The Turning Point

The restaurant of the cruise is empty, besides Maria and myself—just the waiters changing the linens on the tables. Judging from their voices and gestures, they’re not too happy about a new batch of tourists, each with their whims and their steam blowing. I didn’t wake up on the wrong side of the bed—on the contrary, I was happy to escape the droning and the pervading fumes of the neighboring boat’s engine—just that I don’t feel inclined to find excuses: for the miserable western food (the juice, the milk are watered down, the desserts seem emptied from a can, and everything else is weird tasting—it’s not easy to follow a recipe if you don’t know what the result is supposed to look and taste!), for the forced jokes of the waiters trying to make us smile and have a “good time”, for the sky-high prices of everything not included in the service (a British woman tried in vain to convince the manager that 15 euros for a glass of juice is not a normal price!), for everything. I’m tired and the day has just started.

Market delivery

When we embarked, we had to pass through three more boats to get to ours. Our rooms were on the main floor, large enough to accommodate, besides a king bed, two armchairs, a fridge, TV, and space for luggage. The bathroom had a large shower and everything looked plush and sparkly clean (in contrast with the public areas where it was a faded and thread-bare luxury). Like any cruise boat, it had an upper deck, where we could have a dip in a freezing pool, sun ourselves on deck chairs, serve tea, while listening to our fellow travelers, senior citizens from Britain, who wondered what should they wear at dinner time or were trying to keep up with their Jones's.

Aswan

We chose to spend most of our time in the room, having a gorgeous view of the Nile. The lower course didn’t look like its former self: its banks were cladded in stones and steps, reminding me of the Indian ghats. I didn’t see many people, but maybe they were coming at a different hour. Parallel to the river was the road, traveled by donkey-pulled carts, bicycles, and, rarely, old cars.

Beyond that there were the fields—some light brown and freshly tilled, some green with crops. From time to time we passed some houses, some pastures with oxen, some wild areas. At one point we went into a lock, descending so rapidly, that we didn’t have time to go upstairs to observe the process before we were out.

The belly dancer and the Brits.

A twirling dervish

One of the advantages of this cruise was visiting some other temples. With this occasion we noticed that we had an Asian group with us, blocking the exit so they would be the first in line. Kom-ombo was special because we saw it in the moonlight with some accents from the spotlights. Actually, it is a double temple with two dedications: to Sobek, the god with a crocodile head, and to Isis, two holy places, with two tables. Close by was a museum where we learned more about the cult for Sobek and saw huge mummified crocodiles.

Swallowing the key of life.

Being purified with celestial water.

The other temple was Edfu, we saw it in the morning light. We left late (the Asians were up from 5 am to catch this one) and our only choice of transportation was Mr.Hamdi’s kalesh. He pointed out the English school, the Egyptian school, the pharmacy, the souq. He held a protecting arm around Ioan’s shoulders while going over the speed bumps. He asked our age: 45. He has 45 too, but he looked like 70, almost bald and a little white hair at the back of his head. His wife is 38 and they have six habibi (huh-bee-bee), I presume children. In the end he didn’t want to be paid, he wanted to wait for us. Mihai insisted. Mr.Hamdi asked 20 Egyptian pound per head. My husband just smiled, gave him 20 for all of us, and we left.

The Edfu temple is the most complete Ancient Egyptian temple. We found the same things, huge walls with bas-reliefs, some erased, Christian crosses, nilometer. And we found color, blue, and red, and black, and green hidden in the crevices of the hieroglyphs, or in between the column and the ceiling. They told of the wonderful feast for the pilgrim’s eyes, after days in the desert.

The boat that takes the soul on the other side; a copy. The original is somewhere hidden on the right side of the lower level stairs in the Louvre, Paris waiting for the reopening of the Egyptian gallery.

