Journey to Egypt: Land of the Pharoahs - the Desert - the Nile

By James A. Gunn

The ancient Egyptians developed an extraordinary culture that produced some of the world’s most outstanding art and architecture.  Because of its location, it has long been a crossroads between Africa and Europe exerting its influence on both continents.  It is a culture that relies on the rising and falling of the Nile River, a lush verdant ribbon of life next to the Sahara Desert, one of the hottest and driest regions on earth.  Mr. Gunn journeys from pyramids and temples to monasteries and deserts, to the present as well as to the biblical past in his personal journey through the Land of the Pharaohs, The Desert, and The Nile.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 14, 2005
• ISBN: 9781463458423

James A. Gunn

James A. Gunn is an ex-marine who, after 27 years as an anthropology professor, presently teaches anthropology aboard the U.S. Navy’s nuclear aircraft carriers as they travel the globe.  He has worked as a foreign correspondent for SacraMetro News, taught at First Global College in Nongkai, Thailand, as well as an instructor for the Royal Thai(land) Artillery.  Mr. Gunn has been awarded the TIGER WITH SWORD by the Thai military.  His publications include: American Indians in the Public Schools, SWASDEE: Thailand: The Land of Smiles, The Elephant and the Wat, “INDY: The Story of the USS Independence, The USS John Young DD-973, China Destroys Tibetan Monasteries, China’s Pushes Thailand to Spy on the Falungong, Taiwan Earthquake “99”, and Destinations.

Book preview

Journey

to

EGYPT

Land of the Pharoahs

The Desert

and

The Nile

by

James A. Gunn

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2005 James A. Gunn. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/09/2022

ISBN: 978-1-4208-1030-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-5842-3 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Chapter 1Egypt

Chapter 2America

Chapter 3Horus Hotel, Cairo Egypt

Chapter 4Hotel President

Chapter 5Cairo

Chapter 6Mystery Of The Sphinx

Chapter 7Western Sahara

Chapter 8El Alamein

Chapter 9Alexandria

Chapter 10Pompey’s Pillar & The Catacombs

Chapter 11Suez

Chapter 12Moses By Members Of The Big Blue Bus

Chapter 13The Red Sea

Chapter 14Desert

Chapter 15Luxor

Chapter 16Pre-Flight

Chapter 17Flight Over The Valley Of The Kings

Chapter 18Karnak

Chapter 19Aswan The City

Chapter 20Aswan High Dam

Chapter 21On The Road To Abu Simbul Or Mankind: Monkey Or Ape?

Chapter 22Abu Simbul

Chapter 23River Boat

Chapter 24Edfu

Chapter 25Going Home

About The Author

copyright.jpg

To

Elmer and Bernice

My parents who raised me as a child

And To

Teresa and Jamie

My children who raised me as an adult

For their help

Thanks to

Laine Cunningham

Of

Ink Imp Editorial

And to

Bill Solenberger

A mentor beyond compare

Cover photograph by author taken

using a $5 throw-away camera

To The Nile

by

John Keats

Son of the Moon-mountains African!

Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!

We call thee fruitful, and that very while

A desert fills our seeing’s inward span:

Nurse of swart nations since the world began,

Art thou so fruitful? Or dost though beguile

Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,

Rest for a space ‘twixt Cairo and Decan?

O may dark fancies err! They surely do;

‘Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste

Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew

Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste

The pleasant sunrise. Green isles hast thou too,

And to the sea as happily dost haste.

Chapter 1

EGYPT

"The journey of a thousand miles

Begins with a single step."

Lao Zi or Lao Tzu

c 604-531 BC

"Shalom . . . Hello."

"Sabah el ker . . . Good morning."

"Shuk ron . . . Thank you."

It was a balmy spring fresh day in Cairo, Egypt, land of the Pharaohs, the Great Pyramid, and the world’s longest watercourse, the Nile River. We finished a plentiful breakfast and tentatively—with some apprehension—I boldly offered, "Shalom to the fellow behind the desk in the President Hotel, then a polite, Sabah el ker to the waiter in the dining room and an equally courteous shuk ron" to the young Egyptian lad who brought my lukewarm Nescafe—undissolved chunks of freeze-dried instant coffee—in a large cream-colored cup decorated with a jagged crack from lip to bottom. All three graciously smiled in appreciation of my attempt to converse in Arabic, and with exaggerated courtesy all replied, "Ahlan wa-sahlan." I was very welcome. That was the extent of my Egyptian vocabulary; about the same as my Spanish; meager to say the least.

