Later, I sat with Lake Nasser at my back, gazing at the beauty in front of me. One of the disadvantages of being part of a guided tour is that everything is planned in advance. I would have loved to stay and feast my eyes on those statues for much longer, but we were scheduled to leave for the High Dam.
After stopping at the High Dam tower to see both the Aswan and High dams, we left for the the island of Philae, where the Temple of Isis once stood. Apparently, European travellers in the 18th century could marvel at it only from a distance because the islanders fought them off whenever they tried to land. With the construction of the Aswan Dam, the temple complex on Philae was submerged under water for half the year, in the rainy season. When the High Dam was planned, it became clear that the entire island would disappear forever under water once construction was completed. So a massive operation was undertaken between 1972 and 1980 to move the complex from its original site to nearby Aglika Island, which was landscaped to look just like Philae.
In Egypt you pay baksheesh for almost everything. Even a policeman insisted on baksheesh after he took a photo of me in front of one of the pillars of the temple. I spent an hour wandering around the island before heading back with the group to Aswan.
Since it was my last day in Aswan, I decided to take a sunset cruise in a felucca moored next to the restaurant alongside the Nile embankment. It was most relaxing and, since feluccas use only lateen sails and no motor, we drifted gently on the waters of the Nile. I spent half an hour on the Island of the Plants (Geziret al-Nabatat), which is popularly known as Kitchener’s Island. It is named after Lord Horatio Kitchener and was presented to him in recognition of his distinguished service as head of the Anglo-Egyptian Army after he crushed the Sudanese rebellion of 1898 and ensured British control over Sudan. (Yes, the same Omdurman that is now part of the three-in-one capital of Sudan.)
Kitchener, showing his human side, imported flowering plants from as far afield as Asia, in a variety of colours and fragrances, which turned the island into a lovely botanical garden and one of Aswan’s main tourist attractions. Kitchener is the same guy who headed south from Egypt to sort out the Boers in the Anglo-Boer War (now called the South African War because darkies also took part in the war, on both sides).
On waking the following day, I decided not to leave Aswan. It is amazing how things had changed. At one point I was obsessed with getting to Cairo as fast as possible, but now that I was in Aswan I could not care less about the rest of the trip. I really loved Aswan. Maybe it had to do with the fact that locals were calling me a Nubian, which to me sounded very exotic. Besides visiting an unfinished obelisk, I spent the day lazing around stalls and chatting.
I decided to take another sunset cruise. While having pre-cruise drinks, I met three guys from Denmark who persuaded me to do the full-day tour of Luxor with them the next day. I gave them the name of my hotel and my room number. Early the next morning the receptionist knocked on my door to tell me that a tourist minibus was waiting for me downstairs.
Security is very tight in Egypt. On the outskirts of Aswan, we had to wait for other tour operators so that we could travel in convoy to Luxor. It took us three and a half hours to get to Luxor, just under 300 kilometres away. Like Khartoum, it is a three-in-one affair. On the east is Karnak village and the actual city of Luxor, on the west bank lies the Valley of the Kings.
Our first stop was the Colossi of Memnon with its two gigantic 20-metre-high enthroned statues with feet two metres long and one metre wide. The statues were built in 1400 BC and are thought to have stood at the entrance to the death temple of a pharaoh. The place was plundered for building material by later pharaohs until nothing but the two ‘colossi’ remained. Both lost their faces and crowns in a severe earthquake in 27 BC. To add insult to injury, one was also split to the waist.
In the Valley of the Queens, to which we then went, only two tombs were open to the public. Our guide, Mohamed, was very clued up on the process of mummification, which involves the removal of all internal organs from a corpse, including the brain. The organs were put in jars and placed next to the corpse in the burial chamber within the tomb. Only the heart was left because the ancient Egyptians believed that people are judged not by their deeds but by their heart.
No mummies, unfortunately, were on display, but the walls of the tombs had very detailed drawings and paintings of humans. I noticed the paintings were crawling with snakes as well as strange human beings with tails or an animal head. The Valley of the Queens is right in the middle of the desert and I was pouring with sweat. To make things worse, some small insects there were specialists in biting. And it looked as if those insects were more interested in Nubian than in European blood.
Just one and a half kilometres from the Valley of the Queens is the Valley of the Kings. Although only about 200 metres wide and 400 metres long, it houses more than 64 known tombs. The most famous is that of Tutankhamun, the boy-pharaoh who ascended to the Egyptian throne in 1361 BC when he was only nine. His tomb, probably the greatest tourist attraction on the west bank, was found by an archaeologist in 1922.
I did not visit King Tut’s tomb – most of its treasures are in the Cairo Museum, anyway – and, instead, descended the steep stairways of the vast tomb of Ramses II into the actual burial chamber, to see his sarcophagus (stone coffin). Comparing modern graves to these ancient tombs is like comparing a shack to a multi-storey mansion. The ancient Egyptians must have had a lot of time on their hands. How else could they have constructed such big chambers in the sand in the middle of a desert? Surely the sand would have kept filling up the holes they dug?
