MARCH 6, 2022 – I spent several days in and around Luxor. The broad daylight hours were beastly hot, but comfortable hours prevailed before sunrise, after sunset, and in the cooler nighttime air. Much of Luxor was low-key and easily manageable on foot, and in the evenings, my Kiwi friends and I covered much ground, sampled lots of food, and interacted with many locals.
The Nile cradled classic scenery. “Particularly at dawn and dusk,” I wrote home, “is prime stuff for the painter and photographer. Date palms, wheat fields, and papyrus grow luxuriantly, and water buffalo, camels, donkeys, and agrarian laborers are scattered across the fertile land. The rising and setting sun is always red-orange.”
My expenses in Egypt were much lower than the minimum daily required currency exchange. By the time I was to head back to Cairo (and on to Greece), I had money to burn. I decided to splurge on a Wagon-Lits sleeper compartment aboard the crack Egyptian express train running from Aswan to Cairo. It turned out to be the finest train on which I’ve ever traveled—anywhere in the world.
Once I’d inspected my luxurious accommodations, I ambled to the fashionable club car. In the company of a couple of Brits and two Americans, I experienced my first “re-entry culture shock” after nearly two months of travel outside the West. It didn’t go well.
The Anglo-American quartet was demonstratively light-hearted—and well-supplied with refills by the Egyptian bartender. They drew me into their raucous banter, which gradually turned more serious but no less influenced by alcohol.
As I reported home, “I grew disillusioned—almost angry—with them. I didn’t reveal my feelings, but in time I left, quite depressed. In brief, this crowd ridiculed the Egyptians and concluded that the country was too poor and too filthy to be enjoyable. ‘They cheat you at every chance,’ one of the women asserted, ‘and they’re so incredibly filthy, I don’t know how they stand it. I’d rather not visit this place.’”
I wondered what this group knew about ancient Egypt beyond the Pyramids. What did they know of present-day Egypt (other than the Aswan Dam, which they had visited), or colonial Egypt—under the Ottomans, the French, the British? Of Nasser, the Suez Crisis, the wars with Israel, Egypt as a Cold War pawn? Of anything about Egypt besides the inside of a luxury train and the Cairo Ritz and the Aswan Hilton?
After my fill of these people, I returned to my compartment, where in peace I recorded notes of the day. By midnight I was sleepy, but as comfortable as my accommodations were, falling sound asleep on the berth, expertly turned down by the staff, seemed almost wasteful. Besides, by turning off all the lights in the compartment, I achieved a fleeting view of the countryside bathed in moonlight.
Cajoled by the rhythm of a modern train coursing through an ancient world, I fell asleep sitting upright, my head pressing against the window frame.
Cairo appeared with the sun.
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