I was out of bed at seven on a still-dark morning in mysterious Cairo, the capital and largest city in Egypt. By the time I dressed, made it to the street, the Egyptian sky was brightening in the east, and city street life was stirring—people coming out of their homes to greet the new day. Members of the group with whom I was traveling drifted in—one by one, some with sleep still in their eyes, others animated and talkative—for our early morning meal of juices, cheeses, cereals, pastries, olives, sliced tomatoes, and round, flat pocket bread called pita by some of my fellow travelers. A ten dollar brunch at home, but here included in our very reasonable $775 fee for 15 days of roaming the desert lands of the Pharaohs.

It was mid-March in Egypt—the weather pleasant, balmy. Greece had been cold, with chilly winds blowing the ever-present thick, gray polluted air through the streets of Athens. I spent a month in the Hellenic Republic and southeast Europe on the Balkan Peninsula suffering disappointment with the weather, the pollution, the not-to-friendly Athenians and over-pricing. In comparison Egypt, 650 miles across the blue Mediterranean, was spring-like with clear blue skies over the delta and just a hint of a gray smudge in the sky above Cairo and—along with the affability of the people—a heck of a lot more affordable. It is said that in 325 BC, the poor of Athens existed mainly on beans, greens, beechnuts, and turnips, with an occasional grasshopper for meat; with today’s prices they could not afford the grasshopper.

The previous fall Jerry and Debbie Goodell and I were dining with our good friends Joe and Marsha McCormick in their lovely Victorian home in Sacramento. The five of us met a couple of years previously when we shared the twenty-passenger Orca, a ninety foot, three-decked wooden boat on the grandfather of all the rivers, the mighty Amazon.

When I was on the Amazon I thought it the longest river in the world; it is not. Many people do not know the Nile is the longest river in the world at approximately 4,145 miles; the Amazon is a close second with a length of approximately 4,040 miles. In volume, however—there simply is no comparison—the Amazon River is as large as the Nile and the next nine largest rivers in the world combined.

The mighty Amazon is an ocean river, a powerful destroyer of land, carrying an unbelievable nine million to thirty-two million gallons of water per second and deposits a daily average of three million tons of sediment near its mouth. The annual outflow from the Amazon accounts for one-fifth of all the fresh water that drains into the oceans of the world! I have seen entire islands washed away in a night’s passage—where a three or four acre island complete with standing forest, animals, and native shacks serenely doing three knots down the ochre colored river.

However, if the Amazon is an ocean river, the Nile is rightly called a desert river, since nearly its entire length it flows through desert lands. While it does lose its temper going on a rampage every so often, it is not a destroyer but a giver of life, bringing fresh water for irrigation and silt to enrich the desert land along its banks.

Joe, Marsha, and I enjoy each other’s company, so the year after our sojourn on the Amazon, we traveled to Katmandu, the intriguing capital of green and lovely Nepal. At Joe and Marsha’s dinner table, Jerry and Debbie were discussing their upcoming trip to Egypt and, despite Jerry’s loud protestations, I said that I would be happy to join them. Although Jerry complained over the next few months about people butting in, being a third wheel, and other unpleasantries, he nevertheless kept me informed of the progress and dates. Come a bright day in March I walked into the hotel President in Cairo asking the young dark-haired desk clerk if Jerry and Debbie were registered. When he replied in the affirmative, I wrote a note with just I’m here drew a happy face with a beard, and had the clerk put it in their key box.

I had been in Greece earlier in the year and, as I said, found the birthplace of democracy cold and depressing, polluted and costly. I came home from Athens for a week to take care of some business, and then flew back to Cairo, passing through Amsterdam four times in one month, but had to stay within the airport each time for a layover of one to four hours. Not a pleasant way to see that beautiful city.

This leg of my travel started back in Sacramento when at 4:00 A.M. on March 16, Jack Thorne, a college friend whom I have known for over forty years and my ever-dependable ride to the airport, picked me up at my home where I had been awake packing since 2:30. After an Indy-500 ride through the light early morning commuter traffic—Jack could match the wild Cairo taxi drivers anytime—he dropped me off in front of the shuttle building at the Sacramento airport to check in for the short hop to San Francisco while he parked his van. He always joins me for coffee and a roll at the airport on my trips—a good and reliable friend.