Mohamed, although a very informative tour guide, would harass us by telling us repeatedly to ‘buy this, buy that, this is good price’, etc. He even lured us into a shop by promising us that we were going to get complimentary drinks, which in that very hot weather was most welcome. After the drinks, however, we realised that we were expected to buy some souvenirs before heading for the east bank.
Mohamed promised to take the Danes and me to a five-star hotel for lunch, for which we were going to have to pay ourselves. The tricky part of this arrangement was that we had to pay Mohamed beforehand. Even though someone was waiting for us when we entered the restaurant, we were treated as if we had not paid. We were told to serve ourselves quickly and that if there were any questions we should give our room numbers as 303–305,as if we were hotel guests. Although the Danes, like me, were not impressed, we had no choice but to oblige. The food was great, however. A full buffet of the quality you can expect in the restaurant of a five-star hotel.
After lunch, Mohamed collected us from the hotel’s lobby to take us to the Karnak temple complex. According to him, this massive archaeological site was built over a period of 2 000 years. Different pharaohs made their mark by extending the grandest of the three temples, the Temple of Amun, adding halls and chapels. The Hypostele Hall, which is regarded as one of the greatest pieces of ancient Egyptian art, is located in the temple. Mohamed boasted that, at 6 000 square metres, it was big enough to hold both St Peter’s in Rome and St Paul’s in London. The hall contains 134 gigantic, evenly spaced columns, some of which are more than 20 metres high.
Within the temple there is an area that worshippers in ancient times circled seven times before making a wish in the belief that everything they wished for would come true. Well, in the present, too, there are tourists going around and around, making their wishes. During our visit, while wondering whether I should join the circle, I overheard a girl saying, ‘Well, if I don’t get married in the next 12 months, I will definitely give up.’ I decided not to join the circle.
After Karnak, we visited Luxor Temple, right in centre of the city. The temple was built over a span of 250 years, mostly by Amenhotep III (who erected most of it around 1380 BC) and the great and powerful Ramses II. But other pharaohs also added bits and pieces.
Luxor Temple, I discovered later, was meant to serve as a love nest for the gods: once a year, during spr
ing, the statues of Amun and his wife Mut would be brought here by sacred boat from Karnak Temple in a fertility festival that was famous for its public debauchery. The temple was modified by Alexander the Great after he conquered Egypt in 332 BC and, when Islam arrived in Egypt after 600 AD, two mosques were erected on top of it. One of these is still used for worship today. Of course, once the two mosques were put up it was the end of all the fun and games.
I was deeply impressed that most of the structures we saw that day were built more than 4 000 years ago. I had to agree that Luxor was the undisputed capital of the ancient world. The whole day was a case of information overload for me, however. It was too much to absorb in 24 hours.
Later that afternoon, it was time to say goodbye to my Danish companions who, for no reason I could see, had been holding hands during the day and now and then touching each other’s bum. They were heading back to Aswan and it was with a sigh of relief that I saw them disappear in the dust.
Sharm el-Sheik on the Red Sea, the popular resort town east of Luxor where 88 people were killed in a bomb attack, two days before I set off from Durban, should have been next on my itinerary. Pondering my next move, I decided to check for emails from my fiancée. By this stage she was the only one still keeping in touch. In the email she sent me she poured her heart out about how much she was missing me and how much she was longing for me to come home. More than anything – besides requesting an update on my recovery from my Khartoum accident – she was concerned about my safety and well-being. The words that changed the course of the rest of my trip were: Without you by our side Nala and I are losing our minds. That was it – the decision was made. I would head straight for Cairo. And I would apologise to my fiancée about the SMS.
I emailed back that being knocked down by a bus in Khartoum was just my way of coping with such a demanding trip. It was not possible for me, I explained, to focus on the challenge ahead while at the same time being questioned about my imperfect behaviour. With Cairo in sight, I told her, I could now afford to speak the truth. Recklessly I signed off with I love you.
I went to the train station and, although there were a number of people buying tickets, things went in a very orderly fashion and, unlike at Victoria Falls, the queue moved very quickly. I bought a first-class ticket (as all tourists are required to do by law for security reasons). For once I was going to travel in style. While hanging around for more than an hour, waiting for the train to arrive, I bumped into a backpacker, Mark, from Australia. We chatted for a bit until I mentioned that I was on the home run on my Cape to Cairo trek. He looked at me for a few seconds without saying a word. Then he said, ‘You? Please. A sissy like you did the Cape to Cairo?’ With that he picked up his dirty backpack and disappeared down the platform among the other passengers.
The train heading for Cairo arrived at 20:00 on the dot. A twenty-something Japanese guy was already in my compartment when I got there. He was visiting Egypt for a month in order to study Arabic. When I told him I was from South Africa, he immediately asked me, ‘Is it true that Namibia means North India?’ It had been a while since I laughed so hard that my stomach ached.
As we reached the first houses of Luxor I remembered that exactly a week earlier I had spent my first night on the Khartoum–Wadi Halfa train. I drank my whisky while enjoying a shwarma and thought about the people who, at that very moment, would be breathing in vast quantities of sand dust on the train. After a while I thought that maybe they were not breathing in any dust because the train had broken down again. Just before falling asleep that night, I had another of those feel-good moments. I was very close to fulfilling my childhood dream and I could see that dreams do come true if you keep on keeping on.
