A Christmas in the Middle East

One year has passed now. It has been over a year since I have bothered with this blog and one year since I went to the Middle East during the holidays. I am busy nowadays with student-stresses confounding my leisure time and, ultimately, I have abandoned doing something I enjoy very much: Writing. It is funny how we let our reprieves seal themselves shut while we build cages around ourselves, only to later dismay at our sense of being trapped. 

Amenhotep III is depicted by statues, which stand on the west side of the Nile River

At any rate, I am back to attempting to eek out some words, perhaps verbalizing some thoughts on what I did one year ago. The shelf life of my memories has never been of great merit. My mind is more like a dingy pawn shop above all else; things come and go, depreciate in time, the light is dim and there is a slight tinge of foul play in the air.

Cognitive malfunction aside, writing and attempting to recount the events from last Christmas season seems appealing to me. As written before, solo travel opens the common sojourner to a gaggle of possibilities, some better than worse and some better forgotten rather than framed for the keeping. However, this trip still leaves me with the notion that those met along the way had just been waiting for me to arrive.

"There are no strangers, only friends who you have not met yet."

Catching a cheap flight to Egypt, I began on the path through the Muslim countries I had planned to visit. I had not planned a thing for Egypt. I just knew I had a flight to Cairo once school was out for Christmas. All event planning started and ended with the plane ticket from Madrid, no hostel, no idea of transport upon arrival, just my backpack and a vague plan of eventually heading farther southward along the Nile River. After getting off the plane, everyone was herded to a stagnant line filing in front of passport control. In Egypt, you can buy a visa upon arrival as a citizen of the U.S., later I heard of Canada extracting all their embassies and warning all Canadians to travel at their own risk within the country. I didn't know what to make of that really. Fortunately, we still had our embassy there allowing me to get this drive-through convenience type of visa.

A Bedouin man stands over the archaeological city of Petra,
also known as Rose City due to the color of the stone

Finding the actual desk where they were shelled out was a different story. I caught wind of where it was and sauntered over. The supposed "government employee" who sold me it was anything but official-looking. He was casually dressed and smoking a cigarette from the corner of his mouth while propping himself up against the office window. The smoke from his head lazily rose to the yellowing ceiling tiles above and just sort of waited around like the rest of us stuck there. 

The guy hardly examined my passport and then patted the visa on after I paid him what I thought was his next sucker´s share of free cash. I walked away thinking he might as well have sold me a Mickey Mouse sticker with a speech bubble reading, "Welcome to Egypt, shit-head." I shrugged it off and figured I'd eventually see when I got to passport control.

The line still wasn't exactly off to an ambitious start either. In the sly attempt to switch lines for a slightly faster one, I met an Egyptian girl around my age by the name of Nagwa. I asked her what her name meant, she told me something quite beautiful and then shrugged it off looking to change the subject. We shuffled through the line together chewing the fat. I didn't really know how to get to downtown Cairo from the airport and while she gave me some pointers, it became apparent to her that I had come to her country on a harebrained idea. Without any plea for assistance, she became insistent on helping me. I accepted. There was no palpable sense of an ulterior motive in the air. She told me she had arranged for a friend to pick her up. I was welcome to join them.

Petra´s Treasury, most likely recognized from
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

In the meantime time, she helped me get an Egyptian SIM card for my phone and moaned about this friend of hers on the way to pick her, and now myself, up from the airport. According to her, she had pulled the wool over his eyes in telling him she was returning from her trip in the Netherlands with two Dutch girls. She went on and on with the complaining and ideas of abandoning the friendship. Just before she was about to blow an O-ring recounting it all, the guy arrived.

The eventual meeting with a man of such ill-repute turned out to be not as bad as I was beginning to expect. He went by Mohamed, easy name to remember. Mohamed didn't seem too worried about me showing up in place of the tantalizing, fictitious Dutch girls either. We filled his car and left for Cairo.