Jack and I ate our overpriced, over-boiled airport coffee and cardboard-tasting rolls at the airport cafeteria. I gave Jack a birthday card to mail to Judy, a special friend, then he left for a golf game, and I walked back up to the shuttle building feeling a tinge of loneliness travelers experience when leaving loved ones to go to other lands. The shuttle building is off to itself, separated like a forgotten child away from the big shiny terminals of the major airlines. The shuttle service at the Sacramento Airport always reminds me of an airport in a small town in that it is cramped and operated by only two persons, each who does multiple tasks. This morning the fellow who issued my seating and boarding pass also ran the boarding check.

When I entered through the glass doors of the small lobby of the shuttle terminal, I saw an older lady (my age?) struggling with four bags toward the check-in counter while talking to a little girl of about five years old (young!). I offered to help with the bags and the lady thankfully accepted. She and her little granddaughter were going to Disneyland—just the two of them with four huge bags. I asked the little girl how old she was.

She replied, Four.

Then she looked up and very maturely asked, "And how old are you?"

She was a sweetheart.

I told her, "A heck of a lot older than four!"

As we were leaving the building to board the plane two passengers walking ahead of me headed toward gate 40, which was just a break in the rope fence. The ticket issuer/boarding clerk yelled that they were entering through the wrong gate and directed the rest of the passengers (three) to go through gate 41. I had followed the first couple through the wrong gate but since both gates led to the same plane; I did not understand the clerk’s consternation. Maybe he felt that although it was a small operation, following procedure still showed their professional ability.

I climbed into the cramped little silver cigar-shaped prop plane at 6:10 a.m. It fired up its two prop-turbo engines, taxing out onto the dimly lit runway, and lifted off in the early Sacramento dawn. The climbing plane drifted south, then southwest over the University town of Davis, following the meandering Sacramento River below toward the bay area and San Francisco, the City by the Sea.

Twenty minutes into the flight the orange fireball of the sun reflected burnt-orange off the thunderheads over the snow-capped Crystal Range of the rugged, snagged-toothed spires of the young Sierra Nevada mountains to the east. Within minutes the river, sloughs, and rice paddies below turned to molten silver as the early rays lit them, contrasting sharply with the lush verdant fields of rice and corn—we were flying over some of the richest agricultural land in the world. Ahead, Mt. Diablo’s breast-like roundness floated above the wispy foggy mist rising off the floor of the great Sacramento valley hiding the broad delta below. I thought that no artist could capture the beauty and wonderment of flying above the canvas spread out before me.

Twenty-five minutes flying time to San Francisco. That sure beats the two-hour drive from Sacramento and the frustration of the ever-growing morning traffic congestion of the Bay area. Orange juice and a chewy Omaha peanut and chocolate chip bar (granola) were served by the very talkative female flight attendant (stewardess is no longer politically correct). A strange combination of the food I thought—lots of fat calories. Nevertheless, I happily munched away like a beaver on a birch tree for when traveling one should rarely pass up a toilet or food or food and a toilet—in either order. If you do not want it now, put the food in your bag because you will surely want it later. As for the toilet—the John is always called the toilet in Europe, never restroom—make the attempt; it is good insurance.

While I munched away on the granola bar, I remembered another flight in a two-engine plane in Nepal where a just-as-curious combination of refreshments was served. The plane was older, a bit dented and oil-stained, and carried fewer and less sophisticated passengers, but the bearing and courtesy of the flight attendant was first class as she served strawberry ice cream in a little paper cup with a pull tab lid and a tiny wooden spoon, just like the ones I had when I was in elementary school. Along with the ice cream came a little glass of beer, not a bottle, but an open glass much like a little peanut butter jar, and the suds were warm. No telling where that beer came from.

On this flight I was amused to see an old gentleman, a native wearing well-worn clothes and cracked shoes, his leathery-brown face perplexed at his refreshment. He stared at each hand as if to say, What do I do now? Coming to a decision he bent his head, took the little spoon in his mouth, squeezed the ice cream into the glass of beer without spilling any, set the cup down, used the spoon to stir his brew and drank it down! Why did the airline serve strawberry ice cream and beer? Well, why orange juice and granola . . . I do not know! I ate and drank it anyway, separately, not following the old gent’s example. Later I was to change seats and, with my arm around the frail old fellow, mother him as one would a small child when we hit some mild turbulence, gaining a small admiration from my traveling companions . . . but that is another story.

