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T h e G R E E N Y w o r l d D o m i n a t i o n T a s k F o r c e ,
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"A Semester in Russia, Part 3" by Yancey Slide
----- GwD: The American Dream with a Twist -- of Lime ***** Issue #83 -----
----- release date: 01-03-01 ***** ISSN 1523-1585 -----
[Yancey Slide, Head of GwD Undercover Operations, spent the spring semester of
2000 in St. Petersburg, Russia "studying." This is Part 3 of the declassified
version of his account of the trip. Parts 1 & 2 are gwd77.txt and gwd78.txt,
respectively. Part 4 will be released when it has been cleared by the GwD
Council. Maybe.]
March 11 (continued) - Egypt Day One
The hotel, the Lillyland, is on a stretch of highway south of Hurghada lined
on one side by hotels and on the other by a desert filled with unbelievable
mounds of trash. There were nice clean pristine patches of desert, too, but
everything near the hotels was like a landfill. Once the bus turned into the
hotel, though, everything was copasetic. There was a huge gate fronting the
road, which led into a short road back to the main hotel. Inside the lobby
we surrendered our passports and got our room keys, but only after fending
off more avaricious porters and negotiating a metal detector. Virginia said
later that one of the big fat Russian guys we thought were mafia waited by
the metal detector until no one was watching, then slipped around it. Nice
to know our fellow tourists were well armed.
The rooms were laid out in a kind of village behind the lobby/administration
building, centered around the outdoor pool, beach, restaurant, cafe, bar,
theater, indoor pool, med clinic, convenience store, and shopping complex.
It was a full service resort. Our room was off to one side, on the edge of
the complex facing the road out to the highway. The rooms, except for the
triples, were one room with an attached bathroom and a nice little porch;
sliding glass doors were the only way into or out of the rooms. The triples
had a couple of bedrooms and a couple of porches. Justin and Claire had a
room to themselves, Megan had a single (since she was arriving late), Dan
and Molly and Ginnie had dibs on a triple, leaving me to room with Michelle.
I was less than pleased. Michelle is not exactly an easy person to get along
with, much less cohabitate with, but what could I do? I pondered murder, but
it didn't really seem to fit with the whole *vacation* theme. I got a cot
from the hotel staff and we all trundled off to dinner.
The meals were a lavish spectacle. Breakfast and dinner were paid for, and
there was plenty of food to tide one over through lunch. It was a huge
buffet-style spread, with international food and a few Egyptian staples.
It was delicious. We were all tired of Russian food, with its emphasis on
quantity over quality, strength of taste over tastiness, its reliance on
sour cream (smetana), pickled everything, dill on everything, and garnish
everywhere. The restaurant meals, therefore, were a welcome break. Every
night we ate to bursting, and reveled in the sheer conspicuous consumption
of it. Ginnie showed off her artistic side, turning plates of food into
sculptures of farm animals and funny faces. Quite the talent.
After dinner that first night, we retired to Dan and Molly's room to
socialize. We sat on the porch and talked and made shadow animals long into
the night, then hit the sack for a big day on the town.
March 12 - Egypt Day Two
Didn't do much today. Just signed up for the two optional excursions (Desert
Safari and Cairo; I really wanted to see Luxor, but it was too expensive),
lay on the beach, and enjoyed the warm weather.
We chartered a paddle boat from the hotel and tooled around the bay for
awhile. The water was beautiful, and we had a great time just paddling
around and diving off the back. Justin and Claire walked along the beach
on the side of the bay; Justin in his normal exuberant style managed to
stomp on a sea urchin, and spent the rest of the week limping along.
[postscript: Justin got his revenge. Before we left he found the urchin and
bombarded it with rocks from the beach. That'll teach it.]
After another superhumanly huge dinner, we told each other that we'd go back
to our rooms for a bit to clean up and relax, then meet up at the triple
room to chat and have a good time. Of course, after that much food, we all
fell asleep instead. It was kind of a theme for the week; almost every day
we'd make plans to get together late at night to hang out and chat, and we
almost always wound up passed out after dinner instead.
March 13 - Egypt Day Three
Today was the desert safari excursion. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I
would never have thought it would as unbelievably wonderful as it was. We
started early in the morning, when a few Jeeps pulled up to the hotel. There
were three or four cars, some of which were already full from other hotels.
We slipped in with the Russian tourists, but the guy in the full Nike track
suit driving our car figured out that we were Americans pretty quickly. He
was excited, since he doesn't get a chance to use English very often, and
for the rest of the day he took good care of us. His name was Alex; we found
out later that he owns Saif Tours (an incredible misnomer, there's nothing
safe about them), which ran the safari, and he was a blast. He threw an arm
around me and told me to sit up front with him and the other driver, and
everyone else filed into the back (which was just a couple of benches bolted
on to the floor running the length of the car). As we were leaving, a couple
of guys with big, professional video cameras came running out of the hotel
and vaulted up on the roofs of the cars. We pulled out and hit the highway,
bumper to bumper with the Jeep ahead of us, the cameraman sitting on top
grinning at me the whole way.
