Pride and Prejudice in Tahrir

Tahriris in a celebratory mood on Monday evening.

As we entered Cairo after our drive up the Red Sea coast from Hurghada, our van was directed away from Midan Tahrir by the citizen police that have established themselves there.  There are barricades and some barbed wires at streets leading into the square.  We could see that the square was fairly full, even at 9:00 on a Monday evening.  Not packed, but occupied to be sure.  After settling back in to the Shepheard Hotel again, we met up with our friend Ahmad Affifi, who walked with us down to the square to get a feel for the place.  We entered with excitement and trepidation, although Ahmad was comfortable, and we found the place peaceful, with an atmosphere that is a mix of carnival and political demonstration.  People were scattered all over the square, congregating in small crowds to chant, or debate, or drink tea.  There are tents everywhere, and people lying or sleeping on the plaza, there for the duration.  It might seem rash to go visit the Square, but on the ground here we can access the situation and see that one block away the streets are quiet and empty.  I am struck again by the difference between the perceptions one gets from the media (danger, violence, people injured) and what we experience on the ground (largely people going about their business). Regardless, we stay as a group, stick with our local guide who speaks Arabic, and make sure we have an exit strategy, an unfortunate and often overlooked requirement for foreign visitors and imperial troops alike.

Marchers on the Qasr el Nil Bridge, heading into Tahrir (as viewed from my hotel balcony).

People were very curious about us and asked why we were there, where we were from, and what we thought of the revolution.  Their understanding of America was filtered largely through pop culture, so we were often equated with some media figure—I was compared to a professional wrestler named Kane (an unfortunate association), and one of our students, who looks a bit like a hobbit, was pegged as Samwise Gamgee.  Andra, who has an impressive set of dreadlocks is constantly identified as “Bob Marley!” which gets old pretty quickly.  We were offered food and tea, and there were lots of smiles, picture-taking, and goofing around.

Street discussions, flags, street vendors.

But at the same time, the tone there is definitely serious.  The political messages around the square focused primarily on the martyrs of the revolution and on the determination that the struggle would continue.  There were banners and posters in honor of those who had died, a mock cemetery, and Mubarek hung in effigy from a lamp post.  Conversations generally centered on how to respond to the verdict in the trial and to Shafiq.  This is where politics is all too real and the need for careful strategy and debate are essential if the revolution is to succeed.  What “success” looks like is also an open question.  But the people in Tahrir are determined not to give up.  They are proud, they are angry, and they have had enough.  They have come too far to give up now, they are demanding justice, and the revolution will continue.  The energy in the square, even on a Monday evening, was clear evidence of that.

On Tuesday, by late afternoon, the numbers in the numbers in the square had swelled to the point that the center of the square was pretty well packed.  Not being able to get a view from above, I couldn’t begin to guess the numbers, but it was clearly many thousands (akin to the iconic aerial photos we have come to see now almost on a monthly basis).  By a strange stroke of luck, as I went to the corner store near the hotel, I ran into our guide from the Pyramids, Sammir.  He is former semi-pro basketball player and seasoned participant in the revolution, so an ideal guide, and was just heading into Tahrir to interview people, take video, and stand up and be counted.  He is a historian, and this is history in the making, and he (and the rest of us) don’t want to miss out.

At the edge of the crowd the conversations immediately began, with people asking what Americans thought of the revolution and election.  A common question as well is what people think of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Clearly most of the people in the square are very supportive of the MB, and obviously everyone there hates Shafiq.  And they wonder—do Americans fear the Brotherhood?  I try to explain that most Americans are either fairly ignorant or have a view informed by Hollywood and post-9/11 rhetoric, that most support the revolution, disliked Mubarek, and had mixed feelings about Israel and Palestine, and that there is a huge variety of views on all these topics in the U.S. 

Memorials to those killed in the square.

Clearly, for them, whatever fear we may have does not make sense to them.  One could imagine a Christian American asking similar questions of a Muslim and being similarly baffled as to why anyone would fear or hate us (although the thousands of “Christian troops” still in Afghanistan and Iraq and scattered around the globe might provide some explanation).  The Tahriris in the main see the Brotherhood as a benign group who is doing good work in Egypt, as having been brutally persecuted for decades, and believe that they would be tolerant.  Several men I spoke with insisted that Copts or Sufis have nothing to fear from the Brotherhood and that what fears there are stem from the biased media.  I’m sure I would get a different perspective talking to local Copts, and know that the situation is all so complex I will not be able to really get a grasp of it.

