A Journey to Luxor

Al-Qurn, "The Peak" that overlooks the Valley of the Kings

Down along these hillsides,

Many miles ago,

Lived a man of vision, child,

Little did I know,

He was always talking, child,

'Bout the heart and soul,

'Til one day some pharoah came,

And offered up his dole,

In the valley,

In the Valley of the Kings.

Marc Cohn

"Valley of the Kings"

Leaving the lobby of Luxor's small but modern international airport, we are ill-prepared for the onslaught of taxi drivers jostling toward us. Though our flight is full, most of our fellow travelers have arranged transport in advance or are returning home to Luxor and their own vehicles. We are among maybe five other sets of passengers that require transport into the city. There are at least fifty idle drivers forming a loose, mobile barricade between us and the parking lot beyond. 

With the tide of drivers breaking around us, a brown hand, sinewy and weathered, shoots forward, clamping down on one of the straps of my backpack. I do not sense a pull. Just a firmness and an immense presence.

"Come this way, sir." The sonoroous voice seems to emanate from far above me. I look up to see the face that matches the voice. Rye colored skin with a deeply lined face and blazing eyes, the driver towers above me. He is very tall, his height accentuated by a bulky turban and flowing, sage dishdasha. 

He loosens his vice-grip and takes a couple of steps toward the lot. Dana, overwhelmed and nearly surrounded now by a host of drivers, is nonetheless following behind. We halt as a fierce argument breaks out. A couple of jostling drivers in front of us spit harsh Arabic slurs at the tall driver. He barks back, menacingly.

"Umm," I start.

Whirling around, his snarl instantly vanishes, replaced immediately by cherubic smile.

"No problem, sir. No problem. Come." His teeth are a flash of alabaster set against the dark crags of his face. 

Spinning around to face his rivals, he lifts one arm high in the air, fist clenched. He seems to be holding aloft some sort of invisible staff. He is all at once the Moses of the Luxor cabbies. And before him, the Red Sea of complaining drivers parts. He marches triumphantly into the breach. Dana and I are in tow, reluctant Israelites following an inspired prophet; or a madman.

The tone of our three-day journey to Luxor is established by our first 30 minutes in Upper Egypt: running pell-mell into a series of situations for which we are completely unprepared.

The Great Hypostyle Hall, Karnak

First, let me say that Luxor is a marvel. Straddling the Nile, the city boasts an urban side dominated by Luxor Temple and the Temple of Karnak  Then there is the rural side, the West Bank of Luxor, dominated by the necropolis and the Valley of the Kings  Over 3000 years old, the temples of Luxor and Karnak are amazingly well preserved masterpieces of ancient Egyptian architecture. Both sites feature soaring columns and richly carved hieroglyphics. In Karnak some of the ceilings still remain, beautifully painted in various hues of blue, gold and bronze. The West Bank of Luxor is reserved for the dead, the burial chambers for pharaoh's and their spouses, for nobles, and even for artisans. The final resting place for Tutankhamen, a relatively small tomb as we come to discover, is found here in the Valley of the Kings. Tomb chambers, hundreds of feet deep, snake their way into the escarpment. Several are open to the public. In the Deir el-Medina, the tombs of the artisans who worked in the Valley of the Kings remain almost perfectly preserved along with colorful paintings depicting the lives of more ordinary Egyptians.

However, I come to the conclusion that an amazing dis-service has been perpetrated upon the people of Luxor, and they are suffering lasting, negative consequences. Some two hundred years ago, Napoleon and his troops revived an interest in ancient Egypt. Thomas Cook brought the first formal European tour group into the region in 1869. Since then, Luxor has been sculpted and shaped by the tourist industry. Over time, residents with other skills have slowly abandoned their various trades to take jobs in more lucrative industries tied into the tourist trade. Since the coming of the revolution in 2011 however, there has been no tourist trade. The world-class hotels erected here are empty, as are the restaurants, shops and docks that once catered to thousands and thousands of foreign tourists every day. Dana and I check into the 4-star Steigenberger Hotel, for example. With 200+ sumptuous rooms, the hotel is a jewel. Dana and I are among maybe 20 of its current occupants; maybe. For most of our stay here, we feel as if we have the hotel to ourselves. When we go out of a walk, we are bombarded by street merchants, taxi drivers, carriage drivers, and boat captains all looking for that one crumb of business for the day; just one speck, one scrap. There is a desperation here that I have never encountered in all my years of travel. With virtually no tourists, the people of Luxor are making a torturous return to the days before Thomas Cook and Napoleon, and we are heartbroken to bear witness.

