December - Conclusion...

Some Final Thoughts

I think I made this trip mainly out of curiosity.  I wanted to see some things I had not seen on my first trip.  I wanted to see for myself how Egypt was faring in the midst of all her troubles.  And I wanted to see if I could still cope on my own in a strange land.

Well, I did see the the things I hadn't seen on my first trip, and I did discover that I can still look after myself and keep my bits and pieces together, and manage to be where I'm supposed to be, when I'm supposed to be, all without any great panic or difficulty.

But as for poor old Egypt, it has become a darker place.  When I was there in 2011, there was such a sense of hope and optimism.  That is largely gone now - the Arab Spring has jumped directly to Arab Winter.  Do not pass Summer or Autumn.  Do not pass Go.  Do not collect $200.  

I did not meet anyone who was sorry that Mubarek was gone.  I did not meet anyone who was sorry to see Morsi gone.  The Muslim Brotherhood may have supporters somewhere, but they appear to have little support, and certainly none in the sector of the population attempting to make a living out of the dying tourist business.

People are divided over General el-Sisi.  Even his supporters accept that his leadership has put the country firmly into the hand of a military dictatorship.  (It has always been a military dictatorship, of course, but there is no longer any attempt to apply any sort of democratic window dressing.)

I met a little group of highly educated young women (masters degrees, flawless English, French, and German, careers in research).  They regard el-Sisi with a white-hot hatred, one of them in particular hates him so much I fear she will be seriously vulnerable to recruitment by any loony tunes group opposing the regime.  My concern for these girls is such that I won't say how many there were, or how I came to get to know them.

One day, a taxi driver was talking to me about what el-Sisi is doing to his beloved Egypt.  He had to pull over to wipe away the tears as he spoke.

On the other hand, one of my tour guides, a very devout Muslim who stopped for his prayers right on schedule wherever we went, is very much in favour of el-Sisi.  He loves the stability of a firm military hand.  What he doesn't seem to grasp is that this very stability is locking him permanently into the state of near-poverty that is the current lot of everyone in the tourist industry, even the top university-educated guides.  He is one of the many who happily put on blinders to ignore the appalling fact that the military government doesn't care one jot about the ordinary people in the street.  

One indicator of how little the Government cares about the ordinary people is how it is letting the tourist industry die.  There is proof of this everywhere.  EgyptAir, for instance, can get away with cancelling confirmed and guaranteed flights on no notice at all, as they did to me.  Elsewhere tourist services, such as tourist-friendly cafes are discouraged everywhere.

Outside the Cairo Museum, the tangles of barbed wire, the twisted steel poles, and smashed paving that were there in 2011 after the revolution are still lying all over the footpath exactly as they were when I was last there.  The only change to Tahrir Square, is that it is now a featureless blank space, punctuated with the tops of ventilation shafts for a new underground parking lot.

There used to be a really lovely little cafeteria outside the Cairo Museum, together with a really beautiful gift shop.  Both are closed now, as their reduced profits don't enable them to pay the exorbitant  rents the Government demands.   The same goes for the little restaurant that was in the Nubian Museum in Aswan.  The Valley of the Kings had a large covered seating area with drinks and snacks for sale.  The drinks and snacks are gone, as is most of the seating.  It is becoming very difficult to find a place to enjoy a break and a tea or coffee (other than the hole-in-the-wall coffee shops inhabited by the old men with their shisha pipes - and they don't want tourists infesting their little cafes).

While I was in Aswan another little cafe went out in spectacular fashion.  In a nice little park, on the Corniche, and near the rail station, this cafe was a great little spot for tourists to stop.  Because I had been stopping there for a cold drink every day, I was allowed me to take the following photographs:

These pictures were taken several hours after goons employed by a Government Ministry destroyed this little cafe because the owner could not afford to continue to pay the exorbitant "rent" they demanded.

There are police, military, and security services everywhere, even more than there were in the past.  In Egypt, a "police station" is actually a heavily fortified walled compound with watch towers, from which armed officers keep their guns pointed down at the population constantly.  It is not the sort of establishment you drop into to report your bike has been pinched.  The military compounds are similar, but larger.

In the middle of downtown Aswan a new security services building has been built on the Corniche.  Concrete barriers around it mean it is not even possible to walk past it without leaving the footpath to walk past in the middle of the road.  Taking pictures of this building will get you arrested.  However, I managed to get a shot or two from a felucca in the middle of the Nile.

This is one of its armed lower levels.  In the extreme left corner is one of the guns that is trained down on the general populace:

This rather fuzzy closeup of the gun gives you an idea.  I have no idea what sort of gun it is, but it is big enough to need very large wheels to shift it.  There are a number of these down the length of this level of the building.

