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Egyptiana IX: The Duel

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The Ninth Part in which Steve comes Very Close to a Real Camel

 

Scaffolding sphinx

The wonders of Giza quickly overwhelmed any lingering guilt regarding poor Mahmud. We clambered about the stones, visited Khufu’s burial chamber, marveled at the Sphinx, kicked around the royal cemetery. Camels were everywhere, and watching less savvy tourists awkwardly mount them and lumber about in train to bored-looking guides, we shared a sense of smug superiority. By 3 o’clock the crowds had fled to shadier regions. We bought two of something that may have been peaches and split a can of Coke, then headed off across the sand toward the transportation kiosk. We had plenty of time to get to the airport. My pocket held less than five Egyptian pounds, all of it change. Sweet Apricot had no money at all.

Our path took us near the low hulk of a stone wall all but buried by wind and time. A camel stood upon the ruin, its saddle and reins strung with silver and tassels. On its back sat an old man, or an old-ish one, anyway, ramrod straight and draped from head to toe in Bedouin splendor; layered robes, a jingling curtain of chains hanging down his chest, a broad, curved knife in a jewel-crusted leather sheath thrust into his thick fabric belt. His skin was the color of mahogany and deeply seamed. His salt-and-pepper beard nearly brushed the camel’s back. Thick, wild brows shaded black eyes that seemed remote and wise and filled with ancient secrets. He was a figure straight out of Lawrence of Arabia, and I was impressed. He raised an arm and beckoned us to come near.

“No baksheesh,” I said, not slowing. If I don’t talk to him, he can’t ask me for money. “No baksheesh,” he replied, evenly. He was a baritone, with a whiff of desert campfire in his voice. “Come! Come!” He sounded friendly enough, an oasis of calm self-possession. Sweet Apricot wasn’t buying it. “No baksheesh,” she said. He merely smiled a patient smile. “No baksheesh,” he repeated. “I want to show you something.”

His tone was easy, reasonable, a little bemused. “No baksheesh?” asked Sweet Apricot, still wary. She maintained a charmingly innocent surety that forcing him to re-state his position somehow locked him into it. It’s how she lived her life – as long as the deal was clear and she held up her end of it, she was “a basically good person” and could sleep the sleep of the just. It wasn’t a bad policy, simply inadequate to local conditions. “No baksheesh,” he assured her.

Reaching his right hand into the cavernous sleeve of his left, he produced two scarabs the size of jelly beans indifferently carved from some unremarkable gray stone. They were the least of souvenirs, available wherever money changes hands in Egypt for 50 piestras a pop. He leaned down from on high and held them out to us, one in each hand. “These are gifts. For you. Take!”

Our Trojan Horse

It wasn’t our first rodeo, and we both felt the lariat tightening. This was a transaction, plain and simple, and Sweet Apricot’s reaction was automatic and justified. She took two quick steps back and snapped “no baksheesh!”, then glared at him defiantly, silently daring him to admit his treachery now that his feeble charade was exposed. He merely sighed a tired sigh and shook his head. His voice grew conciliatory, indulgent.

“I am Muslim,” he said, as he might speak to a slow child. “It is Ramadan. I give you these gifts for Ramadan. That is all.”

That set us back on our heels. If it was a trick, it was a new one in our experience. It was certainly Ramadan, after all, and he looked about as Muslim as anyone we’d ever seen. We didn’t want to get soaked again, but neither did we want to insult a pious man who was simply obeying the teachings of his church. Sweet Apricot and I looked at each other for a long moment, then at the ground for a long moment, then Sweet Apricot hammered in one more nail of certitude; let there be no misunderstanding. “No baksheesh,” she repeated. It was a statement, a warning, and a guarantee. “I give these to you,” he said softly, soothingly, deliberately, “for Ramadan.”

Okay then. We accepted the worthless trinkets, looked them over with feigned admiration, and thanked him politely. Fact is, I was pleased with mine. Sure, it was a throwaway, but it had a story to go with it, and I would always associate it pleasantly with the striking Arab who gave it to me for Ramadan in the shadow of the Pharoahs’ pagan majesties. He accepted our thanks humbly, then rose up straight in his saddle, patted his camel’s neck, and looked down on us with a triumphant smile.

 “Now,” he said, “ what will you give…for Ramadan?”

We gaped at him, both of us struck dumb.

Damn.

We were caught and we knew it. He didn’t just take us, he took us with ease.

