Train to Luxor

Luxor

January 6, 2012

Cairo Train Station

The overnight sleeper train to Luxor wasn’t exactly the Orient Express, but I have done much worse. I shared a car with a sociologist liberal New Hampshire boy who attended a Southern Baptist College who then joined the military to escape his horrendous student debt. This could be a cautionary tale except he loves the military. They taught him to fly helicopters and he is now serving in the long standing U.N. “peace keeping” mission on the Sinai. No heroics or nationalistic hubris, he just enjoys the adventure and the prospect of a secure future career as a civilian pilot. Army boy told me of a scene he witnessed as he was boarding our train.

Sizing up the train cabin before my guest arrives.

A man broke a carriage window and against the boarded passengers’ best defense to repel the man, he was able to crowd surf through the window. OH I wish I had seen that! But I am grateful that I didn’t have to put up with that bedlam in second class.

I have to admit I was enchanted by this army guy. And no, it wasn’t his flawless good lucks, but rather his disposition. I felt like I had entered a movie set from the 1940’s. With a warmth and humor, this guy was the character that always sees the good side of situations and people and chooses his words effortlessly from a place of kindness. He loves being active, playing music, and charity work. In other words, in my reality, he was completely exotic. This encountered reminded me that I am surrounded by and often the emitter of neurosis.

Luxor

Luxor would be just another sleepy town sitting on the Nile if it wasn’t for the endless flow of international package tour boats and buses. Even during this unstable political time in Egypt, which is keeping away the vast majority of tourists, there are still more tourists than I care to share my space with. It must be like the swarms of locus during a regular season. If you can get away from the river’s edge, the tout-hassle declines tremendously and the city is kind of cute. I gorged myself daily on fresh breads and pastries from a shop that was little more than iron racks of baked treats piled on the sidewalk in front of an industrial oven.

Room mural with mood lighting, such a love nest.

Room even came with a balcony! 

Hotel's rooftop patio 

View of the Nile and the West Bank

My room in Luxor had the luxury of cable TV. Clear your mind of whatever image that might have conjured. This is a shoebox sized room. The TV gets 3 English channels and the screen is the size of my laptop. Back to the point…I was watching an English program and a commercial comes on. A handsome man walks down a street in any-town, Islamic world. He’s blindfolded and following a mysterious man dressed in black with all but his eyes shrouded. Mystery man leads the blindfolded man to the top of a staircase. Blindfolded man then steps out and tumbles and twists, with sounds of his body thumping of the stone and bones breaking. The closing shot is of blindfolded man laying dead at the bottom of the staircase bleeding and with his limbs dislocated. There is no dialog (and the visuals don’t need any), but the closing text is in Arabic except for the url: www.saynototerror.me. This bit of anti-terror was played repeatedly while I watched my American movie? Who’s the intended audience? The most obvious answer would seem to be Egyptians. But when I surfed the regular Egyptian channels I never saw the commercial; it appeared to only be incessantly broadcasted on the all-English content cable movie channel, which I’m sure some Egyptians do watch, but so do all the foreigners.

Tomorrow I go to the Valley of the Kings!