Convoy to Abu Simbel

Fifteen minutes before we were scheduled to leave, the hotel gave us our wake up call. We climbed into our clothes and stumbled out into the lobby where we joined a handful of equally bleary-eyed guests. We were given a boxed lunch before being led to a spacious minibus. Given the length of the ride, I was pleased to only be sharing the bus with a few other people. Besides our small group, it seemed that the only others making the trip were four Korean tourists who, coincidentally, we had actually already met around a campfire in the White Desert the week before.

Unfortunately, this was only the second of a long series of stops. The empty seats quickly disappeared as we pulled into random alleyways and sidestreets, gathering one or two more tourists each stop. Soon, every seat was filled, but that didn’t stop our imaginative driver from creating more. Our bus had foldaway seats hidden everywhere – under other seats; on the floor; behind ingeniously disguised panels in the bus' walls. If the vehicle hadn’t already been horribly crowded, it might have actually been fun to guess from where the next seat was miraculously going to appear. In the circumstances, however, what had looked like a bargain when we booked was beginning to look even more like a steal, only we had become the victims.

"Well, at LE70 each, that's only about $5.00 each, not too bad for seven hours of transport," I said optimistically.

"It's more like £10.00 sterling, which is what you'd pay for a full-size seat on a National Express bus in England," replied Ms. Chadha with better math and brutal realism.

Awkwardly folded into a seat further down my row was an enormously tall German (he was 7'2", which according to Ms. C. would have made him the tallest man in New Zealand). At the first stop, he asked the only slightly less enormous Korean passenger who sat in relative comfort by the door if he wouldn't mind trading places. Unsurprisingly, the Korean passenger wasn't interested. “But my legs are very long, it would be more comfortable," pleaded the German. The Korean guy thought for a second before defensively replying "I will stay because otherwise I have the same problem." I prepared to watch what would certainly be the tallest smackdown I had ever seen, maybe the tallest ever! I confess to being a little disappointed that nothing came of it.

We settled into our seats, some more happily than others, and waited for the rest of the convoy to gather. Fifty minutes later, it had, and one by one we pulled onto the road to Abu Simbel. I don’t often imagine convoys, but when I do, I imagine something impressive - the word evokes military supply lines, long-haul truckers, ships dodging submarines in the Atlantic. Minibus convoys, on the other hand, are absurd. A lone minibus look vaguely ridiculous, five dozen of them in a row look supremely so. The safety advantages weren’t clear either: attacking a lone bus requires a certain amount of timing and precision. Hitting a chain of buses that is scheduled to pass at a certain time, on the other hand, must be an attractive target for even the laziest, most clumsy terrorist. In any event, the convoy had broken apart within the first twenty kilometres. The only effect the convoy seemed to have was to bring down property values in the neighbourhood where it gathered. What a nasty surprise it must have been for the locals. Imagine: your first night in your new home and you’re woken up by the sounds of forty or fifty minibuses idling outside your window. What would you do when you realized that this was going to happen to you every night for the rest of your life?

Abu Simbel itself is an extraordinary site well worth the three hour drive (especially if you do it in an adult-size bus). The four collosi of Ramses II outside the temple are familiar enough – as a child one of my favorite issues of National Geographic was an article on the relocation of the monument to higher ground as the rising water behind the Aswan dam threatened to innundate it. What I hadn’t known was that the interior of the temple was so extensive. It’s incredible both for the quality of the original work and for its level of preservation. I’d recommend heading straight for the temple interior when you arrive. Most tourists will be stuck listening to their guides’ background lectures just in front of the temple, so even in the middle of such a large crowd, you can steal fifteen minutes of peace inside the temple if you hurry.

There’s plenty of time later to enjoy the exterior views of the temple, where the crowd milling around below only accentuates the size of the monument. The colossal quartet of Ramses II were built to scowl at travellers from the Nubian kingdoms to the south, impressing upon them the power and terror of Pharaonic Egypt. It’s still effective today, though now the monument is set in an artificial mountain overlooking an artificial lake, and the modern oppressors of the Nubians have reverted to more barbaric ways of demonstrating their power.

The hour-and-a-half given to see the site seems like more than enough time, but before long the roar of a thousand minibuses told us that the convoy was reforming. We settled back into our seats and tried to get comfortable as the convoy, united for now, began the long trip back to Aswan.

Down in Upper Egypt

EgyptAir offered us a choice of three afternoon flights, all of which were scheduled to leave within ten minutes of each other. For several hours on either side of this small handful of departures, nothing left at all. Flying planes in a convoy might have seemed strange to me once. Fortunately, I've stopped trying to understand these things and, instead of puzzling over the logic and worrying about the waste, I now just sip my mini can of Pepsi* and enjoy the extra space in my choice of one of three available planes, none of which was even one-third full.

The only disadvantage of a near-empty plane is that it suffers more from the effects of the hoht afternoon air rising off the baking desert beneath us. The same rules of atmospheric thermodynamics that allows birds to gracefully wheel in ever-higher arcs over the desert floor also apply to 747s, but there isn't anything graceful about our flight, which lurches clumsily through the air. I would never have described myself as someone who’s afraid of flying, but I’m going to start avoiding these Saharan flights. They’re nasty.


The Aswan airport is tiny and, on a Sunday, was completely empty. This didn’t mean that I could make it to the bathroom unobserved by the staff, however. As soon as I left the stall, a newly-arrived attendant handed me a paper towel and I handed him back a one-pound note. I could see right away from the polite-but-disgusted look on his face that I had made a mistake. I realized that I’d used my left hand to pass him his baksheesh. This must have been particularly revolting given where I’d just been. I do really try to not make these mistakes, but I’ve found that there’s a difference between knowing the proper etiquette and having the presence of mind to always observe it. This is why whenever I’ve had the opportunity to eat with anyone local, I literally sit on my left hand.

The taxi cartel at Aswan International is unusually disciplined, and my price negotiations weren't impressing anyone, including Ms. Chadha. When my generous counter-offer of LE50 was refused en-masse by the rank of drivers, I was left without any other plan except to sit there until someone crumbled. Someone did, but it was no surprise when that someone was me. Unless you’re a masochist or on a very tight budget, book a hotel transfer.

I’d read that Aswan’s souq was the best outside of Cairo, and since I was still in the market for a backgammon board, we decided to give shopping a try before anything else. Aswan’s municipal government had completely refurbished the market several years ago. Gone are the narrow, twisting streets with shops and vendors of every sort all haphazardly heaped together. Now the uniformly sized shops sit in neat rows on newly paved streets. It feels like you’re in an exotic version of a suburban shopping mall, though admittedly one with a more interesting food court. The main disadvantage is that in these “improved” open streets, the shopkeepers can see you from thirty meters away, and so have time to position themselves as inconveniently as possible – usually with the aim of separating you from whomever you’re walking with. The shopkeepers recognize that it's easier for a group of people to ignore them and have adjusted their strategy accordingly. In Aswan, you have to fight to stay together.

Overall, shopping in any souq is definitely a more pleasant experience when there's actually something you want to buy. However, after seeing thirty versions of the same backgammon board, we gave up and went back to the hotel. I still have hope that I’ll find what I’m looking when we’re back in Cairo. If anyone has any suggestions, please send them my way. I'm probably going to end up getting one on eBay, which would be pretty lame after having lived all of this time in North Africa.

