When I first started writing this blog, I posted on here another piece about Egypt, memories from a vacation in Hurghada 7 or 8 years ago. I tried to contrast the modern country with its (perhaps more illustrious) past, when Pharoahs not dictators ruled an empire not a country. I called the piece Egypt: Ancient meets Modern. Give it a read, it’s still here in the Archive. At the time, I never expected a return to the country – though expressing a liking for the Red Sea resort – and certainly never anticipated an extended stay in Cairo. On the vacation, we only made a day trip, a long and tedious coach journey, specifically to visit the Antiquities Museum and the Pyramids. Despite the journey, it was a good day, though I described the Pyramids as “disappointing”, mainly due to their proximity to the city itself. Last weekend, I paid a return visit.
* * *
In the years since I last trudged through the sand at Giza, sweltering in 35C dry heat, Egypt has changed. At that time, Hosni Mubarak ruled the country with a carefully concealed iron fist. Outwardly, it seemed a prosperous and by Middle Eastern standards stable country. The Iraq War had essentially ended, inasmuch as the Iraqi forces and government had collapsed, Saddam was on the run, the Americans and British and other coalition forces were managing the collapsed society and trying to organize the place into something resembling a democracy. The insurgency that plagued the place for years hadn’t really been recognized: the regular bombs and killings were blamed on Saddam loyalists who refused to accept the reality of their defeat.
Across the border, Iran was Iran – ruled by the mullahs, stridently anti-west and to European eyes very strange. Its own nuclear program was underway but undercover, not in the public eye at all. It was still considered part of Bush’s Axis of Evil, as it is today, but apart from that the ordinary man in the street (that’s you and me, loyal reader) paid it little if any attention.
Elsewhere in the region, Gaddafi still ruled the Libyan roost, mad as ever but swimming in oil wealth whilst his country starved, still denying his involvement in the Lockerbie bombing 15 years or so before. Syria was stable with a popular president who the West liked, complete with an English born wife. He’s still there of course, as is the missus, but the leopard has changed its spots and he’s now systematically slaughtering citizens who disagree with him. Israel was Israel – so no change there then. The Gulf States were prospering as never before.
Egypt, meanwhile, went its own sweet way. Its tourism industry was, understandably, flourishing – our visits to Cairo and Luxor were made on coaches that formed part of police escorted convoys. It was cheap, the weather in October was great, the resort on the Red Sea brilliant, and people flowed into the place all year round. Of course things were not all perfect, that was obvious – the police escort for the coaches was a bit of giveaway, as was the abject poverty we saw out of the coach windows wherever we went. But still – it was stable, and people seemed happy enough.
Well, after the events of last year, in the Arab Spring, where Mubarak became the second biggest casualty (after Mad Dog himself), demonstrates that all was not as it seemed. Everything in the garden was not rosy at all – all smoke and mirrors. Mubarak is now on trial for various crimes against the state, and the verdict is due in the next couple of weeks.
* * *
But back to the Pyramids.
This time I didn’t need a coach. My hotel is a mile or so away, so I walked. It was a hot Friday (it being the weekend here, no work for Travellin Bob that day) but there was a bit of cloud about and a breeze that made it more bearable. I had breakfast, donned the sunscreen and the iPod, then camera in hand headed off.
The flyover outside my hotel - lovely, eh?
The main road just along from my hotel leads from Cairo city centre straight to the Pyramids. Friday, this quietest of days – the Islamic Day of Prayer – seemed to make no difference at all. The traffic on the road was not appreciably less, nor was the driving any better. The old man selling cloves of garlic was still at his place, sitting on the kerb in the dust. The taxi-bus drivers were still pulling out without using mirrors, horns blaring, cutting other drivers up and coming close to mowing pedestrians down as they did so. Under the flyover there were market stalls selling fruit and vegetables, cigarettes, and pitta breads. Another guy was selling quite decent-looking luggage sets – a suitcase with matching laptop bag, sports bag or vanity case: the quality looked pretty good. Right on the corner, another old man had spread out a tarpaulin and from this was selling newspapers, all neatly stacked in little piles according to title. He was in a very precarious position, as any car or taxi or bus turning right came incredibly close to running him down or scattering his wares to the wind, but he was doing a brisk business – the preliminary results of last week’s Presidential Election first round were due to be published. There were people everywhere, talking volubly about this no doubt, but of course it was all gibberish to me.
