Snapshots: Having a Great Time in Egypt — Wish You Were Here

PHOTO: Egypt’s mysterious monuments are sublime, unmatched. (Photos by David Cogswell)

I’m not surprised that my thigh muscles are a little sore today. Crawling around the inside of the Khufu (Cheops) Pyramid yesterday I could feel that I was using muscles I hadn’t used in a long time. But I wouldn’t trade the experience for happy thigh muscles. A chance to actually go inside the greatest of the Great Pyramids is not something you say no to.

I was told that the chamber we crawled up to is two thirds of the way to the top of that giant structure. It was a highly strange, supernormal experience, following closely behind the next person in line, sometimes walking, sometimes bending low, sometimes duckwalking or crawling when the passageway shrunk to about three feet high.

There were metal bars to hold onto in some places and wooden slats underfoot on the less steep parts of the climb. When I reached the end of the passageway I was standing in a small room with some other people in dim lighting. It feels like going to the weirdest nightclub you ever visited on the most bizarre bar-crawling night of your life.

But it was something you have to experience if you have the chance. I will certainly never forget it, though I’m sure I will go to my grave never penetrating the mystery of those gigantic monuments. Some things are so grand you have to just enjoy the experience and accept the mystery.

I’m convinced that not even the most authoritative Egyptologists in the world really know altogether what was going on 5,000 years ago in Egypt. I’ve seen how little the history of my own lifetime is understood, how mixed up and distorted with misinformation and myth it is already. I can’t expect the understanding of 5,000 years ago to be much better. But you don’t have to understand it; you can just live it.

Being in Egypt is mind-shattering euphoria. It’s impossible, however, not to feel sorry for the Egyptian people now as they struggle and the world turns its back. We went to Sakkara to see what is known as the Step Pyramid of King Zoser, said to be the oldest pyramid ever built, and we practically had the place to ourselves. A parking lot the size of a football field had four vehicles in it.

One of the men who offers camel rides at the Great Pyramids gave me a clue how much the people of Egypt are suffering since the bottom fell out of their biggest industry. “Three years is too much,” he said. “The camels need to eat. If they don’t eat, they die. And I have my wife and kids and my mother and brother and sister to take care of…”

It was heartwrenching. The vendors at the tourist sites are very pushy trying to get you to buy their wares, but you can’t blame them. They have to do something.

One of the oddest things about it is that there is strong pent-up demand for travel to Egypt. Phil Otterson, Abercrombie & Kent’s president, told me that when they put the President’s Trip to Egypt up for sale, it sold out in the blink of an eye. A&K takes a maximum of 18 passengers per group, so when they sold out one, they added another, and then another until they had four, a total of 72 people.

Each group of 18 travels separately from the others, and then they all gather together for certain functions, such as the opening dinner and the closing dinner, which will be hosted by the American ambassador to Egypt.

One of the guests today at lunch told me that when she and her daughter decided to come to Egypt, they couldn’t find anyone to take them at first. Nearly all the tour operators have canceled their departures for a long time to come. You can’t blame them for making that business decision, but it is anguishing for the Egyptians, and it’s especially biting when you hear that people who want to go are unable to find operators who will take them.

In case anyone on this trip should ever feel any anxiety, we are being escorted around by armed guards. They are subtle and not in your face about it, but they are clearly there in force, and it would take a small army to overcome them. No one I have spoken to has expressed one iota of anxiety during the trip. The experiences of Egypt are too overwhelming to leave room for thoughts of that nature.

I have experienced nothing but friendliness and have been welcomed by all the people we have encountered. I am convinced that nearly all the people in Egypt want and need the tourists passionately and feel tremendous gratitude to us for coming. There is no advantage to any terrorist group to attack tourists because they would lose the hearts and minds of the people by doing so.

But fear is contagious and no human being is entirely free of the herd instinct. If you’re in a crowd and it breaks out into a run, you will probably be moved to run yourself. And the situation here, as it gets filtered through the media system, is badly misunderstood.

At the opening dinner the keynote speaker was Mona Makram-Ebeid, a former Member of Parliament educated at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. She vehemently objected to the characterization of what she calls the second revolution in the Western Media. “It was not a ‘military coup,’” she said. “It was a popular impeachment.”

After Morsi was removed from office, she said, the military immediately established a civilian government, unlike in 1952 when Egypt really did have a military coup.

She was one of the demonstrators in Tahrir Square and she said that women were in the forefront of that opposition movement. “It was a terrible year for women,” she said, referring to the year under President Morsi. He was trying to push Egypt backwards into submission to Sharia law, she said, trying to make women re-fight battles they had fought long ago and put behind them, including trying to wipe out modern prohibitions against genital mutilation and marriage of girls aged 9.

Under the new constitution, she said, the framers have taken great pains “to keep religion from interfering with politics.” This time, she said, “We will get it right.”  

In any case, enough said about security. To me it is not an issue, nor is it to anyone I have spoken to here. For us it is all about this great adventure we are experiencing here.

Wish you were here!