The San Francisco Bay area was one solid fog blanket, gray soup with rounded crests of mountain peeking through the overcast here and there—the Coastal Range. The coastal ranges are older mountains, rounded, showing the effects of weathering and erosion, not tall and jagged as the younger Sierra Nevada’s to the east. For a few anxious moments, I thought I was on my way to Los Angeles as the plane serenely flew east of Mt. Diablo on a straight course now south. I knew San Francisco International, which is where I wanted to go was due west of our position although it was hidden by tulle fog. In the dark anxiety recesses of the traveler’s mind I remembered the gate mishap back at the shuttle station. Grandma and granddaughter, sitting behind me, were going to Disneyland which, as I recall, was south, south as in Los Angeles, south as in Anaheim! I must be on the WRONG PLANE!

I was going to miss my connection!

Damn!

Adrenaline surged. After all the problems of coming back from Greece, losing 100% of my deposit for the trip in Egypt if I didn’t show, AND buying another ticket ($900), I was going to LOS ANGELES!

I do not even like Los Angeles.

Nobody does.

There are two methods of travel in L.A: automobile and ambulance, and I do not want to be in either in that jungle. As Woody Allen says, I don’t wanna live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light.

Now the plane was past San Francisco still headed south!

Ding-Damn!

We’re headed for the City of Angels!

City of Angels my foot! Orta call it Six-Suburbs in Search of a City or Paradise with a Lobotomy as Clive James, an Australian writer did.

Whatever!

Los Angeles is the kind of sprawling mess that you are already living in it before you get there.

I had unconsciously unbuckled my seat belt, going to do what, I do not know, because they certainly were not going to take me to San Francisco just because I was on the wrong flight. Then my confidence reasserted itself and my dignity returned as the little plane banked serenely to the right, dropping a little, beaming in on a heading northwest, and starting on the gradual downward slant toward San Francisco International Airport.

WHEW!

Aww! . . . I knew it all the time.

Never worried a minute!

A new apprehension presented itself as the old one dissolved: my flight to New York would depart in 15 minutes. We had not even taxied up to the departing ramp yet. I would never make it! Then the pilot announced our time and happily, my $40 Genuine-Copy of a Rolex—the Thai salesman guaranteed me it was a Geen-u-Wine Copy—was fast. Twenty minutes after landing at San Francisco International, I was on United Airline flight 4, seat 27E--with empty seats on each side of me—on my way to John F. Kennedy International in New York City! I stretched my legs under the seat in front of me and relaxed. . . .Well . . . I was on my way again!

Chapter 2

AMERICA

"For my part, I travel not to go anywhere,

But to go. I travel for travel’s sake.

The great affair is to move."

Robert Louis Stevenson

*****

San Francisco to New York City

Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet-500 passengers

2,568 Miles * 5 Hours * 33,000 ft.

Nevada-Utah-Colorado-Nebraska-Iowa-Wisconsin-Michigan

9:08 in the morning and I had just finished a tasty breakfast in this huge flying silver Conestoga of the sky as it cruised eastward toward the red-streaked dawn. I am constantly criticized by a couple of literary friends because I think airline food is not that bad. Cheese omelet, chunk pineapple, orange juice, muffins, one lone grape and hot coffee is a pretty good lunch. I am one of those weird folk who don’t mind airline food as long as it isn’t just strawberry ice cream and warm beer; if it is there, I will eat it. The Bible says, Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me¹ and food with no effort on my part while I am sitting enjoying a trip is . . .food convenient for moi. I mean je vis de bonne soupe et non de beau language. (It’s good food and not fine words that keeps me alive.)

While I was feasting from the modest aluminum tray we traveled a good two hundred miles above the deserts, plains and mountains below. Imagine the pioneers of the 1840’s trudging their four and half to twelve miles a day in heat and dust, rain and mud along the California and Oregon trails. What would they say if they were told that someday a traveler would do—at 513 miles per hour—in twenty minutes what it would take them twenty-five days to do. In addition, does it sitting to a meal while watching a movie about Indians attacking a pioneer wagon train! Science fiction books existed in those days—Jules Verne, the French author wrote 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 1870—but no one would have taken seriously bridging the continent in five hours. Harboring such a thought in 1850 would not have been logical, but no problem a hundred and fifty years later. As Einstein stated, Everything is relative. Even logic.

