Desert Storm?

One of the perks of living in a desert is sand. There's a lot of it. Usually, it stays on the ground. And in your hair and clothes but to a fairly reasonable degree. Occasionally the wind decides to do some rearranging, but it's not too bad.

Until the khamseen.

Khamseen means "fifty" in Arabic. And it denotes the fifty days during the spring season during which sandstorms occur.

They started this week.

Wednesday, the haze was thicker than usual when we drove across the bridge to campus. After my class got out at 1100, I walked out of the Social Sciences building and was crossing the quad at Greek Campus when it started to rain while the sun was shining. I grinned to myself. Shaytan's beating his wife, I guess. And then I got bonked on the head by hail. Reasonably big hail, too. It only hailed for two or three minutes, but the Egyptian students went crazy. You'd think hail had never happened. (I found out later that it hasn't hailed in Egypt since the mid-1990s...)

Once I got onto the street and start walking towards Main Campus, I could see what this sandstorm thing meant a little more personally. The air during a sandstorm is brownish-yellowish-red. The sky is grey, but looks dirty and a little red, too. It's not like it's cloudy outside. When it's cloudy there's still light. Here, there's an unnatural sort of diffused, weak light that makes its way down. When the wind starts blowing (and not gentle breezes, either. Some real wind.) it's less fun. Wearing contact lenses during a sandstorm is bad.

What a sandstorm is NOT: those desert scenes from movies where the wall of sand comes out of nowhere and is blowing in everybody's faces and they can't keep their eyes open, wrap Bedouin-style scarves around their faces, and have to huddle in caves for hours on end (...and if it's The Far Pavilions, make sweet love). Maybe those happen way out in the desert.

Today, I woke up and walked to the store around 1030 to get some bread. It was absolutely peaceful out. Very quiet (it's a weekend morning and NOBODY in their right Egyptian mind would be up until about 1300), with a few birds and almost no car horns. I could smell flowers, actually, as I walked down the street. It looked cloudy but I didn't look too hard.

While I was in the gym, something changed out there. Upon exiting the gym the air smelled like dirty smoke, felt thick and too hot. Looking up at the sky, it was that brownish cloudy and things were obscured. I got back to my room and looked out the window, and found it hard to see to the normal distance. Buildings looked hazed over, but it was actually blowing sand.

It's calm now, but everything still has that strange color. The sand and dust in the air are really noticeable.

That's a sandstorm.

A Day in the Life...

Wake up. The windows are closed, but the sounds of the street are easy to hear. Car horns. It’s only 730, but they’re going already. Turn on electric kettle to make tea, traipse to the bathroom. Make tea; check BBC and Facebook for news of civilization. Get dressed, put in contacts without using the mirror, return to bathroom to brush teeth and wash face. Try and be quiet because both roommates are still sleeping. Chat with a few stray Georgetown friends online and tell them to go to bed. It’s 200, you know.

Accidentally kick Sara’s turtle while crossing to the closet (it moved!). Sara’s alarms start going off at 800. And keep going indefinitely. Her phone alarm goes off (unheeded), clock alarm that beeps and plays the call to prayer at five daily intervals goes off (unheeded), phone rings (it’s her mother calling to wake her up, unheeded). Usually by 830 she’s answered the phone. Usually. The other roommate says Sara generally makes it out of bed by noon.

At 815, the children at the elementary school across the street start chanting as they do their calisthenics. You don’t think it sounds like “Death to America,” but it may well. They don’t enunciate terribly well. At 820, what sounds like a toy piano breaks into the chords of the Egyptian National Anthem. The entire student body begins to screech...Bilaady, bilaady, bilaaaaaadyyyyy… Next seems to be “Frere Jacques,” but you can never be sure.

Descend from the girl’s side of the dorms, exit dorms and board shuttle. It’s two seats on one side, one seat on the other, and a fold-down seat for each row across the aisle. If this bus needs to be evacuated, you should probably just curl up and pray because you won’t get out. Drive across the bridge from Zamalek to mainland Egypt. Join the collective wince upon seeing just how thick the smog is today. Try not to think that you’re breathing it.