This is the part of the story where I’m supposed to say something about the fortunes of war, about contests fairly won and honor in defeat, and how I conceived a grudging admiration for the dusty camel driver who so ably outwitted us. But I didn’t conceive a grudging admiration. Just a grudge. And I didn’t feel honorable, just defeated. We weren’t the kings of Egypt, or even savvy travelers confidently navigating foreign lands armed with no more than native cleverness and raw moxie. We saw – too late! – that we were just two more feckless American tourists, fish in a barrel, long on vinegar but short on salt, easy game for an inventive Egyptian with a camel and a dagger and a lifetime’s practice coaxing a poor living from the aforementioned.

To his enduring credit, the canny Bedouin didn’t gloat, but his placid expression stung more than anything he might have said. I gave him everything in my pocket, and he silently took it. We shuffled off toward the city. I glanced back once to see him still sitting motionless upon his camel, watching us go. We boarded the plane a few hours later, a mortally humbled pair without the wherewithall between us to buy a stick of gum.

Greece was a relief. Things cost what they cost, cabbies took us where we wanted to go, public bathroom stalls were adequately supplied, and nobody ever, ever asked for baksheesh. It was orderly, predictable and, quite frankly, a bit tame. We were loaded for bear in rabbit country.

The warm feelings shared by Egypt and America seem to have turned a bit frosty of late. I’d still very much like to return to the Land of the Nile one day, but, for the foreseeable future, I’m not exactly in the way of scouting cheap airfares. And for what it’s worth, and because you’re wondering, I wouldn’t be going back to settle any old scores.

I belatedly appreciate that Egypt’s economic woes run deep and its safety nets are few. I suspect that Mahmud was simply doing his best to put food on his family’s table by the only means available to him. I’m guessing that relentless little souvenir shark at Karnak would be in school working toward a more secure future if dire financial circumstances didn’t demand otherwise.  Those young hotel herders likely had no choice but to scramble for poor scraps from second-rate hotels that weren’t doing much better. Our crafty airport greeter was probably trying to augment a pauper’s wage by grifting people who, to be perfectly honest, could afford it. I expect Mr. Maghdi had a wife and kids at home who owed their precarious existence to whatever meager kickbacks he could squeeze out of cagey perfumers. And I’m dead certain that all the old men who haunt Egypt’s ancient precincts would much rather spend their seniority in dignified retirement instead of spending the long, hot days of their decline nickel-and-diming resentful tourists. And when I think about it, and every now and then I do, I like to think that masterful swindler on the chintz-bedecked camel was Mahmud’s cousin.

Looking back, I guess I was kind of a baby about the whole thing. Should I ever again find myself in those parts, I’ll still count my change and watch the cabbies like a hawk, but I won’t get my nose out of joint if I get hustled now and then. What’s more, I’ll bring along a sizeable fund earmarked for baksheesh alone, and I’ll cheerfully dole it out whenever, wherever, for whatever and by whomever I’m asked, with or without assault rifles.

I’d like to think I grew a little bit in Egypt. If true, that would come as a surprise to anybody who knows me.

 

 

Egyptiana VIII: The Lion’s Den

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The Eighth Part in which Steve recieves a Free Beverage

Booked on an evening flight back to Athens, we had yet to visit the pyramids. Bright and early we parked our packs at the hotel desk (baksheesh was, alas, unavoidable) and hopped a bus to Giza. We had perhaps LE10 between us, just enough for two admissions to the Great Pyramid and maybe some cheese and a can of pop for lunch. Our travails had rendered us irrationally cheap, and although we were about to stand in the shadow of truly extraordinary history, to walk in the footsteps of the Pharoahs, to immerse ourselves in ageless mysteries of the human experience, we weren’t about to change a $20 traveler’s check and have to eat a second five-percent cambio fee changing half of it into drachmas the next day.

A grand finale

A young man seated at the front of the bus moved back and parked himself directly across the aisle. His name was Mahmud. He was tall and skinny and dressed in sneakers and a mis-matched sweatsuit. Were we going to see the pyramids? Yes we were. No baksheesh.

 Mahmud asked if we would be hiring camels while on the plateau. We told him we had no money for camel rides. He clearly didn’t believe us. His cousin rented camels, he said, and he could get us a sweet deal on a couple of real cream puffs. Thanks, but, like we said – no money. To this day I’m not sure how it happened. We knew with absolute certainty that we weren’t going to rent a camel at any price, yet a short time later found ourselves marching behind Mahmud through the narrow streets of a 17th-century Cairo suburb wondering how we were going to get out of it without embarrassing ourselves.

