Not My Last Word on Egypt

Minneapolis—I've been home from Egypt for a month and I'm still a little flummoxed by the whole experience. I was enchanted by the people, delighted by the food, traumatized by the traffic, aggravated by the noise, overwhelmed by the landscape, disgusted by the filth, irritated by the religion, awed by the antiquities, dismayed by the poverty, and captivated by the sheer length and breadth of the story. But one thing I never was, was afraid.

Friends and family back home sent me frequent messages expressing fear on my behalf, and the longer I was incommunicado during stretches on the road or in the mountains, the higher the emotional pitch. What you don't know can hurt you, and I can understand their anxiety when all the press has to say is that Bedouins are kidnapping tourists and rioting soccer fans are dying by the dozens. But I knew by being there that Muslims are rebuilding Coptic churches, that the Bedouins do have something to complain about and seizing a few tourists (while treating them hospitably) can get them some headlines for their cause, that the sinister Muslim Brotherhood has widespread support not so much for radical reasons as for humanitarian ones, and that I've never felt safer anywhere.

We've got it so wrong about this part of the world. Egypt's whole government "system" collapsed barely a year ago, yet a parliament is in place, political parties have formed, presidential candidates are running, and a diverse population with lots of ground to cover is actively engaged in determining what democracy will look like in a land that hasn't seen anything like it in 6,000 years.

The current struggle for political power is revealing some weak spots, for sure, like parliament stacking the constitutional assembly with members of the dominant political party. And it's making some strange bedfellows (the Muslim Brotherhood and the military? Hello?) But who could have guessed that Egypt would be here a year after Mubarak fled? Could the revolutionaries? Could Mubarak? America may not like how the story unfolds, but how can we help admiring Egyptians for what's gotten them here?

Meanwhile, as the headlines back home made Egypt look like a war zone, every train, bus, and plane I took was on time and running. People may have been surprised that an American was visiting at all (our Israeli policy is a sore spot) but they welcomed me and congratulated me on our president.

And while a foreign woman traveling alone might be a likely target for pickpockets or harassment, I saw no evidence of this in Egypt—even when I found myself walking back to my hotel at night. Would this be true in Europe? In America?

Imagine the situation reversed. You're an Egyptian considering a family vacation to a country where neighborhood militiamen kill unarmed teenagers. Where racial profiling is so commonplace that people of color avoid police officers altogether, much less call on them for help. Where anybody on the street could be packing a concealed weapon—legally.

Say you're not an Evangelical Christian. How welcome would you feel in a country where support is pooling around candidates who think their piety qualifies them for government? Do we ever consider how the rest of the world considers our domestic climate?

I don't know how they do it in a country that's practically quadrupled in population in the last generation, but even in Cairo I met simple kindness and generosity everywhere. Like when I was eyeing some tasty-looking thing in a food vendor's window and he just reached around the door and passed me a morsel. Or when I was running to hop into a packed microbus and a hand emerged to help me inside.

Egyptians everywhere struck up conversations with me simply to practice their English, and when I replied with my scrambled Arabic, their pleasure at my attempt was instant and apparent.

These are the things I remember about Egypt—not the events that inspired the flaming headlines or the inconveniences and abrasions of traveling in a poor country remaking itself. What I remember is the warmth and the unqualified welcome. And because of these, I will see Egypt again soon, inshallah.

About Going Alone

Everywhere I went, people asked why I was traveling alone. Mostly I just told them I was having an adventure. What I didn't tell them was that I did not want to be part of a tour—I'd done that once and if there is a hell, it's a tour bus full of strangers you can't escape.

I had never been anywhere on my own, never planned any travel that didn't require concessions to someone else, and because I'm an introvert, never so much as asked for help in a grocery store. I wanted to know if I could forget all that and make my way in a country whose language, landscape, and customs were completely unfamiliar to me. It was a good idea. Of all the decisions I made in the course of this journey, going alone was the best.

I also didn't tell them what I really wanted to achieve, which was to mark a transition from my old life as wife, mother, neighbor, friend, and career woman, through the dark years when all that blew apart, to this new, simpler life of unforeseen possibility and contentment. Six weeks in Egypt turned out to be just the ticket.

A Final Note. On Toilets.

I have been thinking of something my Egyptian-American Friend told me a few years ago. He said I am like an American toilet: You keep putting the bad stuff in and it flushes right away, while he is like an Egyptian toilet: It doesn't matter how much you put in or how many times you flush, it's there for the rest of your life.

One of the things I did with my time in Egypt was work on understanding myself better. And now that I'm more familiar with Egyptian toilets, I think I understand my Friend better, too.

A Minnesota Goodbye

Cairo—I am so sick with bronchitis or a sinus infection or something that I can't get out of bed, much less go to the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, the camel market, the Egyptian Museum, or the great restaurants my Danish/Cairene friend Christopher recommended for this last pass through the city before I go home. If I weren't so ill I don't think I'd be so travel weary, but try conveying "decongestants" to a young pharmacist who thinks you want anabolic steroids. It's just too much work to pull out the phrase book or throw any energy behind miming, so I go back to bed.

All my new Egyptian friends want to see me one more time, and of course feed me, before I go. Not without guilt do I ignore the phone and the doorbell. But no one evades Iman. I will be fed and pampered whether I like it or not, and she will draft her husband Mohammed to drive me to the airport at 11 p.m. on a work night—the Cairo airport, an hour away through arguably the worst traffic in the world. I beg to be allowed to take a taxi; they don't even have a car. Iman won't hear of it. "We love Amed and we love you," she says. "Besides. Every day I go to work, come home, make dinner, go to bed. To me, this is a picnic!"

Egyptians have a sense of family that is as alien to me as their rituals. Family simply is the measure of happiness in life, and the more overwhelming the family, the fuller the measure. In weeks of meeting Egyptians all over the country, no one has asked me what I do for a living, as a Westerner would. Instead, they want to know about my family, which at first I thought meant my parents and siblings. But no, they mean my children: How many? How old? Boys or girls? Are they good children? Do they make me happy? Egyptians are honest about theirs. With her three grown sons sitting at the table, Iman tells me (after I've told her what good manners they have) that they're no help around the house. Mohammed's dimples deepen.

On my last night before a 1 a.m. flight out, I take my keys upstairs to their apartment—early so I won't interrupt their dinner. But dinner is already on the table and a place is set for me, as if they knew when I'd emerge from my cocoon of congestion. Iman heaps my plate, then the sons help themselves until the platters are all empty and the food is all gone. Iman hasn't eaten anything and Mohammed isn't even home from work yet. While she serves me a dessert I have come to love but that I can't stand the sight of now, she tells me not to worry about her hungry sons: There's another whole casserole and salad in the kitchen, and when Mohammed comes home they will pray and then eat together.

In the meantime I return to my bed and sleep until the doorbell rings at 10:30. Mohammed is ready to take me to the airport in a borrowed Fiat wagon half a century old. We head out into the streets of the city, maybe the meanest streets on the planet, and I wonder indifferently when he last drove a car.