Alight from the shuttle and accompany classmate to the feteer shop one block down. Stand while the feteer guys ogle you and necessary breakfast business is transacted. (Feteer is a tasty, flaky, well-oiled pancake rolled up with jam, sugar, or honey in the mornings and other things later. One costs 50 piasters, a whopping $0.09.) Return, and pass through “Security.” Walk through a metal detector that isn’t plugged in and open the main compartment of your bag (never mind it has at least 4 other compartments) for a cursory glance. Walk across Greek Campus (one of three campuses: Main Campus, Greek Campus, Falaki Campus) to the Social Sciences building for class.

Depart Social Sciences and Greek Campus for Main Campus. Avoid Gucci Corner, where the moneyed of the moneyed at AUC hang out. By this time rush-hours have ebbed somewhat. Cross the street with ease. Wait for two friends who aren’t quite as gutsy and haven’t quite mastered suppressing one’s urge for self-preservation. (It must be completely squashed before walking out in front of a bus five times a day.) Recall that this tactic will have you dead in Washington, DC within three days.

Head to the gym. Change in the bathroom stall because nobody changes by the lockers. Of the two spinning bikes, neither has the straps in the toe cages, and one has the cages completely busted off. Feel a little awkward since only American girls wear shorts and short sleeves, but there’s usually only one other Egyptian girl. Finish workout and head back to locker room. Grab clothing and jump into shower stall. Try to control that post-workout glow (and scent) with the hand-held shower that doesn’t actually have a working drain. Get your clothes a little wet. Oops. Change in the shower stall.

Exit shower stall and return to locker. Remember that you got the lucky locker: it faces Mecca. Everyone on campus uses the locker rooms to pray, so now there are five girls lined up praying right in front of your locker. You can’t exactly walk in front of them to put your stuff in. Wait fifteen minutes until you can dodge in and trade gym bag for textbooks.

Walk two blocks down to the ful and ta’amiyya place. Run the gauntlet of male stares from the hookah place attached. “The ful and ta’amiyya place” is a hole in the wall that serves pita halves filled with ful, ta’amiyya, baba ghanoush, potato chips, etc. Stand among hulking Egyptian men as the sole female or Caucasian and look so out of place that the guy inside the shop can’t help but grin. (An actual friendly grin, not a leer!) Usually be waited on before the men, and occasionally be permitted to step in front of men to place your order. Depart LE 1 poorer, with two pita halves filled with ful—mashed fava beans that taste mostly like refried beans. Rerun gauntlet. Remain thankful that nobody’s grabbed you yet today. Pass ambiguous picture of Sadat or MLK and return to cafeteria to consume ful and a cup of quasi-American coffee.

Run over to the copy shop to pick up reading for next week and order the following week’s. Laugh at how absolutely and unabashedly it violates any copyright laws. Cringe slightly since double-sided copying is unheard of, you’ve got 500 sheets of paper bound together for the next class.

Head to Falaki for class. Depart with 10 minutes until the next class and remember that it’s now 1430. School’s out for the three local elementary schools, so the streets are crammed with kids in uniforms. Get harassed by elementary-age boys (HELLO HELLO! SEXY? SEXY? as they poke at your arms and sides and occasionally stick out a leg to trip you to prove just how cool they are), get trapped behind the three slowest-walking girls in the entire universe.

Next class on Main Campus. Depart with 10 minutes until the next class. Streets are noticeably more crowded with cars at 1630. (i.e., more jammed than usual, making it even easier to cross) Make it to class on Greek Campus with enough time to run to the bathroom. It’s crowded with girls applying makeup and fixing scarves around the mirror. They give you a dirty look when you ask to please get by to make it to one of the bathroom stalls. One elbows you oh-so-accidentally as you pass and then laughs to the girl next to her. Since you’re white there’s no way you could understand what she says.

