The final three days of our time together as a group would be in Luxor, with visits to sites on the East and West Banks of the Nile. Luxor has been a tourist attraction for centuries, with good reason. Between the stunning tombs on the West Bank and the monumental temples on both sides, the ancient sites accessible here are second to none. And the town itself, well, it was a joy ride. Sure, it’s extremely touristic. But there’s also enough of modern Egyptian daily life thrown in to make it interesting. And so much of the town’s lifeblood is built around tourism that what goes own almost becomes a pageant of the enterprise itself.
This morning we headed across to the West Bank by ferry from right outside the hotel. The white boat was fairly small, but big enough to hold our entire group, the guides, and our driver for our time in Luxor, a friendly, smiley man named Hassan. The brightly colored paint job trimming the boat, as well as the scalloped and triangle-shaped serrated trim on the roof, added plenty of color to the ferry, and it was fun to be on the water, even if only briefly. Across the Nile, we climbed the bank and boarded the minibus that would be our base for the final few days. Hassan greeted each of us warmly as we got on.
Our first stop was a quick look at the Colossi of Memnon, huge seated statues towering about 50 feet above the ground. I noticed as we left that there appeared to be active archeological digs happening on the nearby grounds.
From there we headed through the quaint and rural village of the West Bank. Unlike East Bank Luxor, dense and built up, this area had the feel of a small village, with some tourist infrastructure thrown in, though not much. People seemed to be living average lives despite the buses filled with travelers coming en mass. A town of square, brightly painted homes emerging from the stark, ragged desert landscape, the West Bank seemed like a place I’d like to spend a lot of time exploring.
Our first stop stood at the base of a craggy mountainside devoid of visible vegetation. The sprawling Temple of Hatshepsut seemed to climb up the hillside in several levels. We had the choice to walk from the parking lot up the angled pathway or take a tram. Many of us chose to walk.
A little bit of background on this temple, both ancient and recent. I think I’ve mentioned Hatshepsut before. She reigned over Egypt from 1503-1482 BC and was the only woman ever to rule. When she was widowed without a son of her own, she refused to give up her role; instead she at first made herself a co-regent to her husband’s son by another marriage. Then, she assumed absolute control. Known for her strong will, she took an active role in the planning of this temple. She is often depicted in imagery as wearing male attire including a beard, and often has a male body as well. However, in many images her face is decidedly feminine. She called this temple “the splendor of the splendors,” and used much creative control in the design, deciding what scenes should be depicted and even seeking living myrrh trees on a trip to Somalia to plant in the temple’s fountain filled lower terraces.
Imaging the baking hot, shadeless site of today as once a green pleasant place boasting myrrh trees and fountains seemed a stretch. The sun was extraordinarily bright and there wasn’t a bit of vegetation in sight. As we approached the terraced temple, the heat – though dry – seemed searing. Compared to the uneven, ragged forms of the mountain behind it, the linear, columned terraces that comprised this temple struck me as particularly orderly and formal.
After Hatshepsut’s death, the rightful heir defaced many of her images and cartouches, out of revenge and frustration I suppose. I admire Hatshepsut – she seemed a completely different breed. But I bet she wasn’t that easy of a personality to deal with.
Anyway, her temple here at Deir el-Bahri in the hills above the Nile has been a popular tourist site for years. Tragically, in November of 1997, it became the location for a terrible massacre. The middle terrace once covered with myrrh trees became a blood-strewn nightmare when extremists stormed the temple, killing 58 tourists and several guards. The perpetrators escaped in a hijacked tour bus, but the driver crashed it on purpose near the valley of the queens and locals in pursuit caught up to the killers.
Knowing from my guidebook that this was the site of a terrible event, I wanted to know where it exactly had occurred in order to take a moment of remembrance. I made the mistake of asking Ehab; he shushed me and insisted that I not speak of it. A cultural thing perhaps? I heard him do the same thing to Valerie on the way out.