With extremely mixed feelings, we depart. The driver who has guided us through the city and the ruins comes to pick us up from the Steigenberger promptly at 7 am. His name is Said, but he is known throughout Luxor as "Mr. Hero." With two wives and four children to support, Dana and I get the strong sense that he works various jobs for most of the day and night. He bids us a cheery good morning, but his weary eyes betray a deep fatigue. Silently, he drives us back to the airport down roads that snake through verdant fields of sugar cane, cabbage, cauliflower, and banana. At this time of the morning, mists rise from the rich soil as villagers emerge from their simple dwellings to begin their day. Some of the farmers are already at work in their fields. Everything is done by hand; we see no signs of machinery anywhere. When Said drops us off at the airport, we say our goodbyes, we wish him and his family well, and we pay him. There is a lot extra in today's payment. What else can we do? We shoulder our packs and walk towards the airport. I look back for a second. An elderly man dressed in a ragged dishdasha and turban, wheeling a baggage trolley, approaches Said. I get the sense that the trolley was for us, but the man is quite old and a minute or two too late. 

They talk for a second. Both are smiling. Said reaches into the side pocket of his dishdasha and hands the old man some money.

*This week's photographs taken by Dana Purpura.

New Adventures in Dial-Up

We arrive in Egypt in August. Our school meets us at the gate, ushering us from the airport immediately to our school-provided flat. I am immediately grateful for so much: that the 34-hour trek from Memphis to Cairo is finished, that the school has arranged to breeze us through customs and that the internet in the flat is ready to go. Dead tired, we drop our bags, we post on Facebook, we fire off a couple of emails, and we sleep for the next 14 hours. The posts upload no problem, and the email rockets through cyber-space right away. Cloudy though my mind is at the time, I remember thinking that this is great, that we have forever waved goodbye to China-style, slow internet.

The following day we traipse through school tours. Jet lagged, we try to stay awake through a couple of orientation sessions. The guy that speaks to us about our home internet is nice but drones on and on. That much I remember.

"Blah, blah, blah, bandwidth wifi router ... blah, blah, blah, Mbps download ... blah, blah, blah data limit dial-up ... blah, blah, blah." On and on. He finishes. We awaken from our trances, and we sign the papers he wants us to sign. That much I remember.

November is our first full month here in Cairo. Given generous school breaks, we have enjoyed long weekends or week-long holidays in both September and October. And we have taken those opportunities to travel. When in Rome ... The point is that we have yet to be resident in Cairo for an entire month. Sure at the end of September and October, I notice a couple of days where the internet is really slow. But it is Egypt, right? Given that we experience weekly, rolling brown-outs, times when the electricity shuts off for about an hour, I should expect there to be times when the internet is a little sluggish.  So I really do not think anything odd about the end-of-the-month sluggishness until mid-November.

Then it hits. On November 12^th I notice that the internet is remarkably slow. And it is slow on the 13^th and then on the 14^th, too. So I ask at school.

"Ah, that'll be your data limit," says John, a Liverpudlian and tech guru.

Data limit? Nobody told me about a data limit.

Then it clicks. Our first full day in Cairo and the blah, blah, blah internet dude droning on and on. We signed papers. We agreed to ... the dreaded data limit.

Today, I am not certain what our actual limit is. I do know that the data cycle runs from from month to month and is calculated on the last week of every month. I know that this month we blazed through our data limit by the 12^th. I also know that after a household has exceeded the data limit, the internet speed of said household drops down to {gulp!} dial-up. I know that I have spent two of the longest weeks of my life trying to struggle against the brutal pain of plodding download speeds. I now know that I would rather eat shards of glass than suffer creeping, idle internet. This much I know.

I now have a few other nuggets of knowledge. Thanks to a lovely, little iPad app, I know that we normally enjoy a 1.1 Mbps average download speed here at the flat. This is four to five times faster than our connection to the slow-net in China but four times slower than our high-speed hookup in Memphis. Not great, but better than the snail's pace of China and not bad for a developing nation in North Africa. This much, I expected.

But dial-up is something different. Dial-up is old school like your grand-pappy's internet. Like it was back in the day when email was a revolution. With dial-up, you can watch the code slowly unfurl to reveal one small image, line by painful line. With dial-up, your mind fills in the oceans of silence with the babbling cacophony that modems used to emit. With dial-up, you can cook dinner and eat it while waiting for that website you really wanted to see to load. It may or may not be fully up by the time you finish the dishes.