Finish class and book to catch the shuttle back. If the shuttle filled up, it left early and you’re screwed. If the professor talked a little too much, you’re also screwed. If the guy driving the 1900 shuttle got bored and decided to leave, you’re screwed. Taking a cab’s not a problem, but it’s LE 5 that you wouldn’t have to spend otherwise. Make the shuttle by knocking on the door and jumping on as it pulls away. No seats, so you stand in the door well. One block from the dorms (one and only destination of the shuttle), you hear the dreaded “Lo samaht?” (If you please?) A girl wants the bus to stop so she can climb out from the back and walk down her street—one block from where the bus is going to stop. Try and climb out of the door well so she can get out. Get hit by the door. Get off the shuttle at the dorms. Drop bag in room and try to decide what to do for dinner.

Head to the dorm’s cafeteria to view the evening’s selections. Long for Leo J. O’Donovan Dining Hall with entire being. Brainstorm with five other indecisive individuals about dinner. Know that you can go to a restaurant for about the same as the cafeteria, but the cafeteria is here and the food is also here, and at the restaurant food may not show up for another 30 minutes. Settle for cafeteria food. Try and remember what salad tastes like. Resolve to never again complain about Leo’s on Sunday nights. Feel more human after decompressing with people over dinner for forty minutes.

Return to room. Open window to air out room a bit. Plug in headphones to block out car horns as much as possible. Begin homework. Try to use Skype and call America. Fail miserably. Miss real high-speed internet. Finish homework to a reasonable degree around 200. Shower, climb into bed. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Luxor

I.
It’s a bit like the MARC train, but shakes more, vibrates harder, and moves slower. We ride second-class. It’s not recommended, but we’re college kids. We can tough it out.
Tickets for the sleeper train are USD $60, first-class tickets are LE 60 (USD $11). Ours are a mere LE 40 (USD $7), for 699 km. Ten years ago, this was probably a nice car. Two seats on each side of the aisle, plush, a footrest, reclining back. But ten years is a while. Now the plush is dirty and stained, and the seat backs recline with the slightest touch. Every half-hour or so, a man with a tray barrels through, chanting “Shay, shay, Nescafe, shay ya rayyis—shay?” (Tea, tea, Nescafe, tea, oh Sir—tea?) Visiting between cars is common, as is loud conversation. Outside is dark. We’ve left Cairo’s glow behind.
In the car behind us, a man begins yelling. It seems he doesn’t want to pay LE 40 to ride the train. Soon other men join in—yelling at him to calm him down. We look at each other and shrug. If that’s the worst, we’ll be find. We’re the only foreigners in the car, and the only other woman wears a brown abaya, niqab, and gloves, and occupies the window seat while her male companion sits on the aisle.
For an unknown reason, this feels like the real world. Perhaps because it is.

II.
The hustlers are bad. Worse than at Giza. Much worse.
We finally make it to Happy Land Hotel. It brings to mind creepy things, like Michael Jackson. But then we realize we left him at Giza along with Mickey Mouse.
Mahmoud at the front desk welcomes us with karkade—a hibiscus tea. He holds our collective hand through checking-in (a process that—with typical Egyptian efficiency—takes about 45 minutes). In that time, Mahmous checks our passports, books us a felucca ride for the evening at sunset, and a tour for tomorrow. We pay, realize that we overpaid, and he gives us the change.
Two rooms for four people each, with three boys and five girls. I end up in the boys room. The cleaning lady keeps walking past and I silently apologize for scandalizing her. The rooms are small, but clean, two sets of bunkbeds with sheets, a blanket, pillow, and a towel. Our room has a bathroom with a shower/tub, toilet, and sink. The only thing missing seems to be a shower curtain. (But the towel on my bed was rolled in the shape of a heart.)

III.
We walked past Luxor Temple in the early morning, now we walk back. LE 20 gets us in as students, and we walk into a courtyard of half-remaining men. Columns everywhere—big, fat stone columns reaching up to the sky like so many giant tree trunks. We pass column after column, wall after wall, covered in carvings and heiroglyphs.
But so much has been destroyed. One way of taking revenge on someone is to chisel their face out of their monuments. By doing so you obliterate their identity—and their soul. Something like 2/3 of the images have faces hackes away, arms in adoration and offering chipped off. Someone, as Evy says in The Mummy, “must have done something very naughty.” We walk from chamber to chamber, grand area to grander. In some places you can still see the pigments from almost 4000 years ago. There’s more to see than we can take in, but we do our best, consulting Lonely Planet upon occasion.
There’s grandeur here, bordering on ostentation, but there’s true piety, too. Someone did this—all of it—because it meant something huge.