"Speed limits: Hideous thoughts"

Mohamed drove with painful urgency, much as a man on fire runs to the nearest body of water. The curious part of the trip into the city was watching this guy speak pitch-perfect English in a reminiscent tone of Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park while sat in a devil-may-care like posture with the light bouncing off his face from his mounted tablet on the center console as he slammed the accelerator through the floorboard of his sedan. This must just be how they are in Egypt behind the wheel, I thought. We were listening to mash-ups of 2014´s Top Billboard Hits. He was feeling the music and unaffected by the absence of the Dutch girls still. He seemed alright to me. I enjoyed listening to him complain about his country. Evidently, things hadn't been very good since they got rid of Mubarak during the Arab Spring; the people blamed bad politics, politicians blamed terrorism and so on and so forth.

How to cross the Nile like you've got a pair of Egyptian cojones

By the time we got into Cairo, I was fully aware of their take on driving: headlights are optional, especially at night; crosswalks are wherever you dare to cross; lanes are non-existent as well, you basically get in wherever you fit in no matter what speed you approach any open pocket in dense traffic; it isn't uncommon to see kids driving... alone, nothing cute like on their father's lap or something. Of course this was all business-as-usual to my newly acquainted company.

Late night in Al-Hussein Khan El-Khalili

Mohamed proved to be a real class-act. He took me back to his place, prepared us some food, took me to the city center´s souk in the bazaar district known as Khanel-Khalili, haggled on my behalf in Arabic and finally arranging everything involved in finding a hostel for me around 4am, then even apologized for not letting me stay with him on account of him living with his mother. I couldn't believe he was doing all of this still. I kept on waiting for an upturned palm and the inevitable suggestion to cough up some American green backs. Not once did he mention anything of it. After the first night with him, I knew he was trustworthy. I gave him my Egyptian number. He told me to be wary of the street-swindlers and to give him a call the next day. He parted company with me and tore off into the night leaving a few last vapor trails in the empty city streets. Everything then stood still and deafeningly quiet. The streets seemed tired. There was no telling what they had been through or what they had coming.

Moments away from biting the dust after
a botched attempt at sand surfing in the U.A.E.'s
Rasal Khaimah Desert

I slept very little in Cairo. Nearly one-quarter of Egypt's population swamp the city with a blanket of exhaust fumes during the day. It has a bit of a stranglehold on a guy at first, but one could learn to breath as they do eventually. As a matter of fact, you must do everything as they do, especially when it comes to crossing the street or jumping on a moving train as the platform turns into a precipice. Though you may try to do things as them, without one to do your bidding, you will pay foreigner´s prices everytime.

The Egyptian Museum is a perfect example. They aren't about putting on any airs over fair pricing either. I understand locals should have a discount, it is their heritage, but the difference in pricing is eye-gouging. Under the Museum´s ticket booth hangs a sign which reads: 75 Egyptian pounds - single entry, and below: 1 Egyptian pound (written in Arabic of course). It could be their little way of sticking it to the West for France and England's storing of their most invaluable artifacts in the museums of Europe. Sadly, they are safer there anyhow.

As for my personal safety, I not once felt unsafe moving about the country on my own. There were some moments that lent to a poignant understanding of life being different than the West. One look at the feral dogs ripping the flesh from the bones of retired horse and camel carcasses decaying along the fenceline separating Giza from the Great Pyramids and anyone could see.

Any garden-variety westerner would likely return to their unhousebroken pet with a new appreciation for its occasional shortcomings on the living room floor. This was not home. Small, little defining moments like this and I could feel the distance from home sprawl out beneath my feet like unwinding Sibylline scrolls prophesizing coming gloom. Some blemishes are not easily airbrushed over in a place where such might and glory once faced the rest of the world in abhorrent defiance to decay. The Great Pyramids, the Sphinx and all the desert sand beneath them seemed to be boasting and bellowing in eternal sadness at once.

Starting our night with Mohamed and his radiant smile are seated to the right

That night Mohamed picked me up, I threw my backpack in the trunk of his car and we went out to a birthday party one of his friends was having. He told me about the Egyptian Revolution and what it was like to be in Tahrir Square once Mubarak had been ousted. He told me about the revelry and looting. Spirits were high and news reports were distorted according to him.