Although there is clearly a majority who hate, or otherwise dislike Shafiq, the country is quite polarized in terms of views on the Brotherhood.  There are some who see them as a real threat and a misguided mixture of religion and politics that will leave both the Mosque and the Government worse off.  Others see the Brotherhood as a noble and virtuous group that will help to correct the corruption and misdeeds of the past fifty years.

Sammir warns me to be sure not to be videoed, as there are some there who might try to misuse or manipulate the material (take some quote out of context to show who ignorant or anti-Muslim Americans are or something).  Point well taken.  One of the smiling young men I speak with, shows me his cell phone screen saver—a picture of Osama bin Laden.  He is a fan.  Sammir and I move on.

The chants from the crowd and various groups marching in call for justice for the martyrs slain in the revolution.  Shafiq had said he supported the revolution, and the crowd chants, “Shafiq if you support the revolution, why don’t you come down to Tahrir?!”  An older woman with full face veil, and who travelled six hours to get there, holds a sign that roughly translates as:  Greetings to the judge who as “dumped” on us and we are now swimming in it—a play on words from a common and much more respectful salutation.  

The caption of her sign was a witty slam on the ruling from the judge in the Mubarek trial.  Not what I expected from someone dressed like that, but that just goes to show you.

In Tahrir the air of the place is very energetic.  There is a kind of restlessness and anomie that is not typical of most social settings I’ve been in.  There are people of all ages there, from young kids to grandparents, and various levels of religious conservatism.  In the evening, the largest demographic was clearly the young men, and I don’t think I saw any women under forty there at that hour.  Some of them are there for the politics, some for crowd or spectacle, and social scene.  During the day, there are many more women, often congregating in groups together, as harassment is still a problem for women here (both locals and foreigners).  When there on Tuesday afternoon, an Egyptian woman with an English accent strongly urged one of the women in our group to cover herself more thoroughly and stay out of the middle of the square. 

Sammir does a video interview with a young man who says they are not waiting for the election, or waiting for anyone else, but that they are taking action now.  The latest posts from the April 6 movement reflect a similar tension between the desire for democracy and an unwillingness to accept the results of the election.  Their challenge now is to try to build a cohesive anti-Shafiq coalition with real commitment to tolerance, equity, and social justice.  Elections themselves are no guarantee of justice (as has been often pointed out, Hitler was elected, as was Stalin).  Fear-mongering, fraud, bribery, propaganda, smear campaigns, and intimidation can easily bring corrupt politicians to elected office.  The latest move by Shafiq now is to somehow blame the MB and Salafis for deaths that occurred during the battle of the camels—a preposterous claim by a desperate man.

What is clearly most troubling and dangerous about the current situation is that the military rulers and the super-rich (two groups with substantial overlap) are on the ropes, and they have a lot to lose.  The SCAF cannot like where things might head should Morsy be elected (as is expected).  More trials, seizing of assets, loss of jobs, or worse.  They will not go down without a fight, and it will take a great deal of political and diplomatic skill from all quarters to keep this from getting truly nasty.  The next two months will be crucial, and maybe better that we aren’t traveling here then.

Another great NGO--staffed almost exclusively by women (such as Nahda, in the white shirt).

On Tuesday morning we visited with Nahdet el Mahrousa (the “Egyptian Renaissance”) an NGO doing great work on social entrepreneurship and educational reform.  Afterward, our host Nahda graciously showed us around the neighborhood, taking us to the Café Riche, where such luminaries as Naguib Mafouz would meet to talk politics, and where some of the planning for the 1922 revolution took place.  The son’s owner offered to take us to the bar in the basement, where there was a printing press used to print anti-British pamphlets (the Facebook and Twitter of its day), and two trap doors in the walls, behind which the revolutionaries would hide when the British police came.  It was fascinating for us, as we excitedly snapped photos, but this was the first time Nahda had ever been down there, and it was only because she was with Americans.  “Why” she asked with a tone of genuine frustration, “are Egyptians always treated like second class citizens?”  It is a good question, and a sentiment we have heard expressed in various ways throughout our trip.  A teacher we met later that day, who is a dual Egyptian-American citizen lamented the fact that, simply because she has an Egyptian passport, she gets paid a fraction of her foreign colleagues.  She notes as well that most of the wealthy families here focus on teaching their kids English or German, at the expense of their Arabic.  My previous blog post on the tourist enclaves likewise reflects this two-tiered system.