We stayed at the Keylany Hotel, which is a few streets off the Corniche. This means that you lose the river view, but it’s quieter, cleaner, and I’m not sure that the price can be beat. It is a shame about the view, though. When I’d thought about the Nile, the scene from the Corniche is what I’d imagined: a ribbon of blue between dun colored cliffs and mountains of sand, thick stands of palms gathered on either side. It was beautiful and the rooftop of the Keylany would have been the perfect place to take it in – it’s been tastefully decorated with wicker and hundreds of fairy lights** (which looked better than I make it sound).

We decided to have a quick drink before calling it an early night (we had a 2:50 A.M. wake-up call to look forward to), but instead managed to get caught in a conversation with a roof full of backpackers. Trying to extricate yourself from a tipsy pair of chatty South Africans isn't easy, but I felt like I was up to it after an afternoon of practice in Aswan’s markets. Instead of letting myself be suckered into listening to an evening of stories even more exaggerated than mine, I followed my fail-safe souq escape tactics: I smiled, didn’t let them get between Ms. Chadha and me, went for a quick exit while ignoring the usual mix of pleas and insults, and hoped we got away without offending anyone too much. I think I’m getting good at this.

*Pepsi is killing Coke in the Egyptian cola wars. I have no idea why. It's very disheartning.
** I've always just called them "Christmas lights", but that doesn't seem to fit here. I've adopted Ms. C's terminology.

A Little Eire in Egypt

My original plan for getting to Upper Egypt involved taking the Abela Sleeper Train from Cairo to Aswan. It sounded romantic in a neo-colonial sort of way and offered the added advantage of being cheap. Exercising an abundance of caution, I visited the reservation office at Ramses Station a full month before my expected travel date, only to be told by a puzzled clerk (who had probably never planned anything a month ahead in his life) that I couldn’t reserve a seat more than two in advance. I returned two weeks later as instructed, and found that the train was completely booked. My advice for anyone interested in travelling on the sleeper train: skip trying to decipher the conflicting instructions of the confused Abela staff. Instruct a local travel agency to get the tickets for you instead.

In the end, we had to fly, but trading a twelve hour train ride for a one-and-a-half hour flight did at least give us an extra night in Cairo. We used it to have dinner with a couple of my old ILI roommates, one of whom convinced me to try Egypt’s most schizophrenic dish: a bowl of Molokheya. I wanted to write “Egypt’s most revolting dish,” but that’s not quite fair, because it actually tastes fine. What’s revolting is the texture, which botanists describe with the appropriately disgusting word “mucilaginous.” Molokheya is the Egyptian term for Jew’s Mallow, which as near as I can tell, has no more politically correct name. When cooked, the stuff turns to slime – a clear, thick slime with the consistency of saliva...after a night of heavy drinking...when you have a sinus infection.

I washed it down with half a bottle of Omar Khayam, which as noted before, has the useful property of acting as a general anaesthetic in situations like this. This time it also had the unfortunate side-effect of causing me to suggest to Ms. C. that we should go to Harry’s Pub for a couple post-dinner drinks in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. I blame the Omar Khayam, because in sober circumstances I dislike St. Patrick’s day and I hate Harry’s Pub. I can’t imagine a situation where I'd like either of them better when combined.

Harry’s is a faux Irish pub attached to the Marriot Hotel in Zamalek (or maybe it’s the Sheraton – I can never remember, which has irritated more than one cab driver). Harry’s is popular with older (mostly English) ex-pats, local alcoholics, itinerant students, and prostitutes. Unfortunately, this is more or less the exact same demographic that is attracted to St. Patrick’s day, which doubled the potential obnoxiousness of the crowd. Luckily for us, in my enthusiasm I had failed to notice that we’d already missed the holiday, which was the day before.*

St. Patrick’s day may have passed, but there was still one night left for the Irish band that the hotel had flown in from Dublin for a four-night stand. The crowd, many of whom were probably still nursing hangovers cultivated the night before, was more subdued too. Everyone’s enthusiasm had been dampened just to the point where an old crank like me could enjoy himself, and enjoy myself I did. Probably as a consequence of my father’s collection of Dubliners cassettes, I love traditional Irish music. I was delighted anytime they pulled out one of the classics. They have so much energy to them that half the time I don’t realize how ridiculously depressing the lyrics are, which reminds me of a few of my favorite lines from G. K. Chesteron:

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad

Very true, G.K., very true. We didn’t hear anything as conspicuously mournful as “Danny Boy,” but even the upbeat, sing-along numbers like “Whisky in the Jar,” and “Irish Rover,” (which are about a double-crossing lover and the annihilation of a ship’s crew, respectively) are actually quite sad. Some of the poignancy of bleak Irish songs is relieved, however, by the recognition that nobody living in whatever Irish backwater is the subject of a song like “Dirty Old Town” has it nearly as bad as the dozens of poor Sudanese and sub-Saharan prostitutes who frequent places like Harry’s. You would have to take Ireland’s gloomiest songwriter off his anti-depressants for months before he could write a song that could even come close to capturing how terrible that job must be.

We settled the bill just as the band started on to a series of Journey covers. It was definitely the right time to leave Harry's and probably also a good time to leave Cairo for a while, too. I’ve found that a good rule of thumb is that by the time a person starts frequenting fake Irish pubs (which exist everywhere on earth), either they’ve run out of ideas to explore or the town has run out of options to offer. In either case, it was a good time to take to the road for a bit, or, as the Irish appear to say: “mush-a ring dum-a do dum-a da, wack fall the daddy-o.”

*St. Patrick's Day was a month ago, which shows just how many posts behind I actually am on this thing. They're all there, they just need typing.

The White Desert

At the border of the White Desert National Park our driver impatiently honked his horn while the police searched the vehicles in front of us. I couldn't imagine behaving like this in the U.S., and our police have smaller guns and more respect for civil rights. I also couldn't imagine lying to the police when asked a direct question, which is exacly what Waleed did when the officer requested the nationalities of his passengers. "Ithnayn New Zealandi," he replied, "two New Zealanders." Ms. Chadha was visibly delighted and continues to remind me of my two days of grace long after I'd returned to being an American again.

We learned from Waleed that no guide worth his tip will allow his clients from the U.S. or the U.K. to admit their nationality. This is because safety regulations require that the police provide American and British tourists with armed escorts while in the desert. "Not because they don't like you," Waleed reassured me, "but because they like you very, very much." I had no interest in sharing the solitude of the desert with a truck full of soldiers, so I humbly submitted to this affront to my national dignity.

Waleed, it should be mentioned, was a completely different person now that circumstances no longer compelled him to invent trivia for our amusement. When his guiding responsibilities were limited to taking us to places he knew were beautiful and letting us enjoy them, he relaxed and we appreciated him much more. He became less a guide and more just good company (good company who also did all of the cooking and cleaning and who expected a tip in return, but still, good company).

Pointing out extraordinary scenery was easy in the White Desert, where the elements had almost entirely eroded away a thick bed of chalk, leaving only scattered outcrops which the wind had worn into fantasic shapes. The desert floor is littered with ancient shells and millions upon millions of small iron nodules, left behind after the stone that had held them was reduced to sand.

