Egypt

          

           Peering into this glass cage at a little shriveled up small black man wrapped in brown cloth; I wondered why did I have to pay another $13.00 on top of $10.00 I had already paid to get into the Cairo museum? I shook my head and dismissed it as the folly of a tourist who has all the time in his hands. I walked over to meet my newly found and soon to be a good Egyptologist friend from Tasmania. I related the incident to him to warn him not to shell out the money for this seemingly insignificant display. He reminded me that I was looking at Ramses, the Great of New Kingdom of Egypt. He was a 3000-year-old very powerful man. I discovered later that Ramses had married numerous times including his 4 daughters and fathered 96 sons and 102 daughters. He must have been some kind of a dude.  My interest was piqued. I now began to get into what was it like 3000 odd years ago and what did the world look like then?  Now it was getting interesting and may be trip to Egypt was worth it.

 

                                 Cairo was my first destination. I arrived in this dusty old city that was not the capital of ancient Egyptians (that was Memphis…I am not kidding). I expected to find a third world crowded, polluted, unpleasant metropolis that is home to 13 million people. I was not disappointed in that but the people more than make up for it. They almost always spoke to me in Arabic. When I failed to respond, they asked me, “What country?” I would say, “India or America” (depending on the circumstances). They almost universally responded, “Welcome to Egypt.” This generous hospitality expressed itself again and again in people going out of the way to helpful and courteous. The other amusing part was that they always checked with me whenever my friend from Tasmania said anything to them as though he was a child! They remember which table I sat at the restaurant and what food I had ordered. I was welcomed back in the restaurants. They even remembered what I had ordered the last time a couple of days ago! I remarked at this hospitality and their memory to Stephen (Egyptologist from Tasmania) who responded gruffly, “They remember you but not me!”

 

                          I spent the first night at the “Windsor Hotel” of the British fame where Michael Palin had stayed. The character of the Hotel was too much for Stephen and me so we headed out to look for another place to stay the same night. Our wandering brought us to Palmyra. This is a nightclub where only Egyptians come to watch a belly dance. We had a beer or two and looked the bored, fleshy, buxom dancer who was smiling from ear to ear but showed little technical skill that I had hoped for. So we stayed on waiting for the main act to start at 1 AM. Meanwhile, our eyes strayed to the table in front of us that was occupied by two middle aged men and three quite young women.  We wondered what the story was? As the evening progressed our neighbors got into the action. Soon Pound bills were thrown at the dancer and the music got louder and faster. One of the two men then got up and started singing and throwing bundles of Pound notes after blessing his friend with them. The pound notes were usually grabbed by this longhaired, dark faced, sinister looking musician with a tambourine before they hit the ground. Stephen now concluded that the older man was getting married to one of the young women sitting next to him and the other two young women sitting across from him were her friends. The action started to heat up as a man with a black robe like a priest joined the bell y dancer on the floor and my neighbor got up and started singing. The girls next to me were now dragged up by the belly dancer and they were all dancing. The audience sang, wine flowed, pound bills fluttered, music became louder, smoke rose to the ceiling and the belly dancer danced! So this is how they have fun these days!

 