Anyway, we headed up to the upper terrace, an area that hasn’t been open to the public for very long. The entire site has been the subject of continuing digging and restoration by a joint team of Poles and Egyptians, and this highest terrace is the most recent part of the temple to open for visits. Through doorways on the sides we could see people hard at work.
The heat up there was pretty staggering. Sid said that his watch tells the temperature, and he called out that it was 98.6. “Take off your watch and wait a few minutes,” Joyce said, shaking her head. “That’s your body temperature.” The thermometer leveled out at nearly 95. Annoying flies, great numbers of them, buzzed around our heads and landed repeatedly on our arms and faces as we stood and listened to Ehab’s lecture about Hatshepsut and the temple iconography.
The color scheme of this temple – lots of sandy colored stone and yellow and cream colored paint – looked particularly good in the bright mid-morning sun, and I felt that compared to some of the places we’d been it had more of a woman’s touch. I asked Ehab about Hatshepsut’s level of creative control, and he agreed that she had taken a very active role in decisions about the temple’s design. Hatshepsut devoted the temple to Hathor, and there were many images throughout that closely linked the Queen to the bovine goddess, including one carving in which the Egyptian leader suckled from a cow’s udder.
On the middle terrace to the right, a whole series of elaborate paitings illuminated Hatshepsut’s birth, and at the far end stood at chapel to Anubis, the dog god of mummification. A British woman engaged me in conversation here about Anubis, although I didn’t have much to say.
Soon it was closing in on time to get back to the bus. I returned to the group in plenty of time, and again Deb was the missing straggler. We still had more than five minutes left on our free time, so once again I was a bit frustrated by the hullabaloo about Deb’s absence. The guides hurried the rest of the group onto a tram, and Ruth said that she would wait up on the terrace for Deb, expressing concern over her whereabouts. I looked at my watch again. Five minutes until we were supposed to be at the meeting place. Just as the tram was about to leave, Deb appeared and Ruth began calling for her to run to the tram. They hopped on just as it was about to move. Despite the rush up here, most of us sat waiting on the bus while a few people shopped at the souvenir stands.
Ruth and Ehab made some plans at the front of the bus as we drove along and suggested that due to the extreme heat this day we would postpone our planned visit to the Valley of the Workmen to another day. Today we’d visit the Ramesseum of Ramses II, visit an alabaster shop, and have lunch at Hassan’s house before heading back over to the East Bank. Back at the hotel we’d have some free time before our evening visit to Luxor Temple. The Ramesseum was the first stop.
I think part of the reason I felt so hot that day was that I’d forgotten to properly apply sunscreen, so I was getting burnt. The Ramesseum wasn’t much cooler than our previous stop, and during our visit there I drank a large bottle of water in its entirety. We had the place almost entirely to ourselves; after the throngs at Hatshepsut’s Temple it was a relief. Apparently not many tourists come to see the Ramesseum, which surprises me – I thought it was great. Built as Ramses II’s monumental mortuary temple meant to make his memory eternal, now it all that remains are a series of ruins, including a fallen colossal statue of the great pharaoh himself. In the hypostyle hall, for instance, only 29 of 48 original columns remain. Massive sections of the roof are gone, and the statues at the front are missing their heads.
The place has been a tourist destination for centuries – we saw graffiti carved into the walls from the early 1800s, including signatures and scribbles of some famous archeologists of the past like Belzoni. And, I was thrilled to read in my guidebook that the ruined structure inspired Shelley’s sonnet Ozymandias, which we studied in tenth grade. I was only going to put a small quote of the sonnet on here, but a sonnet isn’t a sonnet unless it has 14 lines, so I am including it all (one of my classmates was so inspired in 1988 by the figure skating, or more accurately the beauty, of Katarina Witt that he penned 17 lines and did poorly because he hadn’t met the requirements of the assignment. My own efforts for that particular project now hang framed on the wall of the basketball player who inspired my work, next to his jersey and awards. A long – good – story in and of itself.) Anyway, here’s some Shelley:
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert … Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand which mocked them, and the heart that fed.