There is another feast, for the initiated ones, the people who know how to read the hieroglyphs, the different types of crowns, the symbols that are sculpted in stone. They get to read the whole Gallery of Victory, to understand more than Horus fought Set, revenged his father Osiris, and since those times they celebrate annually this victory, eating a cake in the shape of a hippopotamus.

Having fun in the Gallery of Victory.

And the victory goes to Horus!

Mr. Hamdi waited for us, at his price: 20 liras for one person. We started walking, we had enough time to get to the boat. Immediately he agreed on our price, we climbed in, this time Mihai in front. They started chatting about soccer and Romanian players. Mr. Hamdi knew their names, we didn’t know any Egyptian soccer player. At the boat we payed him what we agreed and quickly he asked for a 5 lira baksheesh, for the horse. He got it!

Now that the cruise is done, we’re waiting for the hotel’s car to pick us up. Mr. Galal called us to tell that he can’t make it to Luxor, but he talked to the manager of the hotel to make sure everything is OK.

There is a long drive from the decking point to the city. It used to be closer, but with the new mayor, there are many changes, that have yet to prove their valor. The new hotel is better, the mattresses are foam, the bathroom door doesn’t close and the tub’s drain is clogged. But at least it’s clean and quiet...until prayer time. We notice the position of the minaret, the walls of the hotel acting as a reflection point.

Baked yams on the spot!

We start visiting Luxor, walking from the hotel to the museum. We make ripples, the taxi and kalesh drivers start moving when they see us. What we see is a huge trench, the riverside is being remodeled, they are digging for the sphynxes, make new streets. To escape a very insistent kalesh driver we enter a McDonalds and order a MacArabia, grilled chicken with salad and the sauces, but in a flat bread. We are told to wait at a table, and we do it, on the third floor, having a wonderful view of the Luxor temple. We decided not to visit this one, the general view was enough for us. An attraction could have been the oldest mosque, built inside its court, but it is closed for us non-believers.

Luxor temple and the mosque

We want to see the museum, but we’re too late, the gates are locked.

A better kalesh

The next day we go and visit the Valley of the Kings. We decide to take a guide, maybe this way we will understand better. Enter Nabil (Nuh-bill), dressed in worn-out corduroy pants, shirt and sunglasses hugging his face. The experience is a little bit frustrating: whatever he tells us we already know, and it feels general, or we don’t know and he doesn’t go into detail, we don’t have time.

The first being was Atum, meaning Perfect. He came into being before being and by thinking, he started to create gods and goddesses. It is said he married his shadow, gave birth to emptiness and moisture, who had children of their own, the sky and the earth. These last two had two sons, Osiris and Set, and two daughters, Isis and Nefthis. Osiris married his half sister Isis (“Why half sister?” the answer was just a meaningful look to stop interrupting). Set, jealous, killed Osiris, cut him in fourteen pieces which he threw in the papyrus. Isis (and her sister) collected them, and through magic revived him. Osiris, the final judge of the dead, holding the feather of truth and weighing it against the dead man’s heart, is represented in the tombs with a fusiform body and a green or black skin. Horus, his son, fought his uncle, avenged his father and lost his left eye in the process. That’s why he gave the ankh, the key of life, to the ones coming after him, to protect them from the evil eye (the bad thoughts of others).

Death is a journey, from this world to the other one, where they live forever. That’s why they need to take with them clothes, perfumes, furniture, everything and shabti, 365 of them. It means “answer” and their terra cotta or wooden painted presence is necessary  to work in pharaoh’s place.

