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166.
Baalbek, Lebanon:
This is a tiny touristic town built beside the imposing marble ruins of a classical Roman frontier city.
My Australian acquaintance has arranged to sell his splendid new automobile to a farmer here.
We spend the night in the farmer’s house--where we are offered an evening meal of lamb stew and sweet tea -- then enjoy exquisite music from a fine stereo in a dark blue room with scarlet furniture.
Our host explains that he is one of a 7,000-member tribe that tends hundreds of acres of marijuana in this fertile valley. He harvests tons of the stuff with combines like they harvest alfalfa in Nebraska, and then his children and neighbors process the plants into hashish. They don’t smoke it. They only grow it for sale, he says, and the Lebanese police and the army dare not molest his powerful tribe.
Later on some of the male neighbor tribesmen stop by for tea and talk.
They all carry beat-up rifles or Tommy-guns and during the evening they occasionally step outside and fire their weapons into the air just for fun. They seem more than a little insane to me and quite dangerous.
Our farmer, who seems to be the big shot, says if I want to make some easy money he will send me over to Germany (like he did my acquaintance, the Australian), where I can buy a nice new Mercedes for him, drive it back here and then he will buy it from me to turn a nice profit for me-- but it sounds a little too nice a project for a simple earthprober like me so I pass.
You know, if you are not raised in a mafia/family of thieves and murderers in Lebanon, you really don’t stand much of a chance of success by joining one and I was raised in a family of simple Lutherans in Albuquerque, New Mexico--so the exciting life of a drug runner hardly seems appropriate for me!
Besides, I want to write this report and what could I honestly write about if I got off the track here in Baalbek?! ...
165.
Beirut, Lebanon:
This seems to be a modern, fast-paced city. I check in at the Central YMCA and spend a few days walking the streets and getting my gear organized and in good repair.I am weary. My diet has been very poor. My money supply is low and I am not half way around the planet. It is too easy to feel depressed. What I need is a vacation from traveling!At the YMCA I meet an Australian traveler who knows of a valley near Beirut where I can simply camp out. But before he takes me there, I go in his car with him to Baalbek, the “City of the Sun”.On the highway crossing the mountains inland from the seaside city of Beirut, we pass a few tanks and military trucks with “UN” markings. These are evidently “peace-keepers” withdrawing from the Syrian/Israel border. The local people expect more conflict because, as they say, “When the teacher leaves the room, the naughty boys fight.” ...
164.
Back into the Cairo Museum without Doc.
I stand flesh eyeball to stone eyeball with the gods of the past wondering if the human drama will just go on like this forever and ever.
And I am having money trouble.
The Egyptian government confiscates all checks and cash that are mailed into the country. I am down to literally my last nickel when the American Express Office in the Cairo Hilton--remembered for it’s fine toilet paper--cashes a personal check for me.
So, after a not much fun week of Cairo alone, I fly to Lebanon. ...
163.
Back to Cairo: We return by train.
Before she goes back to the states, Doc wants to go souvenir shopping at the old market, the “Khan Al Khalili”, now decorated for the most important religious season of the Moslem year, “Ramadan”.
One of the young merchants we meet in the market invites us to join him in his home in Old Cairo for an after-sunset feast, since he must fast from sunrise to sunset.
When we visit, he serves us grapes, dates and holiday delicacies.
Our last few days together are pleasant but Doc must be returning to her studies in America and I want to continue my earthprobing to the east, so it is “farewell, Doc and bon voyage”!
After Doc’s departure I find that walking alone in Cairo is not so easy.
When I am looking for the Lebanese Embassy on foot, for example, I am stopped before crossing one of the Nile’s bridges by a group of soldiers who think I might be carrying explosives to wreck the bridge in my bag.
As an obvious foreigner and as a single man it seems I am suspected by everyone of being an enemy agent.
I can't blame the bridge guards for their caution. They fought a war just a year ago and they are justifiably paranoid.
There is a lot of pressure under the surface here and everyone expects more fighting to break out--since it always has. They just don’t know when.
Governments rise and fall; wars are fought and forgotten, people and nations come and go. My generation seems to be no different from the numberless generations that have gone before--though there seem to be unique opportunities for change here and now
Fate deals the hand and we play it out as well as we can....
162.
Alexandria, Egypt: We came down here by train.
The Doc has some contacts in this city, which turn out to be very rich, so one of the first things we do is go for an afternoon sail in the yacht harbor. Everyone in the Alexandria Yacht Club speaks French.
