Splashing about on the Nile

My trusty friend Mustafa has taken me under his wing rather. He has been whizzing me around on his presumably Egyptian-made Kewesaki (sic) which I feel reasonably safe on now. He is proud to show off his “country” by which he means the plots of land and buildings which are owned and lived in by his extended family, the Omar Alis. And there are a lot of them, with plenty of inter marriage. He took me to his home which was a brick-built house with dirt floors, the main room in which had daybeds which slept three. They had an outside space with chickens and a cow and a vine-covered sitting area. He laughed when I asked if they made wine with them.

He also took me, by way of an illicit booze shop where I bought a bottle or Red Label for £10, to his cousin’s house  (“nice to meet me”, he said, as we shook hands) where we sat on the roof drinking whiskey and coke and looked over at the illuminated mountains of the Valley of the Kings. It is very green and lush with banana trees, sugar cane and other crops. As well as a bit of flooding from the Nile, they have wells with electric machines to bring up the water which then fills irrigates the land. His cousin showed me little artefacts which he said he had found around the tombs in the mountains – mini pharaohs and the like – which he said were original and, as such, several thousand years old. Since so many of the tombs were raided, a lot of the contents must have found their way into local people’s hands, so they may have been genuine, but I couldn’t judge.

Although materially their life is fairly basic – a hole-in-the-ground toilet, mud floors – they had had electricity for some years. His father had mysteriously bought a television back from Saudi Arabia 5 years before they even had electricity. When I explained that my mother had as a child tried to look behind the set to see where the people were coming from, he erupted into hysterics as he had done the very same thing, although far more recently.

So seriously has tourism been affected that there are literally hundreds of boats – from massive cruise ships to little feluccas and motor boats – sitting idle here in Luxor. When I went to the shore to take a boat to the East Bank, dozens of men were pulling at my hands and promising me the best price. They are so desperate; it is just miserable. The biggest sector of their economy has been decimated since January and the people are suffering. Paradoxically, for this reason, it seems to me the best time to come to Egypt and see the country without all the tourists. I have promised various people here to spread the word: come to Egypt!

Since it is hot here – 37C as I sit in the shade and write this – it is as well to get up early before it gets oppressive. One morning I hopped into a hot air balloon at sunrise and drifted – alarmingly quickly – into the sky which gave a spectacular view of the valleys, mountains, desert and the lush verdant land of the Nile. It is a very touristy thing to do, but none the worse for that. Landing the thing is a bit of an art, it seems, and we came down to a thump in some poor farmer’s wheat field. He looked mightily displeased, and had a scythe in his hand to complete the effect, but I was told he would be compensated for any loss. Even so, I think the shepherds and farm workers must have thought it was a bit of a liberty for these foreigners to fly over their land, then crash down into it and smother their crops with a slowly deflating balloon. It gave them something to talk about at least.

This constant early rising had made me unenthusiastic about a late night belly dancing bar, but I went for the craic (no pun intended and, besides, she was fairly well covered). The place, in Aswan, was full of men in Islamic dress drinking beer and smoking. Occasionally one of them would go up on stage and flutter some pound notes over the dancer and a little man would run up after and collect them all. Although it wasn’t my cup of tea – I can’t stand that wailing music they have in this part of the world – it was a fascinating glimpse into what local men do when they are not being watched by their wives or society in general. It is such a male-dominated place that I am not sure I have even had the chance to speak to an Egyptian woman the whole time I have been here. I was laughed at when I asked if women were allowed in this bar, although Mustafa thought Western women might be. The dancer herself was the only exception, but she was Christian. The men seemed to be breaking quite a lot of the rules of the Koran by being here. I wonder what on earth their wives thought they were up to. I don’t suppose they would ever question their husbands, but this religious contradiction and hypocrisy can’t go on forever. I hope the revolution brings some relief to this aspect of Arab society, but I won’t hold my breath.

You see men everywhere here: they sit around drinking tea (my hotel has to buy 80 kilos of sugar a month to provide tea for the tourist police whom they have by law to feed), crouching in the shade on the pavement, hanging around generally not doing much. Some of them are unemployed, I suppose, but a lot of them just spend their days whiling away time playing backgammon and smoking away. Women are far more scarce. You do see them on the back of donkeys or motorbikes, or shopping perhaps, but I would say over 90% of Egyptians must be male, judging from what one sees on the street. It seems to be that in many Arab countries (or at least in the more conservative parts of it), it is a misfortune to be born a woman, since your life is more or less mapped out at birth and you are unlikely to see much outside the home. The men, however friendly they are, don’t seem to get this quite. Their attitude to women is roughly what an Englishman’s would have been in the Victorian times, or earlier. Anyway, since I can’t do much about it, I might as well enjoy my relatively exalted place in society until I come back to civilisation.

