All Hail Fishawi's
20jul08
Back to the resort around 5pm on the 18th, we then went out walking a bit. The salespeople on the streets in Hurghada are pretty much the same as Luxor and Cairo, mostly trying to get you to buy things and insulting you if you don’t. They all have the same banter. If they suspect you are American, it’s ‘Hey Cowboy! I have your horse here.’ or ‘Welcome to Alaska!’ and of course, ‘How can I take your money?’ They think this is clever and entertaining and that we will laugh and then buy from them. I can’t imagine anyone who would.
Steve had surreptitiously booked us a flight from Hurghada to Cairo. He doesn’t like to travel by bus and I don’t like to fly. The bus from Hurghada would be 7 hours or so, I can’t blame him for not wanting to sit that long. He’d agreed to the 5 hour one from Luxor that ended up closer to 6. So we got up in the morning and he said we had to go to the airport. I had figured he might do this, so I wasn’t overly bothered. We flew and I complained. Things were normal.
Even though it doesn’t sound that strenuous to make two one-hour dives, there’s a lot to it and it does make for a long day on the boat. So we’d gone to bed early. It was only 20 hours since our last dive and you technically aren’t supposed to fly until 24, but it was close enough and we didn’t explode or anything.
It was gray over Cairo, the standard sand/pollution mix. A bit of turbulence coming into this layer and we were on the ground. We took the bus into town and got a hotel. After lunch we went shopping for souvenirs and such. We took the short ride to the Khan al-Khalili, the grand bazaar if you will. Enduring more of the ‘Hey Cowboy, welcome to Alaska’ mentality, we perused the market and bought a few gifts. Pricing is hard to do in Middle Eastern souqs, though. You can’t shop around all that easily because if you show any interest in an object, the salesman will hound you until you buy or prove you will not pay enough. Yet prices this year seemed higher than previous and there wasn’t as much haggling. We were there at a peak time I think, many tourists were in the market meaning there were plenty of fish in the sea, metaphorically speaking. If they didn’t catch us, they could just call to another cowboy and claim to have their horse.
We stopped off at Fishawi’s in the middle of the chaos that is the Khan. I enjoy this coffee stop, it’s a great place to people watch. You still get accosted by the countless sandal salesmen and watch peddlers, but you also see, hear and smell the incredible milieu that makes up this unique place. I best remember a trip I made here with several colleagues and the ever-charming Barbara Mertz (Elizabeth Peters). She visited our work at Giza and then we went to the Khan with her. I was reading one of her books at the time and she graciously signed it for me. We talked about many things both archaeological and writerly. She is remarkable, having obtained her Ph.D. in Egyptology many years ago when it wasn’t common for women to do so, having written textbooks on the subject, and having written many, many novels. I’d like to accomplish even half of what she has and I admire her greatly. (The picture at right was taken at Fishawi's early 2003. She's signing my copy of Night Train to Memphis).We returned downtown, had to get up at 5am to get to the airport. We were on the same flight to London but then Steve would take another flight to Seattle and I would stay in England for a few weeks. Arrival in a cloudy London was a little rough, but I’m now in the new terminal 5 having a coffee. I’ll be off to Swindon soon. Other than that, I have no plans. It will be nice to relax and visit friends.
Today our dives would again be at Abu Ramada, but a different island in what was a chain of sorts. In fact, this one was not an island at all but simply a reef that almost met the water at the surface but not quite. It is called Gotta Abu Ramada. This area is definitely a good one to dive; yesterday’s dives topped any I had done before and today’s were equally as good.
We docked in Luxor last night, against the side of another tour boat. As at Aswan, boats are so common that they must tie up against one another and they are all designed with big doors on both sides so that passengers can walk through the lobbies to eventually get to the strand. We ended up on the far edge, four boats away from the east bank of the river itself. This morning, we had a motorized felucca pick us up on the river side and ferry us over to the west bank. As I’m sure you all know, the ancient Egyptians lived on the east bank of the Nile, the sun rise, the land of the living, and buried their dead on the west bank, the sun set, the land of the dead. We were on our way to visit the New Kingdom tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
Hassan took us around the temple, the early morning sun already shouldering its way into the sky and heating up age-old stone. The guide was particularly interested in the representations of music here, pointing to an image of the god Bes represented as a relatively disfigured or distorted dwarf character playing a lyre of sorts. He said that in ancient times, people with various handicaps were given the task of entertaining, but the Egyptians weren’t laughing at them, they were laughing and singing with them. He went on to say that music was important for temples and that they were the original discos. To use the word disco was certainly an exaggeration and gross fabrication, but he was obviously wanting to appeal to his audience. I think much of his inaccuracy was geared that way because part of his job itself was entertainment and he was keenly aware of that. Indeed, he walked with a cane and were encouraged to consider him one of the handicapped entertainers from the past.
We saw the valley temple, got up relatively close to the sphinx, walked through the eastern cemetery and saw the queen’s pyramids and then some of the tombs of the nobles. Next we walked to Khafre and looked at that pyramid, then to Menkaure. The pyramids themselves never cease to amaze. At times when I was working on the plateau, they would fade into the background but then I’d look up and they would seemingly shout back at me, “Hello? Remember where you are!” 
It was 39 degrees at 11am and was promising to get hotter. We went into the ‘lunch tomb’, so known because we used to eat lunch there each day on the dig seasons, and sat in the relative shade. This tomb was just outside our concession but its walls were preserved higher than most and so afforded the most shade for the day. It also still has some relief decoration in it and the shafts of the various tombs are impressively deep. These northern tombs are a bit more impressive; though some, like the caves at Petra, had been used as toilets in recent times leading us to dub one in particular Mr. Hanky’s tomb.
Eventually we walked back to the great pyramid, checked out the solar boat pits and wandered some more. Once back in the main tourist areas, we were often asked if we wanted to buy postcards, ride camels, and the like. The first time I’d been to see the pyramids I felt I couldn’t get away from such people, but Zahi has done a good job of regulating the number of touts in more recent years. Of course he’s also stopped the use of cameras in museums and even inside the pyramids, plus it costs extra for each pyramid you might want to enter. I was lucky enough to explore the great pyramid with only a few co-workers and our inspector a few years ago. We had the entire structure to ourselves and got to crawl to some of the chambers that most people don’t see. It’s a strange feeling inching down a long, narrow passage inside tons of built stone, but a fascinating one all the same. I post a scanned picture from back then of me in the passage leading into the queen's chamber. This is where it was beginning to open up, and other passages are narrower still.
9 July [continued]
These days Zahi has made it a rule that no cameras can be used in any museums in Egypt so I couldn’t get any pictures now that I have a decent camera. I suppose they sell more postcards this way. I post here a photo of the main museum hall taken in my earlier travels when photos were allowed and also my favourite picture from the museum that ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}