The Writer is Out There.

With the pyramids, that is. 

19th September:

**I apologise for mass-posting, but it’s that, or get behind again. Every-day posting is too ambitious. I might attempt pictures tomorrow. A large chunk of the Jordan ones are still stuck in Yiftah, however.**

Today’s Itinerary – Giza, Saqqara, Memphis.

Early Risings don’t treat volunteers kindly. Just so you know.

Still, we leave ALMOST on time.

We drive along the Nile – it really is the impressive sludge-colour that you imagine it to be. And it’s as ripe with bird-life as it is garbage heaps. Storks are impressive when tey fly overhead. I think they were storks.

We acquire horses/ camels (1/2 and 1/2 – not a hybrid, although that’s not a bad idea – I mean, 4 horses, 3 camels) for the trek around the pyramids etc.

None of us can believe we’re actually HERE, and there’s much dancing around, and comments like ‘lets go touch that side of the other pyramid!’.

The Pyramids are incredible. They’re unfathomable… I could write for hours about them, but you’d all be bored stupid. 

—

Saqqara has a completely different style of pyramid, an ‘Aztec’ style – Cheko tells us of a pyramid in Mexico, of similar design, where, on one day of the year, a serpent-shaped shadow is cast to the ground. Apparently, there’s a festival built around it.

‘cool!’ I intone, before explaining the weirdest English traditional festival – the cheese rolling festival.

I’m not sure they believed that it’s a real event.

—

As we set of for Memphis, a certain, famous song enters my head, and stays lodged there welll into the evening, when Peter’s early morning rendition of annoying songs manage to squirm their way back in in it’s stead.

18th Sept –
I awake in mixed elation and annoyance. Somewhere below me, I can hear the exquisite sound of the call to prayer. I didn’t realise how much I’d missed it, but I’m glad of its presence now.

It’s great hearing Arabic around me again. It’s slightly depressing that I understand more of the Arabic I catch in the streets than I did of Hebrew, after almost 5months of being in Israel, and having not spoken more than a few words of Arabic since my arrival in the country.

Did the Egyptian Museum today. There’s not a whole lot to say, except

WOW.

At first, I was totally engrossed in everything (although, I have to point out that they could do a much better job of labelling/ explaining artefacts. And some of the display cases were the WRONG WAY AROUND, so that you could only see the back of whatever they held). And then, having split up with the others, I was reminded of Cambridge museums with a certain friend of mine, and wished for a moment we’d all stayed together, however impractical it may have been.

And a few times, I was reminded of someone special who once had something of an obsession with all the stuff before me. I wonder what he’d have made of the Royal Mummies, and Tutan Khamun’s tomb contents, of the stylised statues with their perfect smooth faces and broad shoulders, and of the depictions of the Gods.

I wished I could share all this with him as he shared his obsession with me. He had this spark about him when he told me stories of Egyptians; a spark which you can’t help but take on board. He mimicked endless hieroglyphs and Egyptian figures in his art. And he once phoned me to tell me, in excited tones, that he was ordering, piece by piece, a large, gilded chess set, where the playing pieces were all Egyptian figurines.

—
Great as it is that we can all see this treasure-hoard, it’s a little sad, perhaps a little unsettling, that, once, great men spent a large portion of their lives preparing for their death/ the afterlife. People went to a lot of trouble to see that they’d be happy and secure – and then they and their belongings are transferred to glass cases, for all to gawk at.

It’s not how it was supposed to be.

I mean – how would you feel?

Egypt. Woo!

17th September – Getting through the border is fantastically, amazingly simple. There were no bag searches, no stupid questions. They barely even glanced beyond the cover of my passport before they stamped it’s pages.

A couple of the others were not quite so lucky, but it was still a stress-free experience.

And then we reach the ‘departures’ area, which I’m sure should be dubbed ‘arrivals’ and things go a little bit comically wrong.

One of the guards takes a liking to Amanda and Caro, both of whom made the fatal error of wearing sleeveless garments. He hangs around, eyeing them in a mixture of lust and suspicion for the duration of our form-filling/ technology-sparring.

The ATM is a temperamental beast, it freezes half way through transactions, shuts down with a temporary taunt ‘Sorry, Out of Service’, and swallows cards so that the poor desk-bound humanoid had to keep coming to rescue us, each time saying ‘it sometimes does this, try again in a minute. It behaved spitefully towards everyone except Hae Yong. Technology seems to like him.

It took 6 people 40 minutes to withdraw money.

We pick up a taxi when we’ve barely started the 2km walk to the end of the border area, where buses await.

The driver promised to take us as far as the Central Bus Station in Cairo (didn’t happen – another, tedious story, but we got a good deal in the end, anyhow), for 70pounds (Egyptian).