At the airport I try to get them to just drop me off, but no. Mohammed leaves Iman and me by the door and goes to park the car while we make our way inside. I'm insanely grateful that Iman is with me now. Besides my being sick unto death, I can't read any of the signs, of course, and every counter is strung with lines of travelers and their suitcases. I doubt I could have found a single English-speaking departure clerk to get me boarded, but I don't need to. Iman has everything under control and goes person-to-person-to-person, asking questions and getting directions until we end up clear around the terminal to the right desk for international departures.

Iman is a wonder to watch. She is half my height and twice my width, and she motors through that airport like she's jet-propelled herself. An archaeologist, she once chaperoned an antiquities exhibit to the U.S. but promised everyone she'd never do it again. Not without Mohammed.

Iman continues to ask directions until we finally arrive at the security gate. We hug each other, and then I slip away. On the other side I see that Mohammed has joined her, and I watch them both follow along mirroring me from the other side of the glass, all the way to the passage where I turn out to the tarmac and my plane. I stop once and there they are, still waving.

There isn't much in Egypt that's like home—not the food or the weather or the culture or the customs—but this long goodbye seems really familiar, like going home after Thanksgiving with my family feeling like I've left part of my heart behind.

Bless Iman and bless Mohammed. Now they're my family, too.

Travels With Omar

Cairo—I'm back in Cairo for the last time before returning home March 1, and now I can relax in the apartment where I'm staying as if I own the place. The cold that kept me in bed and shivering for a day in the Bahariya Oasis has turned into a ferocious and unrelenting cough, but I'm planning on continuing my exploring anyway, at least today. Young Omar is my guide again while I'm in town—a birthday present from my Egyptian Friend back home, Omar's uncle. Today we are going to a city about an hour north by train, beautified with gardens and stone bridges by the Turkish general Mohammed Ali who in the 19th century made himself king.

We start the day by walking to the corner microbus stop for a ride to the train station, where I learn that the suicidal underpass I've been walking to get to the Internet cafe has a parallel pedestrian tunnel. Yesterday I'd witnessed a boy getting his head cracked open by one of the zooming drivers who honk their way mindlessly through this underpass whether there's anyone in there or not. Now I can use the pedestrian tunnel with some semblance of safety and undertake my internet addiction anew.

It takes us a couple of microbuses to get to the main train station because Omar is impatient with the traffic delays and can get us there faster by foot. He pulls me by my sleeve through the narrow, traffic-clogged alleys to speed up my pace, steer me around the many obstacles, and assure himself that he knows where I am. As with many things regarding Omar, I will get sick of this.

We emerge from an alley right at the edge of the tracks, with the trains and the station on the other side. There are no trains moving right now, thank God, because Omar leaps down the four-foot ledge, puts up a hand, and tells me we're going to run across the tracks. "I'll bet you've never done THIS in America," he says. No, I have not, and I don't want to now.

But today and for the rest of my time in Cairo Omar won't be shy about telling me what to do. He tells me I should carry a toothbrush, put on my jacket, comb my hair, change my seat, hurry up—even dress my salad. ("Pour the dressing ON the salad.") He grabs my sleeve again, we run across about five sets of tracks, and he helps me onto the platform on the other side. He finds a policeman to ask about the next train to our destination. All I recognize from their cheerful conversation is the word "American."

The next train is leaving in a few minutes and it occurs to me to ask if there's a W.C. on it. Since there isn't, I run back to the station, use the loo, and run back just in time to leap aboard. Every seat is filled and once again it's a big surprise that no women or foreigners are on board.

Omar turns on the charm and pretty soon some men start shuffling and two seats open up—first for me and then for him. The men who yield their seats ride for the next hour in the wobbly space between the cars where poor Egyptians can ride free—even though these men have paid their full 1 EGP (1/6 of a US dollar) fare.

Tourists are not supposed to ride fourth class, and at first I thought that was so the railways could bilk the tourists. But it turns out to have more to do with competition for the cheap seats: Everyone uses public transportation here, and most Egyptians are poor. None of these trains runs with extra seats, no matter what class the car, so it's better for everyone if the cheaper cars are reserved for the people who can least afford them. (And anyway the first-class cars are so cheap as to make sneaking down to fourth class absurd.)

I have ridden in first class toward Luxor and second class from Alexandria, but this is my first fourth-class ride—a gift from Omar who wants me to see how real Egyptians live.

The open platforms between the cars are stuffed with the free-riders, some who look so frail they might blow away in the wind. I try not to draw attention to myself by looking around, but when I perceive something moving in my peripheral vision I can't help myself. Scooting along the luggage rack within inches of the ceiling, there's a man with a stuffed flour sack that he uses as a pillow once he reaches a point where he can stop and stare down at me. Every time I sneak a peek at him he hasn't moved—or, apparently, blinked.

As I've been warned the glass in the windows is gone. I don't think about the effect of traveling in a train with no windows until the black smoke from the diesel locomotive comes furling into the car. Add to that the dust and dirt of thousands of years of Egyptian decay and now I'm hacking violently, uncontrollably, until tears run down my face.

I have wrapped my scarf over my head (to keep my hair from tangling), around my neck (because I'm freezing), and across my nose and mouth (to maintain an airway), and now I look like Lawrence of Arabia, except for the eyes. (Ever since I bought this scarf in Luxor a month ago I would no sooner go out without it than I would without my passport. It's also camouflage for a haircut and dye-job pushed way beyond their expiration dates.)

Every once in awhile I notice Omar chuckling to himself. Finally he tells me that back at the train station the policeman he'd talked with, who asked if Omar wanted a tourist policeman to accompany us, asked also if he had gotten me off the Internet. Omar told him yes.

As we travel north it's easy to see how Omar, who was raised in relative privilege with an education and the instantly recognizable badge of white, straight teeth, can cross back and forth easily between this world and his family's. He strikes up a conversation with his seat mate, includes a man standing in the aisle, and pretty soon they're talking with the easy camaraderie of old friends. Omar does this everywhere we go—asking for directions and advice, helping someone board a bus, picking up a wallet a woman has dropped, giving money to a beggar on the sidewalk—always with that winning smile. He just got a job in reception at a hotel in Alexandria and hopes it will lead to his dream of touring the world with a backpack. He wants to meet people who are not like him—real people, he says—and with his friendliness and warmth I have no doubt he'll do it.

When we arrive we have to step over the sprawling free-riders crowding the platform between cars. We make our way through the crowded, noisy, dirt streets toward the Nile, which Omar tells me is more beautiful here than in Cairo.

As we walk along he wants to know about my city, so I give him the highlights: clear lakes, the Mississippi, bike trails and walking trails that go everywhere, a vibrant youth culture and music scene. But he wants to know if it's legal there to spit on the sidewalk. Well, I don't know, and I tell him so. He says he saw a European spitting on the sidewalk once in Sharm el Sheikh. "Disgusting," he says. I look at the donkey cart driver throwing orange peels overboard, at the goats upside down in a garbage bin, at the herd of feral cats raking through piles of garbage someone has just dumped from a window, at the steaming mounds of animal waste underneath my own feet, and I think, Really? Disgusting?

We reach one of Mohammed Ali's famous bridges, which has what looks like small, medieval castles on either end. We're out of the worst of the traffic because the bridge is too narrow, but we still have to watch for the lunatic motorcycles and toc-tocs that roar around us. (Toc-tocs are the noisy, smelly, three-wheeled roofed motorcycles you see all over Bangkok. They're new in Egypt and are the worst kind of pestilence since God persuaded Pharaoh to free the Israelites.)