That there were seashells lying in the sand hundreds of miles from the sea was only one of Waleed's "mysteries of the desert." He had forsaken "or something like this" as his stock phrase and instead described everything as being a "mystery of the desert." "See that palm tree," he would ask, "how does it grow in the desert with no water? Impossible to know! It is a mystery of the desert..."

Camp was a simple affair: a screen to block the wind, a few rugs, a low table and a campfire. It was simple, but very comfortable - other than a time we stayed at a tent camp in Kenya (where the 'tents' had polished wood floors and stone baths), this was as pampered as I've ever been out in the wild.

We shared a chicken cooked over an open fire and served with rice and a vegetable and potato stew. This was the third time we'd eaten this exact meal in two days, but it was without question the best interpretation of the theme. We were pleasantly surprised at its taste because we had seen the same chicken fermenting in its plastic shopping bag all day. I was also concerned that the meat might be dry, because during the cooking process Hamid kept savagely crushing the poor bird onto the grill with a pot lid. Maybe it was a function of the law that all food is good food when camping, maybe it was just another mystery of the desert, but it was delicious and we loved it.

Throughout dinner, we could hear dums and singing, and I was dreading the moment that we would be invited to participate in one of the staged "Bedouin parties" that the tour groups like to put on. Sure enough, shortly after dinner, Waleed marched us towards a camp about a half-kilometer away which was the source of the sound. We arrived to find a half-dozen of the guides (who soon claimed Waleed as one of their number) sitting around a campfire singing to the accompaniment of a single drum.

Maybe one of the blessings of being a good singer is that everyone is so enthralled by the singer's voice that people assume the singer must enjoy using it. The guides in this case had pleasant enough voices and the performance was a lot of fun, but what was even more remarkable was that the guides seemed to enjoy singing even more than the guests enjoyed listening to it (the possible exception among the guests being a few older German tourists, who didn't seem too pleased to find that their camp had been selected as the site for the evening's performance). Waleed in particular was an active participant - at one point overturning a storage bin to use as an additional drum. It was great.

Walking back, Waleed told us not to worry if we get lost because he is a Bedouin man and he knows how to sleep in the desert. Apparently, you dig a hole and bury yourself in the sand, leaving only your head exposed. This will keep you warm, but not perfectly safe, since "maybe a fox will come around and play and maybe sometimes he will make a baby on your face. Do not sleep with mouth open."

We made it back to camp, and disregarding the warnings about frisky foxes, chose to sleep under the stars. I've heard the night sky described as a "dome" of stars, but I've realized that I had no idea what that meant until I was in the desert on a cloudless day, 200 miles away from the nearest artificial light source. We saw stars touching the horizon in every direction. It must have been the first time I've ever seen stars without needing to raise my eyes at all. It was the most magical, mysterious thing we had seen in the desert. It was also the one thing that Waleed was content to show us without comment at all.

The Road to Farafra

Our departure the next morning was later than planned because our new driver (who replaced Mohammed) hadn't returned yet from his previous trip. The drivers and guides work in short cycles - completing one trip, restocking, and heading out on another. Because of the delay, we combined the 'restocking' and the 'heading out' bits, which was actually quite a fun little shopping trip through town. Our last stop was at a butcher, where Waheed offered a man in a blood-soaked apron a few notes, which led to his extracting a chicken by its wings from its coop and disappearing with it just out of view. We never saw the chicken intact again, only freshly plucked and cleaned quarters of it as they sailed through the air from the chopping block to a bath of water near the door. Waleed returned to the truck holding the aftermath: a bloody shopping bag full of raw chicken which he put, unrefrigerated, into the back of the truck.

Our new driver, Hamid, was older, more mature and consequently lacked Mohammed's perverse leer. In fact, his only real obsession seemed to be his mobile phone, into which he was usually talking or watching videos. He did share one thing in common with Mohammed, which was that he took real pleasure in trying to terrify Ms. Chadha with unnecessarily dangerous driving. Whenever he was in the middle of doing something particularly frightening, he would let out a shrill ululation in what was meant to be an imitation of Ms. C's screams who, to her credit, has never made any noise of the sort.

As on the previous day, we broke up the drive with stops at different points of interest along the highway. For example, we spent fifteen minutes examining a moderately interesting ridge of quartz crystals. The wind had really began to blow, so it was difficult to examine the several really large pieces of quartz because of the thousands of small pieces that constantly blew in our eyes. Waleed gave Ms C. a small piece of translucent quartz as a "souvenir of the desert" that she, as a conscientious tourist, returned to the site as soon as his back was turned. You can't convince a Kiwi to despoil the environment for anything.

Shortly after crystal mountain, we turned east off the main highway onto a dirt road that led up a narrow canyon and ultimately to one of the most incredible vistas I've ever seen in my life. I'm sorry to say that I'm simply not good enough a photographer (or writer) to capture the scene, but from our perch in a saddle of sandstone, we saw the desert stretch for miles, broken only by massive pink and white pinnacles and buttes rising from the sea of red sand. It reminded me of the first time I saw Monument Valley on the Utah/Arizona border, only this had a softer, less harsh quality to it.

It also benefited from being totally unexpected, or at least unexpected by me: Waleed and Hamid simultaneously let out an exaggerated "ohhhhh my gaaaaaawd" right as we drove over the summit of the saddle and got our first glimpse of the valley, echoing what they've no doubt heard a hundred times from other customers also confronted with this scene. For Hamid, this would be his first and only complete sentence in English, and he made the most of it.

We stopped for a while to take in the view. Hamid wandered off. Waleed sat by himself and smoked. I sat and talked with Ms. C., reminding her that she would just be getting into the office were she still back in London. Suddenly, I was lying on my back in the sand. Hamid had snuck up behind me and pushed me over. I started to get up and he pushed me over again. I understand that this sort of thing is done in Egypt and that you're supposed to take it with good grace, but I have no idea how. I was reminded - not for the first time on this trip - that I have grown into a grumpy middle-aged man. I've become the kind of person whose dignity is offended by being pushed into the sand. But what do you do? My approach was to just get flustered until Hamid tired of playing with me and moved on.

I've had some time to think it over since then and just want to warn the guides of Egypt that while I know it's all in good fun, if anyone ever tries that again, I'm going to have to break his knees.

Bahariya Oasis

Compared to the epic twelve hour bus ride to Siwa, the four hour drive by private mini-bus to Bahariya Oasis was very manageable. The only possible complaint was that our bus had been equipped with a warning alarm that emitted a loud, obnoxious beep at any speed over 120 kmph, so of course the driver did his best to maintain a constant speed of 123 kmph; fast enough to fill the bus with relentless noise for the duration of the trip, but not fast enough to shorten it by much.

After a quick lunch, we met our guides. Waleed wore a form-fitting, wide-collared shirt tucked into a pair of tight indigo jeans which were elaborately embroidered and embedded with sparkling rhinestones. Except for his moustache and mullet, he could have been Italian. Our driver, Mohammed, with his ratty jeans, t-shirt and flip-flops, had nothing at all in common with the Italians except for a near constant leer, which he usually directed at Ms. Chadha.

We began our tour with a visit to the Bahariya Antiquities and Archaeological Center, a crumbling cinderblock building which had the look and feel of an abandoned hospital. That the place was full of mummies (including those of children who are the worst kind of mummy) didn't improve the creepy atmosphere much.