He picks up one more guy – Marten, from Germany, volunteering with disabled kids in Jerusalem – and although he tried to fit a family of 6 in amongst us, he failed abysmally and left it at that.

Throughout the RIDICULOUSLY long drive (um, 7.5 hours, I think), we dozed fitfully, tumbled on top of each other in a bid for comfort. For much of the journey, I watched the horizon. It was beautiful.

The Sinai desert filled my vision and entered my dreams – as beautiful as Rum, but starkly different. It’s flatter. And its colours damper – favouring a deeper grey and sickly yellow to the terracotta tones of much of Rum.

We reach the Paris Hotel at 21:45, and then spend ages sorting out beds/ another place to stay for some (shortage of rooms, yada yada yada).
—

Marten kips in the dorm with 4 of us. He’ll be hanging around for a few days at least, which is kinda cool.
—

I never thought I’d miss crazy middle-eastern traffic, but it turns out that, in its presence once more, it makes things strangely homely – Cairo (indeed, any large city in this part of the world) would just not be RIGHT if vehicles behaved in an orderly fashion.

And unlike the others, the constant buzz of life – crowds milling as crowds do – and honking of horns below us, does not hinder my sleep, but merely fills me with the strange fuzzy feeling I get when I’m on the move.

16th/17th September It’s surprising how un-tedious a 5 hour wait in a bus station can be, when you’re with friends.
—

The bus to Eilat was horribly uncomfortable, and nobody got much sleep, certainly not good sleep. So, when we arrived at 5.15, it seemed a good idea to walk down the hill, bags and all, to the beach, to wait out the early hours until the Egyptian Embassy opened.

Comfortable plasticised couches beckoned at an empty sea-side bar/café, but we were soon ousted from these, forced to wander a few metres along the shoreline, and crash on the gravelly sand. By which point, the sun was rising (in a beautiful, watery way, rather fitting to everybody’s mood – that tired, miserable, excited and contemplative mood that you get in situations like this).

Most of us got a little sleep, amidst half-drowned, energetic dogs on their morning perambulation, and hawkers starting up the day’s business, flies and ever-hotter sun. And it was quite a sight, 8 bags and six people flat out in a row. A layer of towels, sarongs and sweatshirts our only protection against the stones and garbage.

A little after 9am, we give up the quest for sleep, gather our things, and walk, uphill mostly, to the Embassy. Acquiring visas is fast and easy – they didn’t even mind when 1/3 of the group had no photos to go with the application.

By the time we reach Eilat bus station again, I’m soaked with sweat, and I’m so thirsty that the litre of assorted beverages I purchase lasts less than 2 minutes.

Bus to Taba at 12, which takes hardly any time at all. I’m almost asleep and we’re there.

16th September –

We wandered up to Jaffa (or, Yafo) this morning, past a number of people surfing. It looked like fun – I have got to learn how to do that .

The 1st hill we walked up stank like an unattended urinal, and my high hopes for the place were dampened a little.

Then we turned the corner, and all was restored.

First, there was the small, makeshift marquee, with people juggling, walking on stilts, and unicycling. One, brave soul was doing acrobatics hanging from an unstable length of cloth suspended from the canvas roof.

Groups of young children were allowed through the security—style fencing to have a go. And at that moment, I really, really wished that I were 4 again.

Jaffa is a true, unspoiled Artist’s Heaven. The tiny ‘old city’ is literally artist gallery after gallery. There are paintings hung in the streets – a mismatched maze of walls and arches in welcoming creamy stone. All the street signs are inset into the walls, all he same turquoise/blue glaze, the street name accompanied by an astrological symbol.

Amidst the net of streets, the child in me was intoxicated by the sight of a ‘floating tree’. Suspended by 3 large-ish cables, an orange tree, set in a thick terracotta pot, danced laughingly in the light breeze. Every house should have one.

In the centre of the area, atop a hill, sits the Wishing Bridge. It’s lined with brass depictions of all the star-signs. Legend has it that if you cross the bridge, hold onto your sign and look out at the sea, your wish will come true.

It’s probably a good thing that we wandered through on Shabbat. I could have spent a fortune in the galleries.

—
All the hummous joints are closed, but we did find good falafel on Allenby.
And then we found a café/pub-style bar, a small place with 2 rainy-day paintings on the wall, and chunky wooden bar-stools to complement the impressive laden shelves, overflowing with obscure spirits and liquors. We sat there for well over 2 hours, conversation brewing over Italian Espressos.

Apparently, its main attraction, initially, is that it’s ALWAYS open. Even on Yom Kippur. They close the window’s shutters, and the door is closed, but unlocked, so that, although they appear respectful of the day, ‘if you want you CAN open the door, and you CAN come in’.

—
Jorge joined me in the central bus station, so, gradually, the Yiftah War Veterans were brought together once again.