The Nile is wide here as it gathers steam for the delta and the Mediterranean. Fishermen dot the blue, gently flowing waters; some of them ride the current on old tires, their feet dangling in the water. It is a tranquil scene and I'm happy to be here.

We take our time crossing the bridge to the other side, where I can see the gardens Mohammed Ali built extending far along the river. But as soon as we touch foot on the other side we are swarmed by toc-tocs. Over and over Omar says "la, shukran," we want to walk, but they won't leave us alone. They follow us step by step, shouting at us and beeping. Omar keeps putting himself between me and the toc-tocs because they're crowding us and the drivers are hollering threateningly. We escape them momentarily when we turn into one of the gardens, but then the tea sellers start following us to get us to come into their shops. By now my nerves are rattled, my chest is raw from coughing, and my breathing passages are choked with soot and dirt stirred up by traffic and toc-tocs. I agree when Omar suggests we go look at the waterfall and then get out of here.

But back on the street the toc-tocs swarm once again. One boy of about 10, driving illegally, persuades Omar to take his toc-toc to the falls for 50 piastres--1/2 a pound--for the brief ride to the falls. Omar gives him twice as much and we try to walk the rest of the way but the boy, like everyone else, will not go away until the caretaker of the lock and dam chases him off the riverside terrace.

Once we're back on the road the toc-tocs return with the boy in front, and now he's demanding 5 pounds for having waited for us. Nobody asked him to wait and in fact we did not want him to. Some obviously ugly words are exchanged and Omar is angrier than I could ever imagine him to be. I can't believe the guts of this little brat taking on a man more than twice his size. We escape him briefly but here he comes up on me from behind, practically running me over and shouting at Omar. He must be the leader of this little army of toc-tocs because they all follow us step for step the whole way back into town, shouting and honking their obnoxious little horns.

When we get to a place where we can hear each other, Omar suggests we skip lunch, hop a microbus now for the trip back into Cairo, catch the Metro to Tahrir, and get take-out koshiry to eat in the Square—the same sad, squalid Square surrounded by burned-out high-rise hotels and scraps of the occupation camp; the same bland, gut-bloating pasta as we'd shared a month before. I suggest alternatives and he snaps something about why I'm asking so many questions.

Later, on the bus, I barely speak to him and he tells me not to talk because he doesn't want the other people, who are staring at me in that unblinking way I'll never get used to, to know I'm foreign, which is so patently false that I store it away for a later fight.

When we arrive at the Square we go to order koshiry and Omar refuses my suggestion to eat inside, where it's relatively quieter and clean. It's not until later that he tells me that his pique was due to guilt because he had missed afternoon prayers. With that he turns into a covered alleyway, parks me with our koshiry on a plastic stool and joins three men who are praying in this make-shift mosque. It's clear now that the dinner and the destination were about his agenda, not mine.

When he rises he returns to me with that pearly, beatific smile and regales me for the whole walk to the park bench with how wonderful prayer is for restoring your mood.

I can feel it coming. "Are you not grateful to God?" he asks as we take up our bench. "Why do you not show God your gratitude through prayer?" He continues in this vein while I look meaningfully at the bag of koshiry growing cold at his feet.

In a pique of my own I ask him why he thinks prayers are better at demonstrating gratitude than works are, and how does he know whether I pray or not. I try to tell him that in my tradition your faith is between you and God, a personal thing, and that prayer can happen anytime, anywhere, and is free of rules.

But he's not listening. He launches uninvited into the propriety of prayer, the compulsions outlined in Islam that tell Muslims how to pray—when, where, how often, and with whom. The gulf between us—culture, religion, gender, age— is so vast there's no point in taking up my end of the conversation. Earlier in the journey this would have bothered me. Now, I'm glad that he's finally shut up.

What I'm coming to dislike about Omar is not really his fault, it's mine. He had me believing he wanted to travel the world and meet people completely unlike him—in China, Tibet, Vietnam, Russia, Eastern Europe. A lot of non-Muslims live in those places. Does he really think he'd make friends around the world telling them how wrong-headed they are?

The next day we're in a different town and it's time—again—for him to pray. But the mosque we're heading for is a lovely little example of Turkish architecture in a garden, and I drop my antagonism momentarily to see it.

Inside there's no one except the muezzin who smiles at me and lets me sit in a chair under the dome. That lasts about a minute before someone else comes along to object, and I'm moved with my chair to a low-ceilinged, curtained-off corner to stew in my own juices, in the dark.

Now my temper's really up. I grab my shoes, cut through the mosque and head for the garden. Whether Mohammed intended Islam to remain like mental handcuffs or not, the fact that women are forced to pray in a coat closet like some bad Catholic girls strikes me as reason enough to consider this religion a failure.

When Omar comes out and starts his happy preaching, he gets to a point where he describes how Islam around the world has united the people. I really don't want to get into it with him but he keeps it up and after awhile I can't stand it anymore. I say, "the men, Omar." "Islam has united the men." It's interesting that now he doesn't want to get into it with me.

This morning I was driven from the apartment by voices over loudspeakers coming from different directions preaching the Koran, since it's Friday. Once again, they were so loud there was no chance for reading, much less writing. Islam is the state religion in Egypt, its mosques and imams bought and paid for by the government. Although tolerance of minority religions is official state policy, in practice it's a different story. The largest minority, the Coptic Christians, who predate Islam by almost 500 years, suffer under a second-class citizenship that gives them inferior rights compared to Muslims, limits their access to government protection and programs, and otherwise marginalizes them.

One of the many things I love about my country is that in the beginning, religious zealots were so numerous, disparate, and afraid any one of them would dominate the others that the Framers could get away with writing a Bill of Rights that protected all of them from the government. Today, no state religion. In 200 years it's become part of our DNA to believe that pluralism is a virtue.

You Want Make Sex?

Bahariya Oasis—I have spent two nights in Bawiti, in the Bahariya Oasis, and I'm disappointed to realize I won't be going on to Siwa. The only way to get there without going back to Cairo (6 hours) and circling the desert (13 hours) is to go right over the dunes for four hours in a Land Rover at a cost of about 1,000 EGP. Since I can't find anyone to go with, don't have that much money to spare, have no interest in sleeping out in the freezing desert on one of the overnight tours here which is all there is left to do, and have four more days till I have to be in Cairo, I'm feeling at loose ends.

At my first hotel here I meet the European from my bus who turns out to have lived in Cairo for more than 10 years and has a flat in Berlin as well. He's Danish, an antiquarian book dealer, and we spend hours talking the first day, then the next morning too, when I learn that he used to have a house here in tumble-down Bawiti and was visiting to see how much that tourism has wrecked everything since the first hotel signaled the decline to come.

For lunch Christopher takes me to the only "restaurant" in town, owned by a local man who has had the same menu for 10 years: chicken, rice, soup, and bread, none of it very good, for an exorbitant 15 EGP. I'll eat there twice and be sorry both times. It is open onto the dusty road, and you get traffic exhaust and grit with your bad lunch. The owner, Faroum, sits on the road blowing a whistle to get people to eat there. With Christopher's soft voice and Danish accent it's all I can do to hear him above the din. The bathroom ranks as the most disgusting I've encountered anywhere in Egypt, which is saying a lot.