After a few minutes on the highway (with Alex racing the other Jeep down the
road, occasionally driving on the wrong side of the road or swerving around
donkey carts) we pulled off onto a dirt road and stopped. We waited there
for about twenty minutes for the rest of the convoy. Molly passed the time
dancing to the tape deck of one of the other cars and getting to know some
of the Russians in the group. One of the big fat Mafia types was with us; he
told Molly that he lived in the south and was here on vacation. When she
asked what he did for a living, he got very quiet, looked at her for a
minute, and said, "Manager." He never did say what he was a manager of.
There was a woman with him, whom I gave fifty-fifty odds of being either
wife or mistress, and some kids at the hotel, but the little ones didn't
come along on the excursion. They were both actually pretty nice people.
Once the other cars showed up, Alex jumped in the car and got us going
again. I was lucky to be up front, because it was the ride of my life. We
literally raced across the desert offroading upwards of 100 kilometers
(60 miles) an hour. We bounced so hard I had to keep one hand on the ceiling
to keep my head from knocking, but the best part was the enthusiasm. All of
the drivers were obviously having a great time, shouting and singing along
to the wailing Arabic music from the cars and gesturing to each other. Alex
loved to let another car pull ahead of him, then rev the engine and, still
going fifty or sixty miles and hour, run up behind the other car and touch
bumpers to give the people in the back a thrill. The looks on their faces
were hilarious. Other times, it was a simple race to see who could top a
ridge or cross a flat first. Sometimes, Alex or another driver would pull
up next to another car and the diver would chat with the guy in the
passenger seat for a minute or so, close enough to kiss, without ever
slowing down. Alex's favorite trick was to swerve in close to another car,
reach out and bang on the side with his hand, gradually speeding up until he
could give a high five to whoever was in the front seat. The view from the
front seat was spectacular. The pictures are pretty sedate, until you look
at the dust plumes and realize how fast we were going. We won almost all of
the races, which might have had something to do with the fact that all of
the drivers worked for Alex.
When we finally got where we were going, we pulled into a Bedouin village on
the edge of the mountain range. I'm sure the village is just used for
tourists, but it was impressive all the same. It was a collection of small,
open stone buildings and a few wooden huts. All of the other guests on the
safari were pulled off into small groups, and went through the village on
mini-tours through set stations. Alex pulled us off to the side, gave us a
little shady spot all to ourselves, and said that we wouldn't have to sit
"with all of those others." He brought us tea, and told us to wander around
at our leisure and to look at anything we wanted. We really got the royal
treatment. We chatted with a couple of the drivers, Claire took a hit off
their hookah (some kind of rose tobacco), and we poked around the village.
Molly and I followed a little boy and his goat at the edge of the buildings,
where two Bedouin women were making bread. We didn't share any languages,
but they gave us all the bread we wanted hot from the griddle, and it was
incredible. Molly made friends with the village dog, a yellow mutt who loved
to play. Molly, ever obliging, played with him all day long. Of course, when
he wasn't eating bread from her hand, he was eating camel dung from the
ground, but Molly didn't let that spoil her fun.
When we'd seen the village, we started hiking through the desert. Not far
from the village was the well, which was unbelievably picturesque. I'm not
sure if the well was really used or not, but it was in the middle of a
clear, sandy patch at the base of a stony hill, with one wind-swept stunted
tree shading it. It was really something to see. I went hiking away from the
well, and wound up in the pass in the mountains. I got a good ways into the
pass, but finally it was too choked with rocks to go any further. The sun
cut through the channel in the rock, and I could feel the difference in
temperature going from the sunlit pass to the shadows under the ridge. I
could almost feel the pressure of the light from the desert sun. I sat and
watched a train of camels circle then enter the village, and decided to come
back.
It was a good thing that I did, since it was time for the requisite camel
rides. The Bedouins who used the village acted as mahouts, leading the
camels while tourists rode. One of the guides was a girl who was maybe eight
years old, dressed in bright flowing robes. She was incredibly cute, and she
knew it. She'd pose with her camel for all of the tourists, leaning against
the saddle with a tough look on her face. When she was guiding the camel,
she'd tie the lead rope around her waist since she wasn't strong enough to
pull the camel against its will. If the camel gave her trouble, she'd punch
it in the nose to keep it in line. She was definitely one of our favorite
people on the trip.