I am leaving the most beautiful hotel in the world – the Al Moudira, where for 2 days I was the only guest at a place with a staff of 65, so you can imagine how good the service was – and heading to Israel, by way of Cairo. People here are puzzled and slightly offended when I say I am going to Israel, but they don’t make too much fuss of it. I have said goodbye to Mustafa who is now busy studying for his German exam so he can get a visa to live with his wife in Germany. As he put it to me, “She love me and I love she.”

I will write something from Israel and really must put down some word on Jordan, which I have missed out, especially since Petra is the most incredible place I have ever seen.

Back to Egypt

13.05.2011

While I liked Lebanon, I decided not to explore further but to make my way back to Egypt instead; I had only seen Cairo and Giza and had missed out Upper Egypt altogether. (Although it is the south of the country, it is called 'upper' because it is nearer the source of the Nile).

An early flight from Beirut got me to Cairo at 10 am, then the usual hazardous taxi ride got me to Ramses station from where the train south leaves. The station is under renovation and is utterly devoid of the usual signs and notice boards with information on times, platforms, destinations and so on. Each person I asked told me a different platform (either 8 or 3 or 11). In the end I met an enthusiastic chap, Mustafa, who was going to Luxor himself and knew where the train departed from. I had vaguely imagined hoards of tourists all going to the same place, but as it was, I was the only westerner on the train which must have had several hundred passengers on it. Although you can fly to Luxor, I wanted to experience the travel and see the country, so for a mere 10 quid, I had a seat in first class from which, through the grimy window, I had 700km of Nile to look at.

First class is not a luxury option, and the toilets were indescribable, so I won't even try. The entire stretch of the land you see is either built on, with those semi-finished buildings people live in here, or else it is cultivated. Some enormous percentage of Egyptians (90%?) live along the Nile, as the rest of the country is desert. They grow wheat (although not enough as Egypt is the biggest importer of wheat in the world - they eat a lot of bread here), grapes, vegetables and all sorts of things I didn't recognise. The land is incredibly fertile for several hundred metres either side of the Nile and they make use of every inch of it. Most of the farming is done without machinery, but with plenty of donkeys, camels and people to do the work.

Nine hours is a long time to spend on a train, even with a Kindle to occupy me. Mustafa, who travelled in second class, came to check up on me every so often and since I didn't have any low denomination notes (and they look at you as if you are mad if you try and buy a sandwich with a tenner), even bought me food and water. People here really are generally friendly and want to show off their country to you. When we finally arrived in Luxor about 10 at night, he took me on a boat across the sea (the locals called the Nile the sea) and walked me to my hotel. He has since taken me under his wing and today he showed me around.

I was a little reluctant to get on the back of his motorbike, and judging by all the other motorbike riders I could see, there may well not even be a word for "helmet" in Arabic. He attempted to put me at ease by pointing out that since Mubarak had gone, the police had more or less dissappeared and so wouldn't even check whether he had a license. As it was, he drove very well and I wasn't worried at all after a few minutes. He seemed to know everyone in town and took me to all sorts of places a tourist wouldn't normally go. I visited his family who had a simple but pleasant house surrounded by their banana plantation.They also had date palms, sugar cane, mango trees and a "honey space", or beehive. They had a lot of land which his brothers manage and seemed to live a relatively comfortable life. In a courtyard of his house were a couple of cows, some chickens and geese, and a goat or two. The banana trees grow incredibly quickly, so I was told, and they crop twice a year, in May and November. 

Mustafa is very representative of his generation in that he dresses in jeans and t shirt (unlike the rest of his family who wear more traditional Islamic garb), is studying German so he can get a visa to see his German wife, and drinks alcohol, although he hid the beer we were drinking from his brother "out of respect". He is optimistic about Egypt's future now Mubarak has gone and told me about me about some of the changes that had already taken place since 25th January. The police have all but gone - since they were direct representations of the Mubarak regime - meaning there are fewer checkpoints than before and he can drive down roads people were not allowed to before. Land is no longer given away below market rates to Mubarak's family and friends which created the corrupt elite and so enraged the Tahrir Square protesters just 4 months ago. The sad thing is that tourism has sunk since the revolution and, since that is the largest industry in Egypt, that must be taking its toll on people here. On the plus side, I get to see some of the most amazing sites in the world without hoards of tourists ruining the view. (I'm a traveller, of course, rather than a tourist. There's a world of difference...)