"I don't cause riots, but I do cause confusion. People freeze when they spot me." -Tom Hanks

Some men stole half of an iron bridge with a hydraulic tommy lift on the back of a pickup truck, using the lift as if it were a pick ax. Not a soul stopped them either. He also watched one guy unsuccessfully try and load a plasma TV in the back of his other-than-spacious tuk-tuk. When exasperated by the bulky electronic not fitting, he snapped it in two over the curb, load it and drove off. There are a lot of impressive people out there.

A breakfast layed out for Abdulaziz, all his brothers
(enough to form an American football team) and myself
upon arrival in Saudi Arabia

Mohamed was proving to be one of the kindest guys I had ever met. He made sure I was set up another night after we were out late again, helped me get an Egyptian priced ticket for the overnight train to Luxor and gave me a lift to the station the next day. People like him make our disparities in altruism apparent. In the all-too-compelling and well-recommended race to advance myself, I seldom help strangers just for the hell of it. He, on the other hand, wanted nothing in exchange other than my need, nothing at all.

There was no profit-strategy or expected outcome. Seeing to the need was the end in itself. It was brilliant really, nothing for nothing. Maybe from this concept of such great expansive nothingness, the birth of zero came to be. The principle made my neck hair shift and itch at the thought. I remember thinking we didn't have such a handle on it back home and, what´s more, losing it by whatever means would soon lead us to further alienation, perhaps leaving us in an even worse bereft state than that of the one before.

Sunset over Dubai, the Burj Khalifa tower poking into the clouds above

I was off to Luxor, the old city of Thebes. The overnight train had me there by morning where an unexpected man claiming he worked for the hostel I was looking for had been waiting to pick up obvious tourists like me.  The layout of the city was an absolute mystery, so I followed him like a good lamb to the slaughter. It turned out the hostel wasn't the one I had made plans to stay in, but rather the authentic, relocated one. I came to this conclusion much to the indignation of the owner of the hostel who met me at the front desk. She was an Australian mother of two with a madcap way of handling her business, which she seemed to do quite well, actually. It turns out they upgraded to a bigger building after doing well at her older location. Much to her chagrin, the people who ended up at her old, supposedly defunct, hostel got their hands on some old signage from the place and hung it up, carrying on with the business in the same vein as before as though it never closed.

My friend Abdulaziz and I visiting
his uncle's camel farm in Saudi Arabia

Her court case was still in the works I could see. She arranged a bed for me and showed me around. It was her husband who had nabbed me at the train station. She felt the urge to complain about his worsened behavior as a spouse after moving from Germany to his home country with her, claiming she wasn't too tickled pink by the pervasive male-on-top environment of the Nubian territory she found her family in. I was beginning to think I had a sucker´s face for listening to discontented women gripe on this trip.

I met some other solo-travelers in the hostel: a Chilean man, Spanish-Catalan woman, a reserved English guy and a Chinese dude in his twenties. We saw Luxor together and eventually headed south to the city of Aswan. The English guy went by Mark. We got to know one another during a day trip along the west bank of the Nile known as Theban Necropolis, the land of the dead. Evidently, we had been staying on the living side of the Nile.

The Valley of the Kings was the principal attraction along the way. Stopping in Habu Temple, our guide explained the history of the wrath of Ramesses III over the Sea Peoples. There were plenty of wall inscriptions to echo the brutality, including one with a pile of the enemies severed penises, quite an emasculating defeat

Entering the portico of Habu Temple

We walked up a ramp and through a columned portico into a peristyle hall. Many of the inscribed reliefs on the inner columns maintained their original color. We were informed of the historical significance underlying each pattern of inscriptions. The Romans viewed these people as we view the Roman Empire today. A shrinking sensation creeps up on a guy at the thought of the gradual, unceasing domination time has over man. In view of countless military conquests, fallen empires and the mysterious void of information we call prehistory, life's brevity becomes overwhelming. We passed through walls with etched faces watching us with the same coy expressions as they had watched the rest of the world pass by. Anyone to ever happen by them, anyone who had once lived, lost, suffered, loved, persevered, proudly strutted or scraped by in life were now dead and gone. They met us with that same look of mockery as we passed by just as the rest.

Before leaving Luxor, Mark and I shared an entertaining night together with a local we had met on the street. We had already done our share of walking around the city, fending off two-bit, street hustlers for the day until we came across a middle-aged man named Karim.