The neighbourhood mosque
I strolled along, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons going someway to drowning out the traffic noise, taking the odd snapshot as I went – the squalor under the flyover outside my hotel gates, an attractive mosque surrounded by crumbling apartment buildings: typical Cairo views. Some people gave me odd looks, others smiling gestured at my head set and yelled “Good music eh?” amiably enough. It was a pleasant walk, past the archetypal crumbling blocks, separated by little narrow alleys, across which were strung washing lines full of clothes drying in the shade (rarely did direct sunlight fall upon these thoroughfares). In many doorways, groups of men, mostly middle aged to old, sat around smoking and talking, probably about the Elections. Veiled women and their children passed by laden with carrier bags full of shopping. Despite all the dirt and poverty, Cairo is a vibrant place, full of talk and noise and argument and laughter – I’ve seen very few people, even among the numerous beggars, who look sad and unhappy.
All the way, through the odd gap in the buildings, the Pyramids loomed larger until eventually I came to a crossing where a wide side road joined the main road. Across from me was a wall, perhaps five feet high, and beyond it the plateau topped by the Great Pyramid of Cheops and its neighbours. I crossed the side street and switched the camera on to take the first picture, and found that between the wall and the plateau was an unkempt and obviously disused pitch-and-putt course. The fairways looked like the rough, the greens were overgrown and the bunkers full of weeds. I would guess it has only recently been abandoned, because it still looked functional rather than a field – with some care and attention it could be up and running again very quickly I should think. And in the shadow of the Great Pyramid a nice place to play. I took my snapshot and walked on – and within a few yards it all started.
Home of the Egyptian Open?
* * *
Everyone in this part of town is trying to make a quick buck. From the hotel waiters and bell hops to the poor old sod trying to sell his garlic, everyone wants a piece of the action. It’s the same the world over I know – why else am I working except to make money? – but here it’s taken to extremes. For instance, the room service menu says, quite clearly, that a 22% service charge is added to the bill, which in most places (and certainly to me) means no tip is needed. That evening, the waiter brought my food to my room, I signed the bill and gave it back to him. He was looking at my watch on the bedside table.
“Beautiful,” he said. “How much did it cost?”
“It was a gift,” I said and gave him the wallet with the signed bill in it. He looked at it and frowned.
“Do you have something for me?” he said, and held out his hand. “To help me.”
Saucy sod. I showed him the door.
And that is par for the course. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with tipping, but I will do it on my terms. If the service is good, I’ll leave something, even where a service charge has already been included in the bill. But if someone holds their hand out like that and demands it, well, they can piss off. Not a penny. Taxis are the same. The journey to the office is about 7km, can take an hour or so but the fare consistently in the morning comes up on the meter as about LE12.50. I usually give the guy LE15 – it saves me carrying shrapnel about in my pocket and it’s a reasonable tip for the driver. Yesterday I did the same – and the guy starts yelling at me, presumably demanding more. I left him to it and went to work. Going home the traffic tends to be worse so the metered fare comes out around 17 – so I give 20: again, no shrapnel and everyone’s happy. Last night, for once, the road was pretty clear and the fare only came to 12.50. I gave the guy (who spoke a bit of English) a twenty and asked for 5 change – the going rate. He laughed and said he had no fives. I told him he’s better get some then, and took my 20 back. He went into a shop and changed a ten, so we were all happy – but clearly he was looking for a little extra. He chose the wrong tourist, sorry.
At the Pyramids, this gimme gimme gimme attitude was far far worse. It became evident as I walked away from taking my first picture – a young guy, maybe 15 years old, was passing on a horse and cart.
“Hey, mister, pyramids,” he called. “I take you. Twenty pounds”.
I ignored him. In a couple of hundred yards I came to the entrance to the site, the road going uphill for perhaps another 300 yards to the ticket booth. Within seconds, six guys of varying ages offered to drive me to the gate. Another old guy followed offering me a ride in his horse drawn cart to the site, with a 10 km ride into the desert thrown in. I said no thanks, but he followed me for another 50 yards or so, haranguing me about how would he feed his horse and his family (interesting order, I thought….) with no money, please help me mister….. I hadn’t even reached the gate and I was getting fed up.