On the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I am now remembering that I actually very much enjoyed that sonnet unit in 10th grade. And it obviously made an impression. Actually, there are so many things that I encounter in life that remind me of my academic experience in high school, whether it be humanities or philosophy, or art history…it is always coming up. In fact, the reason I am in Turkey is because of studying the Aya Sophia in the 12th grade. That’s a good high school education.
Anyway, back to 2005. We sat on the bases of the hypostyle hall columns, and looked up at the astronomical ceiling admiring the oldest known 12 month calendar. What the ancient Egyptians knew amazes me – and stands in such a contrast to the education and advancement of the current culture. It’s a shame. The interior portions of the site are far more intact than the rest, so it was good to see a glimpse of what it might have felt like before it fell into its ruined state.
Our visit coming to a close, we headed out the exit, dodging kids trying to sell small green statues of cats. Ruth announced that there were bathrooms and cold drinks in the building adjacent to the site, and that the bathrooms at Hassan’s, though “he insists they are first class, are really not very good.” With instructions to be back on the bus by 1:00, we dispersed. Regardless of the quality of bathrooms anywhere, I realized all that water had made me need to go now, so that’s where I headed.
Unfortunately, there was only one stall, so the line of people from our group stood at four when I arrived. We waited, and waited, and one by one entered the stalls. Someone was in the stall ahead of me when, between quarter til and ten til 1:00, Ruth arrived at the bathroom and asked if I was waiting. Sure. Is someone in the stall? Yes, one of our group. “Well,” she said. “Everyone is on the bus waiting. They’re all up there.”
Since this kind of thing was happening more often than not, my patience had already worn to the breaking point, and confronted directly on the issue, I lost it. Very annoyed I explained to our guide what had been happening, how it was making me feel, and why I found it so frustrating. I asked her if she realized she was doing that – not living up to the own times she was setting. She said that it didn’t seem like I was always late. But I said that it was how it felt. I’d been getting a vibe all along that constructive criticism or expression of needs wasn’t welcomed or OK, not really. So that is why I let my frustration build up. Ruth handled it well and only a bit defensively – and agreed that if we are told we have time we should really have it. Then I got my turn in the bathroom, and was back seated on the bus a full five minutes before our arranged meeting time.
We cruised along through the narrow streets of the West Bank to Hassan’s house. Earlier that day, I had shown Ehab a picture of a hajj painting and said I wanted to stop and take some photos of a house like that. He had laughed and said that Hassan’s house is covered with such paintings. When we pulled into his narrow driveway and I first saw his gold-colored house, I was blown away. Geometric designs, images of mosques and modes of transportation, and various panels of Arabic script danced along the walls, punctuated by the structure’s windows and doors.
As we began to climb out of the van, children and adults began to spill out of the house to greet us. They escorted us through the rooms of the home, past brightly painted walls and furniture, and showed us a long table set up in a back room. Hassan’s wife and family had prepared a massive meal for us, and his teenage sons served as waiters. We all took seats and soon we were sipping at brimming bowls of chicken broth soup with orzo pasta inside and quenching our thirst with hibiscus flavored juice. The meal was one of the very best of the trip, by far. They’d made endless platters of battered, fried vegetables, falafel, and beans. There was a tremendous tomato and chopped vegetable dish that seemed a lot like salsa. And my favorite was the eggplant moussaka-like casserole, dripping with rich, flavorful tomato sauce. The food was outstanding. After we’d all finished, we headed to another room and outside to drink tea. I stopped off in the bathroom (quite nice – I’m not sure which one Ruth was talking about). Hassan’s family was delightful – very friendly and warm. I tried to talk with a lot of the kids while we all took pictures. The littlest boy was very shy, and he got upset when I tried to engage him in conversation. The older kids thought that was funny, and goaded him further. I felt a bond with Hassan’s wife; she kept taking my hands and smiling warmly at me. And, I had the opportunity to take many pictures of the hajj paintings, now my new obsession. The warm feelings in the house were a highlight of the entire trip. Although our visit there was relatively short, I still felt lucky to have spent some time with a Luxor family.