                      We headed back to our hotel to resume the search for our new hotel next morning. Our search brought us to the suburb called Zemalik. This is where diplomats live and old mansions have been turned into embassies with guards. We located a suite hotel with a slice view of the Nile and settled in. I headed for the pyramids as Stephen settled into to write his paper on origin of the Egyptian symbol Ankh. He has a theory that it represents the Yoni and the Lingum. Some of you may figure that if you have read Kamasutra.  More on that later. The pyramids and the Sphinx were a disappointment especially if you add in the exorbitant admission fees for each one of them and a fee for cameras to boot. The video camera can cost you $30.00. I figured I would buy post cards and write them under the influence of good wine. I had come all this way to see the Wonder of the world and this is all there is to it. I did find the wonder but it was not in Cairo. I spent the next day going to Mosques just because you can go in them in Egypt. Then a visit to Coptic Cairo where you can see churches from the 6th Century hidden away in what looks like an ordinary house. This was all there to it in this city covered perpetually with a patina of brown dust. I had inhaled enough of that dust and the exhaust fumes and wondered whether I should go to Jerusalem? The Cairo museum has the Tutankhamen treasures that I had seen in New Orleans years ago. Here they are housed in dim light. Stephen suggested we go to the market. I said, “What do you expect to find in dirty, crowded alleys?” Was I wrong? We went to Khan-el-khalil- the street where trade has been conducted for a 1000 years. We had Kabob for dinner and wandered into the alleys till we came to a street café- “El Fishawy.” We sat down on chairs next to small tables and ordered Chay(Tea). We looked around this moving kaleidoscope of human activity. There were women and men sitting, talking animatedly with not a care in the world. Some were smoking the Sheesha(water pipe) while others were just resting and looking. I ordered a Sheesha and we started talking and were soon marveling at the serene, comfortable expression everyone had. Now there is a woman selling jasmine flower necklaces, another offering incense, then came the leather wallets, beggars, someone with stuffed foxes that looked like emaciated dogs and the here is this guy with toys and on and on. We had settled into this comfortable cocoon in a crowded alley with constant traffic and we were comfortable! I was to repeat this experience night after night looking into the mirror and sneaking a look at the people sitting across on the other side, drinking Chay and puffing a Sheesha.

 

                     That evening we went to the Marriott for a glass of wine. While we watched attractively dressed women paraded   in front of us and headed into a room. So we followed. It was the engagement party. There was a band on the staircase with costumed men with drums, brass and singing. They went UP AND DOWN THE STAIRS following the couple while being video taped. In case you could not get close to take a look it was being televised. That is how we noticed the huge diamond necklace on the bride to be. And this was only the engagement party…

 

                        I still did not know what to do for the 5 remaining days. I debated about going to Jerusalem and looked at the post cards to see what I might do next. Then I received an email from my Dutch friends insisting I should go to Luxor. I consulted Stephen who said,” You won’t be able to go to Syria if you go to Jerusalem.” Who cares about Syria?  I wondered I am in Egypt so why not go to Luxor and if I get bored; go to Jerusalem. Good thing too for I would have missed the Wonder of the world. I arrived in   Luxor with few expectations. It was afternoon and I had wandered around Luxor on a bicycle and had seen the whole town in a couple of hours. What next? I walked to one of those ever present Travel shops and started pricing the Sound and Light show at Karnak temple a couple of miles from Luxor. I finally decided to do it on my own and took a taxi. I arrived in front of the temple—There was a row of Ram headed sphinxes in front of the locked gate with mysteries locked behind an iron gate. I along with other waited on the steps till it got dark and tourists flooded in on buses. Finally the gate opened and we rushed in. It was dark. A voice said,” I am Ramses.” The show had begun. The lights dawned on huge columns skywards and the ancient Egypt came to life. Rows of columns and stately statues of gods and pharaohs from 3000 years ago till Alexander defeated them in 320 BCE. The Pharaohs had ruled supreme each one of them added his or Her piece to this temple over 2000 years. This was then the inspiration for Parthenon and Roman temples. The magnificence of the ruins is daunting. One wonders what they looked like in their day! There is a CD-Rom to be made!!! The show went on for an hour and a half and I came back thoroughly enthused.

 

                 Next day, I decided to visit their tombs in the Valley of Kings on the other side of the Nile- West Bank. The city of the Dead or the Necropolis was built into Desert Mountains by Pharaohs to hide and guard then from grave robbers. So laborers lived and worked here on the tombs of Pharaohs and then closed them with false entrances and traps so no one could find them. The Pharaohs hoped to rise into immortality since they had their possessions buried them. Who said you cannot take it with you? So Ramses hoped to defy death itself! Unfortunately he did not even succeed in defying the grave robbers who had emptied the tombs years ago. If you have seen Tutankhamen (Tut- Ankh- Men) treasures( and he was a minor Pharaoh who died young); what was buried with Ramses? All that remains now is shaft of a corridor burrowed into the hillside with painted walls. Dust to dust… ashes to ashes…Did Ramses attain immortality? I guess he did if I can still look at him 3000 years later. Enough philosophizing. Let me head to the valley of Queens where lies Nefertiti, a Queen indeed prettier than Cleopatra. An author who wrote a book on both of them seems to have concluded that Cleopatra was not attractive except in the way powerful men like them- Very knowledgeable. And she dreamed of ruling Rome and Egypt. We know how that one ended!  Nefertiti had no such ambitions. She was so beautiful that a model of her head was discovered in the sands of Egypt and made its way to Paris and started the hunt for her tomb. The walls of her tomb have been restored by Getty Museum at a cost $6 million so you can see it for 10 minutes for only $30 and camera fee is extra. Some of the tombs have exquisitely painted walls that shine and mesmerize to this day. What next? The temple of Queen Hatchseput who married 4 times and killed 3 of her husbands. My driver stated, “She like being the Queen!” The temple is a better site from afar. Then to Habu temple another giant monument to “politicians of the day.”