There are always moments that merit the letting go of the illusion of control.  Karim seemed to find us at the right time. Mark´s headphones were perilously hanging out of his bag dragging along the dirty street when Karim slid himself into our path. He was missing a few teeth but not afraid to make a first impression. In helping save the headphones from being lost to the street, he asked for their purchase. Mark calmly said "they aren't for sale” as he was preparing to part company with the guy. Karim wasn't having it. He really wanted to show us a time out. I looked at Mark and said, “Why not?”

Karim, Mark, Ana and I awaiting the train before leaving Luxor for Aswan

Karim asked if we were up for going to a tourist spot or a more local scene. We both agreed on the ladder of course. He took us to an unlikely place where he had to leave his ID with the doorman. It did not resemble anything from the outside, just a normal city block. We went down a dimly lit stairwell and were sat by an overly made-up waitress. The place definitely looked a bit sordid. I sat with my back to the wall just next to the door we came in. Mark and Karim sat side-by-side. There were a few other customers in the low lit room, mostly Nubian, with the exception of one middle-aged American man who looked more like he belonged in a PTA meeting than this subterranean Egyptian form of a speakeasy. He had another Nubian guy sat next to him against the wall a stone´s throw away. We acknowledged each other with the tacit way most may when they seem to share an unspeakable secret. The only thing was neither I, nor Mark, knew what that secret was just yet. The waitress came to take our order. They had beer and I had a tea.

Preferring to go by Eliot, our friend Zhao Wei
presents us his prized Polariod

Karim didn´t seem to want to let go of the wishful purchase of Mark´s headphones. He claimed that type couldn't be found around Egypt. He eventually let it go and began to teach us a few Arabic phrases and, more emphatically, the number system. Then he broke out a worn spiral notebook of his and began to brandish it to Mark and I. It was full of the writings of other travellers he had come across in Luxor. It was like his own little handheld Yelp review log. I had never seen someone actually carry something like that with them everywhere. It was obvious that he desperately wanted to win our confidence.

Mark wasn't having it. He sat in a posture so uptight you wouldn't have been able to cram a pin up his ass with a jackhammer. Karim mentioned that he was illiterate in the English language as he requested us to read some of the entries aloud, then write our own and read them aloud, too. We felt obliged to humor him.

We did so given that it seemed to mean so much to him. Then he got on about Mark letting his guard down saying things like “open your heart” and “we are all brothers here.” I began to bust a gut with laughter. The situation was just too much to handle, the incidental Karim, the questionable place he had taken us to, Mark´s stone-cold face, it all came together in a perfect harmonious farce of itself.

 Inside the tomb of Horemheb in the Valley of the Kings, here Anubis,
the protector of the dead and embalming, is seen facing to the left

Karim let off with the headphone talk for awhile and got to bragging about his time in the service and working for the Egyptian CIA. He started showing us scars and telling us tall tales from his glory days. He was so full of it his eyes were brown. Then he hit us up for a little souvenir to remember us by. Anything from our countries would work. Mark gave him a British pound. I was without American dollars since I had come to his country by way of over a year spent in Spain. I tried giving him a King Juan Carlos I minted euro, but he was not too amused. He let me know I was in his debt for that. 

I had another fit of laughter. It was beginning to draw some attention. He went on to show everyone he had helped out before had given him a little something in the past. He made mention of his button-up shirt he had on as a gift from a man from Holland. Looking closer we found that the guy had five layers of clothes on. It was still eighty degrees outside.

Mark and I kicked back in the Temple of Karnak

The waitress came with more drinks. Her and Karim spoke in Arabic for a moment and I tried spitting out some words he had taught me. She smiled, most likely not understanding me. As soon as she left, Karim got to doing some dirty old man talk, mentioning his taste for women of different nationalities, reciting his repertoire of sexual conquests. Then he wanted to know our opinion of the waitresses. Now any doubt of the establishment I may have had once had vanished. Karim had brought us to a whore house. The discreteness of it all went from a hum to an ear-splitting siren in my ears. It was obvious why he had brought us here. I looked over at the PTA dad sitting alongside the other wall. He was lounged back calmly chatting with his company. I now saw underneath that innocent veneer. I had him pegged. If only his fellow surburbanites back home could see him now. What the hell were we doing here?