Back on the bus, we all raved to Hassan about what a wonderful time we had had and how good the food was. He seemed pleased. He’d often tell me that I should come back to Luxor for my honeymoon.
Our next stop was a visit to an alabaster factory – another organized shopping trip. For the first and last time, I did have a shopping agenda here – to get a handle holder in alabaster like the one I had seen at the Mena House Hotel. They didn’t have much like what I wanted; I did finally find something that would do, but the guy was quoting a price way too high. Diane came over and asked me about it, and explained the dilemma. She told me to enlist Ehab’s help. I went over to talk to him where he sat in the corner drinking tea and smoking, and he told me to go ahead and bargain with the guy. Which was my instinct anyway….
Anyway, when I looked around for the clerk, he was helping Judy with something. I’m not sure I mentioned her before – she was very nice and although I hadn’t really gotten to know her she seemed a very sweet person. As I approached the clerk, I saw he was holding a statue, and when he saw me coming, he carefully faced it away from me before turning to greet me. I realized why when I got closer and saw what the statue was – a version of the one armed, enormously endowed male fertility god. The clerk had turned the statue around so he wouldn’t be pointing a massive stone penis at me. A nice gesture. I managed to get him down within my price range, although I still suspected I was paying too much. But the purchase was made, and I headed out of the store to walk around a bit while the others finished shopping.
I encountered a sweet small girl from the village who said she was 11 but looked much younger. Her name was Aisha, as I recall. We talked a while; she knew a few words of English, which included the phrase “America very good.” She also had learned the thumbs up sign. One of our group approached and I asked for a picture of the girl and me together. While we stood posing, I felt her little hand creeping up the back of my shirt and softly running all across the skin of my back.
It had already been a long day; we’d seen and done a lot although it was only around 3:00. We headed back to the hotel and had a few hours of free time. I decided to visit the pool, and when I got there I found Sid. He kindly found me a seat next to him and we chatted and swam for an hour or so. Getting to chat with Sid was a pleasure. By the time I got back to the room I had just enough time to shower and dress before our 5:30 meeting time for our visit to Luxor Temple.
We had two visits planned to this temple, which rises along the banks of the Nile in the heart of Luxor. This, our first, was scheduled for dusk and beyond, when the temple is beautifully illuminated. The second would be the next morning at 6:00 a.m., if we so chose. The sun had set but the sky was still bright when we arrived at the temple, and as soon as we entered, Ruth pulled us together and gave us a speech about free time and the evening’s schedule which struck me as somewhat in response to my feedback earlier in the day. She said she wanted us to get what we wanted out of this experience, so if we wanted to skip the tour part to have more free time, we were more than welcome as long as we let them know. We began our visit with some initial free time to explore and to approach the temple by walking down the Avenue of the Sphinxes that once led all the way to Karnak. A glow of lights cast over each sphinx.
As the sky grew darker, the temple – though initially impressive – began to look even more monumental under the lights. The entry pylons were massive walls of stone, the space between them flanked by two huge statues of seated men. On the left, a single obelisk towered well more than 50 feet; it used to be part of a pair, but the other was removed in 1835 and now stands in the center of Paris’s Place de la Concorde. Beyond the pylon walls I could see rows of columns and the dramatic lighting of the further reaches of the temple. I only briefly wandered inside, figuring I’d save that for our group visit; I was content at first to explore the dramatic façade.
Just before we were supposed to meet up, I was staring up at the Obelisk when I saw an owl fly past. Seeing owls is always such a thrill for me, and this time was no exception. When the group gathered, I decided to forgo the tour and spend some time exploring on my own, with a little bit of an owl hunt thrown in.
This temple ended up being one of my favorites. A mosque was built inside at one point in more recent history, and it remains, perched up above the temple walls. While we were there the call to prayer sounded, and hearing its sound echoing through the illuminated temple added even more to the mysterious feel. Extending beyond the temple front were room after room of relief-covered walls and open courtyard after open courtyard of dramatically lit columns. The nearly full moon hovering overhead in the velvety-dark sky added to the atmosphere.
