156. Doc in Luxor

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.

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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.

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