Back in 1992 Tiger and I went to Egypt on holiday. It was always a dream of mine. I was working in Belfast and Brenda Hassan who is married to an Egyptian saw this great offer in a travel agent’s that was starting out. I couldn’t wait to get the holiday booked. We opted for two weeks in Luxor.
We flew from Dublin and met Mary and Frank at the airport. Then we met Finnuala and Ray while we were all queuing to get through visa and passport control. We met Geraldine and Joan on a trip across the Nile to the Valley of the Kings and we all gelled. We met lots of other peeps who drifted in and out of our wee group.
The luxury of the Hilton, the Etap, the Isis and the Sheridan was unbelievable. The poverty outside was beyond belief. The Egyptian staff at the hotels were so helpful and professional and always so kind. Kenawe who was our housekeeper left us little handmade gifts. He is someone I will never forget. Outside the hotel people were either living in falling down mud brick houses … if you could call them houses or sleeping on the streets at night. I was ashamed to be living in luxury in the middle of such heart-breaking poverty.
Tiger and I had promised to bring Ahmed some Egyptian tobacco back and went to the wee place at the end of the Hilton drive. It had a mud floor and we tried to explain what we wanted which was tobacco for a Hubble-Bubble pipe. The owner got us stools and indicated we sit down and disappeared. We thought he was going to get someone who could speak English. A short while later all these people arrived with tea and treated us like royalty. They touched me and said Cleopatra … you had to know me then. I had a crimped bob and I do have big eyes and wore kohl eyeliner.
They were so very grateful that we would visit their shop and want to spend time with them. What lovely, kind and gracious people. They had nothing but wanted to share it with us. Word must have got round because the place was packed in the end. We went back again to see them and buy as much tobacco as we could take home without getting in trouble with HM Customs.
The thing that got everyone in our group riled was that the army extorted money from us at every turn. One has to comply with men tooting guns who are demanding Baksheesh. Even at the airport we had to pay to get our luggage through security. The corruption was terrible in the armed forces while the ordinary people could not have been more generous.
I’m not a bit surprised that the people have revolted. We were revolted by the treatment they received. I support them wholeheartedly. I do worry about the future because there are different factions and beliefs as everywhere else. On a trip to Cairo we experienced prejudice from devout men on the underground and in the market at Luxor at night some men made camel noises at us gals. I learned that it was best to keep your head covered and keep your eyes averted when they were around. The rest of the Egyptians were fantastic towards us. As I have a homemade cross tattoo on my hand (as you do when you are an experimental teenager) the Coptic’s took me to their hearts. To be fair the Muslim staff treated us really well too. They have a class system in Egypt though and the Nubian waiter explained that he was low down in the pecking order because his skin was so black. We hugged the life out of him. It is wonderful that everyone are putting that aside. At least for the time being.
Yet another country is in turmoil because of corruption in government. People are finally bonding and saying enough is enough but what happens next? Nature is giving us a wakeup call and society is in breakdown. I fear that total anarchy is a few steps away. Oil, ergo food prices, are becoming astronomical. You can be sure someone in a well-guarded tower is making a fortune out of other peoples misery. Damn them.
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