We were informed that the Golden Mummies of Bahariya had been discovered in exactly the same way as the catacombs of Kom es-Shoqafa; by a donkey falling into a hole. I've heard this sort of "lucky archaeologist/unlucky donkey" story enough times now that I've started to doubt whether all of them could possibly be true. Whether the initial discover was an unfortunate donkey or not, the archaeologists have been quite pleased with the outcome. Subsequent exploration has revealed the largest cache of mummies ever discovered - as many as 10,000 spread over a necropolis covering ten square kilometers.

I started to grow increasingly suspicious of the information Waleed provided about them as it became more and more improbably specific. It didn't help that he had the curious habit of adding "or something like that" to the end of half of his sentences. This made even his accurate information sound completely invented. He directed our attention to a decaying mummy, which he told us was once a doctor, probably a surgeon, and that a nearby mummy was his friend and had probably helped him with the surgeries. This seemed to be more than anyone else in the world knew about these things and we began to suspect that Waleed was just playing a macabre form of house - as if these corpses were no more than life-sized, elaborately decorated dolls.

Our next stop was a visit to the tombs of Zad-Amun ef-Ankh and his son Bannentiu. Both tombs require a ten-meter descent down steep staircases before ducking through low portals into the main halls. The murals in each were painted in vivid yellow and blues that looked as bright as they must have been 2,500 years ago. Neither tomb was nearly so colorful, however, as Waleed's interpretation of the events depicted on them. In one scene showing the falcon-headed god Horus standing near the ibis-headed Thoth, Waleed explained his theory that they were probably the same god: "some people say they are different, but I think maybe they are the same style guy." This was almost exactly the same way he described his view of the differences between Japanese and Chinese tourists, which he shared with us the following day when we met a group of people who I think were most-likely Korean.

One scene depicted Bannentiu (Waleed pronounced this as "Bennington," which I will use also) flanked by rows of baboons and frogs. Waleed told us that this was to show that he is happy in the afterlife, "because baboons live in trees and eat bananas and that is nice. Frogs sing like making music by the water and this is nice too. We see that Bennington is happy to be dead and not go to the fire, or something like this."

By the time we visited the Temple of Alexander, about 3km further down the road. Waleed had given up any pretense of trying to provide useful information. The temple's primary hall was lined with a procession of gods which Waleed recklessly tried to name. He made it through Anubis, Horus and Osiris, but then things begn to get a little foggy: "Isis, Amun Ra, Seti, Meti, Teti, Feti, Beti..." he was just rhyming the same word and still had half the wall yet to get through. The old Bedouin caretaker wasn't having any of it and cut him off. The caretaker than started over from the beginning, announcing every god clearly with a throaty growl which is exactly how I want my voice to develop over the next thirty years.

Whenever we'd return to the landcruiser after one of these visits, we'd find Mohammed relaxing to Arabic music on the radio. He would quickly turn it off as soon as he saw us, but having grown tired of the interruptions, Mohammed asked us if we wouldn't mind listening to something. We didn't mind at all, but Waleed whispered to him in Arabic to please make sure that it was English music, so we sped along the dirt road absolutely blasting a Toni Braxton album.

Soon we came ten-meter cliff which Mohammed pretended to want to drive over. Growing up in Utah, I've been on a lot of jeep trails over the years, but never, ever, anything so steep as this. I thought he was only teasing Ms. Chadha (the desire to tease Ms. C seems to be the only cultural constant in this world) but soon, with "Unbreak My Heart" blaring in the background, he slipped over the edge and brought the landcruiser to about an 80 degree angle to the canyon floor below. Everything loose in the truck was resting on the inside of the windshield before we finally leveled off and drove up the sandy bank of the opposite side. I was worried that Ms. C. wasn't going to take this stunt well, but after she caught her breath following a long bout of manic laughter, she managed to indicate that she had enjoyed it very much.

We ended the tour by driving through a narrow, winding canyon to the top of Jebel Ingleezi (English Mountain). The valley where we parked looked almost lunar - I didn't see a single living plant growing out of the black basalt on the short walk to the top. The view from the summit of the Oasis and the surrounding valley, however, was very good, which led the English to build several stone shelters here during one of the world wars (Waleed wasn't sure which and appeared surprised to learn that there had been as many as two). He told us only that "the English were very scared that the people come to find them and so... English Mountain!" After this explanation, he told us he was very hungry and asked us if we could get back to the landcruiser by ourselves. We told him we could and he set off for something to eat, leaving us to take photos and enjoy the view. Poor Waleed, I got the impression that he'd had a rough day, even though I don't think we could have been the most difficult clients. We didn't trust anything he was telling us, so we almost never asked him to expand on anything. I suppose in some ways, that might be more difficult for a guide.

Back at the bottom of the mountain, a few other groups had arrived and their guides had gathered around our jeep to share a pot of tea. They invited us for a cup from the second pot. The first pot tends to be stronger and more bitter, while the weakness of the second cup is compensated for by piling in the sugar and mint. I prefer the second cup - it reminds me of the sugary mint tea I got hooked on in Morocco.

Back at the hotel, Waleed informed us that he would also be our guide through the White Desert and that he would give us a wake-up call at 9:00 the next morning. We went to bed confident that the next morning we could rely on our guide to safely lead us through one of the world's great deserts while also providing useful and accurate information, or something like that.

The Pyramids of Saqqara and Giza

Ms. Chadha arrived last night, which promises to improve life in hundreds of different ways, most of which are too sappy to share here. One change is that I can now visit all of the major monuments that I'd put off seeing (on Ms. C's instructions) while I awaited her arrival. The most obvious and convenient of these was a trip to the pyramids, so, the following morning, this is exactly what we did.

We wanted see more than just the Giza pyramids, so we decided to hire a guide and a driver for the day. Private, organized trips really aren't much more expensive than trying to arrange everything for yourself and if you're a particularly poor negotiator like me, may even cost less.

Private tours also provide a number of pleasant perks like a hotel pick-up (a convenience which is worth the difference in price alone), a car with air-conditioning, lunch, and a driver who actually knows how to get to the places you've asked to see. What you won't always get is a guide who is able to offer anything like reliable information about the monuments on the day's itinerary.

Our guide, a pleasant, chatty woman named Hana, had undermined her credibility before we even left downtown Cairo. As part of a bizarre, impromptu lecture on Egyptian military history, Hana explained how The country had never, in either ancient or modern history, initiated a war of agression. The only reason her country lost its [entirely defensive] war with Israel in 1948 was because unreliable allies had supplied it with defective tanks, artillery and rifles. Happily, Egypt was able to restore its national honor by defeating the combined armies of France, Great Britain and Israel during the 1956 Suez Crisis. No mention at all of the twin devastation threatened by the United States (economic) and the Soviet Union (nuclear) if the allies didn't withdraw. It was indeed a great victory, but it wasn't a military victory and I'm not sure how much credit Egypt deserves for it.

Luckily, the pyramids are impressive even if your guide believes that Colonel Nasser had them built just to irritate NATO. The Nile pyramids are so old that their true construction dates hardly register. To put their age in context, the first momument we visited, Zoser's step pyramid in Saqqara, was already considered ancient by the Greeks to described it. By the time Herodotus mentioned them some 2,500 years ago, the pyramids were already more than 2,000 years old.

