Sophie’s World

Still Tuesday 8 January 2008

New passengers boarded at Aswan. They are now visiting Edfu temple. Been there! We must wait for them anyway, so Caroline, Swedish expat and Egyptian history expert, invites us for tea and sheesha at a local café. I’m smoking water pipe for the first time in my life. Yeah - I’m not quite as adventurous as I like to think. Truth be told, I’ve never even tried a Turkish bath or a hamam. Not even a skinny dip in icy water after a Finnish sauna, even though I’ve been to Finland and Turkey, numerous times. I’ll have to do better. 

Alex tries the sheesha as well. Even Cat insists she is smoking, although she barely touches the mouth piece with her lips. So now I’m teaching my kids to smoke, you ask? Alex detests smoking and thinks the sheesha tastes foul. Nearing 20, she’s probably not about to start smoking now so I reckon no harm is done. I’m not much of a smoker myself, but I like the idea of the water pipe. Or more to the point, I like the idea of sitting in an Arabic café; slowly puffing on a water pipe and watching life go by while blue hazy smoke billows to the dark ceiling. Just like I like the idea of an opium-den. 

Returning to the boat, I’m propositioned by a 15-year-old. Would I marry him? I tell him I already have two husbands. Surely, that’s very tiresome for me. It isn’t? He’ll happily be number three. We laugh and part in good spirits.  

Heading down river towards Luxor, I ponder this journey we’re on. Many think this is too strenuous a holiday to do with kids. Why not stay in Hurghada and hang at the beach instead? Well, this hasn’t been a relaxing holiday, not a “lie on the beach and do nothing”-type holiday. I don’t like those kinds, though. They bore me silly. Alex tells me she has learnt so much on this trip. And Cat has enjoyed it, too – with all the attention, the dressing up, running among ruins, seeing crocodiles - alive and mummified. But she is showing signs of temple fatigue. The Luxor temple, the last one, is tomorrow evening. We’ll see. 

This time, I make sure we see the locks at Esna up close. I wonder if we’ll see a traffic jam. That would be interesting here on the Nile. But it’s all pretty efficient. At Esna, shops are waterborne, i.e. local peddlers in rowing boats toss plastic-wrapped wares on board - whether we want to or not. Money is put in the plastic bags and tossed back – or at least, that’s what they hope. They’re persistent and literally shower us with dresses, galabiyahs, t-shirts and souvenirs. Don’t think I need any. Sorry!

Luckily, there are other ships nearby, so after a no doubt disappointing outcome from us, they head for new targets.

Tuesday morning 8 January 2008 

 It’s 10 o’clock, the girls are sleeping still and I’m on deck. Beginning to see a pattern here?

Going down river (north) is windier and colder. My note paper is blowing wildly and it’s freezing. Should I just go to the bar?There are huge windows there as well, but it’s rather dark. Hell, I’m a Viking. Can’t go indoors just for a bit of wind. So I remain outdoors. Uncomfortable but outdoors.

Our Nile ship is the M/S Helio, a medium-sized vessel. According to my fab book Up the Nile – a photographic excursion 1839 – 1898, Lloyd’s guidebook advised that “life on a Nile bark has a charm which seldom fails to operate even on the most inert mind.” It has that! Despite air condition and mobile phones, it feels like we have been transported to another era.

In the 1800s, there were three basic modes of transport up the Nile: the sailing boat known as a dahabiya, the smaller sail boat cange and the steamer. If time was of the essence, the steamer was the answer. Travellers with time and money (luxurious creatures, they must have been) sailed by dahabiya. 

 Dahabiya

As I read this, we pass by a dahabiya. I expect it has more mod-cons than the one pictured in my book, but still. The old photo of the inside of a dahabiyah in 1879 looks irresistibly romantic. To hire one, Lloyd’s recommended securing the services of a respectable dragoman, “charging him with the responsibility of providing everything needed, such as a cook, a man servant, and an assistant to wash and clean the travelers’ apartments.”

129 years later, I’m alone on the sun deck, except for a German lady around 90, with white hair, white clothes, white shoes, white handbag, and a very crooked walk. I call her Agatha, as she reminds me of a photo of Agatha Christie in her elder years. Seems appropriate. The Nile continues to be fertile grounds for the imagination. I stare at Agatha, rather impolitely. What’s her story, I wonder? She is bound to have had some tough times in her life, having lived through the Second World War and its aftermath in Germany. One or the other must have been hell for her. Possibly even both!

Ida joins me on deck. She’s a sprightly Dane about 80 who has visited Egypt more than 40 times. Normally, she travels with a friend. But this friend has decided to limit her travels to once a year and that simply will not do! Just a few years ago, she hired a car and drove through all of Egypt by herself. She is fiercely independent and really cool. My kids adore her!  

People are beginning to mill out on deck. We’re an interesting mix on board. A sweet Swedish couple has brought their son and granddaughter along. She’s 13, but looks 18: blonde, heavily made-up eye lids, yet so shy, she can barely whisper her name in introduction. Daddy is about 35, big, bald, tattooed and wears a jacket saying “See you in hell”. Then there’s Yvonne, also travelling on her own. She had her birthday yesterday and had to endure drums and off-key singing from the crew at dinner. Two middle-aged Danish couples are rowdy. “To beer or not to beer! Hahaha! Aren’t we funny?”

I can’t see anyone who’d likely commit a murder on board, though. No Mia Farrow or Simon MacCorkindale. Oh well, can’t have everything!