The tombs, hidden deep in the ground

There is a strictly enforced policy of no photos. It is not enough to have the camera turned off, or in a bag, we have to deposit it. With the advanced technology available and the uncontrollable human being, they can’t take chances and have the surviving tombs degraded by the rays produces in the cameras. If, by chance, one manages to bring a camera and starts shooting pictures, one can find how easily they can confiscate it. So we walk downward in a tunnel painted with evil spirits being punished. Ioan is looking for cartouches with a goose and the sun (that’s the birth name of the pharaoh) or with a plant (the coronation name). Every inch on the walls is painted with verses from the religious books. In one chamber the ceiling is painted with a double image of Nut, the goddess of night, the one who swallows the sun each evening, to give birth to it every morning. On the granite sarcophagus there is a representation of the pharaoh being purified with celestial water, and another one holding in each hand an ankh.

from the internet

There are many things that I would like to ask, but the rules prohibit the guides giving  explanation inside. And when we get outside, we hurry to the next tomb, kind of the same, dug deep into the mountain, with three chambers, finished from the last to the entrance, but different pharaoh, different choice of verses, of artistic rendition. They were the fruit of the high priest’s mind, the one who designed the tomb, and the fruit of labor of many workers, organized in nine groups, who lived there. They were the ones who cut the rock, who covered it in limestone, who traced the design with honey, who painted it with colors mixed with egg white (to preserve it) and gold for the flesh of gods. Their tombs are also in the Valley of the Kings, made of mud-brick with just an inscription, no decoration for a mere human.

Only a few of the tombs are open, you never know which one because they rotate them. Some are unsafe and crumbling, others can’t deal with mobs of tourists. We’ve already seen graffiti from Roman and early Christian times, and again from Howard Carter’s times. He looked five years for Tutankhamen’s tomb, sifting through rubble, only to find it in the shadow of Rameses VI’s tomb. Now is always open, for a very expensive admission, but contains only the mummy, the other treasures are in the Cairo Museum. Still, the rotation doesn’t protect them from water infiltration and dark mold feeding itself on living breath and electrical light.

Hatshepsut’s temple: a modern-looking building in a vast desert, backed by the mountain, worthy of the woman she was. Daughter, wife and stepmother of pharaohs, she ruled Egypt for twenty-two years. To show her right to rule and power, she donned the full pharaoh’s regalia, with false pleated beard and all.

The Osiric position.

Passionate traveler, she sailed to Punt seventeen times to bring back trees and vegetation, her trips etched in stone. Eventually she died, her stepson’s hate obliterating and erasing her name, her face, her deeds, her monuments, and through this, preserved some of them for our time.

A sample of the trees brought home.

Loading the boat for the trip.

We visit some nobles’ tombs, no granite for them, just limestone, easier to work with, flowing design, fluid movements, the wealthiness of hair-dresses or of weavings etched in the white material giving just a small sample of the variety in its entombed one’s times. The next pictures are from the Kha Em Het Temple.

They made mistakes too! The oval holes were made by the Roman soldiers sharpening their spears.

The killing fields, conquering a new nation.

Tied slaves

Local attraction

And another one

We collapse at the hotel, tired, sun-beaten and hungry. We go to the neighboring KFC, we have no energy left for wondering what to choose or what we’re eating. Though there is food, we have to wait half an hour until they bring it: twelve freshly fried chicken drumsticks and fries, with freshly made coleslaw. We eat ravenously and return to the hotel.

We’re tired and worried. For the past few weeks I wrote home everyday, telling them that we’re still alive, no social unrest in our area. We don’t know if we should go to Cairo or not. The last night on the boat, the moment that they started showing the reprisals in Tajjik square they cut off the program. Was it because it was bed time? Coming home one night we saw people outside a building protesting. We look at each other: there is so much more to see, to do, to learn, to find, but there is no more fun, no more excitement. Twelve months in our trip we were still eager, two months later the thought of tomorrow, of the next monument, is too much. “Let’s buy the tickets and go home...”

Karnak temple for people who find it hard to imagine it in its totality

With the end in sight we find renewed energy to finish Luxor. We go to the Karnak temple, constructed in periods, every respecting pharaoh adding his walls, her obelisk, his scarab, rows of sphinxes. It is humongous, too big to catch its layout in one view, too flat to see its relief, too straight to notice the lateral space. Our minds refuse the guided information, we don’t want anymore stories, just what we can register.

