Epiblogue: Just a Little Luxor
Tickets, no matter how they are written, are like everything else: limited in duration. Eventually the train stops, and you wake up groggy and sweaty in Luxor around dawn. Or at least you hope it is Luxor. Whatever the conductor yelled wasn’t all that clear, and you can’t find a sign that you can read to save our life. Once again, you are somewhere new without a reservation, a sense of direction, or a shred of a plan.
To say Luxor is sleepy at dawn, is an understatement – it is completely asleep. The only thing up is the heat. Even the camels and donkeys are asleep. While all I really want to do is go to sleep, or have something to eat, and there is nothing open to offer either of these things, there is something nice about walking through a city that doesn’t seem to be trying to kill me for a change.
I plod through the empty streets making choices of direction based on nothing but bad instincts, until finally I arrive at the bank of the Nile. There is a pleasant promenade here with benches upon which I collapse, and proceed to watch the small sailboats, or “falucas” dance on their moorings. I am asleep in an instant.
The city must begin to stir around my sprawled out body, and no one must pay me any attention, because when I awake what seems like moments, but might be hours, later it is in full swing. My mouth is dry, and my tongue stuck to the side of it. My head aches with a hangover it didn’t earn. And my belongings are resting undisturbed at my feet. I don’t remember laying down or even taking off my pack, but here I am, and there it is – about four feet away from me, completely available to anyone who might want to walk away with forty pounds of dirty laundry, some books, a camera, and a Walkman that doesn’t seem to work anymore. But no one has.
I saddle up, and head back into the heart of the small town, looking for something to unstick my tongue from my cheek, and fill my stomach.
The restaurant appears to be operated by one young man, who also looks like he just woke up, and maybe even slept on the floor somewhere in the back. If there is a menu, it is not printed in a language I can read, so he doesn’t bother bringing it to me. I ask simply for eggs, knowing bacon is a longshot, and not wanting to have to imitate a pig.
Finding a hotel is surprisingly easy in this ancient tourist town. I find only one that is open for check in, and it has a room available. I am tired and want to lie down on a bed, so I take the room even though it and the proprietor give me the creeps. He is relatively young, and keeps telling me stories of his time in the Egyptian army – digging holes in the desert at 140 degrees or something. He seems hardened, and a little bit menacing despite being friendly.
The room is stark white, small, and reminds me of a cell. A light bulb and a ceiling fan are all that relieve the monotony of walls and ceiling. I lie on what looks like an old hospital bed, staring up at the exposed wiring but grateful for the breeze. Vague worries of being sold into white slavery creep into my mind as I begin to drift off to sleep again.
The first thing I think to do – other than checking to see if I am indeed locked in my room – upon awakening sometime in the afternoon, is to try to find a way out of this town. It’s not that I want to leave, at least not yet. It’s just that my new rule for travelling in Egypt is to figure out how I’m going to get out of a place, before I start to really be there. I have no idea how many friends I am going to have to make to get a ticket to the Sinai from here.
On my way out, the man from the hotel calls to me, asking something about my passport and beer. I pretend not to know what he is talking about, and wave, saying I will be back soon but have to run an errand. The truth is I don’t know what he is talking about, but it sounds like he wants me to help him with something, and I don’t want to get involved right now. I make a pantomime motion of driving with a steering wheel in my hand, as if this might explain to him that I need to find a bus ticket. It may indicate that I’m about to buy or steal a car as well.
Despite my dislike for them, I am resigned to taking the bus, because I don’t think I have the energy to try to find another train ticket, and I’m pretty sure there is no rail line from here to the Red Sea. The bus station turns out to be a long walk through hot, winding streets and not even a bus station at all. It is, rather, a bus stop by the side of a road. I am informed by the tobacconist nearby, that tickets must be obtained in the lobby of the hotel across the street.
Inside the hotel, they tell me that the woman who “makes” the tickets is not there at the moment, and that I can wait or come back the next day. I elect to wait, hoping this does not mean I will need to wait until the next day. The chairs are big and plush, and covered in a leopard print velour over dark lacquered wood. I figure that if all I need to do to get a ticket is wait in these comfortable chairs, I’m getting off easy. Soon, or later (I no longer keep track), an attractive, elegant woman in a dress and matching hejab appears at the desk, and asks if I would like to buy a bus ticket.
The transaction is surprisingly straightforward, and I am given the opportunity to choose both my destination, and date of travel. It will be an overnight bus, and she explains that there will be nothing to eat, but if I like, I can buy a box lunch of a chicken sandwich to take along from the hotel. It seems reasonable enough, and I elect to go for the lunch feeling good about how well this is all going. (I will feel less good days later when I open my box on the bus in the middle of the night to find nothing but wilted lettuce and two hard boiled eggs. This, after I decide not to eat at the restaurant where we stop for a meal break, because I know I have a box lunch.)