While we eat we are joined by Ahmed, who through the Bedouin underground knows that I am looking for a tour into the desert, but most importantly a way to get to Siwa. (I will get used to the fact that no matter where I am in Bawiti, everyone seems to know what I want and how to find me.)

Does he know of anyone going to Siwa? He says he will check with the military office to find out. (Anyone going through the Western Desert near Siwa, in the Great Sand Sea near the Libyan border, must have a military permit. The military would know if one has been filed, who filed it, and then I would know if there's anyone going.) It turns out no one is.

Since Christopher isn't leaving until tomorrow, we work out an arrangement with Ahmed to spend the next day touring the desert.

In the meantime I want to walk in the palm groves that extend for miles in every direction. Ahmed takes us to his own land in the midst of the groves, where he has planted alfalfa to begin the process of enriching the soil for a garden. He shows us another garden that his will look like in a few years, a large one full of onions, beans, cabbages, melons and lettuces. It is protected by a strong fence made of 6-foot-tall woven palm fronds, and the donkey tied up nearby must be the tractor.

We sit for awhile and Ahmed explains his plans. At 29 he has been taking people into the desert for 11 years, and while he says it has been fun, he has a wife and two children now and wants to turn his labors to something more reliable. With tourism so minimal, he is spending his time working on this garden, getting the irrigation set up, and starting work on an olive grove right in the sandy desert outside Bawiti.

The next day we drive out of town toward the sand and the black mountains. It is hard to imagine how caravans crossed this trackless waste, but pretty soon we turn the Land Rover off the road and over the embankment, and head straight toward the mountains and the sand dunes ahead.

Amed's Land Rover is much used but very clean and well appointed, and since he doesn't smoke it smells as fresh as the desert itself. The seats, dash, and stick shift have colorful, hand-woven covers. Ahmed is showing off some of what the Land Rover can do and I'm impressed, which pleases him. I ask him if he's given the truck a name. He smiles that private smile I'll see frequently today, and responds that the truck is named "Fajarag," or something like that, which means someone who breaks all the rules in Islam.

 
I am sitting in front and will come to regret that when Amed aims for a steep dune as fast as Fajarag can go. We can't see what's ahead, whether another truck, another dune, or one of the razor-sharp drop-offs created by the frequent sandstorms, so I'm hanging on with both hands to the roof handle generously covered with another Bedouin weaving.

When we reach the top he stops, with the front wheels just over the perpendicular edge. "It's ok," he says, looking over to me, "we go easy, like camel." And down we go, slowly.

We spend the rest of the day driving around to some sites Ahmed thinks we'll enjoy—English Mountain, so named for a battle with Britain; the great salt lake, several sites with grand vistas, and my favorite, a corral with a male and female Moroccan camel newly delivered of their rickety offspring.

The baby has been born today and is being guarded by her beautiful mother. Ahmed tells me the loose hobble on the mother is to keep her from wandering too far from the baby. I watch from a distance, not knowing how they feel about strangers, but then the baby gathers her legs under her and wobbles over to investigate me. She shows no interest in Ahmed, who's trying to figure out her gender, but after a few tries petting her she submits to some scratching from me. She has a velvet muzzle that she rests right in my hand.

We had come this way to see one of the many hot springs where everyone bathes in Bahariya Oasis. Large concrete pools have been built to collect the water, and runoff goes to the irrigation canals that course through the agricultural fields. I want to try it; I've picked up a cold and would love a hot soak. Ahmed says that one of the pools is more frequented by tourists and he suggests taking me to that one, but Christopher will be gone by then and I have to decide if I'm comfortable in Ahmed's hands.

If I'd brought my own man I wouldn't have these infrequent inconveniences, but the one thing I don't want to do is risk later regret by letting overcaution come between me and something I shouldn't miss. I agree to go and tell Ahmed, "No funny business." He thinks this is hilarious and repeats it all evening.

Before I go I tell the proprietor of my hotel what I'm doing, where, with whom, and when I expect to be back. I tell him I'll find him when I return so he's not worried. He is sitting with some people who tell me Ahmed is a "good guy" and I don't have to worry, so I don't.

The spring is in a palm grove on government property but I can't see much of it in the dark. The pool is half-full of boisterous young men who greet me with a wave. "America? Obama!"

I sit by a fire waiting for Ahmed to change and I'm asked my name, my nationality, and how old I am. It isn't just the country people with the effrontery to ask this question; several of my Cairo friends have asked the same thing. After huffing, "That's no question to ask a lady," he drops it, and I'm given a few moments to wonder why I give a damn.

Ahmed comes out of the nearby hut in trunks and I go in to put on my shorts and a long, loose shirt over my bathing suit. I have been told this is how women dress for the springs, but nobody here seems to care. The only light is by the small fire and the dome of stars, making it difficult to find my way. But when my eyes adjust I can see figures outlined in the steam rising from the pool.

The water is too hot to enter all at once, but after awhile I ease myself in and...dissolve, just like sugar in tea. I lean my head back on the ledge and look at the stars, which drop all the way to the ground on this moonless night. I'm selfish enough to wish everybody else would just go away.

I have to get out several times to cool down, and I admit to Ahmed that he was right about how long you stay relaxed and warm. Finally I'm just too hot and say it's time for me to go.

On the way back we're quiet. Finally Ahmed says, "Why you travel alone?" I tell him it's because I'm on an adventure and it's easier to meet people if I'm alone.

"You want make sex?"

"What??! NO!" I tell him.

He wants to know why not.

Well, four reasons that I can think of right off the bat: he's married, I'm in a relationship, I'm going home in a few weeks, and he's nearly thirty years younger than me—not necessarily in that order. Misunderstanding me, he tells me that he "can't make sex unless married;" his religion forbids it. I say fine, who asked you?

Then the lightbulb goes off in my head: He thinks that my adventure, on which I've said I will meet interesting people because I'm traveling solo, is intended primarily to meet interesting MEN, and that I'M asking HIM to "make sex." I find this hysterical and tell him so, and he gives me that private smile that I interpret to mean he's not sure he believes me. I have to list the names and nationalities of all the women I've met, in addition to the men, who have made this trip unforgettable. We don't have time for me to explain why this is important to me.

But once we get the sex stuff settled, Ahmed asks if he can put some questions to me.

The first one is a doozy: "Here, woman over 40 not want make sex," he says. "European women over 40, they still want make sex?"

Hoo boy. I tell him yes, I think so. But he wants to know how they manage when their men are losing the ability, not to mention the interest. I tell him I don't know, maybe they're unhappy?

Bingo. THAT'S the answer he's looking for.

It seems that in his 11 years of guiding desert tours, Ahmed has been propositioned repeatedly by "old" women. (I correct him: We prefer "older.") He's a little mystified by this but I can't tell if he's flattered. He says it's not usually a problem; the women respect his answer when he says his religion prevents it, and he understands that sleeping in the desert on a starry night can put one in the mood. But knowing that European women are not done with sex after their childbearing years is news to him, and it puts something into perspective for Ahmed that he has long wanted to understand.