The printing press used by early nationalist and Wafd activists to print pamphlets in opposition to British rule prior to the 1922 revolution (in the basement of the Cafe Riche).

Egypt is such a mix of tremendous national pride and at the same time, a sense of some inferiority and envy in regard to the West.  This seems to have started with the arrival of Napoleon, and was reflected initially in Mohamed Ali’s attempts to modernize and Westernize Egypt.  He traded one of Hatshepsut’s obelisks for a big French-made clock that promptly broke and now sits in the Citadel, a monument to misplaced priorities.  In Tahrir the pride is palpable and ebullient, and in so many of the youth we have met, but outside the square we are constantly confronted with a two-tiered society—the “modern” western elite and tourists on the one hand, and the marginalized and subaltern communities and voices on the other.  On some level, this division is really at the heart of the revolution, and I think I hear it behind the questions I get in the square.  The Brotherhood is a response to this tension, and Islam and Egyptian nationalism are counters to the gap between the pride and resentment.  In the U.S., I am repeatedly struck by the ongoing and insidious legacy of the conquest and slavery that were part of the country’s beginnings;  in Egypt the impact of colonialism and neo-colonialism likewise continue to profoundly shape self-conceptions and political divisions here.  The main anger in the square is against the Mubarek regime, but that regime, in large part, was both a manifestation and a reflection of a deeply divided society that is the product of a long history of authoritarian and colonial rule.

Whither the revolution?  No one really knows.

In our meetings with the NGOs and young people there is clearly great optimism, promise, and an alternative vision—genuinely Egyptian, capable, proud, Muslim, and cosmopolitan.   This is where the future lies, and we need to do whatever we can to support and collaborate with this generation of Egyptians.  We cannot expect these problems to ever go away.  We can wish for it, but if we do, we will be disappointed.  But we can hope to see some improvement—some lives made better, some people empowered, some jobs created, some dignity restored.  The contingency of political outcomes, and role of human agency in shaping that future, along with the whole raft of factors that we only partially understand, are all very real here in Egypt today.

All-inclusive: the political economy of tourism and study abroad

The gate at the Steigenberger "citadel."

At the Steigenberger Al Dau Club in Hurghada on the Red Sea we enter a gated community that is in effect a little country-within-a-country.  A sign that we were no longer in Egypt is the first sound of a lawnmower since arriving in Egypt.  In search of export earnings from tourism they import lawns to make the guests from Europe feel at home. 

The carefully tended little path of Western landscape in the middle of the otherwise arid desert.  The development here displaced the local fisherman who used to live there.  They were bought out, given new housing (and some stock in the new development), and now live back behind the "Friends Bar" and "Shade" and "Papa's Club"

This could be Orlando or Vegas or the Riviera, except there are still a few women in hijab watching their kids in the pool.

The food is almost all western;  the alcoholic drinks are free; and when you check in they tag you with a blue wristband that looks (and kind of feels) like a hospital or asylum bracelet.  It is, in their words, “all-inclusive.”  In a sense it is like being on a cruise ship that has run aground on the shore of the Red Sea.  At Abu Simbel we had the similar experience of being transported to another world, not so much of the ancient pharaohs, but one in which there are only Europeans or Japanese (and now some Chinese), all there, like us, to take pictures and post status updates on Facebook.  This is one end of the tourism spectrum—isolated, homogenous, safe, clean, antiseptic, and resource intensive—but it is where the center of gravity for tourism here is located.  And for all that it “includes” it is most notable for what it excludes.

My ticket to paradise--Hurghada's version of the Hotel California.