At the ticket office there was no queue, and the big car and coach park, crowded when last I came here 7 years ago, was empty – perhaps a dozen cars and not a coach in sight: so much has the tourist trade collapsed since the Arab Spring. A ticket for the site is LE60 (that’s about EUR7-00, GBP6-50, PLN35) – this gets you onto the plateau and allows you an unlimited time to wander around quite happily taking your pictures, and also admits you to one of the smaller pyramids (there are 9 in total) and the Engineer’s Tomb. A further LE100 gets you into the Great Pyramid of Cheops. I took the cheaper option, and strolled into the grounds.
* * *
Within 50 yards, I was surrounded by three hawkers and 2 camel jockeys. The one guy snatched off my cap, quickly stuck an Arab headdress on, and stuffed another one in my bag, laughing and congratulating me on how I looked. I gave him LE100 on the basis they will be useful for shading the kids’ heads on the beach when we go to Spain in August. Big mistake! It opened the floodgates. In the space of about 10 minutes I ended up the proud owner of two sets of (admittedly nicely carved) pyramids, a pair of stone and fake gold necklaces, and half a dozen pictures taking by one of the camel jockeys, with him and his camel, all the while fending offers of postcards and other assorted tat from everyone else. At a total cost of about another LE300.
Me and my mate Mohamed
Mohamed (the camel jockey – he was actually a nice bloke) then started giving me a guided tour, telling me how there were three different types of stone used in the site’s construction, how it had taken 10 years to quarry it all from Luxor and ship it a couple of hundred miles up-river to Cairo on papyrus rafts, then dragged overland to the site, then another 20 or 30 years to build it – he was talking about the Great Pyramid – and all this using slave labour over 5000 years ago. It gave me pause for thought: what were we doing in Britain then? Or Poland and the rest of Europe, for that matter. Not a lot…..which makes the Pyramids all the more impressive. He took me to the Engineer’s Tomb and introduced me to his mate Ahmed, who was the security bloke – he happily took me in, and pointed out which one of several statues was the Engineer, which his son, his wife, his mother and so on (they’re all buried there), showed me the beautiful carvings in hieroglyphs depicting the work going on at the site, the Engineer’s death and his funeral. We took a bunch of pictures (there was a big sign on the door: “No Photography” – I pointed it out to him: “it’s ok, I not stop you,” he laughed) and he took me back out into the hot air, stuffing a gift of LE300 into his back pocket. He was happy.
Mohamed met me, and led me off again, ignoring my protests (“look, I’m ok, I just want to be left alone!”) and started explaining to me who all the other Pyramids had been built for, how long it had all taken, where the stone came from…..the guy clearly knew his stuff (or was a very good story teller – I won’t call him a liar). Eventually, after climbing to the top of a pile of rubble where he took a couple of novelty pictures (me holding a Pyramid between thumb and forefinger of one hand), I finally managed to get a word in……
Heavy stuff....
“STOP!!!!!!” He looked at me with a gap toothed grin. “Look, I know you’re trying to be friendly and help, but really, mate, I’ve had ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!!”
He laughed. “OK, ok, ok! But was I helpful……” holding out a grubby hand. Bloody hell. I peeled off another 200.
“That’s it, I said. “No more. Go away please.”
He was happy enough, and with a final hug and instruction that I was not to open my wallet for anyone else, he hopped on his camel and headed back to the entrance to find another punter.
I was exhausted.
* * *
I changed my music to Fleetwood Mac and headed downslope to the Sphinx.
As usual – half a dozen hawkers charged up, hands outstretched offering me playing cards, more bloody Pyramids, more bloody postcards in tatty airmail envelopes. I had the volume turned up and stomped past them, wallet firmly shut and zipped in my bag, and ignored them. One or two followed me a few yards, yelling about feeding the cats or something, but quickly dropped back and left me to it.
The Sphinx was deserted too – again a shocking contrast. On my last visit we had spent maybe 15 minutes waiting patiently in line to get to the ideal position for the obligatory novelty “Kissing the Sphinx” picture, but this time we could have gone straight to the spot. There were no more than 20 people around the statue (and not many more than that back up by the Pyramids) – a pitiful number for a sunny weekend. It is an extraordinary statue, but seemed if anything to be in bigger disrepair then I remembered it. I took my pictures and headed back to the hotel.
Smile? What smile? What FACE??
