While in Cairo I was treated to a Khamsin, the occasional hot, dry desert winds from the west. That Khamsin took the form of a powerful dust storm, and turned the entire sky, horizon to horizon, a strange pale orange color from the quantities of desert dust in the air. People went about the streets of Cairo with handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses, and kept their windows closed to try to keep out the dust. That dust went everywhere and was abrasive and gritty between my neck and my collar. Fortunately the Khamsin lasted less than two days, and the skies cleared again.
At the height of the Khamsin I met a Canadian vagabond named Bill on the street. We peered at each other through dusty eye-slits, conversed, and became friends. Bill was unenthused with the Beet Shebab, so with the permission of the staff, I moved him in onto the floor of my comfortable pensione room. Soon poor Bill became quite ill with gut-gripes, so he inherited the bed, and I sat with him and ran errands for him until he recovered. We met again later in Aswan, and much later in Nairobi.
Bill had already scouted Cairo's American University, and took me to visit the inexpensive cafeteria, as well as to meet some English-speaking local women. We chatted up three lovely young ladies at the adjacent table, and had a nice conversation. They were all from Saudi Arabia, and in order to allow them to attend the American university without compromising their reputations, all three of their entire families, parents, brothers, and sisters, had also moved to Cairo to chaperone them !! Yowee. It must be nice to be born rich. The American university was the only place in all of the Middle East where I managed to speak openly with young Moslem women, who traditionally are jealously guarded and kept separate from males, and from other polluting influences.
Riding local busses I took a day trip south some distance to Sakkara, to see the ancient monuments there. Pharaoh Djoser's step pyramid is the world's first monumental stone building, and very impressive, though not very beautiful. In some nearby derelict tombs, a guard encouraged me to take a piece of 5000 year old wrapping linen from a partial mummy which was resting in a corner. That seemed too disrespectful an act to me, so I declined. This experience brought into sharp focus another of my mistaken assumptions. I had always believed that in Pharaonic Egypt the wealthy and important people were mummified and placed in tombs on the West side of the Nile. Actually, for three or four thousand years, EVERYBODY was mummified and placed in tombs in that area !! The whole place is just honeycombed with tombs, and bones and bits of mummies are very common only a few yards away from the maintained tourist paths.
At Sakkara I had a piece of luck. Returning past Djoser's step pyramid I encountered a group of French speaking bus tourists. Since the local busses were uncomfortable, and a substantial hassle to ride, I accosted the cute young French tour leader, and asked her if I could ride with them back to Central Cairo. My stumbling, ungrammatical French was apparently sufficient, because she agreed, but first specified that I would accompany them while they visited the Pyramids of Giza, and then the papyrus institute. Sounded fine to me, and things worked out very well. There were plenty of French folk who weren't curious about the inner passages of Kephren's pyramid, the second-largest, so I went inside with the tour party for free. The French group tourists were pretty interested in me, and asked lots of questions about solo vagabonding in North Africa. I parted from them that evening at the Nile Hilton and walked back to Pensione Roma.
When sated with the sights and attractions of Cairo, the
railway carried me south up the Nile to Luxor, where a
cheap dormitory in a back-street vagabond hotel
welcomed me. In and near Luxor are two massive
reconstructed pharaonic temples, while on the other side
of the Nile is the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. The
huge, confusing complex of the temple of Karnak, nicely
rebuilt, showed areas of the original color still adhering
to the decorated undersides of a few of the massive
lintels ! I wonder just how long ago that paint was
applied. Everywhere exposed to the direct sun had long
ago been bleached of all color. Crossing the Nile on the
cheap ferry (no bridges there even today) the hordes of
dragomen, touts and donkey-drovers were eluded with
some difficulty. I took an all-day self-guided walking
tour of the Valley of the Kings, Queen Hapshetsut's
temple, and the Colossi of Memnon.
As I was coming out of my Luxor freak lodging in the early morning, I encountered a young Canadian couple in the cramped reception area, just hanging out. When I approached they asked where I was going, My target was Edfu temple, south on the railway, and across the Nile, and they asked if they could come along. I was used to this behavior in pairs or triples of unescorted women in Egypt. Egyptian men could be a real hassel to western ladies walking around by themselves. I was powerful and fit and reasonably "safe and sane" at the time, and I realized that usually they just wanted something to keep the unsophisticated Egyptian guys a little farther away. It had nothing to do with me as a person, I was being recruited as an escort-object only.
Now John, the Canadian husband, was a tall, strong guy, and I figured he could probably do just fine at escort by himself, but along I went. I was wrong. His wife, Kay, was little, and plump-pear-shaped, with a broad, soft bottom, and had long wavy FLAME RED Scottish hair. Even though she had it tied back, it was a PROBLEM. At the time the Egyptians made their women put that stiff henna crap in their hair to make it sort of muddy brown/red. She was perfect in every eye !! The unsophisticated guys would get that "radar lock" stare, and approach directly with the full intent of touching and grabbing her. It happened once every few minutes!! Yowee !! With me walking on one side, and John on the other, keeping our bodies between Kay and the would-be assailants, threatening bodily harm, we were just barely keeping her un-grabbed. Tense, and not a very fun situation. I finally convinced Kay to stick her hair down her blouse and put a scarf over her head, which helped some but didn't stop the strange behavior.