The political economics of tourism involves, as part of the larger neoliberal economic dynamics of the late 20^th and early 21^st century, two form of exclusion—local residents and cultures pushed aside and commodified in order to make way for the machinations of globalization, and the visiting tourists then quarantined from contact with the local culture to make sure they are not infected with any of the unpleasant realities of daily life in a country where 40% of the people live on less than $2/day. As cities and communities develop new economic activities (dams, factories, roads, strip malls, resorts), people living in or near those operations are forced to relocate, in a move reminiscent of the Vietnam War philosophy of “destroying a village in order to save it.”  It is a practice by no means limited to the Global South—in  Minneapolis there are communities that have been displaced by the needs of the modern world, such as Frogtown and Roundout where freeways created neighborhoods that constitute a form of urban refugee camps.  But in Egypt the dynamic is more pronounced, and we have witnessed several stark examples—from the Nubians in Aswan, the local residents of Qurna, and now the fisherman in Hurghada, whose wharves were bought out to make room for a strip of Western-themed bars, shops, and restaurants, where I now sit, sipping Turkish coffee and feeling angsty about my privilege.

One of the many orientalist establishments in Hurghada, catering to Western preconceptions of the Arab world.

There is the term coined recently for “environmental refugees” who are displaced by drought or other manmade environmental problems, as opposed to the traditional refugees that are forced from their land because of oppression or war.  In contrast, the Nubians, and other inconveniently located marginalized communities here, have been displaced by the idea of modernity—the Nasserist dream of making Egypt modern, up-to-date, with electrical power and all the benefits that it brings, or the Neoliberal dream of globalized and privatized monetary spaces.  Most of the new tourist developments are the product of the neoliberal reforms initiated under Sadat in the 70s, known as the infitah.  For instance, the sound & light shows began around the late 70s, when capitalism arrived at the antiquities, commodifying and converting them into Vegas-style attractions.

During our day with the Nubian community in Aswan we were taken to the ruins of one of the abandoned mud brick villages, which, as one student put it simply, was “sad.”  One could sense the lives that had once filled those spaces, the clear cultural imprint that shaped the structures, and the pain that must have been experienced by those ripped from the land—I imagine not unlike that of a parent who loses a child.

The remains of the Nubian village at the First Cataract on the Nile.

The remains of Old Qurna.  After a 50 year battle that turned violent at time, the residents were relocated into new model homes in the valley.

On the drive from Aswan south to Abu Simbel we passed Karkar, one of the new villages built by the government to house the displaced Nubians, built up on the barren desert plain.  It looks new and modern (with lots of lights and new homes), but nothing to compare to living along the river with its fertile riparian fields.  I think it is hard to overestimate the impact on a people of having their land just wiped off the map by the rising waters of an artificial reservoir.  To be alive and to know the land is still there, but submerged by a lake created to fuel a culture and economy of which you aren’t a part, is indeed sad.

In the encounter between “the local” and “the tourist” we see how the difference in wealth infects the relationship.  In the tourist centers the norm of isolating and separating the tourist from the local culture, is apparently based on the assumption that tourists want nothing to do with ordinary Egyptians, except for them to serve as polite waiters and staff.  Instead the tourist is hermetically sealed in a bubble of Western culture, in which they can experience what they think Oriental culture should be like—belly dancers, palm trees, exotic ruins, sun-soaked beaches, the Arabian nights, and relatively cheap prices. 

We're not in Kansas and we're not in Egypt.  We're in the Kansan imagination of what Egypt is.

What is clear is that when a culture of wealth encounters a culture with less wealth, the wealthy culture pretty much wins.  The Egyptian resorts cater to the visitor, not the other way around, which is very different from how tourism works in Paris or New York where guests are haughtily expected to conform to the local norms.  Here, it is not unconditional surrender, with elements of local culture seeping into tourist bubble;  there are some Egyptian guests at the Steigenberger, and they still serve fool (the staple bean dish) for breakfast, and there are no adult channels on the hotel TV.  If the Islamists continue to consolidate their power here, it is likely they will push back even further, and for all my unease with religious moralizing and anything resembling theocracy, I am not completely averse to this prospect.

Japanese tourists at Abu Simbel, a place largely devoid of Egyptians, except the security guards.

The affects of tourist economy are felt in the local ecosystems as well.  In Hurghada we visited with the 20-year-old Environmental Protection and Conservation Association (HEPCA), and they are worried about where the Red Sea coast is heading, with dozens of large resorts having sprung up right along the shore in the last fifteen years.  The new hotels have helped provide low-paying new jobs in the area, but the ecological and cultural carrying capacity of the region is being seriously strained.  They report that the fish populations are steadily declining, the result of commercial and recreational fishing, erosion and increased turbidity, and excessive boat traffic.  But they have won some significant victories in recent years with banning shark fishing, creating an extensive mooring system and creating the largest national park in Egypt on an offshore island here.  None of these issues are completely back-and-white or hopeless.  Good people are working on alternatives all over the place.