Just beyond the Sphinx is an open air market, about 50 stalls selling assorted Pyramids-related souvenirs and assorted junk. Seven years ago it was packed with coachfuls of tourists, pleasantly haggling the afternoon away. This time it was deserted. The lack of visitors is clearly having a devastating effect on the people who work there – my friends Mohamed and Ahmed were clearly pulling out all the stops to get as much from me as possible, on the basis that it might be a while before anyone else came along, and I don’t blame them: there seemed to be more camel jockeys and hawkers than there were punters. Slim pickings indeed, and tough when you have families to support and camels to feed. So although I had spent a lot more than I had expected or wanted to spend, on reflection I don’t begrudge it – these poor sods are not wealthy, they don’t have a lot and no state aid to make up their earnings in these lean and difficult times. They face a future far more uncertain and less lucrative than I do so I hope my couple of days’ per diem helps them and their families a little.
This place used to be busy....
* * *
All in all, my opinion of the Pyramids has changed after this visit. Seeing them close up and talking to Mohamed has really brought it home to me just want an extraordinary piece of engineering it all is, and all hand crafted and hand hauled. No power tools or heavy lifting gear, just very clever designers (genius, probably) and thousands of naked and sweating slaves, toiling the in the baking sun for years at a time. This, at a time when Europe was just crawling out of the Stone Ages into the Iron Age, with no civilization worthy of the name.
The location is still spoiled by its proximity to the sprawling and noisy mass of Cairo, but that unfortunately is the price paid for 5000 years of growth and progress. The site seems to be run down and in a state of disrepair to what it was, and the lack of business is clearly adversely affecting it: no visitors so reduced income, less money to spend on upkeep. Even the floodlights that illuminate them after dark are no longer switched on, as a means of saving money. In fairness, after 30 years of Mubarak’s corrupt regime and the last 12 months of transition, the fledgling democracy has a lot more to worry about than looking after an ancient monument that, in better times, financed itself (and I’m sure one day will do so again). There are more important priorities for this fragile democracy, in infrastructure and healthcare, relieving the poverty that most people live though day after day, cleaning the place up and finishing some of the stalled civil projects across the whole nation, not just around its capital.
At some point, when progress has been made on some of these issues, when safety is not a concern, the tourists will I’m sure come back. Right now, most of the guests in my hotel (at least those I’ve seen and heard so far – the place is far from fully booked) have been Indian families, a few Chinese, some elderly Americans and Germans, and the odd Russian. Not the average package tourists, certainly, and those are the ones who really need to return. The resorts at Hurghada and elsewhere on the Red Sea offer the same brilliant diving and beaches as ever, and once they start filling again the coaches will start running again for the day trips to Giza, for it is well worth the trip.
I hope it happens soon, because my mate Mohamed the camel jockey really needs to visit the dentist….
* * *
In the years since I last trudged through the sand at Giza, sweltering in 35C dry heat, Egypt has changed. At that time, Hosni Mubarak ruled the country with a carefully concealed iron fist. Outwardly, it seemed a prosperous and by Middle Eastern standards stable country. The Iraq War had essentially ended, inasmuch as the Iraqi forces and government had collapsed, Saddam was on the run, the Americans and British and other coalition forces were managing the collapsed society and trying to organize the place into something resembling a democracy. The insurgency that plagued the place for years hadn’t really been recognized: the regular bombs and killings were blamed on Saddam loyalists who refused to accept the reality of their defeat.
Across the border, Iran was Iran – ruled by the mullahs, stridently anti-west and to European eyes very strange. Its own nuclear program was underway but undercover, not in the public eye at all. It was still considered part of Bush’s Axis of Evil, as it is today, but apart from that the ordinary man in the street (that’s you and me, loyal reader) paid it little if any attention.
Elsewhere in the region, Gaddafi still ruled the Libyan roost, mad as ever but swimming in oil wealth whilst his country starved, still denying his involvement in the Lockerbie bombing 15 years or so before. Syria was stable with a popular president who the West liked, complete with an English born wife. He’s still there of course, as is the missus, but the leopard has changed its spots and he’s now systematically slaughtering citizens who disagree with him. Israel was Israel – so no change there then. The Gulf States were prospering as never before.
Egypt, meanwhile, went its own sweet way. Its tourism industry was, understandably, flourishing – our visits to Cairo and Luxor were made on coaches that formed part of police escorted convoys. It was cheap, the weather in October was great, the resort on the Red Sea brilliant, and people flowed into the place all year round. Of course things were not all perfect, that was obvious – the police escort for the coaches was a bit of giveaway, as was the abject poverty we saw out of the coach windows wherever we went. But still – it was stable, and people seemed happy enough.