Next day we are invited to a party at a private beach forty kilometers out of town. The other guests are ten young men who are army officers and about the same number of single young women. We spend the entire day listening to dirty jokes told by the soldiers. One joke I remember which is not dirty is about the reason Egypt lost the “Six-day War” with Israel. “We lost because to save money our tanks were manufactured with only one gear, but the gear was reverse!”
Most of the young people I meet at the party want to immigrate to America. I meet one young man who is quite determined. His family has saved enough money to send him to New York with a thirty-day tourist visa. He hopes to find some American woman willing to marry him during the thirty days and use that marriage as a key to US citizenship. When he gains his US citizenship he hopes to bring over his entire family. I don’t know what the rules for gaining citizenship are at this time but it may work.
Some of the young women I meet suggest I could marry them so they could become US citizens. They say their families would even pay me quite well for the service and we didn't have to be "really married". Somehow this does not seem to me like a particularly honorable thing to do or a very solid foundation for a marriage relationship.
The Egyptians I meet all say they like America and Americans. Many have relatives in the states and most of the young ones would like to attend a university in the USA. They are generally afraid of the USA’s pro-Israeli policies and, of course, fear our ICBM’s and atomic weapons.
I watch American TV programs with Arabic dubbing and dance with the pretty daughters of Doc’s contacts to American music.
Alexandria’s museum has some interesting leftovers from the various conquerors that have passed through—the Greeks, the Romans and the rest, but there seems to be absolutely no trace of the famous but very well-burned library....
161.
The famous “King’s Chamber” is empty except for the mysterious “stone box”, which some think was a sarcophagus for a pharaoh’s mummy, but which is obviously too small for such a use.
The way they buried the old pharaohs, in coffin within coffin and sarcophagus inside sarcophagus make the idea preposterous.
I hop into the box myself but cannot lay down straight though I am only about six feet tall.
No, this lidless stone box is for something else besides a coffin, but I don’t know what!
If there ever was any thing else in this room--which was sealed and untouched until fairly recently--those contents were looted, dispersed and vanished long ago.
Even so--perhaps the vibrations set in motion by the very shape of the pyramid are still at work and perhaps being in this strange place is changing us somehow.
I have heard that the word “pyramid” refers somehow to “fire” and these geometric forms may be energetic in some currently unknown way. Well…
Previous treasure hunters have carved a big hole in one corner of the chamber and covered their work with heavy boards. I discover I can make a good loud drum sound by beating on the boards with my hands and so we four explorers chant “aummmmm” to a good rhythmic beat here in the heart of the great pyramid.
Maybe our echoes mix with some enduring vibrations left over from the great engineers who envisioned and built this place.
We’re here, Imhotep! The scattered pieces of Osiris are coming together again!!...
160.
We spend a day or so exploring the ruins of Karnak but the constant ferocious heat is getting to the Doc. She is not a born desert rat like I am so we catch the train back to Cairo,
In Cairo, we visit the pyramids again in the company of young VSO couple we meet at our pension hotel-- for another daytime visit.
Guides and guards swarm at the entrance hole into the Great Pyramid but somehow we manage to sneak by them and enter the mysterious tunnels and chambers all by ourselves.
Dim electric light bulbs hanging from open wires here and there provide a little light but the place is spooky enough for anyone. It is very old. Even the polished granite in the steep main corridor shows signs of wear. The high vault for sciences forgotten and the giant slide for equipment unknown stand empty, of course, as they were when the entrance was forced.
Wandering further into the pyramid, we find and climb a modern catwalk installed for tourists, then pass through a hole punched through a solid stone seal and emerge into a rectangular “time capsule”: the “King’s Chamber”.
I think: “it is older than I remember”, but know logically, of course, that I can have no memory at all of this place except in my imagination....
159.
And here are the mortal remains of the youthful king himself still encased in his golden sarcophagus. Tutankhamen is the only one of his peers to be at rest in his original tomb. I feel humble and strange to be in such intimate proximity to such a famous body and this is one of those human experiences that really cannot be described in words--at least not by me--but the tomb and it’s ancient occupant are certainly awe-inspiring, beautiful and unique.Out into the oven then back down into other cool underground tombs.
Some are painted with interesting murals, but all are empty. Obsequious guards offer to unlock more tombs for us to explore but we don’t have the necessary baksheesh and what we have seen for the regular park entrance fee was enough. ...
158.
