Cairo to Luxor
Added on Monday, May 12th, 2008 by Carole Nash Editor
Pyramids
The journey into downtown Cairo was not the calamitous experience I expected, partly because it was Friday, a day off for Egyptians. Thank God for that! To be reprieved from Cairo motorists is a blessing.
It was good to see Groppi’s café. I read a letter there in 1983 having cycled to the Source of the White Nile and back. It told me news of my mother’s death, expected. I stood there, 25 years later and looked blankly at the same table and chair where I sat. How the waterwheels of life trundle on. How we become steadied or badly stretched, depending on our ability to process tough emotions, or whether we garden them under a few inches of top soil. Likewise, Talaat Harb Square was my stomping ground. I waited there for a month while I was given my Sudanese visa. I got to know the scent of Cairo well, it’s stenches and it’s perfumes. It’s guttural sounds and it’s corniche of nightingales that serenaded the banks of the Nile.
This time I followed the Nile, firstly crossing it to Giza to see the Pyramids - that travesty of ruins - only to reach the new Western Desert Highway. Then I blasted down to Assuit and stayed in a city where I was a tourist in the minority of just me. I doubt any tourist has ever stayed here before and in the morning; there were two police cars to escort me safely out of town. It wasn’t necessary, was just a precaution against a city that has a tough reputation - something I didn’t feel, even in the back streets at night - but having such to lead me front and back, I felt like the President of a small Africa Republic - for a while it was a nice feeling, but soon it paled. After a while the regular checkpoints that occurred every 20 miles started to take an interest in me and relays of police vans started to escort me across their territory only to pass me onto the next in line. Suddenly riding down the lovely banks of the Upper Nile Valley was no longer my own journey. By the time I reached a point 150kms from Luxor, I was forced to wait an hour whilst a small tourist convoy arrived and was allowed to join with them. We raced at 90mph to limit the chance of a bad encounter. Men in jelibias had rifles slung over their shoulders and militia talked into walkie talkies whenever we went past. There was a feel of the wild west, that there was something we could feel but not see. That over the water in the caves and cliffs there were eyes watching us.
On 17 November 1997, at Deir el-Bahri, an archaeological site located across the River Nile from Luxor in Egypt, a massive terror attack instigated specifically by Ayman Zawahiri of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (later of al-Qaeda) hoped such action would devastate the Egyptian economy and provoke the government into repression that would strengthen support for anti-government uprising. It failed. Luxor is a delicious place and it’s a point worth making, that the people here are benefiting hugely.
When I got to Luxor and being reminded of such historical hostilities, the military convoy began to make more sense. I grabbed some digs and shot out to have my tyres changed ready for my Nubia crossing, should I attempt it - should I be able to do it. Back Street Heroes did it all for me, Hassan the great, and then I fuelled up and then I organised my obligatory position in tomorrows convoy to Aswan and then I had my dinner whilst writing my blog and processing the photos and then I sorted out a small film shoot for 5.30am and then I went to sleep.
