”Welcome to Alaska!” was the warm, tongue-in-cheek greeting to the few Americans from friendly Egyptians. The reference was to the heat of the country rather than the heat from the potential Iraqi conflict. In Egypt everything was calm and peaceful-we were told that tourism was down 70 percent from a year ago.
I had taken my wife to Egypt in October to share with her my most memorable travel experience, a Nile River trip. We went much to the dismay-and against the advice-of many well-intentioned friends and relatives, most of whom had never experienced the wonders of this land.
We chose not to cancel our trip because the distance between Cairo and Baghdad is about the same as that between New York City and Chicago. And, to my knowledge, no one was postponing trips to the Loop because of potential trouble in Times Square.
That we proved to be correct was nice for us. But those who chose not to come were deprived of a terrific vacation, and their change of plans has helped set the Egyptian tourist economy on its ear. The Sheraton HOTP ship that took us up the Nile has a passenger capacity of 150. Our trip carried 26 passengers and a staff of 115. Great for us, but it meant a loss of tip income for the crew.
We were on a tour under the auspices of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Along with us was John Larson, the institute`s museum archivist in Chicago. He explained history, language and customs, patiently and with good humor throughout the trip. We all agreed that our goal was to see, smell, touch and taste as much as we could in the 18 days between Alexandria and Aswan.
We went to see the fabled sights and sites. (My first trip had been in 1980, right after the Camp David accord, during President Jimmy Carter`s term.) The ancient scenes of time placed on hold were impressive indeed, but we were even more fascinated by the people and country-crowded cities and rural villages that haven`t changed since the times of the pharaohs. The warmth of the people we met was just one of many reasons to visit Egypt.
Lines are short
The most obvious effect of the lack of tourists was the short lines in the usually crowded historic sites and museums. My well-remembered hour wait in the heat-baked sands of the Valley of Kings tombs in 1980 was reduced to two minutes, for example. One could walk through the Temple of Karnak and actually spend some quiet time in contemplation.
As an aside, most of the temples and sights have restorations in progress. Scaffolding obstructs some portions of the sphinx and the statues of Ramses II at Abu Simbel. But if you wait until all restoration is finished, you`ll never see Egypt.
A major highlight of this trip was the reconstructed Cheops Boat next to the pyramid of that name. It`s 4,500 years old, 160 feet long and in perfect condition. It`s said to be seaworthy still, and, as a carver myself, I can report that it`s a beautiful work of wood sculpture.
The weather during our stay was hot during the day and balmy at night, so that whether we were relaxing on our Nile riverboat or sitting on the balcony of our room in one of the hotels, we felt we were getting the best of traveling conditions. There were very few flies, mosquitos, asps, crocodiles or hippos to annoy us, and a warm, spicy, Middle Eastern breeze to remind us that we were a long way from our home in Los Angeles.
Four of our group of 14 were members of the Brested family, descendants of James Henry Brested, who founded the Oriental Institute. They and our entire group were invited to visit Chicago House in Luxor and to partake of a formal dinner there.
(I learned later that all Oriental Institute tours are so entertained, not surprising because a tax-deductible donation of $350 a person is added to the $3,330 price of the land arrangements. The next Oriental Institute Nile River tour is Feb. 23-March 14. For information, call 800-541-8385, or write to Archaelogical Tours, 30 E. 42nd St., New York, N.Y. 10017.)
Chicago House is the U. of C.`s three-acre compound on the edge of the Nile, midway between the temples of Luxor and Karnak. The resident
Egyptologists have been recording in minute detail the hieroglyphs on the walls of the temples before they disappear.
And disappear they will. The damming of the Nile at Aswan has changed the water levels under the monuments. The resulting leeching of the salts to the surfaces where the hieroglyphs are inscribed has caused the carvings to slough off, and the estimated time it will take for most of the writing to disappear is 100 years. That means plenty of work for the staff and a great loss for future travelers.
Little joys
All that was explained to us in an un-air-conditioned library of Chicago House by Peter F. Dorman, managing director. At the end of his chat we were led to a living room where we devoured ice by the bucketful. Not only was it 90-plus degrees in the library, but because we had been cautioned to avoid shipboard and hotel ice cubes, we were famished for the frozen purified water that the staff promised us was safe. Little pleasures mean so much when you`ve been deprived.
During the evening at Chicago House we were delighted to meet Henry Riad, 75, a robust cross between Yves Montand and Maurice Chevalier. An Egyptian, he had been the director of the Cairo Museum when the traveling ”Treasures of Tutankhamun” exhibit was put together. His French-accented English made him sound like a boulevardier.
That, he told us, was because he had spent the ”best six years of my life in Paris, during the 1950s.” I told him I`d spent but six days in that wonderful city in 1956, and he responded with a warm handclasp and a knowing wink, as if we had shared an experience of equal weight.
Moving upriver from Luxor to Aswan, we came upon a sight that has to be seen to be believed. The view of the Nile from the balcony of the Old Cataract Hotel, a former palace which overlooks the river as it curves through swaying palm trees. In the near distance on Elephantine Island was a crumbling ruin of a 6th Century B.C. town. Donkeys and goats freely climb the trails they`ve made.
The music of Mozart played as background for the 5 o`clock tea at the Old Cataract. The cries of the muzzeins, calling the Islamic faithful to prayer from the minarets in Aswan, a balmy breeze and an ice-cold Stella beer in hand were enough to make us vow to winter in Aswan every year-as soon as we could mortgage the house.
Our final stop was Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast, reached by bus and plane.
Inspired by book
I had wanted to see Alexandria since reading and re-reading several times ”The Alexandria Quartet,” by the late Lawrence Durrell. I was eager to identify the streets, shops and locales that he had made so vivid, even though his novel was set in the late 1930s and early `40s.
I wasn`t disappointed. Alexandria remains as he described it-a cosmopolitan beach city, much like a town on the French Riviera, with a 15-mile corniche and a very European feel in certain sections.
Just a few blocks away, however, in the heart of the city is the Arab quarter, with sights and smells of a continuous bazaar-congested streets with motorcycles, donkey carts, horse-drawn coaches, boxes of rabbits, chickens, spices. Old men sat in cafes playing backgammon and smoking their hookahs.
An unexpected treat was seafood sold for almost nothing in out-of-the-way restaurants. We had saute ed sweet shrimp and sea bass that was the equal of any we`ve had in three-star restaurants in France.
Our only regret was that we spent too little time in Egypt. We would have preferred another month to wander the streets of Alexandria and other old cities, or even to travel longer by bus through the countryside, as we did for three days. We opened the windows of the bus and smelled the fires, spices, camels, sugar cane and other scents unavailable to city folk.
Our Egyptian guide, Mamdouh (”Some don`t, but Mamdouh”) El-Sebai, deputy general manager of Egyptian Express, a major tour agency, summed up his country`s predicament this way:
”Last year our agency had two groups of 2,500 people each. This month I myself am in charge of your group of 14. In November . . . the height of the tourist season, we have no one at all.”