The next morning, we were woken up for a warm and delicious breakfast of eggs, tomato, toast and coffee that was served in the dining car of the train and soon afterwards stopped at Gaza station, the last station before Cairo. Eight and a half hours after leaving Luxor, we arrived at our destination.
I was in Cairo.
It was still early in the morning and I had to take a taxi to my Cairo budget hotel. On my way there, it suddenly hit me that I had been travelling continuously for almost three months, although it felt more like five. I looked around me. I could not see much because the taxi (yes, in Egypt cabs are called taxis) seemed to be travelling through underground tunnels.
Getting to Cairo felt, firstly, like a huge relief and, secondly, like I had achieved something big with my life. I had never felt that sense of achievement before.
It felt better than the safe landing on my first parachuting adventure.
It felt better than crossing the Comrades finishing line.
It felt like scoring a winning goal during extra time in a World Cup final must feel.
The only difference was that when I got back to Mzansi no one, except for Lulu and Nala, was going to welcome me at the airport.
During the trip I had been constantly aware that my failure to get to Cairo would make certain individuals very happy – for example, all those doomsayers who kept telling me, before I left Durban, how dark and dangerous the rest of Africa was. If for one reason or another I did not make it to Cairo, almost everyone would have said sakutshela – we told you so.
It felt good to have proved to myself that a small-town boy from rural Nqutu in northern KZN could travel more than 11000 kilometres all by himself to see the sun rise over the largest and most populous city in Africa and the Middle East. On my own steam I had achieved my goal, which is more than Cecil John Rhodes could say about his heavily British Empire-sponsored, imperialist, painting-the-map-red dream.
It had always been my plan to spend a few days in an upmarket hotel and have buffets, cocktails, massages – the works – when I eventually got to Cairo. But here I was on my way to checking into a cheap place. The thing about us black people is that we curse everyone, especially the black government (these days), when we can’t afford anything, but when we spend lots of money we feel guilty. Anyway, I checked into a very old and grubby hotel, dropped my bags and headed for the Nile, just in time for a sunrise cruise in a felucca.
Aswan, Luxor and Cairo are all built on the banks of the Nile. Cairo, with a population of more than 15 million, is by far the largest of the three. It was not as chaotic as I had been led to expect. The traffic was flowing freely. In fact, there was not really traffic to speak of at that hour of the morning. Most of shops were still closed and there were hardly any people walking on the streets.
Sailing down the Nile in a felucca simply has to be the highlight of my entire trip. I watched Cairo wake up, the sky turning brighter and brighter, traffic starting to accumulate on both the gigantic Tahrir and 6th of October bridges, the sun reflecting on the skyscrapers on the banks of the river. While drinking in these sights, I thought how I could’ve flown directly from Johannesburg to Cairo but had decided, instead, to do the difficult thing just for the fun of it and push myself to the limit.
At that moment, with Cairo floating by, I felt as if I could do anything that I put my mind to. I felt that I was truly and honestly the master of my own destiny. I found myself thinking that:
I could go one on one with Tiger Woods in a round of golf and win.
I could go one on one with Lennox Lewis in a 12-round boxing contest and win.
I could go one on one with Luciano Pavarotti in a music competition and win.
I could go one on one with Roland Schoeman in a 100-metre freestyle race and win.
I could go one on one with Michael Jordan on a basketball court and win.
I could go one on one with Serena Williams on the tennis court and win.
I could go one on one with Michael Schumacher in a 25-lap race and win.
I could take on Jennifer Lopez and Janet Jackson simultaneously on the dance floor and win.
At that moment I felt – considering my good looks, natural charm, not to mention adventurous spirit – that I stood a very good chance of having J Lo and Janet litera
lly fighting for my attention in the back seat of a limousine.
That is what doing the Cape to Cairo does to your already messed-up mind: it pushes it over the edge. It was a very emotional moment for me.
The felucca sailed on to Zamalek Island where the rich and famous live. From the river I could see the posh hotels where I had thought I was going to stay. Drifting downstream I wished only that Lulu and Nala could be there with me. Still in the felucca, with the sun rising in the east, I drew up this agreement with God:
I, Sihle Khumalo, while fulfilling my spiritual needs, accumulating
material possessions, nurturing my mind through reading, keeping
physically fit and trying to be sane most of the time, will take time off
to, amongst other things:
Smell the grass after it has been cut
Smell the soil after the rain
Listen to birds singing Listen to water going down a stream
Kiss my daughter’s plump cheeks
Hold the hand of a destitute and underprivileged child
Savour the abundant fresh and juicy fruits and vegetables of the earth
Appreciate nature’s beauty on top of mountains and under the sea and everywhere in between.
To which God responded:
I, God Almighty, will:
in a way
kind of
directly or indirectly
in one way or another
in the short, medium or long term,
overtly or covertly
single-handedly,
on my own terms without prejudice or favour
justifiably or otherwise
based on my own objective, fully informed judgement
after full consideration of past, present and future,
Dark Continent my Black Arse Page 22