I spent my time taking pictures, admiring the reliefs, and poking around the nooks and crannies of the temple – there were areas off to the side that were empty and dark, and it felt very mysterious to be back in there.
As time to meet the group neared, I headed outside to look for the owl some more, and then I sat on a bench in front admiring the temple front again. Ehab came over and wanted to know if I was angry at him and that’s why I didn’t join the tour. I was really surprised, and tried to explain to him that I really just wanted to explore on my own and it had nothing to do with anything but my own need for alone-time. That seemed to satisfy him – I got a laughing “so you still love me?” in return. I found the episode a bit strange.
After the group gathered, we walked to dinner in the tourist area nearby. We ate out of doors, in a plaza area filled with brightly colored tables. My food was good – an eggplant moussaka – and the atmosphere pleasant. The service, as seemed typical in Egypt and in Luxor in particular, was extraordinarily slow, so we were there for a long time. By the time we left it was nearly 9:00. Jane and I had decided to go back to the bazaar that night to pick up her robe from the tailor. When we told Ruth, she said it was way too far for us to walk, so she’d have the bus take it. We both were a bit surprised, because we felt like we were close, but we hopped on the bus with the rest of the group. As we drove past the first intersection we passed, less than half a block away, I saw what looked like the copper store we’d photographed the day before. We continued several blocks to the main taxi area at the head of the market street. Ehab and Hassan tried to figure out the best place to leave us off, but Ruth was disagreeing saying that we needed to go several blocks further. Jane, Ehab, and I all chorused that here was good…and soon Hassan was opening the doors so we could hop off.
We had to backtrack the several blocks to the intersection where we’d started, and sure enough we could see the restaurant complex at the foot of that street. Oh well. As soon as we arrived, we saw the tailor, who was sitting drinking tea at one of the streetside stalls. Tonight, in addition to his long robe he wore a white wrap loosely around his head.
He jumped up excited and began calling out to various people that we’d arrived. In the middle of the bustling, brightly lit intersection, Jane and the tailor hugged, and he expressed his earlier concern that she wouldn’t come after all. Soon a young boy had appeared with the brown wool robe in tow, and grinning the tailor told Jane to try it on. “Right here?” she asked. “Yes, yes!” he exclaimed. Jane handed me her belongings, lifted up her arms and slid the garment over her head. As its hem dropped to the ground, she began to smile. The tailor was beaming, and I found myself chuckling as well. It suited her so well. “Take pictures!” the tailor called out to me, so I did. Jane took a couple of spins in the intersection, the cloth billowing out around her. She asked the tailor about the length – it was slightly too long, which she had expected after he took the measurements. He said that the garment would shrink a little when she washed it.
We were causing quite a stir in the street. At this time of night, the market was bustling, but there appeared to be very few tourists, who must have been all shuttered into their four-star-hotels by that hour. Instead, groups of girls in scarves and long yet fashionable skirts strolled the street in small groups, arms linked and laughing. Along the edges, boys and young men stood talking, drinking tea, and eyeing the girls. I wondered if this time of night at the market was like Friday night in an American suburban mall – the place for young people to hang with friends and check out members of the opposite sex. Our presence on the scene had not gone unnoticed – many of the vendors had stopped what they were doing to watch Jane try on the robe, and a few of them came up to wave away street children from around my legs. Jane pulled off the robe and the tailor sent it off to be folded and placed in a bag. He then invited us for tea – he insisted in fact. Jane and I looked at each other and shrugged; sure, why not. Within a few minutes, a team of boys and young men had helped the tailor to arrange several chairs alongside a closed-up storefront and the small boy who’d gotten the robe was dispatched for the tea. The tailor sat down to join us.