Camel riding is definitely an acquired taste. Granted, we were only kind of
riding, since the guides were pulling the brutes, but it's still a bouncy
experience. The saddles are only marginally more comfortable than riding
bareback, and camels don't have suspension. Mounting is easy, but
dismounting has a trick to it. The trick is that the camel drops to its
knees, meaning you fall about six feet and land with a hard leather saddle
between your knees. It's a little startling at first, and it feels a lot
like being kicked in the butt. The rides were a great experience, though,
and it reminded me more than a little bit of being pulled on a donkey on the
ranch in Mexico when I was a kid. I named the camel I was on "Don't Pull
Me" after that donkey.
After we'd finished seeing everything in the village, we piled into the vans
for another short little trip. We went a few miles over into the mountain
range, up a broad sandy approach to one of the peaks. It was a short climb
from there to the top of the mountain; the string of people climbing and
walking along the trail made me feel more than a little bit like a
supplicant on a pilgrimage. When we got to the top, we strung out along the
peak to watch the sunset. I can't possibly describe how beautiful it was.
The sun went down over the mountains, and the rocky desert looked so pure
and clean and wonderful that it was a powerfully spiritual experience. I'll
count myself a lucky man if I see the like of it even just one more time in
my life. It was a little bit melancholy, though; Dan and Molly and Justin
and Claire went off as couples to enjoy the experience. It was the kind of
thing you should really see with someone close to you to fully appreciate
it. There was a German woman sitting by herself near me, and I think she was
feeling more or less the same thing. I kind of like to think that we bonded
a little bit.
The sun is supposed to set quickly in the desert, but I felt like I had been
sitting there for days by the time it got dark. The catharsis was
refreshing, and I was sad to leave when we mounted back up for the ride back
to the village. Once we arrived, we all went in as a group to eat the meal
that they'd been cooking for us inside. I'm not too familiar with Middle
Eastern cuisine, so suffice it to say that it was good, good food. We ate
three or four platefuls apiece, chatted with Alex some more, and enjoyed
more special treatment (we were first to be served, first to get seconds,
first for everything).
After dinner we drove back to the hotel, which was a much more peaceful and
sedate ride. We stopped halfway back, and Alex turned off the headlights and
took us onto a small dune to look at the stars. He tried to teach us the
Arabic names of some of the constellations, but the language barrier got in
the way. We were a bit distracted, since we weren't really dressed for night
in the desert and were pretty cold. We were happy to get inside, and happy
to get back to our rooms, but that day in the desert is one of my strongest
and most pleasant memories of the entire time I was abroad. Out of all of
the cathedrals and monasteries I visited, that mountain was probably the
most spiritually significant place for me, and I was deeply gratified by the
experience. The time I spent traveling was something beyond anything I've
ever experienced. I know for a fact that I'm a different person now than
when I left, that I've changed after what I've seen and felt. That night in
the desert was a large part of that, partly because I was ready for a
spiritual experience. In a way, I guess, the mountain came to me.
March 14th - Egypt Day Four
We didn't have anything special planned for today, so we decided to hit the
town. Ginnie and Michelle had been the day before, while the rest of us were
in the desert, and Justin and Claire wanted to go by themselves later, so
Dan and Molly and I walked out to the road to hitch a ride into the city. We
hired a cab and rode north to the city of Hurghada proper; we were told that
the original city had been based on trade around a nearby port, but with the
growth of inland cities the highway and tourist trade were more important
now. Most jobs in Hurghada are based somehow on the tourist industry, so we
didn't have any trouble with languages. Almost everyone spoke either English
or Russian. We were dropped off in the middle of the marketplace, and we
started to wander. There were police everywhere, dressed in a nondescript
black uniform with no real patches or badges. The assault rifles slung
across their backs were enough to tell people they were the man.
We figured out the ground rules pretty quickly. Looking at merchandise,
making eye contact with the vendors, smiling or breathing were invitations
to be harangued by vendors. Shops were everywhere, from blankets spread in
alleys to large, air conditioned tastefully decorated stores. Molly was
sharp enough to dress pretty conservatively; although she must have been hot
in slacks and a long sleeve shirt, shes well-traveled enough to know that
its better to follow local customs and grouse about how unfair they are in
private. Still, if she walked more than a few paces ahead of Dan or me,
she'd get dirty looks and at least once a motorist honked and yelled at her.
She didn't let it bother her, though; the only thing that really disturbed
her was when we walked through the non-touristy part of the market and saw
butchers slaughtering animals. Truth tell, it almost put me off of meat. It
was awfully hot and unsanitary to be butchering meat outside, and the sounds
were a little, well, off-putting. The real kicker was the man sleeping (I
hope) underneath a butcher's table, covered in flies.