Well, after the events of last year, in the Arab Spring, where Mubarak became the second biggest casualty (after Mad Dog himself), demonstrates that all was not as it seemed. Everything in the garden was not rosy at all – all smoke and mirrors. Mubarak is now on trial for various crimes against the state, and the verdict is due in the next couple of weeks.
* * *
But back to the Pyramids.
This time I didn’t need a coach. My hotel is a mile or so away, so I walked. It was a hot Friday (it being the weekend here, no work for Travellin Bob that day) but there was a bit of cloud about and a breeze that made it more bearable. I had breakfast, donned the sunscreen and the iPod, then camera in hand headed off.
The flyover outside my hotel - lovely, eh?
The main road just along from my hotel leads from Cairo city centre straight to the Pyramids. Friday, this quietest of days – the Islamic Day of Prayer – seemed to make no difference at all. The traffic on the road was not appreciably less, nor was the driving any better. The old man selling cloves of garlic was still at his place, sitting on the kerb in the dust. The taxi-bus drivers were still pulling out without using mirrors, horns blaring, cutting other drivers up and coming close to mowing pedestrians down as they did so. Under the flyover there were market stalls selling fruit and vegetables, cigarettes, and pitta breads. Another guy was selling quite decent-looking luggage sets – a suitcase with matching laptop bag, sports bag or vanity case: the quality looked pretty good. Right on the corner, another old man had spread out a tarpaulin and from this was selling newspapers, all neatly stacked in little piles according to title. He was in a very precarious position, as any car or taxi or bus turning right came incredibly close to running him down or scattering his wares to the wind, but he was doing a brisk business – the preliminary results of last week’s Presidential Election first round were due to be published. There were people everywhere, talking volubly about this no doubt, but of course it was all gibberish to me.
The neighbourhood mosque
I strolled along, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons going someway to drowning out the traffic noise, taking the odd snapshot as I went – the squalor under the flyover outside my hotel gates, an attractive mosque surrounded by crumbling apartment buildings: typical Cairo views. Some people gave me odd looks, others smiling gestured at my head set and yelled “Good music eh?” amiably enough. It was a pleasant walk, past the archetypal crumbling blocks, separated by little narrow alleys, across which were strung washing lines full of clothes drying in the shade (rarely did direct sunlight fall upon these thoroughfares). In many doorways, groups of men, mostly middle aged to old, sat around smoking and talking, probably about the Elections. Veiled women and their children passed by laden with carrier bags full of shopping. Despite all the dirt and poverty, Cairo is a vibrant place, full of talk and noise and argument and laughter – I’ve seen very few people, even among the numerous beggars, who look sad and unhappy.
All the way, through the odd gap in the buildings, the Pyramids loomed larger until eventually I came to a crossing where a wide side road joined the main road. Across from me was a wall, perhaps five feet high, and beyond it the plateau topped by the Great Pyramid of Cheops and its neighbours. I crossed the side street and switched the camera on to take the first picture, and found that between the wall and the plateau was an unkempt and obviously disused pitch-and-putt course. The fairways looked like the rough, the greens were overgrown and the bunkers full of weeds. I would guess it has only recently been abandoned, because it still looked functional rather than a field – with some care and attention it could be up and running again very quickly I should think. And in the shadow of the Great Pyramid a nice place to play. I took my snapshot and walked on – and within a few yards it all started.
Home of the Egyptian Open?
* * *
Everyone in this part of town is trying to make a quick buck. From the hotel waiters and bell hops to the poor old sod trying to sell his garlic, everyone wants a piece of the action. It’s the same the world over I know – why else am I working except to make money? – but here it’s taken to extremes. For instance, the room service menu says, quite clearly, that a 22% service charge is added to the bill, which in most places (and certainly to me) means no tip is needed. That evening, the waiter brought my food to my room, I signed the bill and gave it back to him. He was looking at my watch on the bedside table.
“Beautiful,” he said. “How much did it cost?”
“It was a gift,” I said and gave him the wallet with the signed bill in it. He looked at it and frowned.
“Do you have something for me?” he said, and held out his hand. “To help me.”
Saucy sod. I showed him the door.