My turn: I take the opportunity since we're more or less on the subject to ask why a Muslim man would ever want multiple wives. (To me, this is lunacy.)

Ahmed concentrates for a minute, mumbles something, and replies so fast it takes me a minute for it to register.

"Mango, mango, mango, mango, mango everyday mango," he says.

"You understand?"

What's Up with the Mini-Skirts?

Cairo—In the Turgoman Bus Station in Cairo I'm having a Turkish coffee when the proprietor of the shop turns the television from LOUD prayers to videos of Egyptian pop—a very Eastern kind of disco that I loathe. But then he switches the channel to stunningly gorgeous women in sparkling gowns with plunging necklines, mini-skirts, blue jeans, and short-shorts, dancing that sinuous, gelatinous, classically Egyptian dance that is so frankly sexual that I can't believe it's on any TV here at all, much less on one hanging in the Cairo bus terminal right across from several smoking Bedouin men and women in hijabs with children.

[UPDATE: May 17, 2012—According to the Associated Press, Egypt's vice police arrested the owner of a belly dancing TV station in Cairo on suspicion of operating without a license, inciting licentiousness, and facilitating prostitution.]

The issue of what is and is not covered on Egyptian women has been a matter of debate for decades, with women ultimately choosing the veil for themselves after Iran's Islamic Revolution made it a point of pride to do so. (The Salafists, radical Islamists who just won a respectable showing in the recent Parliamentary elections here, don't like even the suggestion of female breasts on statues and have moved to cover them up.) But the hijab is practically universal now, even among children; in four weeks traveling the country I can count the number of unveiled women I've seen on one hand, and I doubt they were Egyptian.

The Prophet Mohammed called for his wives, daughters and the faithful to pull their veils "down low" to cover their "ornaments," according to my translation of the Koran, which has been variously interpreted to include their hair, eyes, lips, bosom, and/or their entire body. But the "ornaments" on these Egyptian dancers are right out there, wagging, and in case you haven't noticed this, the dancers look right into the camera and flip their hair, bat their eyes, roll their hips, purse their lips, and otherwise spotlight ALL their ornaments, which in their case are considerable.

The few women I've been comfortable enough with to ask about why they wear the hijab say simply that it's a declaration of faith. But besides sounding too automatic to be heartfelt, the answer sounds dubious in a country where EVERYBODY is Muslim, or is expected to be, and if they're not, they keep it to themselves. Other than the hijab the young women dress just like girls in Europe and America, with snug sweaters, jeans, and shoes that can't possibly be comfortable on the broken, rubble-strewn pavements of the cities and towns. I will add the dancers in the bus station to my questions for Omar when I return to Cairo.

What's To Love About Egypt: A Pictorial

The Nile Valley, by balloon

Scaring yourself to death

Boys and their camels


Purple carrots

Children

Forests in the desert

Sunrise over the Red Sea

A slow pace

Challenging toilets

Street food

Actually, ALL food

Bedouin girls

Fixing things Americans would scrap

New friends

It's LOUD in This Country!

CAIRO—I'm on my way to the Bahariya Oasis today so I find my way to a full-size bus at the station and load my red bag into the compartment beneath. Some of the seats have numbers, some are broken off, and I can't tell from my ticket anyway whether seating is open or not. So I choose one near a window halfway back (to avoid witnessing the driving) and settle in. Only two other people board—an Egyptian and a European man—and I'm glad I'm early because ten minutes before departure time we take off.

Across the Nile into Giza we stop at a crowded transfer station under a bridge and take on more passengers—enough to completely fill the bus. An argument erupts about something with much shouting and waving of hands, and the driver comes to ask me for my ticket. I am relocated to a seat farther back in the bus, but it's next to a youngish bearded man who turns out to be an imam, and the shouting starts anew. This continues until the imam finally relinquishes his seat altogether rather than sit next to me (because I'm a woman? An infidel? Both?) but I'm fine with that because now I get his seat by the window. I have heard that Bahariya is a hotbed of Salafists and I wonder if this man is heading there to be part part of all that.

We're not even out of Cairo yet when the sound system starts blasting the Koran. The European man in front of me promptly puts in earphones; I have heard him speak to fellow passengers in Arabic so I'm guessing he knows what's coming. My earplugs are in my red bag in the underneath compartment. I don't know yet that this recording will last more than two hours—with a pause for the imam to lead general prayers—and by then I've resorted to fingers in my ears.

It gets to the point where I really cannot stand it. It is an assault on the senses and in my Western way I consider it the worst kind of bad manners to force me into anything, much less listening to these interminable prayers. I can't read, I can't even think because the recording gives me no peace. I wonder if Egyptians don't ever get sick of this constant noise. Later, at the lovely oasis hotel where I'll stay in Bahariya, the peace from within the palms will be shattered regularly by the whistle a woman uses to collect her family. She even uses it INSIDE the stone restaurant, forcing me up out of my skin and ultimately out of the restaurant.

Egyptians have a native warmth, generosity and sociability that are unmatched, but they can be completely oblivious to what I think of as ordinary courtesy. This woman's family will party on my terrace until well past midnight. After the second night I will change hotels. The proprietor of my new hotel, a perfect little gem in a garden costing a third as much, will tell me he never rents rooms to Egyptians. "They're too loud," he says.

Too Nauseated for Alexandria

Alexandria—The best way to spend your first day in Cleopatra's Alexandria is NOT in a budget hotel, in bed, fully dressed, moaning.

At about 3 a.m. in Cairo I was awakened by violent nausea that emptied my stomach. Three hours later the wave swept in again. A half hour after that I finished packing my things, left the apartment where I was staying, broke the key in the lock, and hailed a taxi for the train station.

Was it the calamari sandwich I'd eaten the day before? (Very yummy.) Did I forget to use bottled water with my toothbrush?

It takes two full days to feel like eating again, but as soon as I do I head straight to a waterfront place famous with local Alexandrians for its seafood. (Sooner or later we're all going to die, and I AM on the Mediterranean!)

I am not disappointed. I take a carriage to the old Anfushi district, around the western peninsula from my hotel. As we turn the corner from the busy corniche the street suddenly turns quiet and pungent with fish on wagons that line the route. The Farag Restaurant is not far, right across a quiet street from a swimming beach that will be mobbed in a few months with Cairenes escaping the city's heat, but tonight there's no one here but a single family playing on the swingsets.

Inside I'm greeted warmly and steered to a beautifully displayed fresh catch of the day: calamari, pompano, red and white snapper, shrimp in three sizes, and several other varieties of multi-colored fish. I choose the large shrimp—grilled in garlic—hold up 4 fingers and assent to a salad. The host doesn't mention that the salad will be enormous and in ADDITION to the 4 other salads, plus 5 loaves of pocket bread, plus the pickled vegetables that I love, that he'll bring right out for me. I'm stuffed before the shrimp (6, not 4) and salad arrive, but they make a good breakfast. I end up paying $16—more than I've spent on any meal so far—but it more than makes up for the day I've lost touristing.

I decide to spend an extra day in Alexandria since I feel so capital now and begin the day at the Alexandria Library, a soaring, ultra-modern edifice right across from the Mediterranean. Alexander the Great chose the site to become the greatest city in his empire, but it was Ptolemy I who executed the vision. The library was intended to be the most comprehensive in the world and books from around the world poured in to be copied and added to the nooks.