We lived, though the chickens didn't, and found our way back to the more
cosmopolitan section of the city. Id love someday to go back and study the
way the market was organized. Barkers were everywhere, trying to get us to
come to their shop and see their wares. If we didn't see anything we liked
(or, more often, werent willing to pay the incredibly inflated prices),
they'd encourage us to go to their friends shop. At one of these
"friend's" stores I saw the owner slip the first guy a handful of costume
jewelry as he ushered us in. The stores shared customers, staff, and
apparently merchandise in some kind of complex pattern. I dont know if it
was an official arrangement, or just swapping customers in exchange for a
little gratuity, or quite how it all worked, but it was a well orchestrated
and rehearsed process. At one of these stores, a barker asked us to go look
at his friend's merchandise; when we demurred, he promised us that we'd find
something we liked. We went in, and some unbelievably pricey silver jewelry
and plates and such. Molly was ticked. She stomped outside and found the
barker, and told him that she didn't like the shop. That didn't seem to
bother him very much, but she was insistent.
"You promised us that we'd like that store. I didn't like it," she said.
He looked a little askance, and without looking directly at her, said, "It's
a very nice store..."
"It's too expensive!" she snapped. "Now you owe us something." That took him
by surprise.
"All right," he conceded. "Come to my store and I give you something."
So we followed him through a web of alleys and narrow streets and wound up
at a very nondescript shop with, in my opinion, much better (and cheaper)
wares than the first place. Mostly stoneware, with a few blankets and cotton
shirts for variety. He took Molly's hand, and asked her if she knew anything
about henna. He fished the tools out of a basket under the counter, and
began to henna Molly's hand while Dan watched and I browsed the store. I
found a very starkly handsome stone bowl, and argued over the price while
the shopkeeper inked a very intricate design on Molly's forearm. I had read
up on Arabic numerals before we left the hotel so that I could read
pricetags, and I was sure that he was inflating the price from the sticker
on the bottom of the bowl. I found out later that I had been reading it
wrong and he was right, and felt terrible for doubting it to his face, but
we walked out of that store very happy. Molly had a very artistic flowing
and flowering pattern inked into her skin, and I got a good deal on my find.
As we were leaving, I heard what I thought was music and poked my head
around the back door of the shop; I almost stumbled over two men kneeling in
supplication and prayer. Aside from some airport employees as we left the
country, those were the only people I saw in Egypt at prayer even in the
bustling city.
We found another cab to take us back to the hotel and went home for a good
meal and a good night's sleep - we were supposed to be up at two a.m. the
next morning for the Cairo expedition. The experience in the city was
extremely interesting. I'd thought that Russian culture was profoundly
different from my American lifestyle, and in its way, it is. Just one day in
an Egyptian city, though, threw a new perspective on things. As alien as
Petersburg seems at times, it's infinitely more familiar and homelike than
Egypt. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.
March 15th/16th - Egypt Day Five and Six
The telephone got me out of bed, but I didn't really wake up until the girl
on the other end started yelling. I was disoriented enough that I still
don't know if it was Ginnie, Megan, or Claire, but someone was telling me
that I was supposed to be on the bus right now! and where was I?! and
everyone's waiting!!! I guess I overslept, but I might as well blame it on
Michelle: she ignored the wakeup call. Or turned off the alarm. Or
something. Anyway, we were really late for the bus. I grabbed everything I
thought I'd need for the day excursion and stuffed it into a bag and bolted
for the lobby. QT Guy (the man who met us at the airport) was not amused,
and neither were any of the people already on the hell bus. There was the
usual assortment of Russians and Germans, but at least I wasn't the real
focus of their irritation. Michelle was even later than I was, so I got to
pretend that I was perfectly on schedule and I was as put off as they were.
The hell bus was, well, the bus from hell. The seats were built for
underweight Oompaloompas[see GwD55], and I physically couldn't sit normally
in one of them. My legs just wouldn't fit. Although the bus was crowded, my
friends let me have a double seat to myself so that I could sit sideways in
some measure of comfort (or at least lessened misery). The bus eventually
set out and, after picking up some more passengers at another hotel, motored
north towards Cairo. The scenery was really very beautiful, once the sun
rose, but I had levered myself into a semi-reclined position and drifted off
into a pain-induced hallucinatory coma. I didn't really wake up until we got
to the rest stop from hell, which was actually rather pleasant (except for
the food and the bathrooms).
Finally, we got to Cairo. Our first stop was to pick up Dinah, our tour
guide. We got our own guide to speak English to us, which was really great
of the tour company. We talked to her at length over the course of the day.
Apparently, she's a doctor (or possibly a medical aid) and practiced in
Britain, since she couldn't practice in Egypt. She said that she spends some
time every year in Egypt, and works as a tour guide to pay bills while she's
at home. An odd arrangement, but she was a great guide. Aside from pointing
out the normal touristy things, she answered most of our questions about
Egypt as a whole, the language, the culture, the whole kebab.
One of the first things she explained to us was the rationale behind the
skeletal buildings we saw everywhere. As we drove into Cairo, it looked like
downtown Belgrade. Highrise apartment buildings were open to the elements,
with naked girders and superstructures. People obviously lived in the
unfinished parts of the buildings, though; Dinah explained that completed
buildings are subject to a special tax. Unless the owners or the occupants
were reasonably affluent, then, it's apparently common for residences in
that part of town to be left perpetually "under construction." It means that
poorer families live in half-finished buildings, but I suppose that's better
than living on the street. We saw plenty of that.
