Asha

Me gusto Luxor

Was traveling to Upper Egypt (i.e. southern Egypt…..confusing eh?) for the weekend. We’re talking about a 13 hours train ride here. Went to Luxor and Aswan with some friends. Apart from being almost continuously hassled by people trying to sell us stuff for ridiculous prices Luxor was pretty nice. My favorite part was the Karnak Temple. Apart from the fact that it is HUGE and was buried under sand for a 1000 years before some archeologists found it….that place is mind boggling. It has 134 GIANT columns. All prettied up with intricate carvings and drawings. I have absolutely no idea how folks 1000s of years ago made this thing. The temple for me along with the Valley of Kings for me is even more amazing than they pyramids. Will try to post up pics soon.

Aswan….went to a nice little island there called Kitchener’s Island. It is basically a big garden. So the stereo-type in the north about people in the south is that they are very conservative. Didn’t like Aswan that much. People weren’t as helpful and hassling was taken to a whole new level along with this idiot who was being extremely rude.

And also at Aswan we were trying to get an earlier train back to Cairo and when one of my female friends (who is Egyptian-American) went to the ticket window the dude was pretty snappy and was like “mish makan” (there isn’t any place). So I thought he was bsing so I asked a guy friend to go ask the same thing (even though he doesn’t speak much Arabic) and wolah! we have tickets for an earlier train. The girls were obviously really pissed off.

One more thing about here is that people don't really get that they shouldn't really ask personal questions to people they've just met (actually this happens in many other countries too). You exchange a smile with someone and they ask you if you are Muslim, married, why don't you cover your head, have kids (if you earlier told them that you were married which I often do!), how long you're here for, do I like Egyptian men etc etc. Majority of people think I'm from India and sellers think that its a good idea to attract my attention by saying, "YA India".....grrrrr...

An interesting contrast from Pakistan. I was surprised here to see women working in stores, shops and photocopying centers etc. Places where they won’t work in Pakistan. So my initial reaction was "oh…women here have more liberty than women in Pakistan." And then incidents like the one I mentioned above happen… like women not getting the correct information or plumbers refusing to talk to the women in the house even if there aren’t any men around. Jacked up stuff like that which makes me wanna smack someone on the head.

It is dust storm weather again….EWWW! Really hope we don’t have another dust storm (and that’s like hoping for no snow in MA in November).

Btw check out the cartoons on aljaeera.net. Pretty good.

posted by mir @ 5:35 AM