Tomorrow I am going up in a hot air balloon to sea the Valley of the Kings from the sky as the sun rises over Egypt. It's tough, but someone has to do it.

Hadchit, Lebanon

Today I drank beer with terrorists. Kind of.

(I have failed to blog about Petra and other places, but will do soon, I hope. I just wanted to document today while it was fresh in my mind).

In am in Bcharre in the Lebanese mountains. It is a pleasant taxi ride from Byblos on the coast with its 28C sunny mediterranean feel. I am now just below the snow line and in spite of the sunny weather, some mountain roads are still blocked. I am checked into the Palace Hotel, which, inevitably, is anything but. Still, the people are friendly, as they have been generally in Lebanon.

From my hotel I overlook a beautiful valley which I decided to explore today. The chap who runs the hotel drew me a little map of where to go: down some steps, past a church, and into the valley. All seemed fairly simple and of course I could see my destination all the time. After the concrete steps down from the village to the churches and cemetries had ended, there were just olive trees and rocks. They didn't look insurmountable, so I persevered down the mountain. There was a path, of sorts, perhaps frequented more by goats than people, but I followed it nevertheless until I reached a precipitous cliff. Try as I might to find a different course, I could not. Instead of risking my life by continuing, I decided to give it up and retrace my steps. This I did back to the village where I came across a very pleasant French-speaking woman. (Generally in Lebanon I have been speaking English as no one in Beirut spoke French - in spite of all the French signage - but for some reason this lady spoke French.) She told me a different way down the mountain past her chickens and goats and olive trees and down to the valley. Again, I tried. I went a bloody long way with the scratches and bites to prove it, but in the end again I met a cliff which, had I tried to negotiate it, would have been the end of me. So I returned to the village of Hadchit. (It's pronounced "Hadshit" and, as its name might imply, has had its fair share of crap and is now fairly empty.)

I was desperate for a cold beer but no cafes or bars were in sight. After a climb, I came across a bunch of men drinking beer. They were sitting opposite a shop whose beer they were consuming and, as I later discovered, not paying for. They beckoned me over and offered me a cold beer. Talking to these drinkers (they had been at it all morning and had the collection of bottles to show for it), it turns out that they were "protection" for some sort of Christian military leader. They didn't have guns on them, but had access to them, so they said. Tomorrow, they were going to go to Beirut to protect their leader and would, they told me, be armed. Anyway, they were fascinating company. My third beer with them was, as I announced, "my last, thank you", but over the following 6 or 7 bottles I learned a bit about what they did.

Lebanon is 50% Christian and 50% Muslim, or thereabouts. (Their constitution even reserves certain positions, such as Prime Minister and Speaker of their parliament, for people of one religion or another.) These chaps, my new friends, were a sort of Christian militia who had been fighting Hezbollah but were now at peace. They were still employed, if that is the right word, though, as "warriors" in case of any incursion from Islamists. They were ready for a fight, they told me, but would not initiate anything. They had killed many people in Beirut some decade and a half ago during the last fighting. So they spent their time protecting their (Christian) leader when he travelled around, as he was going to do tomorrow.

They had, by all accounts, fairly chequered pasts. Some of them had spent time in Australia, apparently smuggling drugs. I say 'apparently' because their English was unclear at times. (They also had a few words of Russian since they sometimes took the time to "fuck Russian women", the poor prostitutes who were trafficked from Russia to Beirut). They had certainly been deported, though, as they crossed their wrists to show they had been arrested and sent home from Oz.

This part of Lebanon has been Christian for as long as anywhere has been Christian and they were very jealous of their position here in the mountains. They didn't seem particularly religious; their religion was more an identity, like being a Rangers or Celtic fan. Since I was drinking with trained killers, I thought it sensible for them to think that I was both straight and Christian and that Lebanese girls were the best in the world. They were puzzled as to why I wasn't married at the age of 33 and offered to procure me a girl, but I declined the generous offer.