The other nagging question she solved for us was the rationale behind the
tent on every corner offering freshly slaughtered meat. It was like the
entire city was host to a butcher's convention. In a way, it was; Dinah told
us that it's a special Muslim festival that's celebrated by slaughtering and
eating meat. A kind of three-day meatfest. I think it sounds like a pretty
good idea. It gave the city a particularly...unique bouquet for the day we
were there. Not unpleasant, just kind of "ripening goat carcass"-ish.
We had lunch at a wonderful little downtown cafe, with the pyramids looming
in the background. It must be nice to have that kind of view out your window
every day, but I suppose it'd lose its charm after awhile. Heading to the
pyramids after lunch, we passed over the Nile, which was a little
anticlimactic. Nice, but not the kind of thing they stop the tour bus for.
What they do stop the bus for is the Egyptian National Museum. The museum
was fantastic - it's an enormous building, stuffed to the gills with
artifacts and exhibits that are just unbelievable. The smallest side room
would be the centerpiece of almost any other museum in the world. A bit
limited in scope, of course, but the variety of holdings even in a museum
dedicated to ancient Egypt surprised me. There was the expected smattering
of canopic jars and burial accoutrements, plus Tutenkhamen's regalia, but
there were also wonderful exhibits of art and sculpture that really
impressed me. We didn't have much time in the museum, but Dinah did her best
to show us everything important without skimping on the running commentary
that gave everything a nice context.
After the museum, we moved on to the real reason behind the trip - the
pyramids. We stopped at the edge of the plateau (the pyramids overlook
modern Cairo from Giza, outside of town) to admire them from afar and to get
a sense of their scale. After we'd oohed and ahhed and taken a few pictures,
the bus drove us down into the sea of tourists at the foot of the monuments.
Seeing the pyramids was a wonderful experience. While it didn't have the
deeply personal resonance of the desert safari, I feel good that I've done
one of those things you're supposed to do before you die. We had the chance
to go inside the pyramids, but we demurred. There's nothing left inside
them, so it seemed ridiculous to waste the time when there was so much to
see on the outside. We climbed as high as we could without getting hassled
by the camel-mounted police, took rolls of film of each other, and took
turns being harassed by the locals.
By "locals," I don't mean Egyptians. I mean the people who earn a living
burning tourists around the pyramids. My own experience was pretty mild. I
walked to the edge of the plateau to get a picture of the skyline over the
Sphinx's head, and was followed the entire way by a kid who was maybe ten
years old riding a camel. He kept riding into my shot, yelling that I needed
a picture of him. I didn't bother, since he obviously wanted to money for
the privilege, but he finally haggled the price down to nothing. So to keep
him quiet I took a picture (which turned out pretty well) of him striking a
pose with his camel. Naturally, the price shot back up to five pounds, and
he wanted to be paid. I wasn't about to pay the little confidence man, so I
walked back to the busses. He followed me the whole way, screaming in at
least three different languages. Three or four even younger kids took up the
banner, and I was seriously worried about getting my pocket picked by the
time I got back to the bus from hell. As we got away from the edge of the
plateau, though, other beggars and camel-ride hucksters chased the kids off;
I guess they were chasing business across somebody else's territory. It was
irritating, but nothing compared to what Ginnie and Molly and Megan went
through. A crowd of kids, who were pinching and grabbing at them the whole
way, chased them all the way to the bus. Cultural relativism is one thing,
but there's no excuse for that kind of thing. QT Guy seemed pretty incensed
that people would be that crude, but Dinah just kind of shrugged it off. The
ladies didn't let it bother them, though. By the time we got to the Sphinx
everyone had more or less forgotten it.
The Sphinx was amazing. We drove around the plateau in the bus and came
around the front. The Sphinx sits with its back to the pyramids, more or
less facing the city. Approaching it from the front, with the Sphinx staring
at you with the pyramids over its shoulder clouded in blowing sand, is the
closest I'll ever come to being Indiana Jones. Dinah explained the story
behind the Sphinx. In a nutshell, it started out as an outcropping of harder
stone uncovered during the construction of the pyramids. The ruler at the
time had it worked into a ritualistic guardian/monument to his rule, and
it's commonly believed that his face was the model for the Sphinx's
features. It's been there so long that thousands of years passed during
which the locals had no idea where it had come from. I think she said that
its name means "fear" or "terror" in Arabic, but I'm not sure that I
remember that right. She mentioned that the story of Napoleon's soldiers
shooting off its nose isn't true. Slaves, taken as children from Eastern and
Southern Europe, rose up hundreds of years ago and took power in the region.