Christmas dinner my first night in Saudi Arabia

Mark went to the bathroom. I was uncertain if he would return. Karim began lecturing me about how important it was that I look after Mark. He must have been under the impression that I had known Mark a long time. I told him Mark is a big boy and not to worry. He had already done a lot of solo travelling around the world and he was, after all, still kicking. He didn't let off though. I couldn't tell if it was feigned concern or actual human empathy. He was a bit of a mystery.

I still didn't see Karim´s profit out of bringing us there, but I am sure there was one. He finally dropped the lustful talk and offered Mark a Nokia mobile phone. He wanted to meet with us the following night. Mark wasn´t too privy to the idea of accepting the phone, nor his offer. He was still sitting in the posture of a man in an electric chair awaiting his doom. To alleviate the situation, I told Karim I'd accept the phone without a problem.

“No,” he refused with an insolent glare, “you're not on a straight path like Mark, you are a cheeky one and I don´t trust you.” The irony was too much to handle and I could feel the next fit of laughter building up.

“Tell me, how much do you trust me,” I asked, “give me a percentage.”

“Twenty percent,” he said curtly.

A walk about Shei Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi while Abdulaziz and his brother pray

I almost suffocated on the cackles shooting up from my diaphragm. He had one helluva take on our encounter. Either that or his poker face was strong and brazened by the years of drawing travelers into his snare, one in which still had an unknown objective.It had to be a ploy. Being the first to lance accusations of mistrust served him well of course, given our own doubts of his character had still not been openly expressed. And even if he truly didn't trust me, on what grounds? What was his premise, my cackling fits in such a situation such as this? Maybe he saw me as one to be too comfortable in contrast to Mark´s stoic temperament. I couldn't tell. Either way, it was absurd and funny.

My new Chilean friend Eduardo and I preparing for a hot air balloon
ride at sunrise just over The Valley of the Kings

Mark finally acquiesced. The phone was ours and so was the implication we would be seeing him again. Besides, I was still in Karim´s debt according to him. He would not accept our standing deficit.

My thoughts shifted to the legalities of prostitution in a Muslim country like Egypt. It started  like  bolt of lightening striking a drought-plagued field of desiccated grass in summer, one strike and then, devouring flames.

I wouldn't have put male castration past their courts either. I would end up like the conquered Sea Peoples, just without a timeless inscription on their walls. All I knew is that I didn't want to find out. Any trip without desperate need of the American embassy is a good one to me. Maybe I was thinking too much. Maybe the government turned a blind-eye to places like this. Or maybe we were going to have to bribe our way out.

Once again we had returned to the headphone disagreement, the very topic that hooked us into coming into this shady situation in the first place. Mark had his headphones in hand, Karim leaned forward from the wall, eyes intent and voice solemn.

The Nile River as soon from Aswan in southern Egypt

“Mark we are all brothers here,” he smiled, “Wouldn't you give them to your very own brother, Mark?”

They were locked in. One second lagged behind another in languid endlessness. Karim piercing into Mark's eyes, Mark abiding, looking at his handful of his property and back at Karim's unbroken stare and then looking back at his headphones. I could feel the tension between the two hitting me across the table. 

The next laugh attack was coming, too. After a solid minute passing, I lost it. Karim, looking annoyed, asked what was so funny. He could see my uncontrollable spurts were of no use to his game. My sides were aching by now.

"With mirth and laughter let wrinkles come." -William Shakespeare

Abdulaziz and I relaxing on his Uncle's camel farm outside of Riyadh

“A real quality brother wouldn't try to manipulate his family members to his benefit,” I answered.

Karim disregarded me entirely now. He was back to his assumed position staring Mark in the eye with an upturned hand now.

“Give them to me, Mark. Give your headphones to your brother.”

Then, with slow and jerky uncertainty, Mark extended the headphones, letting them defeatedly slip out of his hand and into the palm of Karim. It was done. At last, Karim had what he so desperately coveted.