Jane and the tailor continued right where they’d left off the day before, launching into a philosophical conversation about how people do not realize that money is not the most important thing in life. The tea was too hot to sip at first, so we sat there with it steaming away, listening to the tailor’s life views on all sorts of things. A little while in, he ran off and reappeared with a bag – he had something else he wanted us to look at. Jane had been adamant (and even set up a bet with Diane) that she would buy nothing more. The tailor reached into the bag, and pulled out a beautifully carved, light green scarab several inches in diameter. Extricating it from its loose newspaper wrapping, he set it firmly on Jane’s lower thigh; then he handed me one. I glanced at Jane’s face – and knew immediately from the look I saw there that she would be taking this scarab home. The tailor told us that his son carves these; I liked them too, but wanted one with an owl, so off the tailor went running to get reinforcements. The young boy stood by eyeing us and offering an occasional smile.
Jane turned to me and said, “I can’t believe this. He gave me the one thing I said I would buy in Egypt, but I haven’t seen one I liked.” Apparently Jane had come here expecting to purchase a scarab, but didn’t like most of the ones she’d seen. But this one was beautiful and different from the normal tourist souvenirs – the top was simple with a small carving on one side, but the bottom was covered with tiny hieroglyphics carefully etched in the flat green surface. Jane reiterated her vow not to spend any more money.
The tailor returned with another whole bag of newspaper-wrapped scarabs and pulled them out one by one to show me. He didn’t know the word for owl, and was showing me all sorts of other birds and animals. For about five minutes Jane and I, using pantomime and sound effects, tried to describe an owl, and finally the tailor understood us. “Oh, we don’t have any.” At this point a harder sales pitch began for the scarab, and Jane commented that her robe had not yet been returned to her, wondering under her breath if we were being held hostage a bit until one of us bought one of the scarabs. But as soon as she mentioned the robe, the tailor said Oh yes, and sent the boy off running to get it. Within a minute Jane had possession, and we started to make some movements towards leaving.
But the tailor told me that he had something for me, and kept making the shape of a box with his hands. He led us to a small nook across the street; it held only tables filled with more carvings – nothing else. He leaned down to reach under a table and pulled out a beautiful, small, handmade date palm fruit crate, just the perfect size for carrying home on a plane. I yelped in excitement, prompting laughter from Jane. Where did these come from? I asked. The tailor explained that his son had made two of them for me to see. I looked at them both and then picked one that had a jauntier shape; I was delighted. I asked how much it would cost. He explained that these are not the kinds of things that people buy and sell to tourists, so there isn’t a price. I should just make an offer. I leaned toward Jane and we whispered back and forth. I said I’d happily pay $15 or $20 for it, and Jane agreed, noting that it had been made especially for me. The tailor overheard 20 and I think he thought I was talking about Egyptian pounds. He said that he would need to get his son for the negotiation.
He sent the small boy running again, and shortly thereafter the older boy came in. He was fairly tall and stocky around the middle, but his round face was that of a young boy’s, with chubby cheeks, button nose and twinkling eyes peering out from under a baseball cap. The father asked the son for a price: he thought for a second and said 65 Egyptian pounds – less than $15. I was willing to agree, but I turned to Jane and asked her advice on whether to make a lower counter offer, assuming that bargaining was expected in this situation. As she and I bantered back and forth about it, we soon realized that the father and son were talking back and forth too. The boy looked a bit frustrated, and the father was clearly lecturing him. The dad turned to me and said, “Look, he is my son. He is young and needs to learn that everything isn’t about money. He needs to learn that when you have a connection, you don’t try to get money from people. We have a connection. I am telling him that you are not normal tourists. He shouldn’t try to take your money. I will only let him charge you 30 Egyptian pounds for this. He says OK.”
My beautiful handmade crate would cost a little more than five dollars. I asked again if they were sure that was enough; the father insisted, and as I pulled out my money and handed it over, we all felt very good about ourselves. The boy, who was seventeen, posed gladly for pictures with the crate and with me, and, after I pointed out some brightly colored beads hanging on the wall, he offered us each five strands of them as a gift.
