The Apinautica - Chapter 8 Egypt (Part III)
I probably should have posted these Egypt sections in closer temporal proximity, being as the whole section was already written before I posted the first one. Ah well. On the plus side I just finally finished the Turkish chapter that comes a bit after this, and I'm thus finally finished with 2013! But anyway, for now, the third and final Egypt section! It began here and this is the second / immediately prior section.
Sunday, April 28th [2013] - It’s a two and a half hour drive through the fertile Nile delta to Alexandria. Here the terrain is green and agricultural, with occasional square brick buildings, sometimes whole villages of square brick buildings, with the occasional minaret of the local mosque.
“What are those conical towers on the roofs of all the buildings?” I ask Husam.
“They’re dovecots, they raise them for food.”
As we enter one of these villages just before Alexandria, to my surprise there’s banners over the main street heralding my arrival. We visit a beekeeping family: a grandfatherly fellow, his middle aged son, and his 18 year old son. We look at their hives and extracting plant - spinners and bottling machines.
Afterwords they invite us, Husam the driver and I, to a sumptuous home cooked dinner in their house. The wife and daughters slip in and out silently to deliver food to the table but are never introduced or mentioned, though a shy eight year old son is proudly introduced. The table is covered with dishes of meat stewed with lentils and spices, rices, vegetable salads.
“Try the bird tongue soup!” Husam says cheerfully pushing a taurine of soup towards me. My look of alarm is immediately apparent as everyone bursts into laughter.
“It does not actually contain bird tongues, that’s just the shape of the pasta” Husam informs me after the laughter dies down.
The conversation is in Arabic with Husam occasionally translating for me, or at least giving me general summaries -“we’re talking about politics again.” … “they say no one supports the Muslim brotherhood but they were the most organized when we had elections because all the other parties were just forming themselves.”
As we are afterwards driving through the twilight back towards Alexandria Husam mentions casually to me
“They invited us to stay the night there but we already have a hotel in Alexandria”
“I don’t care about a hotel in Alexandria I’d love to stay with a family here”
“Ah, well, it’s too late now.” he shrugs in a manner that conveys it doesn’t matter to him what I want. “I hope you’re ready for the presentation tomorrow at University of Alexandria, there will be many people with PhDs in beekeeping there!” he continues, seeming to relish making it intimidating. And it works, how can such an esteemed crowd not be disappointed with me?
Monday, April 29th - The presentation at the University of Alexandria goes much the same as the others, they are up to date with the very most cutting edge information there is to be had about beekeeping, but I talk about comparative methods, and they are polite. At least these people profess that they allow their hives to grow larger than one box. Someone adamantly tells me one person cannot run 500 hives alone, which of course is what I’ve been doing.
Tuesday I visit various beekeepers, a beekeeping supply store, honey processing and wax processing facilities around the town of Tanta in the middle of the Nile delta. I’m told everyone in this town is trying to get into beekeeping as those that are not are seeing how rich their beekeeping neighbors are getting from it. There’s two beekeeping clubs here in town, I’ll speak at both but must be careful never to mention one to the other because they hate eachother, a tale as old as time.
Wednesday morning I learn that some of the people the day before had invited us out in the evening but Husam had once again declined on my behalf because he didn’t want to. I remonstrate unsuccessfully with him. He wastes no opportunity to mention that on Thursday I am expected to speak to a meeting of the Arab Beekeeping Association, and there will be people coming from as far away as Kuwait and I better impress them.
Despite Husam’s fairly successful campaign all week to psyche me out for Thursday, the Arab Beekeeper’s Association meeting, in which it turned out I was merely one on a panel of speakers, was not nearly so painful, though I did meet some people from Kuwait there as promised. And the project is over!
In 2008 I had come to Egypt as a tourist, saw the tourist sites and paid tourist prices while constantly harassed by tourist-focused peddlers and touts - this time I had seen a more authentic Egypt, met locals living their day-to-day lives, who had extended genuine hospitality to me and given me a better glimpse into what life is actually like in Egypt.
Gosh I was young
Friday, May 3rd - Three years earlier while posting and perusing pictures of sailing ships on the photography website Flickr I had become friends with Deniz, a fellow moderator for a sailor forum, a young Turkish woman who worked as a third mate on cargo ships of the largest size. Now it happens she is on leave in Egypt and I am there too.
Laying sight on her with my own eyes for the first time, grinning on the sunny Cairo sidewalk outside my hotel, I’m struck by how beautiful she is, with her fiery auburn hair and sparkling brown almond gazelle eyes. And also how short! She has her nikon strap around her shoulder and, like me, black combat boots on her feet. I take her out sailing on the Nile on a felucca, and we stroll around town taking pictures. All too soon it’s time to go. Mohammed the driver obligingly lets her come with us to the airport (Husam was against it, but the driver has always been more obliging than Husam), and I’m off.
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Return to Dubai for a direct flight from there to Los Angeles. Seems like the opposite side of the planet, and it is, sort of, but the opposite side of the planet from Los Angeles is much further south, south of Madagascar, so this will be “only” 15 hours. Due north across the Persian Gulf, over Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, dull brown-green steppes far below. Russia, a darker green of Siberian forests glimpsed between clouds, and then an endless white down below. I watch the airplane marker on the map on the seatback display as it approaches and passes directly over the North Pole. The North Pole! I’ve been to the North Pole now.
Down through Canada, Washington, Oregon, and I’m back in California after a 33 hour day.
Of course Deniz (real name Asli) will later feature very prominently in the upcoming Turkey chapter. I feel clever with this renaming, as Deniz is both an actual Turkish name and the turkish word for the sea. Husam has not been renamed yet but I'll have to do that too.