Arrival in Aswan

I never expected to be sitting by the Nile River with my laptop working on my next blog post, but that’s what I’m doing. Right now (May 6, not whatever day I post this), we are in Aswan, in Upper Egypt (in the south). At this point, thanks to lots of water, rehydration packets, and the help of Lily and Julia, I am feeling almost completely better. Unfortunately, over the past few days I did have to miss the feast at Abduh and Hayyam’s as well as a trip to the pyramids at Saqqara (which the rest of the group was able to go inside!!). All the bed rest did give me a chance to reflect on the symphony of sounds that is the street in Cairo. Honestly, I was either so out of it that I was hallucinating, or else some of the car horns legitimately sound like trumpets, birds, or people speaking. Also, I was able to hear what sounded like a guy conducting his own street racing game around the block near our hotel (innocent pedestrian? 5 points!); I definitely heard him slam into another parked car at one point. Maybe a good day to be sick, in hindsight. I remember reading an article on nyt.com before we came about the level of noise pollution in Cairo; in some areas depending on the day the volume apparently reaches 85 decibels. Even in Zamalek, which seems a little more quiet and removed from the downtown area, it can be a raucous area. In a city with a population of 18 million, it perforce must be densely packed with people kind of piled on top of each other. I realize that different people have their own opinions (and I’d love to find out soon what Cairenes think of their home city) but I wouldn’t mind it; in some ways I find it comforting to think that there are so many people nearby.

So once I finally felt better, it was time for our group to head for Aswan- by overnight train. I’ve been on the train a few times, but usually just the commuter rail out of Boston to nearby places, so for me this was pretty much a novel experience. We boarded the train for dinner at 8 PM, but my still-delicate stomach wasn’t interested in the slightly sketchy looking meats. Then we spent the next 15 hours mostly sleeping or reading. Or, in my case, mostly listening to music (my sleep schedule must be more off than I originally thought, because I haven’t actually slept through a full night in Egypt since our first one here). Anyway, this morning we were awoken by the knocking of our train attendant, and I was able to stare out the window for a few more hours and ponder…life.

The train from Cairo to Aswan follows the Nile pretty closely through the country. Again, I was struck by the contrast of the verdant area right on the banks, with the crests of the desert rising directly behind. I was also able to see the fellahin (Egyptian farmers) working their crops. Ignoring the telephone poles, the metal wheelbarrows, the occasional ferries on the Nile, and the fact that I was on a train, I was again reminded of much earlier times in history. As I watched the farmers at work, I couldn’t help but think about the Dominican Republic again. I was in communities that made their living in the same way, and it’s not an easy life. In DR, though, it was very clear that certain mechanisms were in place to bring enjoyment to their lives anyway. We were in this hardworking rural community that didn’t even have basic toilets (we were there for the weekend building latrines). But Saturday night, once the work was done, the bottles of rum came out, the bachata was turned on, and they still danced and took pleasure from the world. I’m not saying that everyone’s mode of relaxation and enjoyment has to be drinking and dancing (that’s obviously not so culturally appropriate here), but I wonder whether (and hope that) the fellahin find some kind of enjoyment in their existence.

After arriving in Aswan and crashing for a few hours, it was time for another felucca ride on a much different part of the Nile. In contrast to Cairo, Aswan is a smaller, sleepier town with a population of about 300,000. It’s also a bit more lax than Cairo in terms of how we have to dress, and thank goodness, because the temperature here is about 108 F, and it feels wetter than Cairo too. So our cruise on the river showed us a calmer, less built-up area, with lots of hotels and sailboats directly on the river. Sailing around Elephantine Island, which is smack in the middle of the Nile, we drifted over near the Tombs of the Nobles, a burial site for (what do you think?) ancient nobles. This burial site is set right into a sheer crest of the Sahara (or Western) Desert. Atop the crest was a tower for keeping watch on the desert. To me, this was the most impressive part of our boat ride, because it ties in closely with the books that, for many years, I’ve been reading about Egypt and its history.

The boat ride was followed by an excursion into the market area to find Chef (or “Chief”, as the sign said) Khalil, a restaurant featuring delicious seafood on the menu. I was able to use my Arabic twice in the market, asking directions to the restaurant…too bad the policeman didn’t know what he was talking about when he pointed me back where we’d come from. The marketplace was busy and not all at the same time; many people were present, but I can’t verfiy how much business was actually being done. All I know is that Rebecca has a lot of “cousins” here in Aswan. Before returning to the hotel, Julia, Bret, Pat, and I ran into this cool guy on the corner. Halli was a taxi driver from Nubia, and we were able to scrap together a half-English, half-Arabic conversation which began with him guessing Bret’s Moroccan ancestry. It ended with an invitation for us to attend a Nubian wedding tomorrow, which sounds fun. Part of the conversation revolved around religion. Halli went into this whole spiel about how all three major monotheistic religions came from “Father Abraham” and talked about the branching off of the three. Eventually, he got into asking who was what, and my response was “Nothing.” That doesn’t really fly here; you have to be something. It was a vivid reminder of the importance and influence of religion in other cultures; being in the U.S. one person can be religious and at the same time accepting of another person’s non-religiousness, and that makes me forget its key position in other societies. I think as humans we like to peg each other down as a method of organizing our own thoughts and opinions about each other. For me, as a spitirual but nonreligious person, I don’t really enjoy having to bear a religious association, but considering how much religion intersects with everyday life here, I can see a little bit more why a religious peg is one of the pieces that people here want in order to define others.