IV.
After an unmemorable lunch (memorable only in how greasy it was), we catch a cab to Karnak. We walk in (shrugging off hecklers all the way), and come face to face with what’s left of a road flanked by rams—the sacred animal of Amun-Re, to whom the main Karnak Temple complex is dedicated. It used to connect Karnak to the Nile, but has since been pared down to about 50 yards.
Karnak is huge. A multitude of pharoahs built and planned it. Each one added his own temple, obelisk, stele, courtyard, chapel—you name it. You can’t really take it in—it’s so big, so detailed, there’s just so much. Room after room, wall after wall of relief, of carving, of heiroglyphs. You know from the start that every picture you take will fall short of what you see. But the camera comes out. You can’t really help it. We make our way to the Great Hypostyle Hall. Purposely, I don’t look up, but keep my nose buried in Lonely Planet until I’m in the middle. Then, I look up. The 134 columns tower over me. Truly, tower. The floor space of this one hall—this one room of one temple—is larger than St. Peter’s in Rome and St. Paul’s in London—together (6000m2). Each column is thick stone with carvings over every inch. I stand on the base of it and wrap my arms around. They go maybe 1/6 of the circumference. Between the columns are stone tops—the entire area was once roofed in stone. On those “in between” stones, the heiroglyphs have kept their color. 4000 years old, and the suns are red and the ducks yellow.
The temple Ramses III built is a hit with me. There’s a rather famous relief of him “smiting” his enemies (who seem mostly child-size, extending their hands in supplication that goes unheeded). His temple is full of much larger-than-life statues of himself…I’m not sure how amazing or how entirely narcissistic you must be to build a temple of statues of yourself.
We find more and more. The roofless temples seem to go on. Some places have color, some have extraordinary relief. There are some places that faces have been chipped away, not nearly as much as at Luxor Temple. I find one room, near the back, that has gorgeous carvings, most still with the paint. It’s dark and cool, and looks like not many people visit. But the pharoah depicted has been chipped away in every image. Not just his face—his whole body until all that is left is an outline of a pharoah, looking like a flaked arrowhead.
Trekking one, we pass a guy (American) we’d met with two other Americans over at the Ramses III temple. He tells us about a secret staircase in the corner of the Great Hypostyle Hall. Will and Adam realize that it’s the same place where the “Golden Gun” is in the N64 version of GoldenEye. So if you were curious, that staircase exists. And it’s pretty sweet. Scratch that—really sweet. (Even though it ends, blocked with debris, just feet from the sky.)
Wandering the “open-air museum,” I’m looking for the Temple of Ptah, because Lonely Planet says there’s a beautiful statue of Sekhmet—the lion-headed goddess of war, pestilence, destruction, and medicine (odd, I know). Near the outer wall, a man hisses to me and Will. (We’re quite alone out here—anywhere other than Egypt it would be crazy and I would be frightened. Here I just know he wants to show me something special and get me to give him a few guineas.) “Sakhmet?” he hisses, and I nod. He leads us back to the Temple of Ptah, then opens a gate to show me Sakhmet. She’s life-size and beautifully preserved, absolutely beautiful. He points to a hole in the ceiling, then closes the door to the temple. Light from a small square opening falls in a single shaft over Sakhmet. Beautiful. I give him some baksheesh and leave, satisfied.

V.
We ride a felucca—a single-sail Egyptian sailboat—that afternoon. When we leave, it’s 1500 and the sun is high. Our guide and his two sons sail the boat, and he chats with us a bit. He’s funny, and pokes fun at us girls in a kind, harmless way. We take “glamour shots” in the bow, chat, and goof off. It’s great fun.
We sail to Banana Island. Not like we’ve heard of it, but one guy says everyone told him to go. So we pony up the LE 5 per person, and our guide’s son takes us through the banana groves—pointing out the various sizes of the tiny, unripe, bananas. Muhammad, maybe ten, then shows us the wheel of clay jars used to take water from a deep well and put it in the channels that irrigate the fields. He takes us back to the start of the banana grove, where we sit on long benches and they bring us tons of tiny Egyptian bananas. They’re smaller and tougher than the bananas we get at home, and have seeds. But they’re tasty, as is the sugar cane they bring us, which we gnaw at in a manner hardly civilized.