Within a couple of days after the 12^th, I shake off the hypnotic lethargy associated with watching the spinning-circle animation of a website loading to get the problem sorted out. I find the number of another internet service provider that can install DSL cable in the flat. I am on the phone for at least an hour, but I finally reach a customer service agent who speaks English. Yes, DSL can be arranged for our address, and yes, we can purchase a plan with unlimited data. It is even reasonably well priced (for us ... not the rest of the country)! Success!

There is a slight catch, though. The next available time slot for an installation crew to swing by is in March.

Chimes of Freedom

What started three months ago with a bang - a loud "bang" during which hundreds and hundreds died - ended Tuesday with a cavalcade of partying. Egypt's three-month old military curfew has ended, and Cairenes are taking to the streets. This time around they are here to celebrate. Three months ago, Egyptian security forces backed by regular army units hammered groups of sit-in protestors at Cairo's al-Nadha Square and Rabaa al-Adawiya Mosque. Sensing that there would be major social unrest expressed as a result of this crackdown, the government under the stewardship of Adly Mansour and General Abdel Al-Sisi ordered a one-month, sunrise to sunset curfew to be imposed by Egyptian security forces. Over the course of the next few weeks, the curfew was moditified to relax those time constraints involved but was also curiously extended from one month to three months. Although security forces remain in place on the streets of Cairo, as of Tuesday, November 12th (2013), the curfew is a thing of the past.

Friday being the holy day throughout the Muslim world, the Cairo work week stretches from Sunday to Thursday. Thursdays mark the beginning of the weekend, and Thursday evenings are usually boisterous affairs. When we leave work on Thursdays for our walk home, we usually weave through streets congested with honking Fiats and ramshackle busses. We are invariably greeted by a couple of street merchants. One merchant in particular wears upon his back a mobile grinding apparatus designed to sharpen tools and knives. 

This Thursday is particularly boisterous as it is the first Thursday in three months where weekend revelers know that they can remain out for as long as they wish. I am just finishing my chaperoning duties at our annual school homecoming dance, so I am leaving school at 11 p.m. The street in front of the school buzzes with drivers and taxis waiting on our students as they depart. Other taxis - dilapidated Fiats as well as luxury, three-wheeled tuk-tuks - whiz by hoping to catch any fare that has not already made prior transport arrangements. One of the uber-luxurious tuk-tuks sports disco lights and blaring music - Journey's Don't Stop Believing. Almost 30 years after the song was recorded, it has become one of a couple of American "anthems" popular among tuk-tuk drivers in Cairo. Tonight's version comes complete with driver belting out the lyrics in a jocund melange of English and Arabic. As I shift my satchel over my shoulder and head home after a very long day, I cannot help but smile along with the jubilant driver. 

I walk further toward Victoria Square, one of the landmark squares in Ma'adi. Even from a distance, I hear honking, laughing and singing. The square is packed with noisy vehicles and raucous pedestrians. Traffic is going nowhere, but the drivers and their passengers do not seem bothered in the least. Music of every cadence imaginable is pumping from almost every one of the cars. Smiling Egyptians lean out from windows waving and singing. Street merchants bob and weave amidst the traffic, selling water and flags. One merchant is even selling life-size Daffy Duck balloons.  I duck the balloons (pun intended), zigzagging my way through the traffic. 

Success. Now I have only Port Said Road to cross. Like Victoria Square, Port Said Road is a partying parking lot.

I cross the busy street heading toward a knot of tea-drinking, off-duty drivers. They are laughing. All are smoking the potent cigarettes readily available at corner kiosks throughout the city. I can smell the strong tobacco. One of the drivers has his music blaring, although the song is unusual.

Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake
Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an' forsaked
Tolling for the outcast, burnin' constantly at stake
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

It is one of those moments where I do not know whether to laugh or cry. On this occasion, I choose the former rather than the latter. The driver with the music is the first to spot me.

"DYLAN!" He pronounces it "DEE-LAN."

"I know! That is awesome!" I blurt out, laughing.

"DYLAN! DYLAN!" The men are all laughing and chanting. One even gives me a high-five.

"Masalamah, masalamah!" I say as I bid the drivers good-bye.

"MASALAMAH, SIR!" They pronounce it like "SAIR."

I walk on, the din of Victoria Square and Port Said Road fading into the distance. As I walk, I marvel that in the span of just a few short months, Egyptians have experienced everything from the profane to the sacred. And in an odd way, Dana and I have experienced this, too. I cannot help but wonder which way we are heading.