Mahmud’s home was built along classic local lines – two stories, plaster domes atop square blocks, an interior courtyard where all the work of the house was performed. Also along classic local lines, his mom and sister were busily performing all the work of the house. A half-dozen chickens clucked and strutted around them. Mahmud shooed an honest-to-gosh goat off the stairway and showed us up to his receiving room. It was large, completely unadorned, and unfurnished save for a shiny, like-new, four-piece, green velvet Louis XIV livingroom set huddling against one wall. He motioned us to be seated in the two chairs, then lay back grandly on the sofa, like an Oriental potentate, throwing both arms over the back and breaking into a broad smile. He could get us two camels for only LE35. Each. We were getting nervous. We were on his turf, far from friendly tourist haunts, and we were about to waste his whole morning.

We complimented his home (we were both genuinely charmed) and praised his command of English. We waxed eloquent about Egypt’s many wonderful attributes. We said it again. “Thanks, Mahmud, but no. We really don’t have enough money to rent camels.” He leapt from the couch and stuck his head out the glassless window. “You see? You can see the Great Pyramid!” Sure enough, by leaning dangerously far out over the rutted dirt street below and craning our necks west, we could discern through the maze of buildings a thin sliver of tan blocks that appeared consistant with ancient pyramid construction. “That’s awesome,” we said. “But we should probably get going.”

I think that’s when it occurred to him that we might actually leave without renting camels. If we’d blown half the morning getting sucked in by Mahmud’s hyper-persistent gravity, he’d blown it buttering up a couple of pikers. He barked a sharp command and in short order his mom appeared with three cans of local-brand lemon-lime soda on a gleaming silver tray. Sweet Apricot and I exchanged uneasy glances. By accepting refreshment we’d be beholden, and that meant baksheesh, or worse. “Thanks a lot, but we’re really not thirsty.” Mahmud would have none of it. His hospitality had taken on a slightly desperate edge, and he watched intently as we sipped our drinks, all the while lowering his cousin’s bottom line on camels and determinedly ignoring our increasingly firm rebuffs. It was Sweet Apricot who finally saved us. She stood up. “We have to go,” she said, and simply walked out the door. Mahmud looked at me with a mixture of disbelief and dawning realization. Like the coward that I am, I shrugged a weak apology and skipped out after Sweet Apricot. We were wending our way through close, littered lanes in the general direction of the pyramids when Mahmud suddenly appeared behind us, walking fast. I expected an unpleasant scene, but he hustled past without a word. A single glance – an accusatory blend of bewilderment, disappointment and bone-deep irritation – served as our just rebuke. We’d come into his home, drunk his lemon-lime soda, and let him down. He was doubtless heading back to the highway in hopes of salvaging the day with a better class of tourist.

A long walk

The episode with Mahmud cast something of a pall over our Giza adventure, but only a little one. If our escape hadn’t exactly been graceful, it had been decisive. We’d gotten ourselves into a tight spot, but acquitted ourselves with dignity more or less intact and with all the money we came with. We were still the reigning kings of Egypt, and that happy thought saw us through the long hike up to the plateau.

 

Next Time: The startling conclusion!

Egyptiana VII: The Watcher

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The Seventh Part in which Steve enjoys himself at Another’s Expense

Best supporting actor

 With our two-week tour drawing swiftly to a close. We reserved a sleeper on the night train to Cairo and spent the shank of the afternoon lounging in front of the Temple of Karnak, filling up the corners of our memories with mammoth pylons and soaring pillars and the entertaining chaos of tourists and vendors unfolding beneath them. Sweet Apricot left to mail a postcard and my attention drifted to a well-dressed, matronly woman standing about 30 feet away in the temple forecourt. She wore a flowered dress and a frilly, flowered sun-hat and carried a blindingly white purse. She looked for all the world like she’d just come from a ladies auxiliary meeting at First Presbyterian at the corner of Elm and Main. A little Egyptian boy danced and hovered around her like a new puppy. In his upraised hand he gripped a ferret-sized carved stone crocodile. I couldn’t hear a word, but I knew the script by heart.

He excitedly praised the rare quality of the sculpture’s workmanship, the luster of its stone, its impossibly low price. He flattered her dress and her hat and reminded her what great friends are Egypt and America. She thanked him, but, no, she had no need of a stone crocodile. She had no room for it in her luggage, and the price was out of her reach, and anyway she wasn’t fond of crocodiles, and where in the world is that tour guide? Every minute or so she’d make a break for it, gesturing with finality, turning her back and pacing quickly away. Each time she did, he’d bob around in front of her, walking backwards before her retreat and thrusting the object up to her face that she might better appreciate the remarkable detail of its scales and the incredible value she was being offered. As the duel stretched out, minute after long minute, my fascination grew until the crowds, the hawkers, the grand temples, the carriages along the Corniche and the feluccas afloat upon the placid waters of the Nile dissolved away until all that remained were just we three. I couldn’t look away.

