It is ten o’clock in the evening, we are waiting to tie up with the other motorboats and dock at Kom Ombo. A cloud of dark pollution prevents us from breathing, we stop for another twenty minutes, some of us put on face masks on advice of our guide. It is the second day of Eid Ramadan, the chaotic streets of the city are packed with people in galabeya, the sportsbars celebrate the one and only football demigod Salah, shisha is smoked in the ‘wedding halls’, the fastfood restaurants overflow with hungry patrons, the purification of Ramadan is finally over. None of them seem to struggle to inhale what is cooking my lungs. The degree of pollution seems to be part of a horrifying habit.
The situation is topping up the circumstances I have experienced this morning in Edfu. Six o’clock in the morning, confused mind, we reach the great temple by carriages. We are pulled by the horse Rambo, one of the few steeds that does not show suffering raised ribs, that does not limp, even runs in the fast lane through the ruined city of Edfu. Our coachman is very proud of him, he almost boasts in front of his colleagues, they are all young guys trying to make a living from this activity, some feeding their horse, others forgetting about it, perhaps that is why some have stopped running from fatigue. Are by chance these, the legendary Arabian horses?
At one time, the stretch of waterway connecting Edfu and Kom Ombo was particularly strategic. Coming up from Nubia, the Egyptians, then the Ptolemies and the Romans, secured their supplies of gold and other precious metals. At Edfu, the Egyptians erected a colossal temple in honour of Horus, the falcon god, during the era of Ancient Egypt. Then came the Ptolemies, the same ones who at Kom Ombo erected another temple in honour of Sobek, the crocodile god. Forerunners of the consensus factory, the Hellenistic dynasty of Ptolemies astutely maintained the Egyptian cult subjects, working to ensure that the pantheon of both pagan cults could gradually become syncretic, fostering political assimilation. Edfu and Kom Ombo are symbolic of this instance.
While our guide dwells on the fact that Egyptian depiction technique was much more refined, I note that later Hellenistic engravings were already distinguished by their propensity for perspective reproduction of the limbs, the body, and the plasticity of the figure, characteristics accentuated by the chiaroscuro lighting of our nocturnal visit to Kom Ombo. Less poetic is our visit to the museum of the local crocodiles, stuffed on display in front of us. We get there after fumbling through balloon vendors, bagged chips, rollerblades, children biting or selling cotton candy, bombastic speakers of carnival music.
We were actually supposed to arrive here in the afternoon, but the Nile traffic slowed us down. Last night we stopped for a couple of hours at Esna. There was us and multiple night-owl Greeks on the deck, to witness the infrastructural magic of the famous river lock. After a long queue of motorboats, we too overcame the Nile’s drop, transported 7 m upwards, and were finally able to proceed to the next marvellous stretch of stream.
As we descend southwards, we are in fact proceeding towards the Upper Nile, where the water level is higher, in the direction of Lake Nasser. I hope we will float for much longer. Like intruders, we snoop from our motorboat towards both banks of the Nile. I brought binoculars to spy onto them. We are mere spectators on a stage, where in slow succession the scene materialises. On the right bank are the agricultural plots, I like to think that they have remained unchanged since the era of the pharaohs, at least it seems that way, until the actors intrude: children playing football, rinsing on the river, families blasting music at full volume in some of the kiosks, many of them are happy to wave at us, smiling, sometimes laughing. Perhaps we are also part of the scene, even though we feel avuncular and guilty, by virtue of the barrier that separates us and them. A constant barrier, impersonated by our dock and the omnipresent security police who keep watch over us, monitoring our every step, to prevent the native population from accessing our surreal universe, a spell on the water. Who knows what they think of us. The police probably detest us. After all, we are frivolous Westerners imbued with Orientalism, weak, pale, oblivious to reality. But we are tourists, we count for 12% of the country’s GDP, Al Sisi has ordered his men to defend us, whether they like it or not. But instead, what will the ordinary people of the Nile think of us? We easily think we are luckier, but what about them? There is no feeling more special than to cross, even for an instant, the gaze of a couple of boys on the banks. In that moment, I believe we all become actors in the same scene, equal human beings, restored to a simple primal state, wondering at the end of the day the same question: “and you, who are you?”
So we float slowly southwards, amid wonder, amazement and fascination at what we see. Cuddled by the African atmosphere, dreaming of a bright past and retracing the footsteps of previous explorers, we wait for dusk to catch a glimpse of the colours, we complain about the mosquitoes, we catch our breath in the evening coolness. Then, sipping the last drop of hibiscus, we look towards the left bank of the Nile. And there, in the distance, lies a flat moonscape, the desert. So different from the fertile right bank. And in those silent sands, every question about the fate of the protagonists of this stage, who are the lives on the Nile, melts into the reassuring uncertainty of eternity, where we are all the same, returning, some sooner, some later, to the circular dimension of Nature and Chaos.
And so I will remember the evocative power of the Nile, in its primordiality.
I reflect on this, back on the bow of the motorboat, leaving the hustle and bustle of Kom Ombo behind, its tables of festively gorging people separated between men and women. We looked like four frightened fugitives in the middle of the village crowd, a while ago. I felt out of place. Now the idea of the dusty and cramped cabin sounds almost reassuring, even if I fall asleep at night just above the engine. Tomorrow morning we will reach Aswan, our arrival point, and our oneiric floating on the Nile will be over..