Yachts at the New Marina in Hurghada.  A far cry from the scene in Tahrir Square.

For those not isolated in their resort or tourist enclaves, the challenge of reducing poverty in Egypt appears overwhelming, particularly when looking out over Cairo.  For us, as we walk the streets and show up at the tourist sites, we are repeatedly forced to confront the question of what can or should be done in terms of all the destitute vendors, who are, in effect, begging for money.  To a degree, they are running a market, but their goods are so cheap and plentiful and their sales pitch so desperate, it amounts to something less than a “voluntary exchange of goods for money.”  We do spend a lot of money here:  going to vendors, guides, drivers, hotel staff, and to a degree this helps to alleviate some of the poverty here.  The flow of money from tourist to vendor reminds me of the biological process of osmosis in which ions in solution flow through a semi-permeable membrane, from areas of higher concentration to lower concentration.  Such is the case here with our cash, as we (a volume of highly concentrated cash) come into contact with a volume of low cash concentration (the bulk of the Egyptian population), and cash flows through the semi-permeable membrane of our wallets and ATM cards, via trinkets, scarves, and souvenirs, with a certain biochemical inevitability.  But it is an exchange fraught with problems, with the vast differential in wealth driving an unhealthy dynamic of desperation on one side and guilt-ridden charity on the other.  It raises questions about the value of us being here at all and the sustainability of this kind of economic activity.  This is the fractured economy, in which most of the poor are just kept alive on a life-support system of tourist dollars, with almost no hope of ever rising out of that state.

As we wandered through the ghost town of the abandoned Nubian village, we saw a dark hazy line moving towards us from the west.  At sea I would have said it was a squall line, but in this case it was dust that blew in with a fierce dry wind and coated everything.  One could easily feel that the place was trying to drive us back home.  But I don’t think this is the answer either.  There are alternatives to these inclusive/exclusive encounters, and lessons to be learned for working collaboratively and constructively on reducing the poverty and indignity fostered by these existing economic structures.  There are all sorts of sensible, kind, hard-working people who have rolled up their sleeves and are making a difference.  In our encounters with them there seem to be some lessons for how we can constructively join in.  We have heard repeated calls from those we visited with here to avoid simplistic ideology or rigid attachment to theory.  The local organizations that are succeeding seek practical solutions to the problems at hand, based on as much local knowledge as possible.  They do not get overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge, but are inspired instead by the enormity of the resources at work addressing these issues.  We can all do what you can to help those efforts and, in so doing, will be part of the most meaningful thing that humans can do—making justice more fully manifest in the world through creative engagement to address the pressing problems of the day (many of them caused by people trying to make greed more fully manifest in the world).

It has been encouraging to see how much the students prefer the direct and relatively unfiltered experiences we’ve had on the trip, and how uncomfortable they have been in these exclusive resort settings.  The less we buy into the model of travel and tourism being promoted by the industry mainstream, the better off we’ll be.  A model for sustainable tourism and study abroad can be found in the kinds of experiences we’ve had with the EYouth group, the Nubians, and in our unstructured wanderings through the streets.  It would be great to build up a network of young people or recent college grads who are studying English, interested in working on their English and in getting to know a little more about the U.S. and pairing them up with a small group of students, to tour around town, as we will be doing in Cairo in a few days.  A similar network of students studying Arabic (or other foreign languages) in the U.S. could provide the counterpart to this in the States.  This kind of tourism and study abroad runs directly against the grain of the travel industry here, but there are hints that things are changing.  The revolution in Tahrir has not trickled down to lower levels of society yet, but the process has begun, and with enough pressure, things can change in this part of Egyptian society as well.

Melons at the market in Hurghada--a bit of the local culture and economy still present in the tourist town.

Luxor and the Theban Necropolis

Scenes from our travels through the heart of the pharaonic antiquities.

A villa designed by Hassan Fathy, famous for his use of local motifs and materials.  This was near Hatshepsut's Temple and was used by some of the Polish team that worked on restoration.

This is was is left of "Old Qurna" near the Valley of the Kings.  Several people died in clashes with police in the struggle around relocation of the inhabitants to the Fathy-designed "New Qurna."

