It was hot, hot for me, at any rate; at forty-three degrees, hot for most, I’d imagine. But it was dry, and as long as I took to the shade, tolerable, comfortable, even.
But I was not afforded the luxury of shade at the Unfinished Obelisk. It baked under the sun, its crack black with a shade denied us. More unfinished obelisks were scattered about, their shaped carved out of the rock to one degree or another. How long did to take to chisel it out from the rock with only bronze and stone tools? And how many others were abandoned once a flaw had been discovered, or worse still, cracked when near completion like the Unfinished Obelisk did?
We went to the mosque in the afternoon. It was medieval, lacking the intricate
tile works we’d soon come to expect within them. Turkish carpets were spread
throughout, as we’d come to expect, dispelling the rocky damp, muffling the
echoes. What I did not expect was the confusion I felt, and was sure we all
felt, when one of the imams sang out the call to prayer for us, his trailing
voice leaving a vacuum of silence once the echo had died away. “Were we to
tip?” I wondered. He didn’t have his hand out, like everyone else did. There
was the expectation of tips and baksheesh wherever we went. Take my picture? Tip
me. Need directions? Tip me. That might be fine for those others we met, but
this was a holy man. This was a Temple. I pressed my hands together and bowed
my head in thanks to the Holy Man, somehow feeling cheap for not having tipped
him, yet finding it impossible to tip a “priest.”
There was more than just sightseeing on the agenda. There was shopping to be
done. We were tourists, after all. We all wanted souvenirs, keepsakes and props
for bragging purposes. What I wanted was a mother-of-pearl chessboard. I didn’t
find one, but I didn’t expect that I would there, not outside Cairo. I wasn’t
worried. Rumour had it that you can find just about anything in the Khan
el-Khalili, the oldest continuously active market in the world, and we were
going there once we returned to Cairo. What I found was an airy V-neck shirt of
the lightest and whitest Egyptian cotton. And a Bedouin robe. I bought that for
an upcoming costume party we were having, otherwise I’d have let it lie, and would
have bought a couple more shirts instead. The robe was a waste of money. When
would I ever have the need to wear it? Little else interested me, so I was one
of the first to make my way back to the boat, Jackie and Derik with me.
I almost didn’t make it. The repositioning of the boats was afoot, something we
were unaware of upon returning. We arrived to find our boat no longer on the
pier but were instructed that we could still get it by passing through the one
that was. There was even a sign to say so. We were also told to hurry. We had
to pass through three other boats to get to ours in fact, all moored together,
double and triple parked against one another, through one increasingly
shuttering lobby after another until we came upon our own, our staff gesturing
for us to “Shnell! Shnell!” That’s German for “hurry up!” by the way. Our boat
was already pulling away from the others, the narrowest of gaps between the
deck we were on and the one we were making for inching wider as we watched. We
began to run. I leapt across the narrow gap, just after Jackie and Derik, the
last to gain the deck before we were separate from those other decks.
I showered. I made my way to the dining room, noting the time and that we had
still not tied back up to the docks yet. The sun had set, the wind had risen,
the temperature had plummeted.
While we ate, we noticed the rest of our party through the window, huddled together and clutching one another on the pier we’d narrowly almost been left behind on, their newly purchased robes thrown on and their clothes pressed flat against their bodies. They spotted us, warm, our bellies full. We waved. What else could we do?
Once they were back on the boat, we departed, they ate, and we retired to sleep
off our passage to Edfu.
Mornings had become a ritual for me. I was usually the first to rise (I suppose
I was beginning to transform into a morning person then), so I’d bring my copy
of Gravity’ Rainbow down to the dining room to await the others’ risings. I’d
find a cup of Turkish coffee waiting for me at the bar. Ahmed (our bartender,
not our Egyptologist) had suggested that I try one my first morning when I’d
asked for an espresso. I did. I found it strong, battery acid strong; but I
declared it very good, just the same. It was, but it was also very small, no
larger than the espresso I’d originally asked for, yet so thick it left a pool
of mud at the bottom of the cup when complete. It’s amazing what you’ll grow
accustomed to; by the third morning I found regular coffee bland.
We did not go to Tell Edfu. It’s the ancient site, and it contains more Egyptian history and is of more archaeological interest than the Ptolemaic temple, but it’s less glamorous, and visiting tourists want the glamourous stuff, and tourism is all about giving the people what they want, so we skipped it. We had a ways to go to get to Luxor and Karnak, anyways, a site that even the most historically illiterate have likely heard of. We steamed downriver to Esna and passed through the locks, an action that brought us all to the rails to watch.
That evening we had our costume party. The boys dressed like Bedouins, the
girls like belly dancers. Was it fun? The turbans grew hot and only lasted an
hour or so. We drank a lot. It was a Contiki party.
We woke to find ourselves in Luxor.
We’d arrived in Karnak.
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