In the morning we are up before dawn to catch the first ferry across the Nile. We want to visit the “Valley of the Kings” where the tombs of the pharaohs are located on the far side of the river and people say it is a short ride by bicycle from the ferry landing. So first we rent a couple of well-used bikes. Reaching the other side of the muddy river, we peddle down an empty country road flanked by empty fields. We pass between the much-ruined stone Statues of Memnon--which used to sing at dawn, they say, but are now mute. Kids come running from houses across the fields to trot beside us as we ride--yelling good-naturedly for “baksheesh”—the local equivalent of “cadeau”. The road turns left toward the hills. As soon as we leave the irrigated fields bordering the Nile we enter a short, very dry arroyo. Good heavens! This little dry gulch is the fabulous, world famous “Valley of the Kings”!Cyclone fencing surrounds the whole ravine. But before we can reach the gate into the “park” men and children offering imitation antiques and other touristic junk block our way. After a short but serious struggle we break through the swarm, pay the entrance fee and soon walk down a stone ramp right into King Tut’s famous tomb!It’s nice and cool!...
157.
Doc’s figure is slim and athletic and in the shapeless khaki pants and shirts she wears she can usually “pass” for male here though if we were in Europe or America where women are a bit more liberated she would probably be recognized instantly as an attractive young woman.
But Moslem women must dress like “women”, period, and there are customs and rules here defining correct female dress.
Veils are apparently not mandatory and some of the younger girls dress in a very provocative “western” style: mini-skirts and lots of make-up—but at whatever age they always look like females.
Since I do almost all of the talking and we both wear our longish hair in ponytails, I guess she is often mistaken for the “lean silent type” of young man here.Doc has traveled alone a lot and usually wears unsexy outfits like her present garb since she finds men-on-the-make: the traditional leering Mexican or groping Italian, boring. Frankly, I am so accustomed to liberated young women in America that I never even noticed how she was dressed. ...
156.
A railroad follows the Nile south to Luxor where many monuments built by the old people still stand and we want to visit them, so as soon as we can we are on the train rolling through cornfields and date palm groves. The villages we pass are made entirely of adobe and seem old and decayed.`````
Luxor, Egypt: There is a big train depot here for such a small town, decorated in the “Hollywood Egyptian” style of the nineteen-thirties when the discovery of King Tut’s tomb made this place a huge tourist hit.
The daytime temperature is beastly hot but we rent bicycles and peddle around in the early mornings and late afternoons.
The best ruins in Luxor have a “sound and light” show every evening with English commentary which we can hear standing outside the wall but our limited funds make the show out of bounds for us.
As we walk past the ruins, we hear folk music coming from a little house nearby and, finding us listening on the sidewalk, the residents come out and welcome us to enter and enjoy their Imam Hussein Festival. They merrily treat us to their holiday foods: okra soup, roast lamb, rice and bread and after smoking their ceremonial Marlboro cigarettes together, they lead us down the street to their tiny mosque where we sit while a man chants several chapters from the Koran very beautifully. Our English-speaking impromptu host has introduced himself as a student from the Institute of Language and Translation of Karnak. Doc is the only woman present in the mosque this evening perhaps, I think, because she is mistaken for a man.
Tall and dressed like a sahib or an archaeologist, she regularly wears “men’s style clothing” while in Egypt in order to be comfortable and to circumvent the Moslem customs relegating women to a very subservient role, which she declares is sexist and stupid. And, of course. As a liberated young American woman, she never wears make-up.
As a matter of fact her “male” costume and appearance may be the only reason we were allowed to go together inside the Mohammad Ali mosque in Cairo, but I am just beginning to understand some of the peculiarities of the Islamic way of life.
It was not too bad we missed the expensive sound and light show.
...
155.
Probably anything to do with tourists and the pyramids must have Egyptian bureaucratic approval, but since tonight is the full moon and we are in a hurry, we decide to celebrate the occasion on top of the “red” pyramid, Mankara, without getting any official permission.
We wait until sunset and then once again catch the Giza bus. The tremendous geometric mountains again loom in the bright moonlight. We cautiously sneak through the rows of ruined tombs in the sand to the side of the pyramid, which is in the blackest moon-shadow, and begin our ascent. The pyramids are built in tiers so the climb is fairly easy—like scrambling up a giant staircase.
A galloping horse below makes us freeze into the darkest of the shadows as we remember the rifles of the guards we met on our first pyramid expedition. When it is quiet again and we feel safe we continue our climb and in less than half an hour stand on the irregular stones at the apex of the pile.
Almost directly above us now, the full moon illuminates the ancient causeway below, used as we suppose, by devotees of Amon and Ra.
On my right are three much lesser pyramids and, on my left the huge silent pyramids of Korfu and Kephra and behind me; the desert. ...