And that is par for the course. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with tipping, but I will do it on my terms. If the service is good, I’ll leave something, even where a service charge has already been included in the bill. But if someone holds their hand out like that and demands it, well, they can piss off. Not a penny. Taxis are the same. The journey to the office is about 7km, can take an hour or so but the fare consistently in the morning comes up on the meter as about LE12.50. I usually give the guy LE15 – it saves me carrying shrapnel about in my pocket and it’s a reasonable tip for the driver. Yesterday I did the same – and the guy starts yelling at me, presumably demanding more. I left him to it and went to work. Going home the traffic tends to be worse so the metered fare comes out around 17 – so I give 20: again, no shrapnel and everyone’s happy. Last night, for once, the road was pretty clear and the fare only came to 12.50. I gave the guy (who spoke a bit of English) a twenty and asked for 5 change – the going rate. He laughed and said he had no fives. I told him he’s better get some then, and took my 20 back. He went into a shop and changed a ten, so we were all happy – but clearly he was looking for a little extra. He chose the wrong tourist, sorry.
At the Pyramids, this gimme gimme gimme attitude was far far worse. It became evident as I walked away from taking my first picture – a young guy, maybe 15 years old, was passing on a horse and cart.
“Hey, mister, pyramids,” he called. “I take you. Twenty pounds”.
I ignored him. In a couple of hundred yards I came to the entrance to the site, the road going uphill for perhaps another 300 yards to the ticket booth. Within seconds, six guys of varying ages offered to drive me to the gate. Another old guy followed offering me a ride in his horse drawn cart to the site, with a 10 km ride into the desert thrown in. I said no thanks, but he followed me for another 50 yards or so, haranguing me about how would he feed his horse and his family (interesting order, I thought….) with no money, please help me mister….. I hadn’t even reached the gate and I was getting fed up.
At the ticket office there was no queue, and the big car and coach park, crowded when last I came here 7 years ago, was empty – perhaps a dozen cars and not a coach in sight: so much has the tourist trade collapsed since the Arab Spring. A ticket for the site is LE60 (that’s about EUR7-00, GBP6-50, PLN35) – this gets you onto the plateau and allows you an unlimited time to wander around quite happily taking your pictures, and also admits you to one of the smaller pyramids (there are 9 in total) and the Engineer’s Tomb. A further LE100 gets you into the Great Pyramid of Cheops. I took the cheaper option, and strolled into the grounds.
* * *
Within 50 yards, I was surrounded by three hawkers and 2 camel jockeys. The one guy snatched off my cap, quickly stuck an Arab headdress on, and stuffed another one in my bag, laughing and congratulating me on how I looked. I gave him LE100 on the basis they will be useful for shading the kids’ heads on the beach when we go to Spain in August. Big mistake! It opened the floodgates. In the space of about 10 minutes I ended up the proud owner of two sets of (admittedly nicely carved) pyramids, a pair of stone and fake gold necklaces, and half a dozen pictures taking by one of the camel jockeys, with him and his camel, all the while fending offers of postcards and other assorted tat from everyone else. At a total cost of about another LE300.
Me and my mate Mohamed
Mohamed (the camel jockey – he was actually a nice bloke) then started giving me a guided tour, telling me how there were three different types of stone used in the site’s construction, how it had taken 10 years to quarry it all from Luxor and ship it a couple of hundred miles up-river to Cairo on papyrus rafts, then dragged overland to the site, then another 20 or 30 years to build it – he was talking about the Great Pyramid – and all this using slave labour over 5000 years ago. It gave me pause for thought: what were we doing in Britain then? Or Poland and the rest of Europe, for that matter. Not a lot…..which makes the Pyramids all the more impressive. He took me to the Engineer’s Tomb and introduced me to his mate Ahmed, who was the security bloke – he happily took me in, and pointed out which one of several statues was the Engineer, which his son, his wife, his mother and so on (they’re all buried there), showed me the beautiful carvings in hieroglyphs depicting the work going on at the site, the Engineer’s death and his funeral. We took a bunch of pictures (there was a big sign on the door: “No Photography” – I pointed it out to him: “it’s ok, I not stop you,” he laughed) and he took me back out into the hot air, stuffing a gift of LE300 into his back pocket. He was happy.
Mohamed met me, and led me off again, ignoring my protests (“look, I’m ok, I just want to be left alone!”) and started explaining to me who all the other Pyramids had been built for, how long it had all taken, where the stone came from…..the guy clearly knew his stuff (or was a very good story teller – I won’t call him a liar). Eventually, after climbing to the top of a pile of rubble where he took a couple of novelty pictures (me holding a Pyramid between thumb and forefinger of one hand), I finally managed to get a word in……
“STOP!!!!!!” He looked at me with a gap toothed grin. “Look, I know you’re trying to be friendly and help, but really, mate, I’ve had ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!!”