It may have included as many as 700,000 scrolls when Julius Caesar reportedly burned it down during a battle after setting fire to his own ships in the harbor, from where the flames spread to the docks and beyond. About 400 years later Emperor Constantine burned it down again in his Christian zeal to eradicate Alexandria's polytheistic past, of which the new library was a part. But in the meantime, scholars from around the world used the collections to piece together discoveries in math, physics, biology, astronomy, medicine, literature and geography. Today, across from where I sit in the library's coffee shop, the large open plaza is full of young scholars with notebooks in their laps, taking a break from their labors in the stacks. Meanwhile two women in sweatsuits and hijabs jog by on the corniche.

I almost skip Alexandria because most of its treasures remain under water. Built in the delta of the Nile whose fanning tributaries relocated naturally over the centuries, the city has sunk at least 20 feet since its heyday. But though divers have been recovering artifacts since the '90s, whole neighborhoods and legendary districts are still coming to light.

Ptolemy (a Macedonian) was a great builder and intended Alexandria to be a bridge between the old pharaonic era and the new Hellenistic one, and evidence of this inspiration is apparent in the many underwater photographs hanging in the Alexandria Museum. When I go to the museum—my next stop—it is these eerie underwater photographs I find most compelling. The artifacts themselves tell only a piece of the story that the photographs hint at.

You can't scratch the ground in Alexandria (or anywhere in Egypt) without turning up some ancient thing, which is a constant irritation to modern builders forced to give the reclaimers time to excavate a promising site. But they rarely get enough time to uncover much before development begins, so more natural means typically reveal new finds.

That's the story behind the catacombs that I visit next, three levels filled with dead over the generations, with the bottom level now underwater. The discovery as told to me via hand signals by the ancient guide is that a donkey stepped in a hole and fell through, revealing the immense caverns beneath. "The donkey die," he laughs.

But that's the same story behind the discovery in the 1990s of the vast necropolis near Bahariya Oasis called the Valley of the Golden Mummies, where I'll go next, and of many sites discovered elsewhere over the years. It's a continuing source of amusement to Egyptians that despite more than a century of hard labor by foreign Egyptologists, it's still the random donkey that's turning up the finds.

My last stop for the day is the Roman Theatre, uncovered beneath subsequent constructions and just sitting there in the midst of a thriving city. The Romans took over officially after Cleopatra committed suicide, marking the end of the pharaonic era. Like the Ptolemys before them, the Romans would blend elements of previous architectural styles with their own. I can see the evidence of this in what's left of the rich people's catacombs, with their scarabs, cobras, and pillars.

It's the end of the day and I have no interest in food, so after finding the train station and struggling through buying a ticket to Cairo for the next day, I return to my hotel and call it a night.

I can't relax completely, though. When I reach Cairo I want to find the nearby bus station and try to book a ticket to the Bahariya Oasis for that day. The train station is in the center of the city—a pulsing, choking mess of vehicles, animals, shouting vendors and pressing people. ("The word "chaos" comes from "Cairo.") On the train I ask someone to write the name of the bus station in Arabic for me, since every single attempt of mine to be understood using my Lonely Planet pocket vocabulary has failed. What works is writing what I need, when I can find a likely volunteer, and just pointing to it.

When I get to the bus station I'm too late to depart today, so I head to a juice bar to kill the afternoon before notifying my Cairo friends that I'm back —again—in town. That's where I am now, listening to very loud, very bad American music.

(I'm delighted though, apropos of nothing, to note that of the three people seated near me, all are using Apple laptops.)

Pilgrim's Path

St. Catherine—It's early afternoon and I'm sitting alone on a sheltered stone terrace in the shadow of the Sinai Mountains, at the guesthouse of the St. Catherine monks who have lived here since the 4th century. Seven ratty cats are driving me crazy trying to steal my tea and butter biscuits. The library I've come to visit is closed and I have nothing to do until dinner.

St. Catherine is a government protectorate that includes this Greek Orthodox monastery, several ancient shrines and mosques, miles of canyons and mountains, and the shrine to Moses' burning bush and Mt. Sinai itself. Tourists and pilgrims come here to walk the ancient path and climb the mountain (after paying about $3 to get into the protectorate.) But no vehicles are allowed beyond that last police checkpoint. My Big Red Bag bearing new guidebooks and tons of tourist trash is mighty heavy as I lean into my mile-long climb to the monastery.

I'm still swatting cats away when the first wave of pilgrims returns from their day's walk. There are mobs of them of all nationalities and I wonder where they're all going to sleep. It's not until two days later that I'll note the rows of giant tour buses lined up at the gate. I'm guessing they head back to civilization after their trek.

Some of the pilgrims who took camels into the steep cliffs look none the worse for wear. While the camels lie about as camels do, the boys who care for them play football in the dust. The bells chime for afternoon prayer and I hear the monks chanting from behind the 9-foot-thick fortress wall built in the 6th century by Emperor Justinian. The voices moan that tuneless, minor-key Orthodox stuff that no one raised on Bach and Handel in church can stand.

It still doesn't make sense to me that these monks are Greek Orthodox, an Eastern rite, when Egyptian Orthodox are Copts, an Oriental rite. All the monks here speak Greek and only Greeks are allowed to join the order, while the Copts, all Egyptians, follow a liturgy in a language closely related to that of the pharaohs. This monastery chose sides during the Byzantine era and hasn't moved an inch ever since. The library, containing many ancient texts, is considered next to the Vatican's to be the most extensive and priceless in the world.

The next group of pilgrims includes about a dozen Orthodox priests whose tall staffs and long, black, dusty robes indicate that they walked. None of them looks like he's had a bath in this millennium, much less a shave. One of them is barefoot and has completely black toenails. Even the Fisherman wore shoes.

That night at dinner they enjoy several bottles of the local Omar Kayam wine. I find out the next morning at 3:30 a.m. after I crash their service that they're not monks from this monastery, they're Serbian Orthodox and the people they're with are their flock.

Having missed the group launching early for the sunrise climb, I see women dressed for church and decide to follow them. Through a gate and around some passages we go 'till we get to a heavy wooden door. Inside is a small chapel that looks original to the monastery. I've never been in an Eastern Orthodox church and I swing around 360 degrees gaping at all the brass, censers, and icons. The light is all by oil lamps and casts a warm, yellow glow.

I sneak out when it looks like everybody's about to do something that I don't know how to do. At 3:45 a.m. the bells chime from the large, main church. The resident monks pray a lot—first from 4-7:30 a.m. and again from 5-7 p.m.

At breakfast I meet two Danes on a tour of Egypt's many Christian holy places, including the route the Holy Family took on their flight into Egypt. They both paint icons for a living, and one woman gives me a print of one of her paintings. They tip me off about how to get into the main church, more ancient and foreign than anything I've ever seen.

The next morning when I leave the church's bookstore it's about 9 a.m. and hordes of the pilgrims who got up at 2 a.m. to climb Mt. Sinai for the sunrise are returning. There seem to be hundreds of them today, speaking every language on the planet. I want to climb the mountain but I'm not sure how to do it since I have no interest in walking in the dark—either for sunrise or sunset—much less with all these people.