By early afternoon the airliner cut back its engines over New York City.

My first time near the Big Apple—

35929.png "New York, New York,--

A helluva town." 35931.png

I could not see much of the metropolis, although the weather was certainly cooperating; it was a clear blue-sky day, but I had a center aisle seat and only got a now-and-then glimpse of the ground and coastline.

A smooth landing and a fast unloading--no one lands a plane as smoothly as Americans pilots—believe me I know—and hoisting my bag, I strolled into the United Airlines waiting area . . . well the sign said it was the United Airlines waiting area; to me it looked like the aftermath of a war zone. Like every airline terminal I have ever been in, this one was in the throes of construction with cables hanging from the ceiling, torn up floors, steel scaffolding, saw horses everywhere amid dozens of temporary signs with arrows point to the four corners of the compass—all kinds of construction stuff—everywhere.

Once there I could not get out.

Now I have run into this paradox of problem solving before: I am a college graduate with a Master’s degree. That puts me into the top 5% of educated people in the country. Then why can’t I understand how to do my income tax forms, figure out the schedule of the London Underground or the subway in Paris (it runs on three underground levels), or get out of the waiting area of a major airline? (Maybe there is some truth to that homespun comment my mom used to say when I was being particularly obnoxious, "Well you might be educated hon’, but right now I’m talkin’ common sense!")

What does the poor uneducated slob who can barely read or a foreigner who does not understand English do in these chaotic terminals?

They probably do as I eventually did.

They ask somebody else.

The man I asked at the counter did not know. I felt stupid until I saw and overheard two Captains and three stewardesses or flight attendants—I never know what is politically correct anymore—having the same problem. They could not get out either. They asked the lady at the United Airlines counter who pointed left, then right, then down or vise-versa. I just waited and followed them two floors down to the information center as calm as a widow-woman at her third wedding.

Everything is relative.

Even getting out of a terminal.

I have been to several large cities on this planet: London, Madrid, Bangkok, Tokyo, and Singapore to name a few; but never to New York City. But I knew what to expect. I saw the movie about the gangs of New York and read Henry Miller’s description . . . walking between the magnificent skyscrapers one feels the presence of on the fringe of a howling, raging mob, a mob with empty bellies, a mob unshaven and in rags.² So, after hearing about the rudeness of New Yorkers for years, I was prepared for the incivility of my first encounter with one of those cheeky, brash, callow sub-humans when I asked for directions to the Royal Jordanian Airlines.

A very pleasant young black woman looked up the information for me, then directed me to the red and blue bus stop for inter-airport transportation (free), her precise English abundantly laced with Sir, smiles and humorous repartee. On the bus, a couple of black men, the driver and his helper (who were not even in rags or unshaven), kept up a pattern of jabber and laughter. When I asked for further directions, they helped me get off correctly. So far three nice New Yorkers, zero bad.

The ride on the transporter bus was interesting. JFK International is a huge sprawling complex, much like an imagined space city, with pods connected by transportation lanes. A taped message broadcasting from a speaker informed passengers of the names and airlines of the next terminal. After a twenty-minute ride through various complexes, the male bus driver—whose belly certainly wasn’t empty as it rested against the steering wheel—informed me that my stop was coming up—another pleasant New Yorker. I saw the Royal Jordanian sign immediately upon stepping down from the bus, an impressive sign with an exotic foreign logo.

Although the Royal Jordanian logo outside on the entrance sign was impressive, the office was not; it was dingy: pieces of paper littered the floor, the walls needed a fresh coat of paint, and tattered posters hung about. A slim black man, Negro not Arabic, at the door pleasantly directed me to the correct escalator and a very dark-skinned female with distinctive Caucasian features was especially polite and helpful. Neither seemed likely to go off into a paroxysm of rage within the next few minutes. New York scores: Nice = 5. Bad = 0).

After being directed to the departure gates where I climbed two flights of stairs, walked down a cheerless hall, and came to blank steel doors that opened out into the main terminal of duty-free shops all new, all modern and very clean. The gate I was looking for was number twenty-one and when I found it; I intended to go into the waiting area. However, another young, very polite, black female clerk politely turned me back. (Six pleasant, bad: zero.) I could not go into the waiting area until 8:20 p.m. She was very sorry.

Damn! She didn’t even howl!

I had four hours to wander around.