He laughed. “OK, ok, ok! But was I helpful……” holding out a grubby hand. Bloody hell. I peeled off another 200.
“That’s it, I said. “No more. Go away please.”
He was happy enough, and with a final hug and instruction that I was not to open my wallet for anyone else, he hopped on his camel and headed back to the entrance to find another punter.
I was exhausted.
* * *
I changed my music to Fleetwood Mac and headed downslope to the Sphinx.
As usual – half a dozen hawkers charged up, hands outstretched offering me playing cards, more bloody Pyramids, more bloody postcards in tatty airmail envelopes. I had the volume turned up and stomped past them, wallet firmly shut and zipped in my bag, and ignored them. One or two followed me a few yards, yelling about feeding the cats or something, but quickly dropped back and left me to it.
The Sphinx was deserted too – again a shocking contrast. On my last visit we had spent maybe 15 minutes waiting patiently in line to get to the ideal position for the obligatory novelty “Kissing the Sphinx” picture, but this time we could have gone straight to the spot. There were no more than 20 people around the statue (and not many more than that back up by the Pyramids) – a pitiful number for a sunny weekend. It is an extraordinary statue, but seemed if anything to be in bigger disrepair then I remembered it. I took my pictures and headed back to the hotel.
Smile? What smile? What FACE??
Just beyond the Sphinx is an open air market, about 50 stalls selling assorted Pyramids-related souvenirs and assorted junk. Seven years ago it was packed with coachfuls of tourists, pleasantly haggling the afternoon away. This time it was deserted. The lack of visitors is clearly having a devastating effect on the people who work there – my friends Mohamed and Ahmed were clearly pulling out all the stops to get as much from me as possible, on the basis that it might be a while before anyone else came along, and I don’t blame them: there seemed to be more camel jockeys and hawkers than there were punters. Slim pickings indeed, and tough when you have families to support and camels to feed. So although I had spent a lot more than I had expected or wanted to spend, on reflection I don’t begrudge it – these poor sods are not wealthy, they don’t have a lot and no state aid to make up their earnings in these lean and difficult times. They face a future far more uncertain and less lucrative than I do so I hope my couple of days’ per diem helps them and their families a little.
This place used to be busy....
* * *
All in all, my opinion of the Pyramids has changed after this visit. Seeing them close up and talking to Mohamed has really brought it home to me just want an extraordinary piece of engineering it all is, and all hand crafted and hand hauled. No power tools or heavy lifting gear, just very clever designers (genius, probably) and thousands of naked and sweating slaves, toiling the in the baking sun for years at a time. This, at a time when Europe was just crawling out of the Stone Ages into the Iron Age, with no civilization worthy of the name.
The location is still spoiled by its proximity to the sprawling and noisy mass of Cairo, but that unfortunately is the price paid for 5000 years of growth and progress. The site seems to be run down and in a state of disrepair to what it was, and the lack of business is clearly adversely affecting it: no visitors so reduced income, less money to spend on upkeep. Even the floodlights that illuminate them after dark are no longer switched on, as a means of saving money. In fairness, after 30 years of Mubarak’s corrupt regime and the last 12 months of transition, the fledgling democracy has a lot more to worry about than looking after an ancient monument that, in better times, financed itself (and I’m sure one day will do so again). There are more important priorities for this fragile democracy, in infrastructure and healthcare, relieving the poverty that most people live though day after day, cleaning the place up and finishing some of the stalled civil projects across the whole nation, not just around its capital.
At some point, when progress has been made on some of these issues, when safety is not a concern, the tourists will I’m sure come back. Right now, most of the guests in my hotel (at least those I’ve seen and heard so far – the place is far from fully booked) have been Indian families, a few Chinese, some elderly Americans and Germans, and the odd Russian. Not the average package tourists, certainly, and those are the ones who really need to return. The resorts at Hurghada and elsewhere on the Red Sea offer the same brilliant diving and beaches as ever, and once they start filling again the coaches will start running again for the day trips to Giza, for it is well worth the trip.
I hope it happens soon, because my mate Mohamed the camel jockey really needs to visit the dentist….
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