Just then a Bedouin man asks me if I want to climb today. I like his face and the modest way he approaches me, with a courtly nod of the head as so many Bedouin do. It helps too that his English is very good, since practically no one at the monastery understands a thing I say. With the recent kidnapping of American women here in my mind, we negotiate terms and we're on our way.

I like Suileman's company immensely and he is an excellent guide, pointing out the stone hermitages of the mountain monks high on the ridges that would have been invisible to me. He is a member of the Jebaliya tribe, descendants of the people who have served this monastery since the 6th century when Emperor Justinian imported 200 families from Anatolia and Alexandria for the purpose. After the Arab conquest they eventually converted to Islam, but they retained many Christian observances unique to them. They retain also special privileges at and around the monastery, where they live, and where our paths cross.

The occupants of these hermitages are spiritual descendants of the Christian ascetics, who came here in the first centuries after Christ to meditate, pray, and escape Roman persecution. With the legendary Mt. Sinai above them and the shrine of Moses' burning bush at their feet, they grew more numerous until St. Helena, Emperor Constantine's mother, built them a church. Three hundred years later Justinian built a fortress to enclose the eventual monastery, and in 1,600 years it has been continuously occupied, maintained, and free from attack. Even the prophet Mohammed honored these monks, by offering them his protection and sparing them his taxes. A copy of his decree is in the library.

It is not a two hour climb up the mountain as described to me but three, because I have to stop often to catch my breath. Suileman is very agreeable, saying "slowly, slowly." When we rest he patiently chain-smokes. "Something wrong with the chest?" I can't guess his age within decades. Like all Bedouin he is skinny, leathery, and has teeth as repulsively brown as a camel's. I don't know why until later when I get a load of my own teeth in the first mirror I've seen in weeks: The tea will have to go.

On the way up we pass little shops scrabbled together with stone and straw where treats for pilgrims are sold, but everyone in them is sleeping now because most of their business came by before dawn. I am immeasurably grateful for not having been part of that horde. The experience I'm getting of the Sinai's vast, richly colored desolation belongs just to Suileman and me.

At the top there are two tiny chapels—one Christian and one Muslim—because Moses is revered by both religions. It occurs to me that this valley has been a model of religious toleration and mutual respect for centuries and could teach the world outside a thing or two.

There are blankets strewn about haphazardly for the people who climb and stay overnight, but they leave their trash and cigarette butts everywhere and I think about the hereafter they're going to get.

On the way down my legs are shaking and Suileman sticks out a gentlemanly elbow to help steady my step. We could be an English couple out for a garden walk, except by now he's carrying about half my weight, which is twice his.

One of the tea shops is open and we enter it, dark as a cave, for a hot cup on this cold morning. This time of year it's often below freezing on the mountain and covered with snow. The old proprietor—I'll call him Abraham—lives here alone. There are platforms and mattresses for about 12 people if they're stretched out end-to-end, and stacks of extra blankets. I have no idea how he gets his things up the mountain—bottles of pop and water, candy and cookies, etc. "No woman here," he tells me, which I don't doubt. "Woman keep you warm." I tell Sueliman later that I'm sorry Abraham has no wife. Sueliman finds this funny and tells me he has a wife all right—and five children. The wife is none too happy about Abraham's tea shop.

The next day I am eager to leave the monastery because about 3 million Russians who look exactly like potatoes have descended, shoving me away from the coffee pot in the morning and taking my seat at the breakfast table. They pray en masse in the dining hall, crossing themselves backwards and bowing repeatedly and never—not once—smiling. They remind me of my tour guide in the Valley of the Kings who tried to get several Russian tourists from climbing one of the tombs to take pictures. They completely ignored him, even after several attempts, and without the usual tourist police there was nothing he could do. Later, in Dahab, I was talking about Bob Marley to a restaurant attendant I'd come to know and mentioned everybody's favorite song, "No Woman, No Cry." He smiled and leaned close: "Here? We say 'No Russian, no cry.'"

The next morning with Suileman's help I find and see the icon gallery, which despite my doubts turns out to be a large collection of treasures worthy of a traveling exhibit. Once more we get to experience it all alone.

Besides the very old icons, displayed in a labyrinth of stone caverns like the old wine cellars of France, there are room after room of silver and gold artifacts dating back many centuries that were gifts of the czars. But it's the books I've come to see and didn't expect to find here. Hebrew, Greek—all hand-lettered in original codices. I imagine the hours of work these took to produce, the monks laboring by oil lamp between hours of prayer. There's even a copy of Homer with a hand-stamped gold cover.

I am to go today to a mountain eco-lodge for three days, but change my mind after meeting its proprietor, Sheikh Mousa, who after tea I don't want tells me I'll have to hire a Jeep for 150 EGP to get there, pay about twice what I've been spending to stay there, and pretty much be dependent on him to get back to "civilization" in the village of St. Catherine, which is just a few stone Bedouin houses and a mosque. I do love the silence and the beauty, but there are no other guests and once the sun goes down at 6 p.m. there's absolutely nothing to do.

I decide to stay the night in his Bedouin Camp near the village, which has a variety of accommodations from a mattress on the ground to a very comfortable suite with a full bathroom. I spend the rest of the day reading the last few hundred pages of the Koran that I've committed to, and recovering from what could either have been too many dates yesterday or a touch of Pharaoh's Revenge.

Sheikh Mousa tells me there's a bus to Cairo at 6 a.m. (50 EGP for a 6-hour-trip!), so I walk down to the bus stop to make sure I know the way. The posted schedule shows Cairo crossed out. Well, I've been lucky so far. I go back to my room committed to giving it a go.

Confusing the man at the camp's reception desk, I pay for my room and try to express that I will be leaving before he's on duty in the morning and could he leave the gate unlocked? I have no confidence that he understands a word I say, but he does indeed leave the gate unlocked.

By Microbus with 30 Soldiers
The next morning I walk down to the bus stop across from the mosque, where early morning prayers are just ending. Boys leading strings of camels pass me soundlessly in the dark. Up ahead I see the shape of a mini-bus parked by the mosque, and out pops a man I'd seen the day before who'd asked me if I was going to Cairo. He hadn't told me that he was the bus driver. I can't believe there's a bus after all, and indeed, it's only 50 pounds!

This van is very posh by Egyptian standards, a brand-new Toyota 12-seater. The driver insists that I take the comfy seat up front, and after some futile protests I comply. At 6 a.m. on the dot we're off.

I feel bad for him because 50 pounds isn't much for me and the two passengers aboard for a 6-hour trip. Silly me. At the first police checkpoint 15 minutes later, about 12 very young soldiers throw their gear on top and clamber aboard. In another 20 minutes at another checkpoint, I swear he squeezes another dozen or so guys in fatigues inside. By now I know the wisdom of his having insisted I sit up front. There are easily three times the number of passengers on board than the trusty van was built to carry. The men are in a merry mood and the driver turns up the music LOUD. He leans over to tell me that these are the good guys—not the loathed military police—and they're off to Cairo for a 10-day holiday.

As the sun comes up the colors change and become more breathtaking around every turn. There is absolutely no one else on the road and I wonder why the driver periodically flashes his lights on and off, punctuating this with a swift sounding of his horn. No one smokes the whole way. I am liking this driver.