I asked John "What could those guys possibly be thinking
?!?!" He said he had been pondering that question for a
week, and had finally figured it out. According to John,
when an Egyptian male sees Kay, inside his head he says
"- - - - WOW !!! - - - - I can go to bed with her !!!!!!!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - and I'm going to try RIGHT NOW !"
In my heart, I knew he must be correct. No other theory
fits the data.
But this generates the next question: WHY do these men imagine that western women will immediately lie down when unescorted? Polling many people, I have culled two possible explanations.
I spent the evening at the apartment of an American- educated Egyptian whom I met in Cairo, mostly discussing Middle East politics. He attributed the obnoxious behavior to the many American movies which play in Egypt. In any given western movie there is a good chance that at some point in the story the female lead will go to bed with somebody to whom she is not married. This is particularly true of the movies which are selected to be dubbed into Arabic and released in Egypt. And this is never the case in movies produced in Arab countries. According to my informant, the unsophisticated Egyptian males GET the fact of the bed games out of wedlock, but MISS the fact that it is necessary to the plot. Therefore they convince themselves that all western women walk around continually ready to hop into bed with the first guy who feels them up.
My friend Gene, who lived for years in Egypt and went to school there has another interesting take on the question. He found that on the rare occasions that the stifling chaperoning system broke down, the Egyptian young ladies were quite willing to "fool around", to a limited extent, with available young men. They didn't seem to be too worried about maintaining their own virtue, believing that to be the responsibility of the chaperones. If this is generally true, then Egyptian men, seeing a western woman unchaperoned, would conclude that she would behave similarly. In spite of my respect for Gene's opinion, I have a suspicion that his personal experience was strongly slanted by the circumstance of his own good looks and undeniable charm.
Neither of these explanations satisfies me, and neither explains the behavior towards the HEAVILY escorted Canadian cutie of our story. So, ultimately, I still don't understand the Egyptian grope artists, and am still seeking additional data.
The Canadians and I rode to Edfu and deposited my backpack at the railway office. We walked over the new (at the time) Nile bridge, enjoyed the wonderfully- preserved ancient temple, and were returning to the Eastern side. The tall, modern bridge was very crowded, with autos, bikes, and plenty of pedestrians going both ways. My defensive position was on the inside, next to the wheeled traffic, and I was edgy, my supply of emotional harmony worn very thin. I saw an old bicycle coming the other way, and the teenage pilot went "Radar Lock Joy Face" when he saw Kay, veering through oncoming traffic towards her. I had him covered, never taking my eyes off of him, and keeping a solid defensive screen. Problem was that behind me Kay and John had stopped without my knowing it, and I had continued to move forward OUT OF POSITION ! The weenie pedaled past and grabbed Kay hard by the breast on the way ! Then he peered back over his shoulder with a smug expression. That did it.
WAAAARGH !! I went completely ballistic, berserk with fury. I sprinted after him, blind with a purple rage behind my eyes. I'm not fast, and he should have escaped, but he was going against foot traffic, and that slowed him substantially. After a short chase through the crowd I locked a right hand grip of iron through the funny book-clamp-thing on the bike's rear fender. Dragged him to a halt !!!
Now this felaheen knew from the look in my eyes that death was extremely near. He started to wail, and tried to jump off the bike, but got tangled up in it, and fell down, partly under the bike, with me crawling up to kneel on top of his legs ! He was continuously screaming full volume now, and his eyes were stark with genuine terror. One of those instant twenty-faces-deep-all- around Egyptian crowds materialized, each of the hundreds of watchers fascinated by the exciting drama being played out in front of them !!
Well, now that I had him, WHAT was I going to do with him???? I was beginning to calm down now, and was no longer 100%-out-of-control-homicidal. I could actually think again for the first time in many seconds. My immediate impulse was to loosen his greasy brown teeth with my Yankee fist-of-retribution, but somehow that didn't seem appropriate. I considered tossing him over the bridge rail into the Nile, but the chances were excellent that he could not swim, and would drown. What was I gonna do, there at center stage ? ? ?
Then came one of those rare, perfect Satoris which are given to mortal men only once or twice in a lifetime.
My left hand gripped his throat as I scooted partly off of him, rammed my claw-like fingers up between his legs, and powerfully groped and molested his private parts !!! The horrified crowd went COMPLETELY SILENT !
I released him, straightened up, and held up my thumb and forefinger vertically about 1" apart.
The crowd GOT IT, and laughed uproariously, with amusement mixed with relief !!! The glaringly red-faced dweeb went slithering away , dragging his pox-ridden bicycle with him.
That night I reached the lovely Nile-side town of Aswan, soon purchasing a ticket on the bi-weekly steamer south on Lake Nasser, heading deep into Darkest Africa.
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This completes Chick's 1975 tramp across North Africa.
Continuing tales of vagabonding south through Darkest
Africa beginning at this point.