Waiting is the torment of the traveler. It is exhausting . . . mind dulling. Some travelers sleep in the waiting areas, nodding off in the chairs or stretched out on the floor. I have never accomplished that feat. So, I people watch or read.

Boring.

Checking my ticket, I noticed no dinner was listed for the flight, so I sniffed out a good old Burger King—Burger King’s are also in London, Spain, Mexico and Miami, as well as the rest of the world. Successful franchise company. Start-up fee in 1994: $73,000. I remember the first one way back in 1954 cost 18 cents; today it was $3.95, a slight increase . . . but people like ‘em. They sold 1.6 billion Whoppers. That’s a lot of whop!

Munching my cardboard-tasting Whopper burger³, I thought about the trips I have taken. Traveling has always beckoned. When I was fifteen, I was on a school bus going to a track meet and a few of us started talking about sailing the oceans of the world. I became all excited about the idea of roaming the blue seas with a white sail standing tall in the wind, anchoring in quiet bays and exploring far-off shores. Four years later I was a nineteen-year-old Marine standing on a pier in Inchon harbor, Korea, staring up at a docked freighter from Japan. My thirteen-man squad was assigned to load barges with military clothing before sailing to the States and, instead of working; I would sneak off on some important squad leader task. In reality, I would stand by the huge concrete piers and watch the ships going in and out of the infamous harbor, daydreaming of exotic foreign ports.

Forty years later, part of that dream has been realized. I have been to many countries and the gleaming sailboat of my adolescent fantasizing has been replaced by the floating cities and airports of the seas: the mighty nuclear aircraft carriers and warships of the USS Navy, the USS Carl Vincent, the USS Abraham Lincoln, the USS Enterprise, the USS John Young, and the USS Peleliu—fighting ships I have been privileged to sail on for a brief time as a college instructor, teaching anthropology to some of the finest people in the world.

While traveling seems to be a dream for most people, emotional tolls are exacted from a world traveler. Watching the family at the next booth, a father, mother, and two children talking and laughing as they eat, I was already beginning to miss everyone at home—my daughter, son and granddaughters. How did Fremont, the Great Pathfinder⁴, handle his loneliness? Moreover, what about Stanley⁵, who was gone for years from his wife? They were tough old boys! They had to have been to be away so long with little back-home communication, certainly nothing like we have today with email and cell telephones. As a young man in the Marine Corps, I became teary eyed only once, when we sailed for Korea, and even then just for a few minutes. As I get older, I get weepy more easily when I leave loved ones.

I was getting sleepy with the Burger King burgers resting contentedly in my stomach. I had been awake since 2:30 a.m., and it was now 2:39 p.m. West Coast time, in New York 5:39. Dull-eyed, I sat at a table in the burger joint contemplating the waiting time left. Maybe I could sleep on the plane, although I knew that probability was rare; I had to be totally exhausted to sleep on a plane. A male teenager walked by, plunked three tiny screwdrivers in a small plastic bag on my table, and kept walking. A small tag attached to the package explained: ‘I am deaf.’ Nothing else. A few minutes later he retrieved them.

I did not leave the airport to see the city, but I did glimpse the top half of the Empire State Building and the ill-fated Twin Towers from the window of Burger King. On the airport bus I saw the SST, the supersonic transport that could fly the Atlantic while the 747 was halfway across, parked behind the hanger along the road. However, at a ticket price of $4,300 one way, I will stick to the 747. I read somewhere that the SST uses 1,000 pounds of fuel for each passenger transported from America to Europe. I hope the statistic is not true; if it is, how appalling! I know it cost at least fifteen times the original estimate to build and was a commercial disaster by a review committee of one of the countries that built it. I guess it was, for in 2003 the SST’s were all retired and donated to museums. I read somewhere that they never paid their way. In July of 2000 one crashed on take-off; the rest of the fleet crashed in a sea of red ink.

In all fairness to those who say that New Yorkers are all screwed up, like Hogan’s nanny goat, I did not really go into the City—only the airport. The people there were busy, but had the time to be polite. I judge that when I visit the Big Apple downtown, I will find their relatives to be the same.

Amman, Jordan, 6:00 p.m. local time.

I made it.

I had a good seat on the plane right up front, separated from first class only by a wall.

