One tour guide and then another in or from
Luxor has commented to how they like Mubarak.
He was, it appears, good for tourism.
Now, an hour out of Luxor we stopped for a moment in Qena. I wanted to get my phone’s data charged and
we pulled up along a candy stand and began to ask around. Our guide Ahmed and our guard named Fati
walked down the road with me, in search of a kiosk. I learned this morning that when we paid or
the van and the permission to head to Abydos and Hurghada we had also brokered
the services of an armed guard.
I absolutely don’t
understand how one properly charges one’s phone in Egypt. I’d bought a forty-dollar plan back at the
airport in Cairo which lasted a week.
After that it’s been thirty dollars a day, or so it seems to use data. The guy with the charge machines charged two
hundred and ninety Egyptian pounds for a charge of two-hundred. I don’t get why there should be a 1/3 charge
to all this but so be it.
I went back to see
who else need a charge on the phone.
Fati accompanied me. My older one
had complained this morning that her data'd run out. But no one else besides her needed a top-up. She, like
me, was wearing shorts before long both she and I’d received text messages announcing
the top-ups we’d just paid for. Another
man entered the shop and waited for us to complete our transaction and it
suddenly occurred to me that I looked ridiculous in shorts and that my daughter
presumably looked topless with her own hair and legs unfurled.
Fati accompanied
us back and my wife suggested she wanted a falafel. I snapped a picture of the candy man’s shop
after asking and he gave me a big smile.
Over at the falafel shop they the proprietor was not pleased that I’d
stolen a snap of his boiling eggplant and I complied by returning my phone to
my pocket. My attempts to nod and pull a
smile from the man were completely unsuccessful. We were about to buy eight falafels, and I
most assuredly did not feel welcome as we prepared to do so.
Qena, my driver
confirmed, is not the sort of place that would have been considered Mubarak
territory. Luxor had formerly been under
the jurisdiction of this provincial seat and it is clearly a bigger city than
Luxor though perhaps not as big as Aswan.
The people suddenly seemed to be to be rather conservative and I was
glad to have the chance to consider this place, outside the shadow of Egypt’s main tourist
boulevard.
When we stopped at
a shisha bar where my daughter and I once again could use the bathroom. By now I was acutely aware of her attire and
made a joke about it with her. Inside the
dark environment every water pipe stopped gurgling as we walked by. Fati, handed me a tissue, and then one to my
daughter, as we exited the bathroom door and made our way out of Qena on our way to Sohag.
Saturday 7/13/19
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