauded when we landed in Moscow, which as bitterly cold. I was sad to leave Egypt, but happy to get back to Russia. Even taking the last day into consideration, the week in Egypt was an amazing experience that I wouldn’t have traded for anything. All told, though, I like Russia more. The climate, the people, the food (well, no, not the food) agree with me more in Russia. Deplaning and collecting our baggage was simple and not too taxing, even as exhausted as we all were. The last image I have from the Egypt excursion was passport control in the Moscow airport. As we all stood in line, drooping under our bags and waiting for our turn to be stamped, we saw a woman breeze past the line with only a small handbag to the VIP kiosk, where she was stamped and sent on her way in just a few seconds. It was the woman from the taxi - her husband’s diplomatic papers got her back into Russia with no fuss, muss, or baggage inspection.

 

Peter and spiderman in pskov

American - music and coke and jeans on street to class at university

Teaching classes, 18th

Finals - fair?

Pepe’s after dosto excursion

Riga - cats

Molly’s friends, Pushkin

Context Links:

• Russia
• Trinity University
• St. Petersburg