There are more police and security people than there used to be.  The tourist police, who are meant to be there to protect tourists seem these days to be more interested in watching and controlling - or at least trying to.  A tourist police officer at the Valley of the King tried to take my mobile phone, as he thought I was taking pictures.  (He was quite right, I was).  I refused to give it to him, was quite snarly in fact, and he backed down.

The tourist police generally wear white uniforms, the regular police can be difficult to distinguish from the military, as they all tend to favour Khaki camouflage, though black is popular, too.  Police are everywhere on the streets, usually in pairs, hiding behind massive steel shields on wheels with little bulletproof glass windows.  Military usually are usually in larger groups and have a SUV or two at hand.  The security services are the murky ones.  They don't usually wear uniforms at all.  They dress like they have been watching too much American TV, all designer stubble, hoodies, jeans, and expensive sneakers.  They carry the ubiquitous Kalishnakovs, and have a handgun, usually stuck into the back of the waistband of their jeans.  The are often paired with a German Shepherd, the dog usually seeming to be the less menacing member of the team.

One morning, very early, in Luxor I was waiting for a driver in the alley coffee shop of my hotel, watching the early world go by.  A young soldier was passing on his way to work, just a boy actually.  He marched by with the arrogant jack-booted stride of an SS officer in the streets of Belgium.  He only deigned to glance at us in order to (he hoped) freeze us with a stare of icy contempt.  He was just such a sad symbol of the "them-and-us" mentality that drives the military and police forces.  Just a boy, and most likely a semi-illiterate conscript without the education needed to be retained and promoted once his conscription period is over.  In another year or two he will be back on the street on the receiving end of the next wave of conscripts.

The sad fact behind so much of the current problems is that the Military has no need of the common people.  In this anarchic, dysfunctional state, the ordinary people live in a cash economy that pays no taxes and receives no benefits.  The Government has no interest in taxing them, as taxpayers would soon develop a sense of entitlement and expect some services in return - rubbish removal, health care, and so on.  Taxes paid would have to be returned as services - no profit there.  The only service the Government offers at all is some basic education - needed to create a moderately literate work force for the industries that make them rich and the services that keep them comfortable.

Luckily for the Military, they don't need money from the common people.  The military is rolling in money.  They get billions from the US and Saudis, ostensibly for maintaining stability in the region.  They make another fortune from fees paid for the use of the Suez Canal, and even more money from their industries.  Talk about military-industrial complex!  The Military owns much of the heavy industry in Egypt, and are entirely exempt from the taxation, licensing, and regulation that hampers their civilian competition.

Egypt has been a totalitarian state from the days of the Pharaohs.  The main difference I see is that the Pharaohs needed the common people - they fed the country, made Egypt the bread basket of the Mediterranean,  and most importantly, they built the great tombs and monuments.  Today, the ordinary people are just a nuisance.

I saw a modern-day Egyptian princess while I was at Abu Simbel.  I was taking a break and sitting under a shady tree talking to a young tourist police officer who had thawed to me after I gave some children a handful of pencils and let them practice their English on me.  

A young woman came along - late teens, early twenties.  She was wearing a conservative but very expensive pant suit and carrying a very expensive designer bag.  (Horrid bag, actually, the sort of bag you see hanging on the arm of the sort of girl you see hanging on the arm of the nastiest sort of rich Russian.)  She was flanked by two police officers, not the usual run-of-the-mill types in their dumpy uniforms.  This matching pair were over six feet, and done up in perfectly tailored uniforms.  Coming along behind at a respectful distance was a knot of army officers, fairly senior judging by their age and shiny brass.  Behind them was a clump of ordinary police, managing a very credible grovel as they brought up the rump.   Who is she? I asked of my policeman friend.

She was the daughter of a general, amusing herself looking around the historic sites.  A motorcade of Mercs would be waiting for her at the entrance, to take her to her military corporate plane or helicopter at the airport.  Back in Cairo, the roads would be closed for the motorcade to take her home from the airport.  The roads in Cairo are constantly being closed to allow the top military brass and their families to pass. Closing the roads so they can travel conveniently and safely is a lot less trouble than trying to do something about the chaos on the roads.  You see this all the time - it looks like you should expect to see President Obama driving by, but it is just somebody's wife going shopping.

Despite it all, the resilience of the Egyptian people is a wonderful thing.  The young girls in their bright headscarves and tight jeans are proof that the Muslim Brotherhood is no match for Facebook.  Young couples shyly hold hands in the street now, something you never saw in the past.  I suspect that there may in time be other  revolutionary groups who will attempt to overthrow the military, but I suspect they will be more secular than religious.

The cafes in the poor and working class areas are bursting with exuberant conversation and laughter until one or two in the morning.  (I know this for a fact, as the cafes in question were directly under my hotel window.) They may have little money and few prospects, but they do have a wonderful ability to find joy in what is around them.

Would I go back again?  Very possibly.