Cairo Rain

Rain in Cairo comes as a surprise. At first, I hear the sounds of small dry leaves tumbling along the pavement. At least that is what I perceive. Then I feel a light tap on my shoulder. Again, I think of the trees. Surely a parched kernel of a seed has fallen, dropping upon my shoulder. But then there is the sound of more leaves scuttling as I feel another tap upon my shoulder. And then another and another. I look up to see the purplish hues of an evening sky veiled by gauzy, grey strands of stretched cotton. Impossibly and immediately, buckets of rain begin to fall. Adults around me run pell-mell, seeking the dry shelter of a nearby overhang. At the same time, children emerge from the buildings around me, shrieking with delight. Rain has come Cairo.

Shirt soaked, I walk to a covered terrace. I stand next to an old, smiling man, and together we watch the children jump up and down amidst the downpour. In the next minute, the rain simply stop just as abruptly as it began. Adults, now animated and chatty, emerge from their shelters, picking up where they left off. The children are now leaping from puddle to puddle. The old man standing next to me nods and slowly walks away. I linger for a moment watching the kids splashing one another while the adults go about their business. Although I am jarred by the sudden rain, I am certain that the adults will take their children home and the trees and the pavement will dry as if the rains never came at all.

Deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has not been seen since he was removed from power on July 3rd of this year. In the days following his removal from office, different segments of the Egyptian populace have publicly celebrated and protested. Hundreds have died in the violent aftermath. There is still a curfew in place, enforced by thousands of Egyptian security forces and regular army personnel. Daily protests continue in Cairo and Alexandria. Egyptians are polarized, although Morsi supporters are in the minority. They are a sizable minority, however.

After months of imprisonment, Morsi emerges today to formally face charges of incitement to riot and murder. All of Egypt has halted to watch the spectacle. Everyone is expecting the worst.

We are, too.

Mercifully, we have a school holiday today. The Muslim New Year is tomorrow, but our school is officially celebrating it today Good thing, too. In the past week 20,000 security forces have been deployed in the area in an attempt to discourage mass political protests. Most roads in and out of the area are closed to through traffic, so many of our students would not have been able to make it to school had we conducted classes. Today we are home, and were glued to our Twitter feeds and Al Jazeera apps.

As we log on to a very sluggish Internet, we discover that the military government has, at the 11th hour, changed the venue of Morsi's hearing to a heavily fortified police training facility many kilometers away. We learn that the judges in the trial have barred any live broadcast from occurring and are only allowing a handful of the state-run media reporters into the courtroom for the hearing. Not to be deterred, we listen to BBC and Al Jazeera live broadcasts from outside of the facility. We also monitor some rogue reporters tweeting from the hearing.

After an hour or so, a handcuffed Morsi appears surrounded by hundreds of heavily armed, military guards. He is hurried into a large fenced-in area within the courtroom, and there he is greeted by other ranking members of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) that have been stated to stand trial with him. According to our Twitter reporters, Morsi is dressed in a business suit while his MB co-defendants are dressed in prison-whites. When he enters into the makeshift defendants' cage, pandemonium breaks out in the courtroom. His fellow MB compatriots and cell-mates embrace him as hundreds of courtroom spectators shout all at once. Some of the shouts call for immediate execution while others are in support of the defendants. The judge calls for order and then adjourns the hearing to order to let the military guards establish quiet in the courtroom. We hear that order is restored, lost and then regained. We hear that Morsi is defiant and that he waives his right to counsel. We hear that he repeatedly tells the judges that he is their president and that they have no right to try him. We hear that he refuses the lead judge's order to change clothes into the white, prison fatigues that all defendants are by law to wear during a hearing. After just an hour, we hear that the judge adjourns the hearing, postponing the trial until January. Morsi is then apparently helicoptered to a maximum security prison in Alexandria while his MB associates are imprisoned here in Cairo. Later on we see some of the video transcripts that the state-run media outlets were allowed to post, seeing for ourselves that our rogue Twitter reporters were accurate in the reports posted.

Fearing a wave of pro-Morsi militancy, we brace ourselves for the worst, staying indoors for the day. But we hear nothing; no distant chanting, no drumming marchers. Nothing. The day passes quietly, and so does the night. In the wee hours of the morning, I wake up, half expecting a phone call announcing the cancellation of school. None comes.

As usual, Dana and I walk to school the next morning, traipsing down the tree-lined streets of Ma'adi. The streets look exactly like they did two days ago when we last walked home, and we are not sure what to make of this.