I had quieted down by then and just watched the two of them. Karim looked at his new headphones, back at Mark and then back at the headphones. The turning point of the night hung in the air and impacted our table with an uncomfortable feeling as though being stared at from a lone stranger leaning, nonchalantly, on his elbow at the bar, thinking some unknown treachory. We sat at a corner of the room, but it now seemed to be dead-center.

Just two bros in front of the Temple of Hatshepsut,
the name of the "first great woman in history."

Karim gave the headphones back to Mark in casual, false wisdom. He really seemed to be enjoying his game.

“Ahh man, Mark,” I butt in, “can't you see? This has been a test all along, one you've passed!” Naturally, I was fanning Karim´s ego's desire to be viewed as some old sage wisened by the years. He looked awfully smug reclining to the wall again.

It was getting late. We asked for the bill. When it came, it was obvious why Karim wanted us to learn the Arabic number system: The drinks were on us. Evidently, he didn´t want us being confused and feeling overcharged by the end of the night.

Just as we were about ready to pay and make our way to the exit, the door violently burst open next to me, just inches from my seat. A flood of men screaming in Arabic marched in, the last with a revolver tucked into his pants, held to the small of his back by his belt. We were had, I knew it. They had no uniforms, but they definitely had some authority.

An afternoon picnic with Abdulaziz and his extended family in the UAE desert

They went directly to the American man's table, his partner stood up with machine-gun-rapid Arabic spewing from his mouth. The man with the revolver walked up to him while his cronies held the accused by his underarms. They both screamed at one another without listening to the other party at all. It was apparent the one with the the revolver was in charge. He slapped the man in the face and they began to shuffle off with him. I was still waiting for him and his crew to turn their combined efforts against the rest of us in there. Instead they filed their way out the door and you could hear them banging their way up the steps and out the front door, leaving devious PTA dad behind and alone at his table now.

A Nubian man standing before the backdrop
of the Nile at Hatshepsut Temple

The room was completely silent. They had killed the music from the bar during all the commotion. We all looked at one another at our table and Karim used it as an opportunity to brag about his clout in Luxor. According to him, he is well known for his military service in the southern Egypt and how the honest man's pillow has the best sleep and blah blah blah…

PTA dad was staring at our table. It was only us left in there at this point. We finally acknowledged him and he came over to explain what he made of it all. His name was Tim. PTA dad Tim had been working in Cairo for years and the apprehended man was his loyal driver and friend apparently. Evidently, the driver had a bad day in traffic and went all ape-shit on some motorist's car with the heel end of his shoe, which is culturally the vulgarest of insults to be dished out in there.

After a bit off ego headbutting with PTA dad Tim, Karim finally persuaded him to go see about bailing his friend out of police custody. He left and shortly thereafter we did as well.

Karim mentioned going to see some bellydancing the following night and made mention of expecting a phone call from him. Mark and I walked back the dirt roads to the hostel. It had been a fun night. I think Mark secretly enjoyed the experience deep down. He never said.

A team effort in negotiating a price for our way out of small town BFE,
even with taxis in Egypt one must learn to haggle

I had to say my goodbyes to him and the rest of the group of solo-travelers in Aswan on Christmas Eve. It was a shame.  I was really enjoying their company during the few days we had together. It was just a few days we had together, but they had become my closest friends within a scarce span of time together. Maybe it was the environment. We were all far from home.

They accompanied me to the taxi and helped in haggling the price down for a lift to the airport. The haggling never ends in Egypt. I knew I'd never see any of them ever again and I was certain they knew it, too. I gave each one a hug and got in the old beater. The taxi clattered away as Aswan was swallowed in the maw of dark emptiness.

Crusader castle in Karak, Jordan 

"No man can live this life and emerge unchanged. He will carry... the imprint of the desert... and he will have within him the yearning to return... For this cruel land cast a spell which no temperate clime can match." 

-Lawrence of Arabia

I made some small chat with the taxi driver, learning a bit about his family in the limited English he could get out for me. We picked up a woman trying to thumb a ride in the middle of the black obscurity. She was on the side of the road all alone. In a few hours it would be Christmas Day. I looked out into the blank darkness that smothered the Sahara Desert. I wondered who else was out there alone, standing quietly, swallowed by the desolate night.