Jane looked at me and said she wanted to buy the scarab. Later she said that the fact that the father made the son lower the price made her trust them, and it was an unusual item. Bargaining began for that and soon we had finished our multiple transactions. More hugs and friendly good wishes transpired, and we got the tailor’s name and address so that we could send pictures. For the first time in all that we found out his name: Joma Mohammed. We also got the name and address of a man across the street, on an Arabic only business card, so that we could send the images to him. It occurred to me, when the tailor had me write out his name and address, that he may not be able to write.
Feeling buzzed by our experiences and toting our precious purchases, we walked the few blocks to the taxi stand. We negotiated briefly with a driver (Ehab had reiterated to us several times that we should not pay more than 20 pounds for a taxi back to the hotel), who readily agreed. As we loaded ourselves into the back of the ramshackle cab, the driver laughed at my crate and asked, “Hey, what happened to the chicken?” When the driver tried to start the car, it wouldn’t go on. He worked at it for a full minute before the engine finally puttered on, and he gunned the engine a few times before we pulled away from the curb. “This is good,” Jane muttered.
Our excitement lingered as Jane and I chatted in the taxi, both feeling lucky to have had the experience we’d just had. As we rounded the turn onto the main promenade street alongside the Nile, suddenly the traffic stopped. There was a road block due to, the driver said, the politician’s presence at our hotel. Police were diverting all traffic down a side street, and there was total gridlock. The driver negotiated his way into the jumble of cars, who all seemed to want to head the same direction we did, turning left onto the street that ran parallel to the closed one. “I know another way,” said the driver. “But it is longer.” Okay, we agreed. Go for it. It looked like that traffic jam could take an hour to sit through.
The driver wound his way past the cars wanting to turn and continued beyond them for a few blocks until he reached a neighborhood filled with produce stands and local businesses. Though the stands were in various stages of closing down, the street still bustled with people chatting and walking. He hung a left – the general direction of the hotel – and took us through a dilapidated neighborhood. There were few people on the streets – only some walking looking like they were heading home. Many of the houses were dark, and I looked at my watch and realized it was nearly 10:30. The driver began turning into more and more deserted, rural looking neighborhoods, and soon the road’s paving disappeared. Now we were rumbling along a street that was clearly under construction – rough stones littered the dirt surface – and the fact that the car had no shocks whatsoever became even more apparent as we jostled around in the back seat. In front, the driver was laughing; he looked back at us and asked, “Are you having fun this ride?”
Jane turned to me and said that the experience was reminding her of a time in Mexico with her ex-husband when the taxi driver took them a route that kept getting more and more remote. Soon after she uttered those words, we hung another unexpected turn and were in an even more desolate area, with irrigation canals on one side and darkened houses on the other. A lone boy walked along the side of the road, and turned to look at us as we passed. Jane and I looked at each other wide-eyed and laughed nervously. At what point should we start to worry, we wondered.
But there was no need – soon we had doubled back and the neighborhood began to look a bit more familiar. We had arrived at the hotel, coming from a completely unexpected direction, but we had arrived nonetheless. When the driver pulled up to the curb, we threw in a few more pounds (hardly anything) and he then in a very polite way asked us for 5 more (about one dollar). He said it would help him because the drive was much longer, but that if we didn’t want to that was ok. We gladly obliged.
Inside the hotel, we agreed that we were too wound up to head back to our rooms right then, so we decided to meet for a beer. We each stopped back at our rooms to get keys and deposit our purchases, and I told Deb briefly of our exciting evening.
Up on a terrace overlooking the pool and the Nile, Jane and I sat for an hour or so with Stella beers deep in conversation. It was an excellent end to our adventure.
When I finally settled into sleep it was close to one. Deb had set the alarm for 5:30 in order to go with the group to the Luxor Temple for a second visit. I left myself open to the idea, but suspected that I would need more sleep than that visit would allow. I was beginning to be plagued by a bad cough, which I was attributing to the lousy air quality. Jane was concerned about the rumbling in my chest; I figured that a bit more sleep would help to stave off any further problems.
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