Snapshot: Egypt, December, 2000

The Corniche outside the Temple of Luxor.

Back on the west bank. Impressions of rural Egypt: riders astride donkeys with loads of reeds splayed four feet out on either side; women draped in either black or in red; beautiful children with eyes buzzing with flies as they try to sell homemade dolls to tourists; water buffalo looking like wide-hoofed creatures from some other planet; young cops and soldiers with automatic weapons and leather cases for additional clips; ibises like gulls, swarming over canals layered with garbage; the river flowing out of the heart of Africa, slow and oily, mounted by palatial tourist cruisers and feluccas; rusty tram tracks from the old sugar cane processors; old kaftaned men sitting on kitchen chairs in front of the open mosque.

Egypt is supposed to be static, but it's changed even from Flaubert's time. Judging from the paintings in the tombs of the artisans, both sensuality and sexual equality were once known in the valley. Now, with modern Islam, whole dimensions of erotic possibility seem shut off, like an Aswan Dam of the spirit. This is a very conservative country (not counting national disasters like Afghanistan) which would probably have struck the old Egyptians as strange. They might also have resented the general air of obsequiousness around foreign cash. Now, unlike in antiquity, Egypt is a country of prudes and panhandlers.

Football in the Sahara.

Today we crossed the Nile again (near Aswan) to visit the Monastery of St. Simeon. This is a 7th century stone and mudbrick structure set over a wadi a few thousand feet west of the riverfront. Stepping off the boat, we were greeted by more than a dozen camel jockeys; the place was much like a paddock, but the camels appealed to me more this time. Their croaking roar seemed somehow cute. 

The Monastery was not the desolate museum I imagined. It is still a working church—there were more than a hundred worshippers there, under the canopies in the ruined old chapel, hearing and repeating the liturgy in old Coptic. The Christian population of Aswan—largely Nubian, it seems—also picnics in the compound after the services. I wondered if this had something to do with Ramadan (no food consumed by the Muslim majority during daylight), but no one could answer the question while we were there. Sitting up on the mud-brick rampart (in that climate, still well preserved after a 12th century renovation, I watched a bunch of boys play soccer on the edge of an immensity of desert.

The Bent Pyramid at Dahshur. The tiny figures are Maryanne and our driver.

The best monuments are barely on the established tours. The pyramids at Dahshur are older than the ones at Giza, and almost as big. They are farther out of Cairo, and thus approximate in their solitude what the Giza pyramids were supposed to be—lonely tombs, not suburban tourist attractions. The Bent Pyramid is especially evocative in its irregularity. It is a gigantic work of improvisation now frozen on the limestone sands. It has much of its casing intact, again evoking the Giza pyramids better than they do themselves. The quality of the silence there—despite the nearby presence of an Army base—is deeply satisfying. This is real antiquity, but without the pretention to ancient wisdom. For there's nothing very wise about suddenly altering the angle of a pyramid in mid-construction because the builders realized they made a mistake. Instead, it evokes the ancient Egyptians as real people grappling with practical problems. There is more human dignity in that change of angle than in a thousand Karnaks.

Text and photos © 2013 Nicholas Nicastro