Queen Hatshepsut's Temple, rebuilt from the ruins of what was left after her estranged son came back and demolished the place.  She was the Queen who dressed as a man and ruled Egypt for 20 years.  This is also the site of the massacre of around 75 tourists back in 1995 by the Jamaa Islamiyah.

The truly impressive columns in Al Karnak's "Hyperstyle" built, once again, by Ramses II.

Classic scene of Luxor temple at sunset.  Beautiful to be there during the call to prayer. 

Delicate carvings of the ankh in Hatshepsut's Temple.

Mai Sia, Fardosa, Shakur, Mohamed, Andra, and our guide Marwa at Luxor.  The gr.oup is getting along really well.

Moon above the mosque that is located in the middle of Luxor Temple (which also houses an old church).  Layers of history and faith traditions there.

Obelisk erected by Queen Hatshepsut at Karnak.

Scene of balloons over the Nile from our hotel in Luxor.  There are lots of tour boats there, and it is very touristy.  The hills in the background are where the Valley of the Kings, Queens, and Hatshepsut's Temple are.  There were no pictures allowed in the tombs there, so I don't have any to post.

Hurghada Photos

A few shots from our stay on the Red Sea.  Unfortunately I don't have an underwater camera to capture the scenes from the reef.

Hurghada is full of stylized resorts intended to appeal to Western misconceptions of the Orient.  Ironically, once inside these resorts, they are generically western.  In the "all-inclusive" compounds, you might as well be in Orlando or Vegas.

Working with HEPCA, a marine conservation organization, on collecting trash along a stretch of the Hurghada waterfront.

Our haul.  We had several locals join us, and someone came to take pictures of the strange tourists picking up trash (which was a nice change from us usually taking pictures of the locals).

The rugged, dry mountains on the approach to Hurghada.  Very, very dry.

Heading out to the reef (from left to right: Shakur, Sam, Amir, and Mohamed)

Getting our instructions from Mike.  Once in the water, we saw all sorts of cool fish.  Dolphins joined us for a while, and jumped into the water and got with a couple feet of a couple of them.  Very cool.

Pure Life

Nestle's "Pure Life" bottled water.  The label reminds us that water is the only fluid essential for life, as if we needed reminding of this fact.

Swimming in the delightfully blue, cool salt water of the Red Sea, we see a profusion of life along the reefs—a myriad of brilliantly colored fish in all shapes and sizes feeding off the “marine pasture” of the coral and its symbiotic algae.  If left undisturbed, this “pure life” is a beautiful example of sustainability—a self-sufficient, biodiverse ecosystem in which the sun and nutrients in the salt water provide all the energy and nutritional inputs needed for all the creatures there.  It is a great relief to see that the reefs and water quality here are still excellent.  Even with all the mega-resorts and boats on the water, the reefs are mostly alive, and fish still fairly abundant.  We heard from local marine conservationists that the fish numbers are still decreasing, mainly due to fishing, and the subtle disturbances from all the divers and boats.  So it was better in the past, but I was half expecting it to be worse.  Lionfish, squid, dolphins, rays, parrot and angel fish, flute fish, and many more.

Part of what makes the water quality so good is that there is virtually no run-off from the land, because there are no rivers and no rain around the Red Sea.  So whatever happens on the land tends to stay on the land.  This boon for the Red Sea however is part of what creates such challenges for 90 million people living in the rest of Egypt.  At the Valley of the Kings I happened upon an elderly gentleman who stood out as the only person wearing a hard hat there amongst all the tourists.  It turned out he was a hydrogeologist and environmental engineer from Penn State, doing survey work on the fractures in the rocks around the tombs.  Apparently, during the rare rain events they do get here, some of the tombs flood, or at least get wet, and they are working with the Supreme Council on Antiquities (SCA) to try to seal up the cracks and otherwise waterproof the tombs.  He’s been coming here for years, working on various projects.  Interestingly he said that most of the funding they get is for more “hard science” projects that have little applicability in terms of the local, immediate problems.  The need here (a sentiment repeated by other scientists and practioners we encountered here) is for applied science with policy relevance, and which can be applied directly to the very basic, but pressing issues facing local communities.  These include a whole raft of water management problems, and as the geologist put it, with a bit of a smile, “The water dynamics around here are incredibly complex.” 