After a solid 10 minutes, just about the time I was beginning to feel badly for the harried tourist, the over-matched woman surrendered. She put a hand gently on his shoulder, leaned down until their noses nearly touched, and said something. His face assumed a mask of somber seriousness and he nodded vigorously. A deal struck and sealed, she fished some money out of her purse and exchanged it for the crocodile. The boy immediately took off at top speed, smiling from ear to ear and holding the hard-won cash high above his head as he ran.

The strange little drama concluded, I sat back in my chair, well-satisfied. As people-watching goes, that was good stuff. I played the highlights over in my mind, and may have actually chuckled out loud. Defeated, but at peace, the woman stood there alone holding her crocodile, still waiting for her tour guide to appear, I supposed. Suddenly the little boy streaked up at a dead run, literally skidding to a stop in front of her. He held a carved stone bust of Nefertiti up to her face. I looked away. I couldn’t go through that again. I just didn’t have it in me.

But that wasn’t us. We were better than that. Stronger than that. We were seasoned veterans who’d seen the elephant, saddled the beast, and now rode astride it like warrior kings. We spent our last two days in Egypt knocking around Greater Cairo, and I didn’t lose a thin dime to baksheesh the whole time. My Formica armor was high-grade leather, by then, more than a match for local wiles. Although I’m not proud to admit it now, a good part of our conversation turned around self-congratulation. Egypt’s tough, sure, but we had its number. We moved about at will and were nobody’s fools. How smart we were, and how much to be admired. Now that we’d mastered that land’s exotic customs, there was nothing else for it but to return at our first opportunity and show some folks – the airport greeter figured high on our list – that the American Tourist is a person to be reckoned with.

Stone of contention

We were insufferable.

 

Next Time: Trapped!

Egyptiana VI: Soldier of Fortune

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The Sixth Part in which Steve has an Unsatisfactory Restaurant Experience

Tipping was mandatory

 Tell me if this counts as baksheesh: One morning I ran out to get a couple bottles of the viscous, super-sweet, neon solution that passes for orange juice in Luxor. The way to the market took me past a restaurant where three young soldiers were lounging around a patio table. Wearing dark combat uniforms and heavily armed, they exhibited the kind of excrutiating boredom distinctive to teenagers, which is exactly what they looked like. As I passed, one of them said something I didn’t quite catch. I stopped. I shouldn’t have.

“I’m sorry,” I said, eyeing their serious-looking military hardware and speaking with what I hoped looked like great friendship. “Did you say something?” One of them stood up, nonchalantly retrieved his rifle from the chair next to him and sauntered nearer. He looked even younger up close. “American?” he asked. He wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t exactly not smiling either. It looked like he’d been working hard on his first mustache without much success. “Yes, American,” I said, unveiling the winning smile I normally hold in reserve for job interviews and encounters with the DMV. “Can I help you guys with something?” I wondered why he’d picked up his gun, then decided not to wonder about that anymore. He may have considered the bonds of fellowship uniting our respective nations to be so strong and universally acknowledged as to be not worth mentioning, because he didn’t mention them.

“One pound,” he said, blandly. His two buddies, still sprawled across their chairs with elaborate indifference, turned their faces toward us with something approaching vague interest. “Why?” I asked, really wanting to know. For explanation, he tapped his chest. “You…give me…one pound.” The words “no baksheesh” formed briefly in my throat where they silently choked to death. On the one hand, I felt that this was an egregious abuse of the baksheesh principle. On the other, these were kids with guns. I fished out a pound note and handed it over. He accepted it without comment. I nodded and turned to leave. “Eh, eh,” he said. He pointed first to one inert friend: “One pound ”, and then to the other: “One pound.”

Damn and damn. Luckily I had two more pound notes in my pocket. One-pound notes are the standard currency of baksheesh in Egypt, and surprisingly hard to come by. I paid them off and fled. Back at the hotel, I breathlessly recounted the whole shabby business to Sweet Apricot, who was outraged, although by that time she existed in a more or less perpetual state of righteous indignation. She thought me craven and stupid for letting the punks shake me down without a fight. That I would have been fighting armed soldiers over a buck-fifty was, in her view, irrelevent. Right is right, wrong is wrong, and you’ll get my three pounds when you pry it out of my cold, dead hand. I’m not saying Sweet Apricot was wrong, but I am saying that on that day, on that hot, fly-blown street, I saw no profit in extending the uncomfortable association any longer than necessary. If three pounds was the price of a ticket out of there, I was content to pay it. In hindsight, I don’t generally regard the incident as baksheesh-related, since it felt more like armed robbery. Then again, anybody who knows me will tell you I’m a nervous sort, and prone to self-dramatization.