There is a hypostyle, a room open to the sky now, full of columns. Twelve open-bud ones line the main nave, while the other closed-bud hundred and twenty-two imitate the primeval papyrus marsh.

We're one man short and she volunteered! 

Namil

In a different part we can make out faint painting of saints, from the times when these temples were transformed into churches. A guard is fishing in the sacred pond, for the ablutions of the priests, and feeds its cats. Russian tourists go seven times round the huge scarab in a counter-clock motion. We leave the main path towards other ruins, the ground covered in organized rows of temple shards. We know so much about the Egyptian civilization, and yet we don’t know enough.

We go to the museum of Luxor, where, again, the rule of no photos blocks us from sharing with you what we saw. We learn that the wavy lines under the pharaoh’s feet are the arches of his subdued enemies, that granite can shatter as glass at a mere few degrees of difference in temperature, that a few exquisite and diverse objects can bring much joy.

photo from the internet

Again it is time to pack our backpacks, to verify if we took everything and shut the door behind us. This time we left intentionally a big pile of empty water bottles. The sterypen was useless, it is incapable of taking out the taste of chlorine and mold.

Giza, prepare! We come to see your pyramids!

I'm holding the smallest flowers that I've ever seen!

Kali mera Elada!

Present time (November 30th, 2012):

Duty— You should have written every day!
The writer— I couldn’t, the writing would have been dry, just a bunch of facts, what we did, like a check-off list, no one would have been interested.
The child— Can we play now?
Duty— Now you have to write after almost two months; what would you remember now?
The writer—I’ll write, just leave me alone, don’t carry me to all these new places, give me some time!
The child—I want a roiboos tea!
Duty—We don’t have time! And plus, these new places have to be seen, they are a must, remember that you always wanted to see them!
The writer—OK, let’s see them, but then I won’t write!
The child—And I want to watch a movie!
Duty— You have to write! People are waiting for your blogs!
The writer— Are you kidding me? They live their lives, we’re just entertainment for them, if there is no blog to be read, they just go and find something else!
The child—Look at me! Look at me!
Duty—Then write for us!
The writer—I need peace, and time! Leave me alone, to find my muse, to process those feelings, to make them less personal, to bring a unified image of how it was there, and not the whole material. It was one thing to present Asia, where it was a first contact with a different culture, and another to show Europe. I grew up here, I can tell details, but then I have to explain them, and you don’t give me time!
The child—Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong! Let’s escape!
Duty and the writer—WE CAN’T! WE HAVE TO WRITE THE BLOG!

Two months ago and forward.

Kali mera, Elada! (kah-lee mair-ah) Good morning, Greece!

A three men orchestra plays a Greek tune as we pick up our luggage and file out of airport. I think it’s a nice gesture, like real orchids in Singapore, having live songs in Mykonos; for sure I will remember this airport. Outside, sunshine, not a cloud in the sky, maybe a little bit of wind. Anna, the owner of Evangelia’s Place (named after her mother), shakes my hand, then leans in and kisses me on both my cheeks. She does this with each and one of us, while saying our names. We pile in her car and she starts talking while she gives us a tour of the island: this is the supermarket, next to it there’s a bread shop where they have very good bread, the pharmacy. Houses, all white and covered in bougainville, have rounded corners and a personal little church.

Tiny church with the Greek flag.

In Mykonos first they build the church, and after, the house. The priest follows a schedule to see whose house does the morning or evening service. At the bus stop Anna brakes, looking at the sign that announces the schedule (a blackboard under the shade of a tree), and tells us when we can expect the bus to ride in or out of town.

Street commerce

We talk about the crisis and the strikes. “It’s not that people are not working—they work, and hard, but the system is bad.” Then we arrive at her place, large terra-cotta jars with geraniums or a different type of “hen and chickens”, olive trees and other kinds.

It’s Mom’s birthday and we wanted to be together. Their hotel is literally across the road, with a beautiful view of the sea and an infinite pool. To reach their room we have to climb down and then up a maze of stairs, between palm gardens, and private room yards.

