I know what has to happen next. It seems to be an inevitable consequence of daring to leave my deck chair by the hotel pool, with its yellow and navy stripped towel and white shirted waiters rotating with iced drinks, to venture onto the streets of Luxor. I know what has to happen next and I dread it.
They remind me of vultures, looking for weakness, circling their pray. Perched on the driving saddles of horse drawn cars, they clip-clop up and down the main tourist boulevard or wait, with watchful darting eyes, at the front of the expensive hotels. One man, off-white head scarf askew, pulls on his horse’s reins, slews his carriage to a clattering halt and sweeps from his perch onto the footpath. He flaps towards us, leather sandals slapping the tarmac, grey robes sticking to his arms and protruding stomach. He has a sweaty, welcoming smile and glistening upper lip. His eyes are black and cold.
“Hello my friend (‘friends’ are easy to make here), where you from? Ustralya! Chin-ese? Ni-how! G-day! Kangaroo! You want horse ride? You know how much? Only E£40! I have best prices in all Luxor! I take you see market, see Luxor temple, see East bank, we go Valley of the Kings! For you, I do special price. 35!... 30?.... ”
We have been walking for (what feels like) several minutes. He ignores Scarlett, the American girl I am with, honouring her only with a cursory glance. Long enough, it seems, to realise who is the weak-link.
“No thank-you. We can walk. That’s fine. La, shukrun. M-ge. Thankyou, but maybe tomorrow, inshallaha!”
He continues his sales pitch over the top of my protests. He grabs my arm and steps in front of me. I can feel his desperation and it breaks my heart. He swoops in for the kill.
“You know how much it cost for my horse to eat breakfast? E£10! I have four kids and business is not good and there are no tourists and my kids go school and my horse costs E€20 for breakfast and I have no customers todayss and you my first customer and I give you 20 LE to Templ….”
Scarlett comes to my rescue. "No, go away, we are going to walk!"
She is an American and not confined by that strangely compulsive English tendency to solve conflicts politely.
The turbulent years following the 2011 Arab Spring shattered the Egyptian tourism industry. In 2010, before the political crisis, almost 15 million foreign tourists visited Egypt, officials said; last year the figure fell to 9.5 million. In place likes Luxor, where tourism and tourism related industries (selling cold water at tourist attractions for example) is said to employ between 80-90% of the town, the effects of this decrease can be very visibly felt.
The famous sites are now unsettling quiet. In the Valley of the Kings, the desert silence is a welcome relief from the streets of Cairo. At the Temple of Hatshepsut, several ‘guardians’ lounge in the afternoon sun, leaving us to our own devices. Back in Cairo, scores of tanks, lines of armored personnel carriers, intimidating rolls of barbed wire and black-clad internal security officers stand guard over the entrance to the famous Egyptian Museum.
Mahmoud, a taxi driver, who, at 25, has found himself the sole breadwinner for his family after his father died last year, describes the aggressiveness of his neighbors as desperation. To put it simply, he argues, people change when they are desperate.
I am drinking a small cup of sweet Turkish coffee at a café. It is the second day of the month of Ramadan. It is shortly after the call to prayer has finished and the streets are slowly coming alive again as people emerge from their houses after breaking their daily fast. The men stand on street corners while the women bustle past in small groups. They drink chai and double fist the powerful Arabic cigarettes- satisfying neglected nicotine urges from the disappearing day.
A horse drawn car canters past me and comes to a stop on the street corner. The grey robbed man sits atop his perch, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. I watch as another man jumps up beside him, a lit cigarette clamped between his lips. With the softness of lovers, he leans forward and touches the glowing end of his cigarette to his friend’s cigarette. The man smiles, his eyes a warm reflection of his cigarette embers. He briefly hugs his friend, they clasp hands, kiss cheeks and disappear into the night.
Jed Anderson-Habel