Mar 20-22
As I want a larger sense of the Nile, and as I don't want to spend four days in Luxor before my flight, I decide to take a train, which follows the river, three hours south to Aswan, and come back two days later. I expect it will be similar to Luxor. Other than it being even warmer (over 100 degrees) I am, fortunately, very wrong!
In Luxor the Nile fertilizes at most two miles on either side, by the time I get to Aswan that distance is halved. I see a lot looking out from the train:
As I've tried to not plan or think ahead this entire trip, I leave the train without expectations. I know I am to walk 1/4 mile to the Corniche (riverfront walk) and go left for half a mile to reach my hotel. I'm shocked as I leave the train station:
and then reach the Corniche:
Aswan, a city of 250,000 at the First Cataract (rapids) of the Nile (the last of eight cataracts beginning up river), is far more than a tourist town and has a long history of multiculturalism. Most residents have both Egyptian and Nubian (black African) blood. The river here is startling. Looking north from a park:
Looking south from the park toward the First Cataract (beyond which, in fifty miles, lies Sudan):
Unlike Luxor, which has no public space (hotels and tour boat docks span the waterfront), Aswan has two free, public parks along the river, giving its citizens dignity and some sense ownership. What is more, another park, built by royalty on a cliff but now open to the public (Egyptians pay fifteen cents to enter, tourists ninety cents), is very beautiful. I meet and talk for two hours, about Egypt and the revolution, with two high school biology teachers, best friends, in their forties. (Students in Egypt may quit school at 15, these teachers get the ones who remain, to prepare for university, and to then become the country's educated class. It is this class from all over the country that, without any opportunity, made the revolution, at least its transfer of power.)
The two teachers come most days to this park to let their eyes rest as they shoot the breeze and daydream. I saw very few places in central Cairo and none in Luxor that allowed common people this bit of private space.
This park is also filled with young people, and show off the fact that this Nubian-influenced part of Egypt dresses with a lot of color:
Upstream from Aswan, the Nubian homeland was destroyed by the building of the Aswan Dam and Lake Nasser in the 1950s. Several Nubians told me they were resettled, in Aswan and villages just north, and treated well by Egypt. The UN funded a fine Nubian museum. The first carving is 8,000 years old.
While most of the food in Egypt hasn't been very good, in the Nile-side restaurant (as elsewhere, there are hardly any tourists): I have a spicy fish stew with broad beens in tomato sauce with grainy Bedouin bread:
(Today, writing this post from Istanbul, I show my novel to the owner of an elite carpet store, who it turns out is no fan of Nobel-winning Pamuk. "Pamuk writes his fantasies, not what our lives are like, as he pretends.")
As I want a larger sense of the Nile, and as I don't want to spend four days in Luxor before my flight, I decide to take a train, which follows the river, three hours south to Aswan, and come back two days later. I expect it will be similar to Luxor. Other than it being even warmer (over 100 degrees) I am, fortunately, very wrong!
In Luxor the Nile fertilizes at most two miles on either side, by the time I get to Aswan that distance is halved. I see a lot looking out from the train:
As I've tried to not plan or think ahead this entire trip, I leave the train without expectations. I know I am to walk 1/4 mile to the Corniche (riverfront walk) and go left for half a mile to reach my hotel. I'm shocked as I leave the train station:
and then reach the Corniche:
Aswan, a city of 250,000 at the First Cataract (rapids) of the Nile (the last of eight cataracts beginning up river), is far more than a tourist town and has a long history of multiculturalism. Most residents have both Egyptian and Nubian (black African) blood. The river here is startling. Looking north from a park:
Looking south from the park toward the First Cataract (beyond which, in fifty miles, lies Sudan):
Unlike Luxor, which has no public space (hotels and tour boat docks span the waterfront), Aswan has two free, public parks along the river, giving its citizens dignity and some sense ownership. What is more, another park, built by royalty on a cliff but now open to the public (Egyptians pay fifteen cents to enter, tourists ninety cents), is very beautiful. I meet and talk for two hours, about Egypt and the revolution, with two high school biology teachers, best friends, in their forties. (Students in Egypt may quit school at 15, these teachers get the ones who remain, to prepare for university, and to then become the country's educated class. It is this class from all over the country that, without any opportunity, made the revolution, at least its transfer of power.)
The two teachers come most days to this park to let their eyes rest as they shoot the breeze and daydream. I saw very few places in central Cairo and none in Luxor that allowed common people this bit of private space.
This park is also filled with young people, and show off the fact that this Nubian-influenced part of Egypt dresses with a lot of color:
Upstream from Aswan, the Nubian homeland was destroyed by the building of the Aswan Dam and Lake Nasser in the 1950s. Several Nubians told me they were resettled, in Aswan and villages just north, and treated well by Egypt. The UN funded a fine Nubian museum. The first carving is 8,000 years old.
While most of the food in Egypt hasn't been very good, in the Nile-side restaurant (as elsewhere, there are hardly any tourists): I have a spicy fish stew with broad beens in tomato sauce with grainy Bedouin bread:
(Today, writing this post from Istanbul, I show my novel to the owner of an elite carpet store, who it turns out is no fan of Nobel-winning Pamuk. "Pamuk writes his fantasies, not what our lives are like, as he pretends.")
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