Being the third one on the plane, I didn’t have to wait while other passengers stowed their bags in the overhead. I had one carry on, a camera bag; many people had baby-strollers, cardboard boxes, large packages, luggage, and so on. They struggled down the constricted aisle with their belongings, making others wait while they pushed, shoved, and strained to stow their belongings into the overheads. Those people are a real pain. So as to not have to wait for luggage at their destination, they just bring it all aboard. It is the airline’s fault for often not enforcing their own rules about carry-on luggage.

The flight from New York to Amsterdam took seven hours, then one hour of waiting in the plane while the attendants cleaned it, then five hours to Amman. Just eight days before, I had sat in the plane in Amsterdam on my way back from Greece. The terminal in Amsterdam is gigantic, ultramodern, and busy; in Greece, it is big also, but dirty. The terminal in Amman, Jordan was modern and clean, but almost totally empty. Many shops were stocked with goods, however, few were open. I walked around and looked at the duty-free shops with over-priced Gucci purses, liquors, and stacks of cigarette cartons.

Everything was expensive—but there were no customers. I settled for a Coca-Cola and waited four hours for my 9:15 flight to Cairo.

Chapter 3

Horus Hotel, Cairo Egypt

"The great advantage of a hotel

Is that it’s a refuge from home life."

George Bernard Shaw

The room is small . . . no, minuscule would be a better description. Approximately eight feet wide and ten feet long, about the size of your average prison cell. Cheap white plastic tile squares struggle to stay on the lower half of the wall and old plaster, chipped and stained, clings to the upper half up to the spider-webbed ceiling. A 1940, old style black phone with a heavy base perches on a loose board about eighteen inches directly above where my head will be when bedded down on the narrow, sagging cot pretending miserably to be a bed. I discover the closet door cannot be opened unless I first close the hallway door. The bathroom is Lilliputian—Tiny Tim might find it suitable—but the toilet facilities are surprisingly clean for this part of the world and the John flushes.

No bed covers, other than a brown blanket that is also very clean. The sheets and the pillowcases are white—as opposed to the usual gray—and freshly laundered with a sun-dried aroma, the way Mom’s wash on the clothes lines used to smell long ago back there in the foothills of El Dorado County. There even is a carpet, light brown with darker brown diamonds sewn in, covering part of the scared wooden floor, a tad warped and severely pockmarked with pitted cigarette burns. A small desk, with lamp and chair, is tucked into one corner. The room is plain; it is clean, very clean and would probably cost twelve bucks in the wino district of east Stockton, a flop-house maybe! I paid forty and—after the flight and this late at night—happy to fork it over.

Wearily, I dropped my bags in a corner—since I not yet figured out how to open the closet—and surveyed the poorly lit cubicle. I was tired, fatigued and rumpled, dirty and sweat stained, defenses were slipping when I remembered a line from David Noland’s book Travels Along the Edge where he declares, What the hell am I doing here? I made a similar statement on the island of Guam one dark morning, around four-thirty, while walking along a narrow ribbon of asphalt bordered by dense brush and trees, headed for the attack carrier USS Peleliu. At that time I thought, What the hell am I doing out here? Here I am, along in years, walking in the dark, tramping along like I had good sense, while all around there are probably all kinds of tigers, snakes, bugs, and things in undergrowth—maybe even an old Japanese soldier still hiding out in the jungle for thirty or forty years just waiting to chop off my ears—and all I had with me was my shaving kit. I guess I could shave something to death! However, I survived that morning; an hour later sitting in the USS Peleliu’s wardroom drinking strong, black navy coffee the world was cheerful again. So, I surveyed the little room knowing after a shower and a bed, I would survive this night, and there would be another adventure tomorrow.

After thirty-three hours of mind-dulling boredom traveling from Sacramento to Cairo, the trip ended with forty minutes of frenzy—getting off the plane, going through customs, and finding a cab so late at night, then a mad ride through darkened Cairo. Therefore, the little room was a welcome refuge.

I shook my clothes and sat at the diminutive desk naked so the ol’ bod could air out after a day and half-cramped into uncomfortable airplane seats and wandering around air terminals. I know the mental image must be horrible, but it felt good sitting at the badly painted 1920s style desk in my monk’s cell in the Horus Hotel scribbling in my notebook. As I write, I drink 100% Costa Rican coffee from a thick Egyptian glass, coffee I brewed up on the beat-up aluminum Swiss stove purchased in 1985 at the foot of the Matterhorn.

That night I had awakened to a chilling rain that soaked my sleeping bag before I could cram everything into the back seat of the rental car . . . an appropriate time to say,