VI.
It’s refreshing to be back on the felucca. Even for March, it’s warm down here and the breeze feels good. The sun begins to set, turning things golden. It’s not a colorful sunset, but the gold color is so strong, it makes it beautiful on its own.
The guide tells us riddles, while his older son makes tea. We drink sweet, sweet tea as the sun sets on our little boat. We laugh and talk, our voices carrying around us.
Dinner is overpriced and lousy.

VII.
We return to Happy Land around 2100. It sounds early, but nobody slept much on the train, and we’ve been in Luxor since 700.
We sit on the rooftop terrace, eating their much cheaper and tastier food. Everyone is tired, but content. We write in journals, listen to iPods, do a little homework.
Our intrepid gang of eight is at peace. At least for now, we are quiet, each in our own “Happy Land.”

VIII.
Our morning “on tour” begins with breakfast on the roof of the hotel. We clamber onto an air-conditioned van and drive across the Nile to the Valley of the Kings. Our guide today, Nasser, has 50/50 English skills, and has about 60% of his script down.
We ride a tuf-tuf—a tram that looks about like the ones in Disney World—to the Valley itself. We exit into a large, steep valley, with almost sheer sides. And full of people. Full of people speaking tons of languages. German seems popular.
Our first tomb—Pharoah Merenptah—is beautiful until I try and take a covert phtot and get my camera taken away. I was terrified that the gelabiyya-ed guard wouldn’t give it back—and he almost didn’t—but I stared him down, almost started to cry, and he gave it back. Egyptian men can’t handle women crying. Waterworks are an excellent accessory in a tight spot. The inside was really pretty though. (Upon further inspection, the covert picture of the tomb’s inside turns out to be of the guard—looking right at me. Brilliant.)
The next tomb, Thutmoses III, requires climbing up high. It’s the furthest open tomb, and the interior is impressive in the amount of paint still on the walls. It’s beautiful. The Litany off Ra and the Litany of the Hours—both of which we talked about in my Egyptology class—are on the walls. Christine gets her camera taken away, too, but gets it back.
The final tomb, Ramses III, is my favorite. The painted images of deities and the pharoah are gorgeous—and well-preserved. As we walk, I start naming gods and scenes, so I end up de facto tour guide for us (our guide didn’t go in). It’s awesome to see the scenes and the gods from class in person.
After leaving the Valley of the Kings, our guide makes an unannounced stop at Mona Liza Alabaster Fectory. There, his friends (who somehow knew we were coming…) named Mr. Bond (Mr. James Bond) and Mr. Rambo give us a two-minute demonstration on how they make alabaster jars, and then—surprise!—take us into their shop. They give us mint tea or karkade, and invite us to look around. Nothing has prices on it, inviting bargaining. They show us their favorite pieces, and most of us buy something. I bargain with one man in Arabic. He tells me he is determined to make a sale with me, but keeps telling me I am Sa’aba—hard. I drive a hard bargain, and do pretty well for myself. He started at LE 35, I got it for LE 12.

IX.
One of the things I really wanted to see was Hatshepsut’s Temple—el-Deir el-Bahri. (That means The Northern Monastery, from when Christians fleeing persecution came to Egypt and made many of the ancient temples into churches and monasteries.)
It’s huge and beautiful. The stone makes clean, sharp lines against the reddish cliffs that roll gently behind it. Hatshepsut built it while she reigned as queen, but she didn’t take to looking like a queen. In all the reliefs, she appears dressed as a male pharoah—ceremonial strap-on beard and all. The problem is that when you usurp the throne from your stepson when he’s a child, he grows us, takes the throne back, and tries to obliterate your memory. Thutmoses III vandalized much of el-Deir el-Bahri in an attempt to rid Egypt’s most famous stepmother from the common memory.
The temple itself—even minus the reliefs and paintings—is worth it. The architecture is beautiful, and truly amazing. A fitting memory of a very powerful woman.
(I guess that’s what happens when you start sleeping with your architect.)