The extraordinary size of the Giza pyramids is as difficult to appreciate as their age. With nothing nearby to compare them against, it's difficult to get a sense of scale - you see only row upon row of limestone blocks. Only when you approach the base of the pyramid do you realize that each block is 4'-5' tall. Of course, once you're near enough to recognize the size of an individual row of blocks, you're too close to see the number of levels or the pyramid's overall height. The Giza pyramids are so massive that it's difficult to find a vantage point from which you can appreciate just how enormous they really are.

We didn't linger too long. The temperature was already over 100 degrees and the touts, while not nearly as bad as I had heard, were still fairly aggressive. So, missing yet another opportunity to sit on an angry, abused camel, we drove on to the Sphinx.

You can't wander around the Sphinx the way I'd imagined. It's surrounded by the bedrock from which it was carved, so you're packed together with hordes of other tourists on a series of viewing platforms to the west of the monument. From the platform, you could see that what remained of the Spinx's face was crawling with pigeons. You can't look imposing with a face full of pigeons.

Quick language note: "sphinx" is pronounced as "sphink-ess" locally, because Arabic abhors both dipthongs and triple consonants. 'Sphinx' is transliterated as 'sphinks' in Arabic, and that 'nks' just won't do, so an extra 'e' is inserted before the final letter. You can hear the same thing with words like "thank-ess" or "rust-ess," the latter of which was printed on an ad for a car wash in Mohandiseen.

On the way back to the hotel, Hana asked if we would like to stop at the Papyrus Museum. We had already turned down a tour of one of the carpet "schools" in Saqqara, so we agreed to quickly stop by whatever "museum" our guide had affiliated herself with. I like this tactic of tarting up your souvenir shop by appending words like "museum" or "school" to the name. I look forward to visiting the "Polytechnical Institute of Spice" and the "National Center for the Advancement of Sheesha Sciences" before this trip is through. We at least knew what we were in for, and the fact that the museum passed out order forms at the door (just like at MOMA!) confirmed our suspicions. The presentation on papyrus manufacturing was interesting enough and besides the look of disappointment shared between our guide and the salesman when we asked to leave, there wasn't much pressure to buy. Not that we were much tempted to buy: the only items on offer were garish King Tuts and Queen Nefertitis which would have looked equally at home airbrushed onto the side of a 1984 Astrovan.

Back at a restaurant near the hotel, as I made my way through a plate of fatah (my new favorite food) I was happy to reflect on the fact that we had now 'done' the pyramids and could check it off our list. This was the first time I had felt anything like this in my two months here. I suppose it's because the pyramids are something you must see, but doing so can really be a bit of a hassle. The perfect metaphor for the whole experience was provided by an eight year old Bedouin girl sitting near the viewing platform exit. Having grown bored of the daily hustle, she was now monitoring the tourist flow and when anyone's ass was big enough to merit it, she would yell "heeeey Shakira!" and give it a good spank. We made it through unmolested, but a fair number of the members of an Alaskan tour group weren't so lucky. I'm sure that they were generally pleased to have made the visit, but something about the process must have struck them as undignified.

Harassment of the Sexual Kind

There is nothing I can say about the harassment women suffer in Egypt beyond what others have already said. I've witnessed first-hand some shocking behavior. Many of the stories can't be told on a family blog (especially now that I know that my very sweet grandmother is a reader) but I will quickly say this: taxi drivers are a filthy bunch.

Men are also sometimes harassed, but I understand that it usually doesn't go beyond being called someone's "mishmish" (apricot). Whether the victim is male or female though, the perp is almost always a man. Egyptian women have a repuation for being more reserved and I think that generally, that's probably pretty accurate. Generally.

My first experience to the contrary took place about a month ago, I was sitting on a park bench reading a book. By "bench" of course I mean "overturned washing machine" and by "park" I mean "the underpass beneath the Tahrir Bridge." I was genuinely reading a book, but more specifically, I was reading the map inside the book because I was hopelessly lost.

So I was sorting my directions out when a pair of girls in hijab walk by and one of them catches my attention by making that hissing noise peculiar to this part of the world. When I look up, she makes what I can only describe as a graphically violent kiss in my direction.

I know that from my description, it sounds like I was probably in a seedy part of town and that these might have been prostitutes or something, but I really don't think this was the case. At home, the simple and reliable formula is that the more home appliances you see rusting in the street, the less desirable the neighborhood. That just doesn't hold true here.

Even at Mugamma, that great symbol of Orwellian order, most office balconies are overflowing with junk. I can't imagine the same thing being allowed to happen at any of the buildings leased by my former employers in New York or London. One of the partners would have come to me and said: "Chadha, we think you are doing fine work, but the committee has been talking. We've noticed that you're storing the engine block of a 1974 Lada in your office window. Now, we don't mind the odd rust-eaten sewing machine or a half-dozen bicycle frames here and there, but the car parts just don't fit the image this firm is trying to project."

Actually, now that I've written that, I realize that the most unbelievable part of the story is that I ever would have had an office with a balcony in New York or London. I also can't imagine ever receiving constructive feedback from a partner.

Anyway, as I was saying, industrial junk in the streets doesn't necessarily tell you anything about the neighborhood. This particular street was perfectly safe and sanitary. I have no idea about the girls, but they looked like respectable, middle-class teens and they didn't slow down to solicit anything or indicate that I should follow them - just kept right on walking without another look.

That my experience wasn't just a consequence of my stunning good looks is supported by my friend's experience. He was in Garden City, a pleasant, embassy-spangled neighborhood near downtown, where he was walking with a female Egyptian friend. Suddenly, a middle-aged woman swooped over, made the same kind of fighting kiss, grabbed his ass and darted away. My friend's Egyptian companion didn't say a word (she was probably thinking to herself 'uh huh, let's see how you like it').

Before this, I was not aware of a lone, sober, middle-aged woman having ever done anything like this anywhere in the history of the world. It's not like this sort of thing is an everyday occurrence here either, but unwelcome groping by both genders still happens more in Egypt than anywhere else I have ever lived. The more minor stuff - catcalls, hissing and blown kisses - those happen all the time. I'm not sure whether to put this in my 'like' or 'dislike' column. I think I'll file it under 'like,' at least until this kind of mentality lowers my relative income or makes it practically impossible for me to become President of the United States.

Hotel Bars and Hotel Booze

I expected that the Hotel Lotus would be a bit past its prime, but I couldn't understand why the stylish art deco building shown on the website looked so different from the place where I had just agreed to spend the next week. When I went back to the website for a closer look, I saw that the hotel in the picture was surrounded by huge American cars with chrome fins. It was the same place, but the photo had been taken more than fifty years ago. Very clever, Hotel Lotus.

From what I've seen in Cairo, the only real difference between a budget hotel and a hostel is the latter has an extra "s." So I was pleased that the Lotus, while no longer anything like the place advertised on its homepage, actually feels like a hotel.

In practical terms this means two things: that my toilet is en suite and that the hotel has a bar. Other than the bartender, who napped quietly at his post, the grandly named 'Polo Bar' was empty for my first visit. I dropped by again the following day and was rewarded with a much livelier scene. I was barely through the door before a friendly Canadian couple bought me a beer and gave me a Winter Olympics update, which unsurprisingly didn't get a lot of coverage here. That they wanted to talk to an American at all told me all I needed to know about the hockey results.

