The Perils of the Western Desert

The third morning following, I was hitching just to theeast of Mersa Matrouh when the first dolmush stopped for me. It was a Citroen station-wagon type, and was already packed with about nine people and all their luggage. I smiled and waved him on, saying in Arabic "free ride". But that's what the dolmush driver meant, and he shoe-horned me somehow into the luggage area in back, doubled over, with a small piece of side-window to peer through, agreeing to take me all the way to Alexandria for free !

We drove steadily for a couple of hours, and then slowed down. I couldn't believe my eyes !! Lined up along the side of the road were dozens of German, Italian, British and American derelict tanks, armored cars, and artillery pieces !! I have always been fascinated by military history, and especially by armored fighting vehicles, so I hollered to the driver that I had changed my mind and was stopping here. The cabbie graciously pulled over to disentangle me from the luggage and drop me off. I wandered among the rusty armor starry-eyed !

A sign informed me that I was at El Alamein, site of the turning-point battle in the struggle for North Africa in the Second World War. The Egyptian army had dragged lots of 35-year-derelict vehicles out of the farther reaches of the desert and lined them up on both sides of the road. A small three-room military museum squatted at the far end of the display. I talked with the young Egyptian lieutenant in charge of the six-man museum staff, who fortunately spoke excellent English. He informed me that the railhead of El Alamein was still some distance away, and that there was nothing "here" except the museum. I was the only museum visitor that day.

I spent a very pleasant late morning and early afternoon climbing all over and through the historic vehicles, inspecting the obvious battle damage. They hadn't been cleaned up at all, just dragged in and left there, and so were full of windblown sand, with bits of shattered periscope glass, weathered paper, and rotted rubber in the bottoms of the fighting compartments. It was like being transported by time machine back 35 years, because the dry climate had preserved the vehicles themselves very well. Some of them were mislabeled, but I decided not to try to convince the museum staff to correct their little identifying signs. I took a dozen snapshots of the rusting relics.

My friend the lieutenant invited me to have lunch with his garrison. It was a good opportunity for him to gain status with them by showing off his English, and translating whatever I said. They were amazed to hear that I had slept out in the open desert.

"How did you do this, Mr. Chick ?"

So I opened my backpack, and on the museum floor laid out my plastic ground-sheet, and sleeping bag, and explained how I put my boots next to my head, with my little flashlight in the top of my boots. The soldiers all muttered and shook their heads in disbelief. I asked my host what they were saying.

"Mr. Chick, we cannot believe that you sleep this way with no protection in such a dangerous place."

When I told them that there was nothing to be afraid of out in the desert, they dissented strongly. I demanded to know what I should fear.

"Tigers !" was the heartfelt reply.

That was my first encounter with an interesting cultural glitch which I later confirmed. In America we think of the Arabs as people who are at home in the desert. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Perhaps 99% of the local populations are "village Arabs" who are scared SPITLESS of the desert. It is only a very few true Bedouin who feel at home in those open spaces. I'm sure Arab mothers all over the middle east use the quasi-mythical desert tigers as a tool to terrify their little ones, and as a result, the whole culture believes implicitly that the clean open desert is a very perilous place. I told this story to my Israeli friends in 1999, and they all agreed, "YEAH, there are tigers out there in the desert, those Egyptians were right !", which makes me think that Israeli mothers use the same fables.

Hitch hiking to Alexandria along the south shore of the Mediterranean was easy. I located the well-concealed youth hostel in the late evening. Alexandria, formerly the center of civilization throughout the Mediterranean world, had always attracted me. I went searching for any remaining traces of the ancient Pharos lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and the Library of Alexandria, the storehouse of all ancient recorded knowledge.

Medieval Pashas had constructed a fortification named Quait Bey on the outer edge of Alexandria harbour where the Pharos lighthouse had stood until it was toppled by a massive earthquake in the dark ages. Stones from the Pharos were believed to have been re-used in building the fortification, but I was disappointed that effectively nothing remained of the lighthouse itself. (Recent underwater surveys of the sea and harbor floor in the area have identified large stones and statues which must have been pieces of the lighthouse. That work is ongoing.) I visited Quait Bey which then housed the interesting Egyptian Naval museum. It may be the only naval museum on earth displaying a number of 4000-year-old models of equally ancient ship designs.

The famous Library of Alexandria, which tragically burned in Roman times, similarly left no remaining trace in the modern city.

Everywhere I went in Alex I attracted crowds of staring young male Egyptian followers. I couldn't stop for a moment to admire the view because of the mass of people who would immediately congregate. After most of a day of this it began to be annoying. Many of these young guys spoke some English, and wanted to try it out. Quite a few times a day I was invited to discuss the same three fascinating subjects, Middle Eastern politics, comparative religion, and sex. Especially sex.

The Egyptians had heard that western women were much easier to get to know than Egyptian women, and they wanted to hear ALL about that. Several times that day young Egyptian men proudly displayed photos of their western girlfriends. The first one showed a pudgy blonde gal with her arm around the proud photo-owner. But there was something a little strange about the picture, the whole side of it away from the Egyptian guy was snipped off. Well, I didn't think much of it until hours later when I was shown a similarly trimmed picture of an Egyptian beau beside a dark haired German lass. Then I realized the scam. These had been photos of western couples who had agreed to be photographed with the local boys, who had subsequently cut the European boyfriends out of the picture. This trick almost made it appear that the lady in question had been the photo-trimmer's girlfriend. I wonder if the rather obvious subterfuge fooled even any of the immediate friends of those pseudo-lotharios.

Another cross-cultural feature which caught my attention were the pairs of Egyptian men walking around the city hand in hand. At first it was disorienting to see two mature, uniformed, battle-scarred Egyptian sergeants walking down the esplanade, holding hands, looking dreamily into one another's eyes, obviously deeply in love. After getting used to the idea, however, I found it rather sincere and charming. I realized that it was my western culture which was messed up about guys holding hands with one another, and that the Egyptians had it right. (Returning to Egypt many years later in 1997, western-cultural mores had apparently won out, and I saw no pairs of men holding hands in public.)

Next time: vagabond's guide to Cairo