Monday, January 18, 2008. Cairo

Editor's Note: The field reports from the last three days in Luxor, allegedly sent, were never received by the front office. The following text has been compiled from the original handwritten notes, and inferences drawn from a series of photographs, developed from a camera which had been couriered to us whole, the film still in-camera. We include this here to give a flavor of those final days.

Friday (January 15): Thebes

Tomb of Rekhmire (TT 100). Scenes of daily life, craftsmen. A woman seen from behind, looking back over her right shoulder. A tall sloped gallery ending with a false door and statue niche. A pair of guards each use a piece of cardboard covered in tin foil to reflect sunlight from one, to the the other, and then onto the images on the walls.

Tomb of Sennefer (TT 96). Grape vine ceilings. Great dead cows with eyes and lolling tongues. A chest shown to contain what look like pleated white kilts or striated angular mushrooms.

Valley of the Kings: Tuthmosis III, Montuhirkopshef, and Ramesses III (again). As the sun sets quickly, and for a last time, the cliffs glow gold against the azure sky. A bird of prey circles far, far above, so high as to be something separate from this world. (I am later told that a rat was spotted in one of the tombs, but my Valley of the Kings was magical.)


Saturday (January 16): "North! To Abydos, come on, the rush is on."

A count of the police checkpoints is made en route. It comes in around 45, but that includes barriers set up at intersections and railroad crossing which may be there simply to get people to slow down in a country where road signs are purely decorative. Still – counting checkpoints with armed policemen still gives you between 25 and 30. Once, when we had to show our papers, we were asked whether we had allowed any “strange men” onto the bus. I looked around and wondered: How strange do you mean?


Sunday (January 17): Gebel el Silsila, Edfu, and El Kab

Pray that you never go to an Ancient Egyptian quarry unless it's been out of business for at least 3000 years. If you had to work in one, you'd be entering a world of hurt that would last the rest of your brief life. At Gebel el Silsila, huge sandstone slabs were cut from the rock by hand, day in, and day out. January is a gentle month here for weather, but it is still hot and humid, and climbing the hills of loose stone is a challenge. Half an hour in, we were all covered in sweat. An hour in, and our faces had gone beyond pink. A man in a stylish business suit appears and accompanies us on our trek. He says nothing, but with every step, his jacket falls open, and the muzzle of a machine gun emerges.

We're reminded to drink water to ward off sunstroke. Some succumb anyway, and we leave them behind in the halfa grass as our guide leads us farther and farther upstream.

On the water: Crossing the Nile on a small transport, outboard engine coughing exhaust at us. We have trouble landing on the west bank because the water level is too low to allow us to reach the pier. The crew assemble a makeshift jetty using large rocks from the shore. We disembark like kings.

Temple of Horemheb. The guard eyes our passes with suspicion, and tries to delay us by inspecting and writing down the numbers on each of them. No one comes here, and our presence has given him a job to do. A book is opened. Numbers are copied into a ledger. The book is closed. Who knows when it will be open again, or whether it will ever be read.

Return trip is uneventful. After hours in the sun, the man in the suit still looks as if he had just stepped out of a Milan salon. He refuses to speak, or sweat, as if to make his point.


Monday (January 18): Transit.

It has rained in the night, heavily, and with thunder and lightning. Awake at 4:00 am, long before the muezzin calls the morning prayer as he has every day of our stay here. I consider phoning him now at this ungodly hour to return the favour, but reconsider after I contemplate the inevitable reprisals.

On the bus by 5:30. Flight from Luxor to Cairo. Arrive back at the Shepheard by noon. Am exhausted, but wired at the same time. Spent the afternoon reprising my role as a male escort and walk through Garden City with Karlene. We play spot-the-embassy and mostly relish being some place where no one is trying to sell us anything. The streets are narrow and twisty, but are lined with lovely big trees, and enormous old buildings which suggest the elegance of the city in its good old days. The streets are also lined with parked cars, some just inches away from the vehicles in front and behind, some parked sideways so their back tires are up on the sidewalk. On one street corner, an old man shows us the only path through an especially tight knot of cars. I thank him, giving him a friendly wave, and then he asks, “You Canadian?” I tell him yes. “Canada – good,” he replies. And then we're off again. How he managed to guess, I have no idea. It's like the guard at the Egyptian Museum who guessed that my father was Japanese just by looking at my face. And this is not a probability thing; I'm not hiding the wrong guesses from you. Somehow, they look, and they just know.

Evening: Most of the group go to Felfela for supper. I'm the only one who knows where the restaurant is, so lead those who want to walk through the underground walkways and up Talat Harb. The rest follow a few minutes later. The food is plentiful and very tasty – all Egyptian fare. Some excellent grape leaves, stuff vegetables, tahina, and a refreshing lemonade. Coming back we cross the busy roads around Tahrir Square like old Cairo hands. We don't get lost. We don't lose anyone. I feel like I'm starting to get this right.