A visit to the Polo Bar has since become my late afternoon habit. I normally have a shot of the local rum mixed generously with Pepsi. In this case, two wrongs do make a right, and I like the drink much more than I'd have thought given how little I like either of its components. I've since realized that they carry Coke too, but I've got it in my head that substituting one of the ingredients will throw off the calculus of the mix and then I'll have to go back to beer. In Egypt, this means the ubiquitous Stella, which shouldn't be confused with the Stella that's sold everywhere else in the world. Egyptian Stella is conceived, brewed, bottled and sold only here and so long as it's freezing cold, is not half bad. At room temperature it's a different animal and is completely intolerable. Nights out will end because the place serving drinks has run out of icy Stella and has started serving only cool Stella.

Speaking of intolerable, let me tell you about Omar Khayam, the most popular (and usually the only) wine option. This stuff is awful and I say this as someone who will never be accused of being a wine snob. I firmly believe that the only reason anyone has ever been able to finish an entire bottle is because the senses, in an act of self preservation, shut down at the first mouthful. All you feel when you drink Omar Khayam is a slight sensation of warmth in your lower back, which you'd think would be more terrifying than it is. It's unbelievably bad, but it's also unnecessarily bad. The Coptic population drinks wine and so do millions upon millions of annual tourists. Why doesn't someone fill this niche? Tunisia manages to produce a few bottles of decent wine and for a much smaller drinking population. Ugh, this stuff is so bad that I want to bring a case home to silence the doubters.

Really, what I'd prefer is a nice whisky, but the few bottles on the Polo Bar's shelf have cracked and peeled labels that have yellowed with age. Somehow, despite being obviously ancient, their contents don't lessen no matter how much people drink. I don't want to slander my hotel, but my math tells me that a bottle of scotch can't still be full after thirty years of pouring two glasses a day from it. My guess is that it isn't Dewar's that's going into the Dewar's bottle every night. Sometimes it's wisest to stick with the simple beer you know, rather than the clever scotch who won't say who he really is.

I'm not sure how this became a discussion on alcohol, but here we are. I've just changed the title of the post to make it look intentional.

Anyway, what I meant to say is that I'm generally pretty pleased with the place. In anticipation of Ms. Chadha's arrival at the end of the week, I'm moving to the Lotus's sister-hotel, the more upscale Windsor. If it's nicer than this place, it ought to be pretty adequate indeed. It will be interesting to judge just how far my standards have fallen by comparing the looks on our faces when they take us to our room.

Coptic Cairo

"Jesus loves you, he loves all of us!" the almost evangelical Coptic cab driver told us. He was speaking to two atheists, a Swiss convert to Islam, and a very high-church Anglican. Seeing westerners though, his natural assumption was that we were all practicing Christians with no significant differences in belief. In Egypt, you are either Christian, Muslim or, rare as it is here, Jewish. There isn't room for anything else: athesism is unimaginable; other religions, unspeakable. The religion we were expected to asume didn't even reduce the cab fare, but in this case, it did at least curb the taxi driver's natural instict to gouge.

Prior to coming to Egypt, my exposure to the Copts had been limited. I knew that they were the original Christians in Egypt and were some of the earliest Christians anywhere in the world, but that was really about it. I recall seeing a letter on display at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, written by no less a personality than the Prophet Muhammad, which strongly suggested that Egypt's Copts should consider converting to Islam. The Copts crossed my radar again when I read that the Egyptian government, in a bizarre reaction to the swine flu pandemic, ordered the massacre of all of the country's pigs. Not unlike Brookyln, pork is "haraam" for much of the population, meaning that only the Christian Copts were affected by the order. As a consequence of the slaughter, garbage that had formerly been collected by the Copts (to feed their pigs) began to pile up in the streets. The people began to complain, and the government recognized its mistake. I've been reading a memoir written by a turn of the century Anglo-Egyptian official who describes the Copts as "consistently paranoid," but you're not paranoid if they actually are out to get you.

The Egyptian government, when not busy literally butchering the Copt's livelihoods, is nervous for them too. The police presence along Sharia Mari Girgis (the main street of Coptic Cairo) is not subtle. Teams of heavily armored police guard both approaches to the neighborhood. On either end, a soldier stands behind a blast shield, ready to pull the cable on an accordian style caltrop. The caltrop is designed to stretch across the width of the road and shred the tires of any wheeled vehicle with its spikes. I've seen these used on C.O.P.S. And can confirm that they are awesome.

Coptic Museum

After I made it past the police (who always make me nervous even though I've never been seriously bothered by a cop in my life) I stopped at the Coptic Museum. The museum is surrounded by peaceful courtyards and is housed in a beautiful building that alone is worth the price of admission. The collection is intelligently and effectively displayed which makes up for the fact that some of the exhibits are not very compelling. I've heard that the Egyptian Antiquities Museum has the opposite problem: an amazing collection which is crudely displayed. I hope not, but we'll find out next week.

The highlight of the collection was definitely the cell frescoes recovered from the Monastery of Apa Apollo. Desert air is great for preserving color - or at least for color not exposed to 360 days-a-year desert sun. The vibrancy of the color could lead you to think that the frescoes were relatively modern. I couldn't believe that they were early 5th century. I'd go to the museum again just to see these. A bit of trivia: the Copts gave Europe the idea of monastic communities. The Franciscans, Dominicans and Benedictines all owe their existence to these early monasteries.

Church of St. George

Even more trivia: The Church of St. George is the only round church in all of Egypt. Beyond that, there's not a great deal to say about it, but beneath the church are warrens of rooms built into the circular Roman tower from which the church takes its shape. In one of the claustrophobic rooms are relics of St. George, including a length of chain you can wrap around yourself if you like - doing so is meant to remind us of the persecutions the saint suffered at the hands of the Romans.

The Hanging Church

The "Hanging Church" is the final major site in Coptic Cairo. It takes its name from the fact that it was built near an enormous chasm over which it literally hangs. This isn't obvious from the approach to the church, so they've cut a hole in the middle of one of the chapel floors to prove just how high you really are. While it's true that you're very high, the cutaway also reveals that the only thing keeping you alive are ancient wooden beams that barely look like they would have been up to the job when they were new, which was more than 1,000 years ago. This must be what faith is.

One of my favorite non-architectural details of the Hanging Church are the beeswax votive candles, which crackle and sputter like they're doing their very best to make all of your prayers come true. I also liked the giftshop where you can buy postcards featuring various Coptic popes, who all look like Rasputin might have if he put less energy into grooming and more into wearing outrageous costumes. The only picture I could find online doesn't really show what I'm talking about, but it gives a sense. Hipsters: behold a true beard.

The Coptic display of faith appears to be much more tactile than that with which I'm familiar. They wrap themselves in chains and crawl into dark, cramped crypts. The paintings of the saints are meant to be touched. In the crypt of the Church of St. Sergius, built where the Holy Family are believed to have stayed, people actually bathe in the crypt's font. I like it! I've always said that if I ever came down with an incurable case of religion, I hope I'm lucky enough to fall into something with a little drama. There are limits, however. Not too far from the center of Coptic Cairo is a column with a groove that has literally been licked into it. The idea is that in the hope of curing whatever disease, pilgrims (I didn't see any myself) come to lick that particular spot on the column, and they continue to lick until their tongues bleed because that's how you know it's working. This may actually be a Sufi ritual rather than a Christian one, but to be honest, from an outsider's perspective, all religions blend together at their mystical fringes.

