There's no escaping it

Luxor 13th september 2006

Today I did Luxor's west bank. By bicycle again. Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, Hatshepsut's temple and Medinat Habu (yes that's the one where they are counting their enemies cut-off hands and penisses).

I saw a whole lot of must-see things this week. I've been a good tourist. Visited the temple at Kom-Ombo, the one at Edfu, the Daraw camel-market, Luxor temple and Karnak.

About Karnak the book says: "... get a crash course in the evolution of ancient Egyptian artistic and architectural styles." I'm sorry to say but I've never gotten beyond crash... It was 42 degrees Celsius that day and for the first time the heat bothered me. I nearly fainted and hardly made it out of there.

At one of the temples a Dutch woman said to her man: "I'm not taking so many pictures, or else we'll have a photoalbum full of old things". Ha, ha, surely it would take a Dutch woman to express my feelings exactly!

No pictures yet. I am taking them, but forgot to take my USB cable with me. Can't find one here, nearest Samsung service centre is in Nairobi. I'll find a way to send some soon.

It's 42 degrees in the shade and I am having a cold!

That cold started on the felucca trip. Two days and two nights on a boat on the Nile. Besides me there were 4 English and 2 Scots on the boat. Jane was telling how she missed choclate, then asked me what food I missed the most sofar. That would be a Dutch sandwich with cheese. Egyptian bread I find not very tasteful.

The day we went to the camel market it was a slow market day. In fact there were no camels at all, just dromedari, not more than 30 all together. They cost 4 to 5000 egyptian pounds, that is 600-700 euro. That evening the captain treated us to camel meat. The meat was ok, except most of it was pure fat.

Luxor reminds me of the good old days. You know, the days of Sodom and Gomorra. The day I arrived I had boys and girls offered to me all the time. I dunno, I must have looked, ehh.... kind of... romantic?

Having a day of reading and writing, sitting in a cafe along the Nile. Suddenly I see two fat rats not two meters away from me. And in Cairo I actually saw a little weasel in the street one early morning. Weasels and rats! Yep, that's Egypt for you!

And then, in the nick of time, I think I meet an honest Egyptian! Sitting in front of his shop he says: Hello, I saw you yesterday! I say: Don't talk rubbish! But he seems truly offended. He went to the East Bank yesterday, so he could have seen me. He exports alibuster statues to Maastricht and Groningen. He shows me a busyness card of his Dutch partner. Westerkade 21, Groningen. I'll be damned... I swear I worked on (or next to) that adress 20 years ago! Of course I come to see his shop. He tells me his busyness philosophy: quality, normal prices and try to make a good turn-over. So I ask him the real prices of the things they sell at the tourist places. 3 little statues start at 500 pound, but go down to maybe 100 if you show no interest. The actual value for one statue is 12 pound.

Yesterday I went back to the Oasis cafe. They have great soup with Italian bread (really fantastic bread, finally). They play jazz instead of arabic music, which makes for a pleasant change. The first time I ate spaghetti and couldn't try the banana split anymore. So this time just soup and the banana split. A group comes in and I am asked to move to another table. I decide to sit in the reading corner. Easy chair, low table, a couple of New Yorkers. They speak Dutch so I say hello to them. One of the girls says she had noticed my bag, from a store in Nijmegen. Of course.... that is where they live.

Cartoon in the New Yorker: A busy street. A man in front of a Tourist Information board. There is just one line of information. It reads: "You are a tourist".

In Aswan I walk back to the hotel my last evening. The guy from the Mona Lisa restaurant invites me in for diner. No sorry, I just ate. Just coffee then? No thanks had coffee too. Next week I'm back in Aswan and I will come to eat. Then he says:
'Where is your bike?'
'? I just rented it for one day'
'You were at the high dam'
'?? Yes, I was'
'Yes, my brother saw you there'
'......'

From the New Yorker, a poem by Ryszard Kapusinski.

Ecce homo

Everything that is
our strength
is also our weakness
Everything carries within itself
the stigma of its opposite sign
like a number tattooed on a prisoner's arm
like a letter sewn onto a deportee's coat

there's no escaping it

even if we were to walk at a certain pace
head held high
number and letter warn:
here is a victim of those clothed in wolves' skins
here branded by history
ecce homo

Sometimes I feel I'm going crazy. All these coincidences. And I really don't believe in coincidence. I feel that there is something that I need to do in this world. And all these things that happen to me I read like signs. As if something is pulling my ear all the time and is saying "look! you fool". And I look and I recognize the signs, but I just have no idea what they mean.