I decided after a couple of hours that I should leave. I offered to pay for the beer, but perhaps since they hadn't paid for it themselves, they refused any payment. (I surmise that the shop was giving them free beer since they were "protecting" the area). One of the guys offered me a lift back to Bcharre where I was staying. I've no idea how how much he had drunk, but I don't think a drunk driver in Lebanon is any more dangerous than a sober one. We got into his 4X4 but after a few metres stopped in order to get into a different car. He told me his friends in the back couldn't smoke in this car as it was his sister's so he would have to exchange it for his dad's. For the first time I was a little worried for my personal safety since this appeared to be a little out of the ordinary, but in fact it was totally honest and he drove me back to my hotel where I took a much-needed bath and slept off an afternoon's drinking.

So were these men terrorists? Well, they were at present essentially men of peace, but as militiamen they were as close to freedom fighters as I am ever likely to meet. One of them even wanted to me my facebook friend. Much as I enjoyed the beer and conversation, I think I might decline the offer.

And so to bed. Tomorrow I intend to take a bus to Beirut and from there to Baalbek, a Roman site. Wish me luck.

Jerash, Jordan

Dodgy internet access and being very busy has prevented me for a while from writing about what I have been up to. I write this from the shore of the Dead Sea in the blistering heat, with Israel and Palestine just 5 km across the water. But I had better start from where I left off last week.

Despite my original intention of travelling by means of land only – to try and experience travel in a more natural way, see the changing landscapes and cultures and so on, rather then get on a plane and magically appear in a different place – I nevertheless flew from Cairo to Amman. It would have meant 24 hours of buses and boats and I needed to meet my friend Nicola who was arriving on the Sunday evening, so I broke my own rule and, I suspect, it won’t be the last time.

Amman is an unprepossessing place, as far as we could tell. It’s not much more than a hundred years old, built on 19 hills and rather hard to navigate or find the heart of. We got a taxi first thing the next day to Jerash, about 45 km away. It might seem rather lush to take taxis everywhere, as we have over the last week or so, but actually they are cheap and efficient. I think we paid 10 or 20 pounds for the ride. Jerash is the most extraordinary set of Roman ruins I have ever seen and they reckon only 10% of the original town has so far been excavated. It grew to prominence around the time of Alexander the Great around 300BC when it had a population of 15,000. Apart from damage caused by an earthquake in the 7^th or 8^th century – and the inevitable ravages of time – you can still walk the paved streets, see where the shops were along the road and visit the public buildings of the town. The oval-shaped plaza, with its magnificent columns – almost all still in tact – the Roman arches, the bath houses – it is remarkably well-preserved and it requires little imagination to envisage life in the heyday of the town. They were the most skilful architects: these enormous columns and buildings of all types were put together without the use of cement – just a very judicious cutting of stone to fit exactly – and are still here over 2000 years later.

The day we were there was “girls’ day”. It wasn’t reserved for girls only, but was one of the days of the week when girls’ schools had day trips there (the boys went another day, apparently). The hundreds, possibly thousands, of head-scarved teenagers walked around in groups singing, banging drums and generally making their presence heard. Western people might imagine middle eastern women in headscarves to be of a modest and conservative disposition – submissive, even – but these confident young women personalised their uniforms in imaginative and colourful ways, marched around the place confidently and loudly, and defied any preconceptions we might have had. The tour guides call them the “green army” and with good reason.

They would often run up to us – or Nicola, more often – and say “Hallo, what is your name?” before giggling helplessly. (I’m not sure where the “hallo” comes from, but I wonder if they are all learning English from a 1930s textbook.) Many of them wanted photos with us – or, let’s face it, with Nicola – and were very excited by the little conversation they could manage. Nicky was almost mobbed by these girly gangs several times. After abut the tenth, I pointed out to the green army that she wasn’t “a bloody film star, you know” and was told by one of the girls, “Yeah but she could be”. I had been put firmly in my place and didn’t mind at all.

One lovely thing about Jerash – and Jordan in generally, actually – is all the goats. These bearded, wanton, ruminant quadrupeds (I think this is how the OED defines them, at least) are to be found clambering over the ruins and generally enjoying themselves amid this Roman splendour. As they were led by a Bedouin shepherd with a staff through this ancient city, it seemed to me that this was a scene which had changed little over hundreds of years which was a pleasingly comforting thought.

.

I feel I haven’t done justice to Jerash here. When we left, I thought it was one of the finest places I had ever seen (and I still do). Perhaps it is because some of what we saw later was yet more incredible.