When i was 16, I worked briefly at the Zuma Beach snack bar, hitchhiking to and from my home near where Sunset Blvd meets the sea,16 miles to the south. One bright Sunday afternoon after work I accepted a ride home with three young men. To my infinite horror, they decided a few miles shy of Paradise Cover that it would be fun, even though there was considerable traffic on Pacific Coast Highway, to see if they could make their 56 Ford go 100 miles an hour. The driver thought nothing of pulling onto the northbound side of the road to overtake those of his fellow motorists who were observing the 45mph speed limits. As the speedometer inched past 90 miles per hour, I somehow regained my power of speech and asked to be let out of the car. I had never experienced comparable terror.
And never experienced it again until two weeks ago, when Dame Zelda and six of our fellow British holidaymakers hurtled toward Luxor in a Toyota people carrier. On a two-way highway filled with motorcyclists (not a few of whom seemed to have both their entire families as passengers, with no helmet in sight) and donkey-drawn carts, our driver seemed intent on ramming the vehicle in front of us at the highest speed possible, only to swing either left or — very much more terrifyingly — right (cart passengers, beware!) at the last millisecond with maybe a millimeter’s clearance.
While making a quick succession of life-or-death decisions of this kind, he was enjoying a spirited conversation with someone on his mobile phone, held to his ear with his left hand.
You or I might have perceived the road as having had two lanes, one in each direction. At moments, though, it seemed to have five, as many as four northbound, one south. One second later, it would be reconfigured to four southbound and one northbound. It was a wonder to behold, and a terror beyond imagining. I seriously thought I might not survive the drive, and tried to find consolation that my death would probably be very fast.
On reflection, Egyptian drivers might be among the best in the world. They’re like jazz musicians, forever responding to each other’s impulses, making everything up as they go. If you were God, and observing from On High, you might imagine that the endless near-misses are painstakingly choreographed
A week later, we observed that the identical rules, or complete absence thereof, were in play in Congested, dusty, deafening, chaotic, dusty and dusty Cairo, which, with its 10 million inhabitants and 120 million cars, makes Tijuana look like Paris. The Pyramids being a couple of blocks up a hill from a busy, very ugly commercial street makes visiting them feel rather less momentous — that and the mounds of camel dung you’re forever just failing to step into, and armies of shrill schoolchildren.
48 hours before we visited the Pyramids, on the outskirts of Cairo, where a vengeful cold wind kept my contact lenses full of dust particles that felt like boulders, the heat in Aswan was such that the sloppily laid Astroturf on the deck of our cruise ship Liberty, felt as hot as any asphaltt I’d traversed as a macho teenager in southern California, where flip-slops or comparable protection was indicative of a deficiency of will.
At our hotel in Hurghada, where we’d have spent much time sunbathing at the edge of the Red Sea if not for the 50mph arctic winds, there was an apparently Russian-themed program, The Kafkas, scheduled for one evening I dared imagine that the performers would transform themselves before our eyes into cockroaches, but this was apparently an entirely different breed of kafka. Presumably out of deference to Ukraine, the hotel replaced the scheduled program with a performance by a male/female vocal team.
I understood Islam to encourage female modesty, lest men be inspired to think impure thoughts. I will confess that both the young woman’s attire and dancing inspired me to think exactly such thoughts.
At its worst, the entertainment at the hotel far exceeded that offered during our week on Liberty, the highlight of which was the evening a group of young Cairenes took a break from their medical studies to don native dress and dance to indigenous music, which isn’t sung so much as ululated. What a spectacle! Once, on stage, the students paid no attention whatever to the horrified British oldsters who made up their audience, the young men dancing strictly with each other, the modestly attired young women only with their fellow coeds.
Silence is no more golden in Egypt than in Greece, Turkey, and other Mediterranean countries with resort-lined coasts. Those who come out to the beachfront or poolside to enjoy the sunshine are presumed to want to be bombarded with the world’s most aggressive dance music while they relax. One afternoon, while one nearby sound system blasted out thud!-thud!-thud! dance music and Ed Sheeran mewl in that excruciating inoffensive way at the snack bar, the next resort down saw fit to conduct a fitness class on its own stretch of beach, with thud!-thud!-thud! dance music of its own. How very relaxing the combination!
As in Greece, a great many Egyptian buildings are topped with ugly rebar bristles because completed buildings are taxed at a higher rate than those still under construction. In Hurghada, there are seemingly hundreds of derelict might-have-been luxury hotels and residences abandoned before they could welcome a single resident or guest in the face of the COVID pandemic.
To walk down the Hurghada resort sector’s paved, sculpture-laden main drag after dinner was to be assaulted relentlessly by bored, desperate (because of no customers) local shopkeepers. “Hello!” the merchant shouts, “where are you from?” To acknowledge them in any way is to guarantee that they will insist that you come in and marvel at their glorious array of T-shirts, made-in-China tcotchkes, or essential oils. On the second day, though, I devised a strategy that seemed to work wonderfully. When a merchant called to me from en entrance of his shop, I would immediately whirl and ask, “Where are you from?” This would often confuse him long enough for me to get out of the range of his voice. When it did not, I would say,. “Have a great day!” From many of the desperate retailers, this elicited smiles and a cessation of hostilities, and I felt good doing it!
In Luxor, Edfu, and Aswan, I was besieged by locals who made their counterparts in Hurghada seem shy in comparison, fervently insisting that one buy everything from scarves to hashish to transportation on horse-drawn carriages. “Just look!” they beseech you, thrusting an armful of whatever they’re selling, as you try to pass. God help you if you do glance at the merchandise.
“How much?” you might occasionally, fatally, wonder, whereupon they will cite a price approximately five times that they’re actually willing to accept. “Harrumph!” you say, and try to move on. Fat chance! Now they become plaintive. You have shown yourself to be ungracious in rejecting their hospitality. Now they are now longer trying to sell you the merchandise, but to give it to you as a gift, albeit a gift for which, once accepted, only an unspeakable ingrate wouldn’t insist on conferring payment.
The children are every bit as aggressive as their uncles and papas. One of my great achievements during the holiday was managing to get a young man in Edfu to stop trying to sell me something, and to converse. He didn’t identify himself as Bond…James Bond, but as Mohammed…Mohammed Salah. I was skeptical that he was actually Liverpool’s remarkable Egyptian-born center-forward. My skepticism made him giggle. How sweet the sound.
The cruise ships, of which Liberty may have been the most dilapidated on the river, are commonly stacked three and four abreast along the shore, meaning that if you’re not on Ship 1’s starboard side or Ship 4’s port side, your view for the duration of the time you’re docked will be of the corresponding cabin in the next ship. The scenery you pass is pretty samey, so you’ll be grateful for the enterprising merchants who attach their rowboat to your ship and harangue those on deck no less fervently than their counterparts on dry land. They toss their wares up to prospective customers, whom they trust to toss it back if they don’t like what they see. Given that the little TVs in the cabins don’t work, and that WiFi’s a fortune, it’s the best entertainment available on many evenings.
You thought the AR15-toting MAGAt at Target buying XXXL T-shirts was well armed! His firepower didn’t exceed that of the tourism police you encounter every few feet or so on the commercial side of the Nile in places like Aswan, along the shore where the cruise ships dock. Tourism is one of the country’s biggest employers, and in the wake of the global pandemic, the country isn’t about to let a tourist be kidnapped or blown up.
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