Just down the hill from where we stood is “New Gurna” a model community designed by Hassan Fathy.  They were relocated, like the Nubians upstream around Aswan, to make way for progress.  Their original homes were up on the ridges adjoining the Theban Necropolis, but the state did not like having them so close to these historical sites.  Their new homes, which Fathy attempted to make in a style that reflected local values and used local material, we initially hailed as a great success, but, as with so many well-meaning development projects, ran into a number of obstacles.  One was that the home were not designed to be expanded, and almost all the houses we see in Egypt are built with partially completed additional floors, for the families of their children.  And there were water problems.  When the British and then Nasser built the Aswan Dams, one of the many unintended consequences was that by raising the average water level in the Nile, the riparian water table rose as well.  In New Qurna, this weakened the buildings, which were constructed of hand-made bricks, and some of the buildings have collapsed. 

We saw the same problems in some of the other sites we have visited, most poignantly in one of the old Coptic churches in Cairo, the basement of which was believed to have been a refuge for the Holy family during their sojourn in Egypt.  USAID had funded a project to de-water the basement, with drains and sump pumps, but communities all over Egypt are faced with this challenge.

Nowhere are the importance and complexity of water dynamics greater than in Egypt, and on this trip we are getting a sense of a range of challenges and problems currently facing the Egypt’s water managers.  We are getting a sense as well of how none of the solutions or practices are without some downsides or risks.  For Egypt to move along the path toward sustainable development, it is going to have to work very carefully on managing the Nile.  The ankh is a sign of never-ending life, and one interpretation of it is the Nile itself with the Delta represented by the loop on top and the straight vertical line representing the Upper Nile.  The Nile, ceaselessly flowing seems about a good an example of a sustainable resource as one can find, and it is being stretched to its limit.

The god of the flood, Honum, at the temple in Kom Ombo.

At Kom Ombo, the Egyptians worshiped Honum, the ram-headed god of the flood.  In Luxor, and elsewhere, and in Ancient Egypt the river was seen as a god—Hapi—uncontrollable and in need of careful monitoring.  It was interesting to see a few examples of the “Nilometers” used by the priests to carefully track the water levels to get a sense of how large the annual flooding of the Nile would be in a given year.  

The Nilometer at Aswan.  Water would rise up these steps, with careful measurements marked at each level.   No longer necessary because Lake Nasser supplies a steady flow year round.

The river in its natural form had this annual pulse which is characteristic of most undammed rivers, and delivered a rich supply of natural fertilizer in the silt from its headwaters.  This enabled Egypt to produce the abundant harvest that was the foundation for its millennia of imperial greatness, and then rendered it such an appealing target for conquest for the last 2500 years. 

The god of the Nile, Hapi, a hermaphroditic figure of the life-giving waters.  I think this was at Edfu, but they do begin to blur together after awhile. 

In the modern era, beginning first with the agricultural reforms of Mohamed Ali, and then kicked into high gear during the British regency, this natural productivity of the Nile River was not deemed adequate.  The extensive irrigation system and cash cropping initiated by Mohamed Ali, formed the basis for an agricultural export economy (cotton and sugar) but by the turn of the century in order to increase production, more water was needed, and the annual fluctuations and irregularity of the river’s flow was a problem.  To address this the British succeeded in both colonizing most of the Upper Nile watershed, and in constructing the first Aswan Dam.  Nasser, embracing this modern conception of the river, with the help of the Soviets, built the mammoth high dam.  At Abu Simbel, the pharaoh Ramses II, is depicted making an offer to himself, Ramses the God.  It is a sign of his ego and hubris that was unsurpassed, at least architecturally, by any other pharaoh.  In a way, Nasser was like Ramses, with the government taking on the power of the god of the flood, Honum.  In damming the river, the Egyptian state became the gods, or at least tamed them.  It is quite fitting that his project submerged the old statue of Ramses, and that the restored temple now looks out over Lake Nasser—a monument so large even Ramses would be in awe of it. 

Our students "in awe" of the modern pyramid of the Aswan high dam, with its huge hydroelectric generators.

Lake Nasser, still the largest man-made reservoir in the world.  The Toshka pumping station would draw water from the lake to irrigate the Western dessert.