Next Time: A drama unfolds!

Egyptiana V: A New Hope

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The Fifth Part in which Steve disappoints a Small Child

Pay-per-view

 We toured Luxor Temple, the grand centerpiece of our new balcony-view. It didn’t disappoint. As I stood among the stones contemplating one great marvel or another, an old man standing several yards away gestured for me to approach. I ignored him. He gestured again, more urgently. I was made of solid temple stone. “Please!” he yelled. “You must!” There’s some weight behind “must”, and I figured if I was careful not to accept items, help or advice I’d probably be okay. I walked over to where he stood. He just smiled at me. I smiled back. He gestured toward the temple’s interior. I turned to look. It was a striking scene – the great seated figure of Ramses II framed on one side by a towering obelisk and on the other by an artistically disintigrating temple wall. “Beautiful, yes?,” he asked. “Yes, it is very beautiful,” I replied, meaning it. He held out his hand. “Baksheesh.” It took me a moment to realize he wanted me to pay him for a prospect 3,500 years in the making. It was touch and go, but at last I smiled back and, with a sympathetic shrug, said “no baksheesh.” He was furious, and started yelling at me in his native tongue. I retreated in embarassment, but he was right on my heels, maintaining a steady fire of unintelligible venom as I fled across the floor of the ancient wonder and clean out of Luxor Temple. And so it would go.

At a small, deserted temple south of town, we climbed a short flight of stone steps to see if there was anything interesting at the top. There wasn’t. A robed figure met us on the way down. The stairs were off-limits, he said, but he’d forgive our transgression for a fee. “No baksheesh,” I said. He also yelled at me.

At the Artisan’s Village on the West Bank we walked a few yards up the hillside along a well-used path to get a closer look at the façade of a worker’s tomb. A man yelled up from below that the much-traveled hillside could only be trod for a price. “No baksheesh,” I said. He yelled again, but less gently.

A worker’s tomb

We surprised a couple of young British tourists climbing out of a hole in the sand. “It’s a tomb,” said one. “Bloody brilliant.” It was bloody brilliant, and when we emerged a half-hour later covered with dust and glory a dusty robed specter was waiting for us demanding payment. “No baksheesh,” I said. His rage was Biblical, and we actually had to run away from that scene.

Burning with thirst at the Valley of the Kings visitors center, we ordered a couple of soft drinks at the lunch counter, paid for them at the register, and stood patiently awaiting delivery. After several arid minutes we went back to the cashier and asked when we could expect relief. Looking decidedly put-upon, she rose from her stool, fetched two cans from the cooler, handed them over, then rubbed her thumb against her fingers in the universally recognized gesture for “fork it over.” We pretended to not understand. “Baksheesh,” she barked, impatiently, explaining the obvious to idiots. I feigned surprise. “No baksheesh,” I said. We left her still hollering and shaking her finger at us. We ran straight into a tour bus in the process of unloading a cargo of middle-aged package-tourists. “You can go anywhere you want, and see any tombs you want,” the tour guide shouted to his flock. “You have 20 minutes.” They all went straight into the visitors center and ordered soft drinks.

I’ll admit to one weak moment. As we rested alongside a rural road near Qena, a small two-wheeled donkey-cart appeared carrying a load of fresh-cut grasses. It was driven in the most cavalier fashion by a little boy and a little girl, both perhaps 6 or 7 years old. The young carters were animatedly discussing their own innocent business and almost didn’t notice us. At the last minute, the girl looked our way and her eyes lit up like Ra on high. “Baksheesh!” she piped, excitedly. The boy instantly took up the cry, and they both yelled “baksheesh!” over and over as the donkey slowly pulled them away up the road. I was tempted, but only a fool won’t bend a principle for a child, and I was such a fool. “No backsheesh,” I said. The little girl lifted her chin in a haughty gesture surely borrowed from a much older sister and cast me a look of such magnificent disgust, such bottomless loathing, such complete and irredeemable disdain, that I laughed out loud. Then I chased down the little wagon and gave them each one Egyptian pound.  Sweet Apricot thought I was a sap, but I thought the performance was worth every piastre. The little girl seemed happy with the money, but no better inclined toward me.

Next Time: A sticky situation!