The Siwan Oracle and Cleopatra's Bath

The next morning, I wanted to take in some of the sites outside of town, most of which were clustered around the village of Aghurmi, five kilometers to the east of Siwa. For someone more used to the bitter cold of Brooklyn, it was way too hot to walk; and unlike the previous day, I didn't have the luxury of waiting until the late afternoon, as I had to catch the 8:00 bus back to Cairo. I would have to find some other means of transportation.

There are no traditional taxis in Siwa, or rather, there are only traditional taxis in Siwa: four-seater carts pulled by donkeys. If I had both money and a heart, I would buy every donkey in Egypt and set them all free - I would be like Moses to these poor creatures. While I couldn't afford to lead an exodus, I could at least resolve not to sit behind one of the brutalized beasts. I rented a bicycle for the day instead: a fixed-pedal, Chinese-made "victory" brand model that would have felt right at home in Williamsburg. For $2, it was a solid little ride.

The modern village of Aghurmi lies at the foot of a 35-foot high acropolis which was the location of one of the oasis' earliest fortified settlements. Inside the acropolis walls is the Temple of Amun, the home of the powerful Siwan Oracle. The oracle figures prominently in the region's ancient history. Herodotus relates the story of the Persian King Cambyses II, who in 525 B.C. sent an army of 50,000 men to capture Siwa and destroy the temple after the oracle refused to legitimize his rule of Egypt. The soldiers marched into the desert and were seen again - though a team of Italian archaeologists believe that a recently discovered cache of bones may be the King's army.

Alexander the Great, the most famous of the oracle's many visitors, traveled here in 331 BC hoping for confirmation of his divinity as a son of Amun, whom the Greeks equated with Zeus. I would have thought that this qualified as a "if you have to ask..." situation, but he evidently thought the detour was worthwhile. While Alexander never divulged exactly what he was told, we can assume that it was good news. Soon after, Alexander's mints began producing coins depicting him with ram's horns, the symbol of Amun.

Like the ruins of Troy in western Turkey, the temple is a lot more interesting for its associations than it is for its remains, which have suffered badly over the last 2500 years and have not been helped over the last ten by amateurish preservation work. Still, I liked the idea of walking where we know Alexander the Great once walked. I bought my ticket and climbed the same stairs that he and so many others had once ascended. From the ticket office behind me, I could hear the attendant and his buddies snickering while they watched pornography in their booth. Reverence for the oracle does not appear to be what it once was.

From Aghurmi, I rode to another Temple of Amun. Nothing remains except a loan section of wall and a few large stone blocks which have been defaced by grafitti. Fortunately, the wall is out of reach, because it remains in good condition. I could still just make out the original blue paint of the bas relief.

I still hadn't swam at any of the oasis' springs, and if it was going to happen, it was going to happen at the nearby called "Cleopatra's Pool," only a short ride from Amun's Temple. The spring was already choked with children (which I loathe), and I used them as an excuse to stay out of the water. I'll have to save the oasis swimming for Bahariyya.

Instead, I had a tea and chatted with the cafe owner whose name was Islam. He was appalled that I was studying FusHa and thought it was a colossal waste of time when I could be focusing on a language people actually spoke, like Ameyya. He had learned English by watching movies, listening to music, and chatting with English speakers like me. He believed that only by doing the same would I ever learn Arabic. His English was very good, and I also heard him speak German and Italian while I was there, so I was inclined to believe him.

He did admit that he never learned anything from one group of people: the Australians. He challenged me to find anyone in all of Egypt ("just one!") who could understand them. "We just nod and we smile when they talk at us," he says, "it is not English!" I sympathized with this point of view and asked him for his thoughts on the New Zealand accent. He'd never heard of the place. "They say 'iggs' when they mean 'eggs!'" I volunteered. Islam was astonished at such a people.

I rode my bike back into town, but still had hours before the bus left and nothing to do. Siwa was still deep in its Siesta and I couldn't even loiter in a cafe, so I sat in the shade of a wall and read my book. I was joined by a young man who was definitely after money and would probably force me to go somewhere else. Still, maybe this was the kind of chance to practice my Ameyya that Islam was talking about. I learned that his name was Ahmed and that he spoke almost no English. He started to ask me a series of bizarre questions:

"How much is half-a-kilo of bananas in America?"

"How big is your family?"

"What is your profession?"

I couldn't believe how helpful this was! I would never again tell a professor that I would never use a phrase like "Tomatoes cost more in Siwa than in Cairo, but olive oil costs less here in Siwa." We were covering familiar vocabulary in a useful way. I barely noticed when the conversation took a more sinister turn:

"Does a lawyer make lots of money? How much money do you make?

"How much does your mobile phone cost?"

"Please tell me what you have in your bag."

"How much money do you have with you now? Can I have it? I want you to give me your money now."

Lesson over. I had already been robbed enough by Egyptian language instructors in Cairo, I wasn't going to let it happen to me in Siwa too. I relocated to the bus station where I struck up a conversation with a Hungarian pensioner. He had spent most of his life in Germany, but now traveled nine months out of the year. He summed up his experience in Egypt like this: "I was here thirty-five years ago, and since then nothing has changed. It is still all shit!" He then catalogued Egypt's ills, which were many and grave. At the end, he did say that Easter Island is a very pleasant place. "Not as bad as you might think!"

I had found a bus that terminated in Cairo, so I could relax and watch the film without stressing about catching a connection in Alex. It was an American film called "Hard Justice." It was terrible. At the first break, the Hungarian pensioner asks "was that the Tarantino? It was very bad. Much worse than people say!" I was starting to like this guy.

The resthouse, called "Bir Nous" ("Halfway well"), was really in the middle of nowhere. The flat, featureless earth spread to the horizon in every direction. I hadn't seen stars like this in years. I was moved to buy a bag of Cheetos and some guava juice. While I ate, a cute little dog that barely looked rabid started begging me for food, so I gave him a Cheeto. He walked around it, smelled it, but finally gave up and walked away. I couldn't believe it, even a starving Egyptian dog in the middle of the desert wouldn't eat a Cheeto! This might do more to change my diet than all the good advice I've ever received.

Walking to Fantasy Island

I woke up late in the afternoon with a plan to walk to Fatnis Gezeera, which translates as "Fantasy Island." This was an ambitious name for what in reality is a short peninsula poking into a shrinking brine lake. The walk isn't any more than 6km and is well marked - at least if you can read Arabic. Learning the Arabic alphabet before traveling to Egypt isn't a bad idea, actually. It's not so difficult and is very handy in situations just like this. Of course, knowledge is its own reward: I was tickled with myself when I discovered that I could read the Arabic script for "Fanta" on a bottle of orange soda. I had to show Ms. Chadha, even though she didn't need a label to recognize a Fanta and even if she did, the English word was clearly written on the opposite side. You take baby steps when learning Arabic.

In town, the late-afternoon sun washed out what little color could be seen under the thick yellow dust that coated absolutely everything. I'd hoped for clearer skies in Siwa, but there was just enough of a breeze to kick up a haze, though nothing like what I have grown used to in Cairo. As I walked further from the town, I was startled to see how green the oasis really was - it was especially brilliant closer to the lake (called Birket Siwa) where the water kept the dust down.