After about two hours we reach the shore of the Gulf of Suez to stop for gas, tea, and a smoke. Everyone in the cafe stares at me long and unabashedly. It's good practice for returning to Cairo, where I'm frankly stared at as if I were a giraffe. But a woman in a niquab heading for the Dunn Bros. in Linden Hills would get exactly the same treatment, so I try to be a sport about it.

It takes another two hours to reach the tunnel that will take us under the Suez Canal. I wish I could capture in a picture what it's like to pass right under a giant container ship!

In the meantime traffic has picked up and my calm, polite, unhurried driver starts showing his Egyptian colors. I can't believe he's going to pass a truck going uphill against traffic in a van with a thousand soldiers in it and another one coming straight at us. I am sure we will not make it and seize the dash with both hands. He weaves in front of the passed truck with no room to spare—the other drivers honking and flashing their lights in friendly greeting—but I don't let go of the dash. The driver leans over: "You a little bit afraid?" Everybody thinks this is hilarious.

At the town of Suez he hands the van over to his son, whose English is better but whose driving is worse. He gets a royal charge out of spotting me freak out. "Good driver, yes?" The flatbed trucks we pass bearing the burned-out carcasses of other "good driver" vehicles reassure me, no.

Once we get to Cairo, though, he takes the time to find me a taxi driver who knows the obscure neighborhood where I am going, the guest of my Egyptian-American Friend and his family. (We won't go into the nightmare of actually FINDING that neighborhood: that taxi driver didn't have the first idea where he was going.) But eventually we get home and I enjoy a huge meal from the fish stall across the street and retire—I think—for the evening.

But once my hosts know I'm back in town I am invited to join them for what they insist on calling "lunch," even though it's 7:30 p.m., and so I do. I use their son's computer to catch up on email, where I learn that some Koreans were abducted yesterday by Bedouins on the St. Catherine road (I'm uncharitably pleased because of the trash I know they left on the trail to Mt. Sinai). I also get an email from the US Embassy warning that a general strike and demonstrations have been called for today, February 11, the one-year anniversary of Mubarak's stepping down from power (because nothing has happened in the intervening year, the malcontents say). Americans are advised to stay away from Cairo if possible, or if not, to stay away from downtown—where, of course, the bus station is that I was intending to depart from today. No matter. I'll stay in Cairo another day, take care of some business, and enjoy my Egyptian friends' generous hospitality. Tomorrow is soon enough to continue on my route.

And besides, one of the things you come to love about traveling is that like life, all plans are fleeting.

Dahab II: More Days in Paradise

February 1-4

Dahab—I am sitting right next to wooden trays stacked high that contain rounds of flat dough the size of a tortilla. A young man in flip-flops with a cigarette in his mouth, his pants rolled to his knees and flour dust covering him head to toe, is transferring the dough into a flaming oven about four feet from me. Barely a minute later the dough puffs up into perfect pillows, and he transfers them to the table nearby. Someone gathers stacks of them into plastic bags and hands them to customers who will eat them that day. Meanwhile a runner takes the empty trays across the street and returns later with more full trays. It's about 7:30 a.m. and I don't notice that my sleeve nearest the stacks of dough is now covered with flour.

 
This place is called YumYum and I've been eating here since discovering it two days ago in the district where the Egyptians live and eat, behind the long row of tourist shops and restaurants on the beach. (Don't get me wrong about the beach places: The food there is wonderful and at criminal (low) prices. I often tip more than the meals cost.)

But at YumYum I get more than food. Besides fresh bread, falafel, shashouka, cheese and tomatoes, and tray after tray of all kinds of salads, YumYum offers that up-close look at Egyptian life I can't seem to get enough of. While I sit and stuff myself at a street-side table (about a foot away from a stinky, idling diesel truck that has stopped so the driver could pick up lunch), I notice how everyone greets each other (and me) with such good cheer over the roar of the propane tanks.

There is much discussion and sadness today over the riots Wednesday night following a football game in Port Said between a local team and a popular Cairo club. After the game, the victorious Port Said fans came down to the pitch and mobbed the Cairo players and their fans, and when the fans tried to escape, they found the exits blocked. More than 70 people were crushed to death; as many as 1,000 are injured. Relatives in Cairo waited at the train station for news of their loved ones, and as the bodies started arriving, the angry crowds grew. Many believed the Port Said mob was provoked by Mubarak henchmen in retaliation for the Cairo club's support in anti-Mubarak demonstrations last January.

The government cancelled a game in Cairo scheduled for two days later, and more mobs set fire to the stadium. While at first the Cairo protests were directed at Port Said, soon demonstrators joined forces to protest the lack of security by the military and the police that led to so many deaths, and to call once more for the quick transfer from military to civilian rule.Tensions are still running high in Cairo and violent clashes are continuing. I'm giving the city a wide berth.

But it's peaceful here in the South Sinai where the sun is brilliant and the weather is warm. I join a British couple I've met for two days at an Egyptian protectorate called Ras Abu Galum, a rugged coastline of steep cliffs, lagoons and coves adjacent to a Bedouin village reachable only by camel or boat. The reefs are untouched and I borrow my British friend Richard's wet suit (though I don't really need it here) and spend the afternoons making the acquaintance of more splendidly colorful fish. In the mornings I try to read his copy of Marx's "Capital".

It's just the three of us enjoying the hospitality of Abby—short for Abraham—who cooks octopus caught that day (delicious) and a whole assortment of his own dishes, including a kind of roasted nuts and molasses jam that you spread on bread. He serves these meals on low tables on the beach, or if we need a break from the sun, under a straw umbrella he's built for the purpose. 

Abby is one of those Egyptian characters you meet everywhere. He's well educated, speaks perfect English, and is living alone in a straw hut at the edge of a camp of Bedouin not known for their placidity. He was married to an English woman once, had two children, and after seven years moved at her request to England, where—according to him—she tried to make him over into a "perfect Englishman." Hence the straw hut on the beach. He stays connected with his daughters via Skype.

I have my cell phone with me and get a call from my Egyptian Friend back home wondering if I'm OK. I haven't heard anything yet about the two American women kidnapped that day by Bedouins at St. Catherine Monastery, just over the mountain, where I'll be tomorrow. It's a balmy star-filled night and I'm enjoying myself
with Abby, Richard, and Sally around a small fire, talking about the CIA plot on 9/11 to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. (Abby thinks that Masons are behind everything and that the CIA is all Masons. Some of the stuff he says is so cracked I can't tell if I'm hearing his Egyptian humor or the ravings of a kook.)

It's not until I get back to Dahab that I learn that the two women not only weren't frightened of their Bedouin captors, they enjoyed their company, were treated very hospitably with tea and dates, and were even spared their smoke when one woman asked her captor to douse his cigarette. He politely complied.

Besides good manners and hospitality the Bedouin in the Sinai have a reputation for lawlessness, but they have some complaints of their own—including unfair treatment by the government and limitations on their way of life. These men were attempting to get attention for the plight of some family members who were imprisoned. I don't know if they succeeded in getting their relatives released, but after an hour or two they DID release the two women, who continued on their holiday with no complaints—and some stories to tell.

- Posted from my iPad