They were responsible for defacing the monument, according to her.
At the foot of the Sphinx is an old, ruined temple that was used for
veneration. The temple is completely gone, worn away by time and thousands
of years of visitors and robbers; all that's left is the stone foundation,
the walls and pillars that made up the rooms, and indentations in the floor
marking where altars and idols stood. The ceiling is gone, so the effect is
a small stone canyon cut into the ground, since the temple is below ground
level. There's not really anything to see here, since it's just the basic
foundations that are left, but the temple felt older than anything else we
saw in Cairo. It was so worn and used that it just exuded a sensation of
age, even with crowds of tourists coursing through it.
Coming up and out of the temple, we found ourselves on a low stone wall that
ran parallel to the Sphinx. To be so close to it was just unbelievable.
Dinah showed us how to "kiss the Sphinx" (if you stand facing the Sphinx in
profile, a photo makes it look like you're face to face with it) and told us
more about its construction and preservation efforts. The Egyptian
government is trying hard to restore and preserve the monuments as much as
possible, but with such a huge influx of tourists it takes all the money and
resources they can muster just to prevent any further degradation. Frequent
sandstorms and the tourist traffic take their toll on the projects the
government does carry out to preserve the sites; in the end, there just
isn't enough money to give all of the monuments, temples, and pyramids the
full attention they need.
We were pulled away from the Sphinx earlier than we wanted, since the tour
bus had a strict schedule to keep. As we were leaving the temple, Dinah
slipped a fistful of cash into the hand of what looked like a random guy
standing around the entrance. She explained, in a roundabout way, that he
was a kind of guard or minder at the site. When she had a group coming by
after hours or when the site was closed, he'd let her take them in anyway.
In exchange, he got a nice little tip whenever she came through with a
group. That kind of deal is apparently pretty common. As we left, we thought
we might be seeing more museums, but they had other plans for us. We were
taken first to a rather pleasant papyrus shop, where a Ghanian woman did a
demonstration of how papyrus is made and what makes it different from paper.
It was just a sales pitch, really, but it was still kind of interesting. I
bought a pair of small papyrus prints, but forgot them at the hotel when we
left the country. We got bored quickly in the shop, and moved outside to sit
on the steps in the breeze. That was probably the most pleasant part of the
excursion - the picture of us resting on the steps is the best shot I have
of the friends I traveled with. After the papyrus shop, we were taken to a
perfumery, a jeweler's, and a handicraft shop. Each one was more boring and
pointless than the last. None of us could afford the few things that seemed
worth buying, and most of it was just crap. The tour company obviously had a
deal with the stores to take patrons by at the end of the excursion. The
Russian mafioso didn't seem to mind shopping at all, but we got a little
testy. In the perfumery in particular some of us got downright Ugly
American. It was embarrassing, but we were all frustrated that they'd cut
our time in the museum and at the pyramids short so they could scratch some
shopkeeper's back. Irritating, but our night was just beginning.
After we'd made the shopping rounds, we pulled out on the same hell bus we
came in on. I wasn't paying attention as we left the last store and almost
boarded another tour bus, but Molly and Dan stopped me. Later, I almost
wished they hadn't. Just as we were leaving Cairo, the bus driver crested a
huge speed bump (or maybe a curb) by hitting the gas as hard as he could.
About four hours later, I woke up from a fitful sleep; I couldn't figure out
what it was at first, but someone pointed out that there was a rhythmic
thumping coming from just under our seats. The bus stopped, and the driver
and guides got out (sans Dinah, who stayed in Cairo) to look around. When
they got back on the bus, they looked less than pleased, but we pressed on.
The bus stopped and the inspection tour was repeated a couple of times in
the next hour or so, but we kept going until we got the rest stop from hell.
This was the same stop we'd visited on the way down, and the tour company
definitely had some kind arrangement with them. That shadowy you-scratch-
my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours arrangement that kept cropping up. The
shopkeepers in the bazaar had deals with each other, Dinah had an
arrangement with all of the monument people, the tour company had a hand in
all the pots; normally it was nothing to worry about, but this time the bus
driver had pushed too far too hard on a bad tire to get to the rest stop he
had a deal with. It was an inside tire, so there was no way it could be
fixed easily, but rather than stopping outside of Cairo where he'd torn it
on the bump, we wound up halfway between Hurghada and Cairo. The guides'
cellphones wouldn't work this far out of a major town, so there wasn't much
anyone could do. We didn't know any of this, of course. They told us it was
a simple rest stop, and we trundled off inside to get a snack and use the
restroom (free, since the kid taking money at the door wasn't working late).
A couple of hours went by before we fully realized what was happening. We'd
figured out that the bus wasn't running fairly early on, but we didn't
really know what was happening until about midnight, when someone looked
around and realized that most of the Russians were gone! The tour company
had called from the rest stop for another bus, but it was a smaller taxi
that showed up and took everyone it could fit. The guides didn't bother to
tell us that everyone else was leaving. In retrospect, I can understand why.