I leave the woman, and the hotel lobby with what actually looks and feels like a ticket. I am buoyed by my success and ready to face the task of arranging transport to the area attractions.
Eventually, I will negotiate with some kid for a driver who will supposedly be waiting for me the next morning when I get off the passenger ferry across the Nile. My mind will be full of doubt, as I board the rickety ferry full of local people and livestock bound some reason for the other shore a mere few hundred meters away. But there he will be, in a beat up taxi station wagon, waiting to take me to the most fantastic archeological sites I have seen since the pyramids.
But first I need to get back to my hotel to ring some of the sweat out of my shirt.
I am once again asked something about beer and passports at the hotel, and this time I decide to stop and listen. After considerable explaining, it sounds to me like he wants me to bootleg beer for him. It seems there is either a restriction on how much he can buy as an Egyptian (even, apparently, as an Egyptian who operates a hotel bar), and he needs me to buy my allotment as a foreigner which he will then sell, or it is a duty-free scam. It sounds complicated, or at least as complicated as it did to get a drunk from the parking lot to walk into a grocery store with a wad of my money, and buy the right kind and amount of beer when I was a teenager, and I’m not entirely comfortable doing it. I think about how it might go wrong, and what the penalty might be for bootlegging beer for Muslims (as opposed to teenagers) might be. I think of Gamal too, and how this is how things work here. I look at this slightly menacing man who is trying to make a living, and not go back to digging holes in the desert. And I agree to do whatever it is he wants me to do.
He seems pleased, and claps me on the shoulder grinning. I tell him, that for this I want a free beer. He looks a little stunned, but then smiles again, nodding. He calls to the other room to a younger man, and tells him to accompany me to the liquor store. Finally, he puts a wad of bills in my hand.
The liquor store looks a lot like a papyrus museum. The only difference being that that there are two men slouched in desk chairs outside providing some sort of security. At this point my young minder explains that he must wait for me outside, and peels off. I present my passport to the two men outside the door. They both spend considerable time inspecting it before handing it back and motioning me toward the door.
Just inside is a desk where I again hand over my passport. It is again examined page by page, and then stamped. I’m not happy about the stamp. Since I will eventually, or at least hopefully, be passing through Syria, I put some thought, if not actual effort, into making sure my passport did not get stamped in Tel Aviv, in order to not give any appearance that I had visited Israel. The Syrains are known to refuse entry to anyone with any telltale stamp. Now without any thought at all, I have proof of a visit to the land of Johnny Walker.
The inside of the store looks like an alcoholic’s bomb shelter. The walls are bare cinder block, and there are no windows. Weak fluorescent tubes illuminate rows of metal shelving stacked with bottles. Adhering to my instructions, I locate a case of Carlsberg beer and take it back to the desk where I hand over the wad of bills. I occurs to me that I have not counted it, or checked the price of the beer, so I have no idea if or how much change I should receive. I am basically playing the role of the parking lot drunk of my youth perfectly. The man at the desk fills out a receipt, which I must sign, and then tucks a carbon copy of it into my passport before handing it back to me. I believe I have just applied for, received, and used my license to buy alcohol in Egypt.
Back outside, the kid from the hotel offers to carry the beer. I tell him, no thanks, I can do it, wary of handing the beer over within sight of the two men sitting outside the store, even though I think it is fairly obvious what we are doing.
I plunk the case down on the hotel bar, and hand the man his change hoping it’s all there. He pockets it without counting and smiles giving a, “sukran.” He must notice that I am sweating again, and pulls a bottle of Egyptian Stella out of the cooler. This is my free beer for my service. I look at it and nearly take it. The condensation on the bottle turns the glass a milky jade green like a glacier fed pool of water waiting to be jumped into. I look back at the man and shake my head.
“What is it?” he asks.
“I got you Carlsberg.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t want Stella.” My last encounter with Stella has made me understand the local motto attached to it: Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
The man again looks stunned. “What?”
“I bought Carlsberg. I want a Carlsberg.”
He considers me for a moment. And I worry about his digging holes in the desert past – maybe I am pushing things.
His face lightens. “OK, my friend. You like Carlsberg, you have Carlsberg.” He reaches into the box and opens one of the Carlsbergs, handing it to me.
I take a long drink. It is not warm. It is actually sort of hot. But it tastes fantastic. I think to myself, “Nicely played, Patrick, nicely played.”
That’s it, there is no more.
If you read this far, thank you!