The Golden One

I’ve known Sabri el-Aziz slightly for years; have spent many boring hours sitting in his office at the taftish. A formal call at the taftish is part of the ritual when one arrives in Luxor. We had made ours a few days earlier, on Sabri’s successor as Director of the West Bank sites. He’d been bumped up since then, to be in charge of all the Upper Egyptian sites.

So I greeted Sabri with an Egyptian kiss (a chaste salut on each cheek), which almost made him faint with surprise. He’d fairly tall and thin, with receding hair and regular features and charming ma

Jan. 2. One of the reasons why Luxor feels like my hometown is that I keep ru

It’s misty tonight. The western cliffs are almost invisible behind a cloud, and the sun was white before it sank behind said cloudbank, with no pyrotechnical display. Now the lights are coming on along the west bank, including two lonely stars that mark the location of the guard posts high on the hill. Must be a lonely job – and a cursed long climb. What a contrast below, in the twilight. A tourist steamer heads south, lit up like a multi level parking lot (these boats really are awfully homely). Half a dozen feluccas, with their graceful triangular sails, glide by, and the little motorboats chug back and forth. They are gay with bright paint and (rather grubby) cushions and fu

Tour busses whiz past (well, they go fairly slowly; in fact, the traffic on the corniche includes bicycles, taxis, and carriages); two caleches filled with Egyptians singing and chanting and beating a drum; the muezzin’s "Allahu Akhbar." I do so love this place. This is the last night in Luxor for this trip.

Later. Had a good time with the B’s this evening; they came to my room at six, with a bottle of wine. Rather than call room service, who had stolen the glasses again, I washed my tooth glasses.

Jan. 3. I seem to have gotten a slight second wind lately, partly because I haven’t done much except sit around, and partly because I am looking forward to spending more time with the Expedition. I will be on the boat with them from Assuan to Luxor, and then we have one more day in Cairo before flying out. (From then on it’s going to be grim – that grisly one-thirty a.m. flight home. All in all I have eight flights on this trip. Have I mentioned that before?)

Had lunch with some of the ladies from the tour and then wandered over to the arcade by Abouti’s to look for a slip. (I lost mine in Cairo – don’t ask how.) No luck of course.

Abouti’s is the best bookstore in Luxor for Egyptological stuff, but its selection of fiction is pretty limited. Have seen my French editions at two places in Luxor, plus one German. None of the English. Transitions are a pain – packing, looking for missing articles, cashing travelers’ checks, paying bills, tipping everybody. The first part of the trip was fine – I even got a smile and a handshake from the grumpy guy at the bank. It isn’t surprising that he is grumpy; some of his customers are rude and unreasonable. He’d been very nice since the time during Ramadan when I walked in to find him reading from the Koran; I immediately stepped back and told him to finish his chapter or whatever, that I could wait. I was rewarded when he asked if I would like him to read aloud. It was beautiful – sung rather than read, in a sonorous baritone. He had studied to be a muezzin.

Later. I’m getting to know Luxor airport (excuse me, International Airport – there are direct flights from Gatwick in England) only too well. The plane was on time, meaning it left only half an hour late. (U.S. lines don’t do any better.) You’re barely up before you come down; flying time is only about twenty minutes. There was an interminable wait for baggage, so Khaled and Bill had been waiting some time and were becoming agitated. I suppose losing me would be a black mark.

On board. They are very nice to me. The suite isn’t much, a tiny sitting room and bedroom and no whirlpool! – but it’s the best the boat offers. There are some lovely old Turkoman rugs and a TV (can’t get anything on it), and everything is spotlessly clean. Even Amelia would approve. This boat, like many others here, belongs to the Queen Nabila line. We’re right up against the dock, but the boats are lined up side by side as usual, two or three deep, and from my plate glass window I can see – another set of identical windows. For about ten minutes I had a lovely view of the river while one boat pulled away, but another one promptly took its place.

Jan. 4. Most of the gang went to Abu Simbel this morning. They had to get up at four-thirty. Need I say I did not go with them? (Been there.) Shopped the suk with Bill and Nancy instead. Suk is more authentic than Luxor, but I fear the good local handicrafts are fading out, to be replaced by t-shirts and junk. Bought spices and three embroidered pillowcases, not nearly as nice as the ones at Luxor just last year. Work is cruder, colors gaudier.

After lunch (the food is fatteningly good and hard to resist), we took feluccas to Elephantine Island. More damned wobbly eight-inch gangplanks! The old museum, once the home of the engineer who designed the first dam, looks odd with its Victorian trim and wide veranda. We visited it a couple of years ago, poor shabby neglected place, and the curator was pathetically grateful for company. So I didn’t go in. Most of the good stuff has been removed to the new Assuan Museum. Wish I could say something sensible about the excavations, which were closed to visitors last time I was here; they are extensive and fascinating, but it was a maze to me. There’s no guidebook and the only publications are in obscure (to me) German professional journals.

Jan. 5. Went to the Assuan Museum alone; I had never seen it. On entering whom should I see but John and Debbie – I love these serendipitous encounters; they only happen to me in Egypt! But John was all bandaged and battered from an accident: A truck ahead of them turned a corner too fast and dumped a boulder on the front of the Land Rover, shattering the window and more. You see trucks like that on the road all the time, overloaded and without tailgates. It’s a miracle more people aren’t injured. (Maybe they are.)

It’s a splendid museum – beautiful architecture, objects well displayed – and John and Debbie were wonderful guides. We went back to town about eleven and found a place on the corniche – lower level, actually on the water. They had lunch and I kerkedah – a deep red, sweet, ice cold drink made from stewed hibiscus blossoms. Resisted the urge to purchase the blossoms in the suk this year – in Egypt it is delicious, when I make it at home it tastes awful! The boat was to sail at 12:30. I figured I might have some difficulty finding it, since I had been warned it would be moved, preparatory to sailing. I was right, but we did find it eventually. John and Debbie saw me to the gangplank of the i