At the isthmus leading to Fatnis Gezeera, water bubbles out of a spring fifteen meters deep and collects in a tiled pool before being distributed via a handful of small irrigation canals to the rest of the island. This is the first of the beautiful, refreshing oasis baths in which I didn't swim. Even if you're like me and you skip the swimming (and spend the next week trying to figure out why), the combination of water and shade makes this an ideal place to stop and rest for a while. Some clever entrepreneur had recognized this and was boiling a kettle of mint tea over a small fire of palm leaves.

I was looking for a lazy way to finish out the afternoon and the island didn't disappoint. The breeze had died over Birket Siwa leaving the water's surface so completely still that it flawlessly mirrored the mesas on the far end of the lake. I once spent three days in Essaouira learning to recognize the best places to watch sunsets and the bank of the oasis was showing all the signs. I planted myself in one of the better chairs, ordered the first of many sugary mint teas, and pulled out a book. It was good that I had claimed a seat, because over the next hour, the island began to fill with fellow sunset enthusiasts. I can respect a culture that takes time off for these things.

The haze over the Great Sand Sea blotted out the sun even before it had set over the horizon. It was getting dark quickly and the goddamn mosquitoes don't wait long. I walked back beside fences made of palm fronds which separated individual orchards from the road. Behind them I could hear children laughing and playing, but more than that, I could hear a lot of singing. Sound carries a long way in the dry desert air, and it was eery how many people I could hear but how few I could see. As it grew darker, it became easy to imagine myself in some kind of "Children of the Palms" scenario. I don't know if it was this or my innate paranoia that made me refuse every offer of a lift on the way back into town. One boy on a bike stopped, looked at me with some concern, and asked me if I needed a ride. I said that I didn't and he kept on his way. Thirty minutes later, he passed me from the other direction and again asked if I needed a ride. When I finally convinced him that I didn't, he shook his head and wished me a good evening and a safe trip. Looking back, I realize that it may actually have been a gesture born out of a real desire to be helpful. It was nice to be out of Cairo.

Siwa after sunset has nothing in common with Siwa in the afternoon. The market souq had come to life such that you probably couldn't hail a donkey-taxi unless you knew someone. The cafes were completely full with Siwan men and their teas, coffees and sheeshas. You might see people smoking sheeshas in other parts of North Africa, but in Egypt, they live with them. All of the tourists and expats congregate at a place called at Abdou's. I went there too, eventually, but the first night I went to a much quieter place just off the main square called Alexander. I don't think I made the wrong choice.

When I eat alone at a restaurant, I normally like to order a few drinks. This is simply because drinking makes everything better. Other than a few spa hotels outside of town, Siwa is dry, so I was going to have to forego alcohol for a sweet-lemonade sugar rush. This wasn't as disappointing as it might have been, because the juice in Egypt is too good for words (even though I foresee a post where I try to describe it anyway). For dinner, I ordered the shish tawooq, which is a chicken, tomato, onion, and lemon kebab marinated in yogurt and spices. At Alexander, they served it with warm bread, hummus, a chickpea and tomato salad, and some sort of spicy yogurt-based sauce. It was fantastic. I enjoyed it in the kind of way that usually means that karma will force intestinal humiliation on me to put things back on an even keel.

I've always imagined myself to be a visual person, but I'm starting to think I travel as much for the food as the sights. If only there were some way to share the tastes.

Arrival in Siwa

On the way down from the acropolis, I met a Siwan woman wearing her traditional costume. Before I could practice my Siwan "Hello! Good Morning!" with her, she lowered her head, ducked against a wall and didn't move again until I had moved further down the path. I guess I was terrifying. I'd have loved to take a picture, but besides whatever psychological damage I surely would have caused, I understand that it's taboo to photograph the Siwans. The men might grant a request, but you shouldn't even ask the women.

It's a shame, because the traditional costumes are incredible: embroidered shawls, brilliantly patterned veils and scarfs, elaborate silver jewelry. It's very cool, so long as you can put out of your head the fact that the purpose of some of these articles, however beautiful, is to remove the wearer from public life. Like Christmas lights strung over barbed wire, it's a nasty barrier no matter how you do to beautify it. That's not an entirely fair metaphor, but the lack of women in the oasis is one of the first things you notice. Actually, the absence of women recurs in other contexts here as well: the oasis is a place that has historically been tolerant of male homosexual relationships, allegedly sanctioning such marriages through the early 1940s. Increased exposure to "mainland" Egypt has driven this aspect of the culture underground, if not ended it completely. My guidebook informs me that this is another topic I shouldn't raise.

I tried to find some photos of the villagers on the web (taken by travelers less scrupulous than me) but the taboo appears to be pretty effective. The only shots I could find were of tourists trying on Siwan costumes and they tended to look like jackasses. While in the oasis, I did find a man who carried a selection of literature related to Siwan culture, including some with photocopied pictures. My favorite was an English-language pamphlet that had the unintentionally provocative title "To Go Under Her Gowns" and the undeniably perverse subtitle of "To Get Inside a Woman of Siwa." The French version didn't suggest anything nearly so racy, so I think maybe something was gained in translation. I didn't buy it because I would have embarrassed myself with all my snickering at the register, just like when I bought a biography of WWI Supreme Allied Commander Ferdinand Foch only because it was titled "Foch the Man."

There were plenty of hotels in Siwa, and if they weren't full when I arrived, they wouldn't be before the evening bus arrived, so I had time for a lazy breakfast. I dropped by the "East-West Restaurant" located just off the market square. The name alludes to the clan violence that has plagued Siwan society since the Middle Ages, when a group of Berber and Bedouin families (the "Easterners" or "The Thirty") migrated to the oasis and became neighbors of the original Berbers (the "Westerners" or "The Forty Ancestors"). I didn't let talk of factional violence put me off my breakfast though. The East West Restaurant makes an excellent omelette, which, together with fresh squeezed orange juice and a generous-sized Turkish coffee, costs less than $4.00.

While I ate, I conducted some amateur forensic genomics prompted by the number of cases of albinism I had seen in my first three hours in town. By my math, "Thirty" Easterners plus the Westerners' "Forty Ancestors" equals seventy founding Siwans. That's a pretty tight genetic bottleneck for the present population of 25,000 to squeeze through and it doesn't look like they succeeded without consequences. Imagine having Albinism in the Sahara Desert! It didn't occur to me until after I'd left the oasis that maybe this was the reason why the only sunblock available at the local pharmacy was SPF 95.

The Hotel Yousef is the cheapest place in town, but is is also the best located if you don't mind the noise from the market square. I took a bed, or rather, I took three because Yousef only had a triple room available. To get any kind of room for less than I'd pay for a burrito in Brooklyn is still a wonder, so I wasn't going to complain. Have I mentioned that Egypt is very affordable? I think I have. I'll probably keep mentioning it. I've never been so obsessed with money as I am now that I feel like I have so much of it.

It was early afternoon at this point and the heat was really starting to sap my energy. They take proper siestas in Siwa, and most shops had already closed their doors for the afternoon. I even had a hard time finding someone to sell me a bottle of water and had to buy one from a cafe that couldn't close because a bright-red Englishman had fallen asleep in the sun and the staff couldn't figure out what to do with him. By this point, the effects of twelve hours on a bus were starting to take their toll, so putting off any further exploring, I headed back to the hotel, collapsed on the nearest of my beds, and slept soundly through the hottest part of the day.