There wasn't room for us, and if someone had to stay at the rest stop for
another few hours, better the young college students than the elderly
couples that made up most of the rest of the group. We weren't in an
understanding mood, though. We were tired, hungry, angry, and pretty
fatalistic about the whole thing. We wound up watching the movie Speed
subtitled in Arabic on the tiny little TV inside the rest stop, while others
tried to sleep on the bus. It was getting cold outside, though, and no one
had really brought warm enough clothing to sleep on an unheated bus. It
squatted by the road, leering at us the whole time. The guides got us a free
dinner apiece, but our appetites were spoiled by the horrible, evil thing
that had stranded us there.
Another hour or so went by before the second "bus" arrived. It was also a
taxi, basically a minivan. There were the eight of us, plus three or four
Russians who had also missed the first bus. Among the Russians were a young
woman and her daughter; Dan and Molly had met her on the first bus and
already hated her, although I never did learn why. They did learn that her
husband was an American diplomat, and she was here on vacation. She kept
fobbing her daughter off on an older woman who might have been her mother;
the little girl must have been miserable, but she never complained that I
heard. We did. There simply weren't enough seats for everyone on the bus. A
few people dug their heels in and insisted on another taxi, but we realized
that we couldn't split the group up and ask a few people to spend another
three hours in the rest stop. No one there spoke decent English, of course
none of us spoke any Arabic - in a word, we were stuck. Well, I was stuck.
In the front seat, with the driver and Michelle. It was a carnival of fear
and misery. When we finally pulled out, everyone else was crammed in the
back. I could hear them arguing about who got a seat and who had to crouch;
there wasn't even enough room to sit on the floor back there. I was in the
middle in the front seat, sitting on the folded down armrest. The driver
spoke only a very few words of English (unfortunately those words didn't
include "left" or "right") and no Russian, and Michelle was in full bitch
mode. The driver had the windows rolled down so that he could smoke. That
irritated most of us, since it was cold and the smoke stank, but I thought
better of trying to ask him not to smoke. It was about three a.m. by this
point, and I wouldn't have cared if he was snorting cocaine as long as it
kept him awake.
Ironically enough, the Russian woman with the daughter was snorting cocaine.
I didn't know about it until after we got back, since I was up front, but
they said that every so often shed pull a compact out of her purse, pile
some powder on the back of her hand, and snort it up. With her daughter
sleeping right next to her, of course. I didn't see any of it, but I had my
own concerns. The driver's music (the ever-present wailing Arabic tapes
scattered on the dash of every car we saw or rode in) bothered Michelle, and
she kept bitching about it. Her solution to the language barrier was to
speak English slowly, condescendingly, and loudly, but we finally got her to
understand that at that point, she had to be quiet or we'd pitch her
overboard. The driver had enough on his mind. Every time we passed another
car on the narrow two-lane highway, each driver would flash their brights
two or three times then turn off their headlights! I can only assume that
the point is to keep from blinding the other driver, but it scared the hell
out of me. A pair of headlights would float up out of the desert over the
horizon, explode into bright light a couple of times, then wink out. A few
seconds later, the car would whiz by us in the opposite direction. I didn't
have any trouble staying awake for the three hours it took us to get back to
Hurghada.
Odd as it sounds, as unpleasant as the drive was it was also one of the most
beautiful experiences I had in Egypt. Every so often, as we drove along with
the beach invisible in the night on our left-hand side, we could see the
light from huge bonfires. Sometimes they were close enough to see the fires
themselves, and the people standing around them as silhouettes. The driver
tried to explain what was happening, but neither of us could understand the
other. Later, I learned that it was part of the Muslim festival that we'd
been told about in Cairo. The drive was a real test of endurance, but the
image of those bonfires lighting our way home will stay with me for the rest
of my life.
We finally got back to Hurghada, and after the drive had dropped off our
resident cokehead and her family in town we managed to guide the driver to
the Lillyland. It wasn't easy, since we weren't really sure of the way and
he couldn't understand us, but we got there. It was light by this time; we'd
spent the entire night traveling in incredible discomfort. The lobby of the
hotel was an incredibly welcome sight. The hotel staff insisted that we take
boxed dinners that had been prepared for us when they realized that we would
be late, but food was the last thing we wanted to see. Bed, though - when I
saw my cot I thought I was in heaven. I told Michelle that I didn't care if
the mountain was coming to Mohammed, I was going to sleep and I didn't want
to be disturbed. Since she had her own bed on the other side of the room, I
thought I was in for a few hours of well-deserved rest. More the fool I.