We have a late-lunch/early-dinner meal, watching the sun setting in the sky and eating moussaka and lamb chops with rosemary. Happy birthday Mom and Grandma Tana! On the table there is a vase with flowering basil. It is peaceful and quiet, we’re the only ones in the restaurant, we’re on vacation. When we met with the parents in London, they watched the movie and Mom said “I know what I want for my birthday!” Two weeks is not long enough to work on this kind of project, especially when you have to visit four more capitals, but the girls pulled all the stops and translated the movie in Romanian, recorded a new audio and made it fit on the English cues. The grandparents had a blast, laughing almost continuously and enjoying the commentaries. (In the meantime they started showing it to anyone who manifested a little bit of interest and they haven’t stopped yet! You can see it to if you have 25 minutes  here)

Even if this is vacation time, we can’t pass Delos. It used to be the place to dedicate a temple to one god or another, to bring a prayer and a sacrifice. People used to live here, there are many houses to prove that, but because of a prophecy, the rulers of Athens gave an edict forbidding people to be born or die on the island.

Now, all I can see are just blinding white stones and ruins under the unmerciful sun. We make our way toward Zeus temple at the tippy-top on slippery steps, shined by the peregrines and hordes of tourists. There is no shade, we’re crawling hot and red faced next to a stone wall or a scruffy bush, to find some relief.

Ioan is looking for life forms, but just the lizards are obliging, anything else is hiding from the sun. From the top I look around: sea and other islands. For a moment I try to feel that disappointment, lived by people marauded on an island, but I can’t, I know I have a boat to take me away.

Back on Mykonos we try to retrace our steps and end up going other white and blue streets, squished between stores, bougainvillea and shade canvases. We admire the windmills, the restaurants, with numbered tables and Van Gogh’s chairs (very uncomfortable), the people who chose to sit, drink coffee and watch people passing by. At our place we find out that it was a general strike, and we laugh, Athens is so far away, the struggle on the continent doesn’t impose on the islanders, who earn their life in tourism.

And then... shame! Disgrace! I find a crawling insect on my shirt, that looks very similar with one that I saw in Spain, while I was sewing! It is a louse! Fortunately the internet is working and I can read online what I am suppose to do and what to buy. We all do the treatment, greasing the hair and combing it with that superfine comb, spraying the whole body with the medicine. I am the only one that finds a dead insect body and that is a relief. Then I have to wash and hope that whatever creepy-crawly are on our clothes, they will die in 104 degrees water with detergent (it should be 140 F for washing or 250 F for drying at least half an hour) . I would have expected to pick up a bug in other countries, less developed, but not in old Europe!

The vacation is over, we’re back in our exploring and learning mode. A slow ferry takes us to the island of Syros, the capital of the Cyclades Islands. We arrive on a Sunday afternoon and after the commotion from the ferry, the town seems deserted. The streets are empty, the stores are closed, houses with shuttered windows, an occasional car. From the second story of a house an old lady throws in the street  leftovers from the Sunday’s lunch to the alley cats.

Fearless cats, not flinching in front of a car, eating on marbled street.

This town has names for the streets (really a rare thing) and makes our life easier as we’re walking with our backpacks toward the hotel. We pass a church, that later we find out that it has an icon (religious painting) by El Greco, when he was still only Domenikos Theotokopoulos. We walk up a stepped street, and another, to “Paradise, Rooms to Let”. There is an old man at the reception waiting for us, he doesn’t speak much English, but he understands. He gives us our keys and then, closes the office and disappears.

Agora or the largest flat place in a Greek town.