X.
Medinat Habu is next. It’s the mortuary temple of Ramses III, built on top of temples to Amun that Hatshepsut and Thutmoses III had already constructed. Ramses III was a warrior—like most of the pharoahs—but his track records was impressive. 19 campaigns, 19 victories. Hence, he liked to commemorate his victories and what appears to be his singlehanded slaughter of every enemy. Quite the guy.
The temple is really big—mean to enshrine his warrior glory for all eternity. Several “sunken” reliefs (this temple is unique for using “sunken reliefs” as opposed to plain old reliefs and straight up carving) are huge and rather famous. All involve people or animals being killed by none other than Ramses III. There’s a really nice big one—much like the one at Karnak—of Ramses III “smiting” his enemies. “Smiting” becomes a catchphrase.
Much of the original color is preserved on walls, columns, ceilings—Ramses III making offerings to several deities (all of them blessings and confirming his great deeds, of course). The color is beautiful, making the images jump from the flat walls. Several reliefs show Ramses III going to war, hunting and fishing in his chariot, slaughtering captives (like at Karnak, miraculously only half his size), and in a truly memorable scene, cutting off the hands and penises of his captives. This guy didn’t mess around.
We take pictures in a back chamber of the temple, hiding from the “guards” (lazy men who will point out something you’ve already found and then block the exit until you give them some money) and generally desecrating the dignity of these sacred memorials. It’s a blast.

XI.
Our last stop is the Colossi of Memnon. We’re so tired and hungry that we take a few pictures and decide to climb back on the bus.
It’s relatively impressive, or a pair of statues that completely crumbled and were put back together. But it’s still not the best thing we’ve seen today. (Although you feel bad saying anything around here isn’t impressive—the sheer fact that it’s still around is quite a feat.)

XII.
Our first move upon arrival in Luxor was to get train tickets back to Cairo (since the people in Cairo told us we had to buy them in Luxor). We couldn’t, they said. Have to buy them the day of, they said.
A few went back this morning. Computer’s broken, they said. Plus, there’s nothing left today. Nothing until Tuesday, actually. If you want, he says, you can just get on and try to buy them.
After returning from our bus trip, four of us take a cab to the train station, including the one girl who is a dual American-Egyptian citizen and speaks better than any of us, to fight for some tickets. It doesn’t work. They’re pretty rude to us—especially to Vivette, the Egyptian girl (really, they just ignored the American kids), telling her there’s nothing they can do in not-necessarily-polite terms. We try to book a sleeper train (again, no spots), and then seem to get resigned to our fate: trying to climb aboard third-class cars in groups of two and buying the tickets once aboard. It’s actually illegal for foreigners to ride third-class, but if it’s our only way back, we’ll do what we can.
A bit heavy-hearted on top of exhausted, we return to Happy Land. Vivette decides to talk to Mahmoud, to see if he knows and way to help us. She returns to us with good news: for LE 95 each (and he needs it right now), he can get us on a bus leaving in three hours for Cairo. That looks a hell of a lot better than a third-class train for ten hours. We jump at it, and within half an hour we have tickets to go back to Cairo, plus a van arranged to take us to the bus station. This is, plain and simple, living in Egypt. Just when you’re lost and out of your MIND with confusion and worry, someone manages to arrange something that saves the day.

XIII.
1900, we board the bus that will take us back to Cairo. It’s a coach bus from about fifteen years back, so some of the seats, lights, and air vents don’t work. But we’re headed back.
When we reached the bus station, the sun was setting over bright green fields of sugar cane. The sunset was subdued—graying pastels into blue—with the cliffs of the West Bank fuzzy in the distance. Fog rolled gently across the sugar cane, sneaking between the palm trees that dot the fields. My last view of Luxor—where everything famous is surrounded by hot, hard, bright stone—is of sunset and fog over fields of sugar cane.
And it feels right.