We'd had a little trouble with our bathroom all week. The shower had no
curtain (common to most Russian and Eastern European hotels, too) so the
bathroom flooded with every shower, the toilet ran, and there were never
enough towels, but I really never cared. If the bathroom was flooded or
there wasn't enough hot water, Dan and Molly and Ginnie had offered more
than once to let us use their bathroom. That was enough for me. Michelle
decided she had to shower before she went to bed, and I guess the hot water
cut out on her. I woke up when she came storming out of the bathroom and
snatched up the phone. She called the front desk and screamed, literally
screamed, at the poor bastard who answered the phone for a couple of
minutes. She eventually got bumped up to the manager, who sent some plumbers
over to look at the shower. I decided that discretion was the better part of
valor, and didn't mention that I hadn't really had any sleep for more than
twelve hours, and I'd spent three hours twisted into a pretzel in the cab,
that I was exhausted, or that the damned shower could wait until later.
Instead, I pretended that I was asleep. I figured she'd get the hint. More
the fool I.
The plumbers showed up, and Michelle greeted them wearing only a towel. In a
city where Molly got shouted at for walking down the street by herself
wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, I couldn't believe that
Michelle would be foolish enough to not change clothes. The repairmen were
consummate professionals, though. I already knew that they couldn't do
anything; the hot water wasn't coming into our room, so it was pointless for
them to be there. Everyone but Michelle knew that they'd been sent round
just to placate her. So they banged around in the bathroom for a while, then
came out and said, yep, there's no hot water. I thought Michelle would take
the hint and let them get on with their jobs and let me get on with my nap.
More the fool I.
I've never seen anyone as full of rage as she was. She screamed and shouted
and griped and bitched and moaned, from the repairmen all the way up to the
manager. By the time I realized what she was angling for, it was too late.
She was demanding, with absolutely no tact or discretion, that she be given
a new room. She at least had the consideration to tell them that I was
perfectly happy with this room and that she was the one who needed new
accommodations. She wasn't being selfish, she understood that I really was
perfectly happy with the room and that I didn't want to move. It was our
last full day in Egypt, and moving was not something I wanted to waste time
doing. Resistance was futile, though. She got her way, but they wouldn't let
me stay. If she moved, I had to move, and she was moving. She did get us
separate rooms, which I appreciated more than I can say. I gathered up all
my things, and Megan helped me move across the compound to our new digs. We
had been put in what must have been the only rooms open, which were
exquisite bungalows on the edge of the resort. They must have been for
long-term renters, but we had them for the night. They were wonderful rooms,
and I loved having a room to myself, but the way we got it was noxious to
me. Michelle had been so rude and so prototypically Ugly American that Megan
and I went to the management later and apologized on her behalf. They were
never anything less than gracious and accommodating; if I ever go back to
Hurghada, I'm definitely staying there. Especially if I happen to be
traveling with a raving psychotic.
After we finished moving, I went down to the beach and just floated in the
water for what felt like hours. It was cathartic, purifying; I started out
edgy, irritated, and worn to the bone, but when it was time for dinner I
walked off that beach as calm and collected as I've ever been. Michelle and
I never really did get on friendly terms, but I shouldn't be too harsh on
her. She was under a lot of stress, and she handled it in what was, to her,
the simplest and most direct way. Not the way I would have done things at
all, but in the end, maybe I'm too passive and too proud of being patient
and accommodating. She did get what she wanted, while I had been content to
shower in cold water in a flooded bathroom. I can't really say which is
better. I can say this - even after the hellish trip from Cairo, I refused
to use the shower in the new room. It was a matter of principle.
March 17th - Egypt Day Seven
We loaded up all of our bags and headed back to the airport. Waiting for the
plane to Moscow was meant several hours in the terminal in the middle of an
enormous crowd, but we managed. We met Lev and his wife, an elderly couple
who were just finishing their vacation. He had been a sailor in the Soviet
period, and apparently has an iceberg named after him. He was very
talkative, and we passed the time chatting with them. We heard about their
children and grandchildren, and generally got back into the habit of
speaking Russian.
Once the plane finally arrived, the flight back home was entirely
uneventful. Once again the passengers all applauded when we landed in
Moscow, which was bitterly cold. I was sad to leave Egypt, but happy to get
back to Russia. Even taking the last day into consideration, the week in
Egypt was an amazing experience that I wouldn't have traded for anything.
All told, though, I like Russia more. The climate, the people, the food
(well, no, not the food) agree with me more in Russia. Deplaning and
collecting our baggage was simple and not too taxing, even as exhausted as
we all were. The last image I have from the Egypt excursion was passport
control in the Moscow airport. As we all stood in line, drooping under our
bags and waiting for our turn to be stamped, we saw a woman breeze past the
line with only a small handbag to the VIP kiosk, where she was stamped and
sent on her way in just a few seconds. It was the woman from the taxi - her
husband's diplomatic papers got her back into Russia with no fuss, muss, or
baggage inspection.
[The original of this document can be found at http://chaos.greeny.org/~yance/]
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