 

                                     I had a day left and took a cruise on the Nile to Dandera. A lazy, sleepy cruise later I arrived at Dandera temple which is dated only to Greco-Roman times. The guide mentioned that the beautiful carvings and paintings on the wall were not ravaged by time but by Christians who fled Roman persecution and later Muslims who thought those nude figures on the walls were sacrilegious!! So Ancient Egypt lives despite the ravages of time, grave robbers, Greeks, Romans, Christians, Muslims and tourists.

 

                                    Back in Cairo, I met Stephen who was joined by his lovely girlfriend from Sydney. We went to see his presentation at the International Egyptology conference. His suggestion that the obvious sexual symbolism in Egyptian symbols had been missed by the Egyptologists met with enthusiastic response from women in the audience and sarcasm from an old South American. We certainly had action in this usually dull conference according to some. We returned celebrated with a few beers and headed to Khan-el-Khalil for Ox tail soup and Tagin, Tea and Sheesha at El Fishawy and danced with the belly dancer at Palmyra into the wee hours of the morning. We had enough action for the day.

 

Travelers Tips

 

GuideBook: Lonely Planet Egypt, Cairo

 

Fiction: Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz, Nobel Laureate 1988. I finished a 500 pagein 3 days “ Palace Walk”- the first in Cairo Trilogy. Book is a must read for anyone who wants to see behind the veils of this society. It is dated(WW 1) but the psychological portraits are breathtaking with pearls of wisdom strewn all over. Reminded me of All the Kings Men. Start reading before you leave. It added immensely to my trip.

 

Where to Stay:

Cairo                  Hotel President in Zemalik $50, good neighborhood, quiet

                          Meridien $200 to $300, best view of the Nile

                          New Star in Zemalik $30- budget, great location

Luxor                 Tutotel $50

                           Novotel $65

                           Winter Palace, Sheraton, Sonesta ??

 

Where to eat:

Cairo              Morning Cappuccino at Simonds in Zemalik

                       Lunch sandwich Maison Thomas in Zemalik,

                        Order Koshary at FelFela in downtown

                       Tea  Marriott in Zemalik

                        Dinner El Dahan in Khan-el-Khalil ask for Kebab (or Meridien)

                        After Dinner Shay El Fishawy in Khan-el-Khalil

Luxor            Cheap eats: Ali Baba Café- try Tagin,

                                        Amoun Restaurant on Karnak St.

 

What to Buy: Fez close to Bob Zubela

                      Gown (Cloak), belly dancing outfit, brass and beads in Khan-el-

                       Khalil

The admission fees are substantial and you might as well leave your camera home or take a point and shoot camera. Buy a CD Rom in the museum complex or a video instead. ATM’s at Marriott

 

Suggested Itinerary:

Cairo”

Day 1: Start early after a Cappuccino at Simonds to the Pyramids at Giza, stop for a beer at Mina House Hotel in Giza, Lunch at Marriott, Afternoon Cairo Museum, Tea at Meridien or Hilton, Dinner at El Dahan, After Dinner Shay at El Fishawy, late night belly dancing at Palmyra.

Day 2: See Mohamed Ali Mosque, Al Azhar and Ibn Tulm Mosques and Coptic Cairo take night train to Luxor.

Day 3: Visit Luxor temple, Sound and Light show at night in Karnak

Day 4: Visit West Bank: Valley of Kings, Valley of Queens, Habu Temple

Day 5: Nile Cruise to Dandera, Take night train to Cairo