Egypt. Part II

November 15–25, 2006

Luxor

In spirit this city is more like a village. Pester is the locals’ middle name.

In parts it actually is a village. The soil, perfect for poking around in, is home to both pharaohs’ graves and ordinary burrow-dwelling enthusiasts.

They’ve been scratching autographs on ancient temple walls for over a century now.

The sheer volume of antiquities per square metre exceeds all permissible standards. I’d thought that Egyptian hieroglyphs and frescoes were to be found in museums, I hadn’t suspected that there are so many of them under open skies as well. There’s so much of the stuff here that sometimes the locals don’t know what to do with it all — so they stick it into stone walls, just for a change:

On the eastern banks of the Nile there’s the airport, the main hotels, various food joints, and two noteworthy sites. The Luxor palace is one:

The other is the mummification museum, where, in addition to a civil servant, crocodile, monkey, and duck, three’s also a mummified fish on display. Even not-so-attentive observers have probably spotted mummified fish hanging from washing lines in Russian izbas at some point in their lives.

Since modern-day Egyptians are of no relation to ancient ones, the souvenirs on offer are of no interest whatsoever. All of the modern images on papyrus are two hundred times tackier than the Russian dolls on sale on Arbat street in Moscow. They’ve come up with a clever way to pull in the punters — matching hieroglyphs with Latin letters. You can check what familiar words will look like written down as images.

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Let’s go for a wander around the shopping district.

Just like in other Egyptian cities, the bazaar is limitless and diverse. Potatoes are sold alongside shisha pipes.

Doormats for sale alongside meat.

You absolutely must visit the west bank, home to all of the main antiquities. A portrait of one of them is omnipresent (it’s president Mubarak).

Inhabitants of the west bank are particularly fond of murals.

Contemporary storylines are just as varied as the ancient ones.

Here’s a “sweetheart, brush you teeth, pretty please” bas-relief that’s over three thousand years old.

There’s also an ancient “Dinamo” metro station here (cf. actual “Dinamo” metro station in Moscow).

Inside the pharaohs’ graves the attendant will let you take photos, touch the sarcophagus, and take no notice of the fact that you’re in a museum, all for the meagre sum of five to ten roubles.

There’s no need to stay in Sharm El Sheikh if you don’t want to, but you absolutely must visit Luxor.

Cairo

Parts of the city actually look like St Petersburg.

The Nile, which flows through the city, is absolutely filthy, as befits the capital of Egypt.

It’s worth spending an entire day at the local market. It goes without saying that I’m not referring to the half that’s full of clothes and foodstuffs, but rather to the half selling household goods. First, your eyes have to adjust to things which all look identical on the outside.

Then you begin to make out the details.

At first you might not notice anything of interest among the lavishly executed stall signs.

Until, at last, you happen upon the stockroom of a rag-and-bone man. Haggling with him for half an hour is an absolute must. You can finally buy what you’ve been searching for — printing clichés, street signs, and other bits and bobs, picking them out from among the rifles and Jesuses.

Mobility
The main mode of transport in Egypt is taxis. They’re either Zhigulis or museum-worthy Peugeot models.

When transporting a foreigner the taxi driver still manages to spot people from his hometown in the crowd, to catch an address through the open window, and to pick up a second passenger if where he’s heading is on the way. For example, a guy carrying a steering wheel.

Locals are charged a symbolic sum. By contrast, foreigners are charged an extortionate amount (by local standards), even after some masterly haggling on their part. Having said that, foreigners aren’t invited to hang onto the back.

Drivers are relaxed and can even sip their tea behind the wheel.

Road signs have LEDs stuck all over them, which makes no difference in the daytime, but makes the signs look like Christmas lights at night.

As far as I can tell, the thickness of the frame to which the sign is affixed can be ascribed to historical factors (dating back to the days of incandescent light bulbs).

Cars are often kept in tarpaulin cases, which in Russia went extinct by the end of perestroika.

The roads are not bad on the whole. On the approach to dangerous junctions there are metallic thingamabobs inserted into the asphalt to keep drivers alert. The thingamabobs sometimes get carried downstream as a result of the heat.

There are hardly any traffic lights in this country. And when you do come across them, no one pays them the least bit of attention until the traffic controller blows his whistle. But for that to happen there needs to be a traffic controller there in the first place, plus he has to want to blow the said whistle. This is in Cairo:

And this is in Luxor — a trendy countdown to mark the installation of the only traffic light in the entire city.

My initial reaction to Egyptians’ driving style is to clutch onto the car seat for my dear life and to shut my eyes tight. The cars drive along the roads as if they were a truckload of footballs dumped into a mountain river. But you get used to it after a day or so and start enjoying yourself. First of all, no one makes any sudden movements. Second, having a high-end car doesn’t grant you any privileges in the flow of traffic. At night they drive with their sidelights on, hardly anyone uses their headlights.

In Egypt if your car’s horn doesn’t work, the car is deemed to be broken. To an outsider it seems like everyone sounds their horn at each other every two seconds, both day and night. But as a matter of fact every Egyptian driver has two tools at his disposal — his horn and his full beam headlights. The horn means “move over” (on top of a hundred-odd other things), whereas full beam headlights mean “stay in your lane”. This is how they drive:

The Cairo metro is convenient (thankfully, all of the signs are also written in English).

Since all of the planes fly through Cairo it’s best to travel between cities by taxi or train.

And travel between them you must, because there’s a lot to see. After all, you’re not just going to loll around on a beach, are you now.