But these stories don’t usually end well—and in this case the High Dam has had all sorts of adverse effects down stream.  Most directly, it displaced thousands of Nubians living along that stretch of the Nile, and submerged dozens of temples and historic sites.  From an ecological standpoint the dam choked off the flow of nutrients down the river.  Driving north from Aswan we followed huge truck loads of “Prilled Porous ammonia nitrate” in trucks heading north to the Delta region, the artificial and costly replacement for the “ecological service” previously provided by the river.

One of many trucks we saw hauling fertilizer north to the farm country in lower Egypt.

In Cairo, the water issues mainly have to do with incredible pollution.  The press of humanity, and lack of trash collection mean that many of the irrigation canals around Cairo are literally choked with garbage and untreated sewage.  This was what the Mississippi was like in the 1920s through the 60s (although it was a somewhat set of circumstances to led to the dire state of the river then).  The fact that the Mississippi is much cleaner now than it was fifty years ago bodes well for the Nile eventually, but it will take billions of dollars in infrastructure expenditures to get there.

The partially finished, and truly enormous canal bed for the "New Valley" project at Toshka.  Stay tuned for stories about problems with this one.

The completed "feeder canal" that will provide water to the New Valley project.

With the increasing population and demand for food both in Egypt and globally, there plans afoot to irrigate a huge swath of the western desert.  The power lines from the High Dam stretch south to the Toshka pumping station, where the new canal project is still in progress.  Named after one of the now submerged Nubian villages, the first stage of the canal system is complete, and the second massive component well under way.  The canal bed is enormous, capable of truly creating a second Nile to the west of the first one.  Now it is a race to see whether this project gets finished first, or the huge new dam that Ethiopia has started building on the headwaters.  The project is backed by oil money, including from Walid bin Talal, Saudi prince who has invested heavily in the Toshka pumping station.  It sounds like an Egyptian version of Chinatown in the making with oil money now gravitating to the new wealth to be generated by food production and rising real estate prices in newly irrigated lands.  People have been coming to Egypt for their wheat since Alexander conquered the place and the idea still has great appeal, with modern machinery and engineering opening up new possibilities for new irrigation projects.  One can only imagine the huge unintended consequences of these grand plan.

In Egypt, a large percentage of the arable land has shifted over to cash crops for export, and the country now has to import wheat, which must also be heavily subsidized to keep the people quiet.  People who know they can at least get their bread each day are much more likely to remain quiescent than those who find themselves unable to afford bread and the government uses this as a political tool.  But the challenge of producing enough food will only get greater, as the population continues to climb.  As well, countries upstream like Ethiopia are in the process of building dams that have the potential to decrease the flow of water in the Nile.  The demands for this water, for all the uses to which it is put are steadily increasing throughout the watershed.

The drinking water then gets increasingly contaminated, particularly in Cairo and the Delta, leading then to the rapid increase in the sale of bottled water, and here we find a different for of “pure life” than that we encountered on the coral reefs off Hurghada.  This is the commodified version—bottled water—pumped from the nonrewable sources of deep aquifers in Lower Egypt.  Nestles’ “Pure Life” and Coke’s “Dasani” are everywhere, and we’ve been consuming bottles of their produces at an alarming rate.  The importance of water in this place is no more evident than in Aswan, where going for even an hour without drinking leaves at least me parched and slightly dizzy.  The high temperature hovers around 115 there, but everywhere we go we are chugging bottled water.  Add to the heat, the problem of contamination (which has wrecked havoc with all of our digestive systems at some point on the trip), and you have a golden opportunity for bottled water sales.  The multinationals have responded, and as long as government spending on upgrading the municipal drinking water supplies stays low, they will have steady business. 

A typical day's trash in our van.  Recycling is mostly non-existent here, except at some of the higher end hotels, and via the zebeleem (the people who make a living by collecting and sorting trash).

Add this all up, and you have a situation that appears to be increasingly unsustainable.  The river keeps flowing, but its flow is decreasing, the costs of cleaning it, controlling it, fertilizing it, and diverting it increase, as the upstream countries increase their use.  Should the revolution succeed, the water management agenda should provide a great set of projects for the new generation of Egyptian rulers to tackle.  For a country that produced the Pyramids and Al Karnak, and is full of so many bright, energetic, and dedicated people, I am confident they will be able to face the challenge, as long as the new government has a genuine interest in taking on projects that truly benefit everyone rather than line their own pockets.  And there is little time to waste.