We take the shortest route to a restaurant where we order the most wonderful meal that we can think of: pita-gyros (peetah). On a flat bread they spread tzatziki (a sauce made from yogurt, garlic, cucumber and sometimes dill), sliced tomatoes, onions, shredded lettuce, french fries and shaves of grilled meat (pork for us), wrapped in a wax paper. As we will find out later, this is the best: pita freshly made, crispy on the outside, hot and chewy on the inside, tzatziki with just a zing of garlic, not too salty, not too runny, plenty of meat, sweet tomatoes ripened on the live vine in the sun. Add to this two sail ships bobbing gracefully with each wave and a setting sun and maybe you will understand why this is and will be the best pita gyros ever.

Later we walk the streets, buy baklavalaki (small baklavas) made with walnuts and saraigli (rounded ones) with pistachios, all drenched in sticky syrup, but still crunchy. Too sweet for Ileana and happily we eat her share.

The many kinds of cake in a sweets shop.

Next morning the town is unrecognizable, so many people, cars wheeze by on the marbled streets, restaurants open where locals and tourist alike drink coffee and nibble a pastry. We board a new ferry, for Santorini this time.

Many like to think that this was the famous Atlantis, but there is no proof. My mind fills in the gaps as we approach the island and I can “see” the huge cone. The island in reality is of a crescent shape with some young islands that hiss steam periodically in the middle. As we enter the submerged cone of the volcano I look at the forbidding cliffs, capped with multicolored houses, terraced for a better view. They used to be all white with blue shutters, a form of resistance and nationalism in a time of Ottoman occupation. The whole island was just a huge flag.

We pass cruise ships, anchored close to the old port, the one with the hundreds stairs and donkey- caravans to haul tourists up, featured in “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” (nowadays they have a small six cabin gondola, but it takes only 36 people at a time, insignificant for a cruise).

Very, very smelly creatures!

We dock in the new port where the hotel’s car awaits. The road zig-zags the cliff and after many hairpin turns we drive on the flat top toward Fira (feerah), the main town. We pass “Señor Zorba” a Mexican hotel and restaurant. We smile, there is a little bit of truth, Nikos Kazantzakis Greek hero was brought alive by Anthony Quinn, of Mexican descent. Our hotel has, besides narrow stairs going up and down, sideways and round, a pool and domed rooms, with arched windows and interior shutters. There is even a walled cupboard, like a medicine cabinet. I look closely and find old nails sticking out and irregularities in the masonry. I can’t imagine how old is this room, hundreds of years?

But we don’t have time to muse, we have a sunset to catch. The bus leaves just as we enter the station, so we take a taxi, much better and quicker, to Sunset Point, on the right side of the crescent. Over the horizon a thick haze hides other islands and gives an orange hue to the light. We’re not there yet, the streets are narrow, the tourists are just rambling (they live there in Oia, they can see it as many times as they want), so we're trying to squeeze and run, only to hear “Slow down!” And when we get at the end of the island, we miss it, behind the haze. But the colors are good too, so we linger a little bit more, look at people and go back, along with the others and perusing the art galleries.

Fira is in the background as tiny light dots.

Back in Fira we have a museum to visit. Before erupting (somewhere between 1700 to 1300 BC, different museums post different dates), the volcano was kind enough to give plenty of signs so the majority of people could leave. They took their valuables and left everything else. Just a little part is excavated and exhibited and still is plenty: bird vessels, religious objects, board games, frescoes and the golden ibex, made from separate gold sheets and welded together. The archeological site is scheduled to re-open, but no one knows when. It’s mind-numbing to think of the efforts that go in finding things, extracting them, cleaning, restoring, understanding, preserving and if they are significant enough, exhibiting them in a museum, under 24 hours surveillance.

Different types of bird vessels.

Bird vessel with swallow.

Offering table with dolphins.

Before leaving we buy Santorini pistachio, it’s supposed to be different. We don’t have the “others” to compare, but the shell has a pink rim and the seed is tasty. Also we try homemade wine “vino santo” (vee-noh sahn-toh), strong and sweet, almost like an ice-wine. It is made from the unwatered grapes, like all the plants that grow here, their necessity of water taken from the dew. Then we board our next ferry: Crete awaits us.