“All boats in Egypt are five star, but not all boats are five star,” pronounced our driver cheerfully as we pulled up to the harbour, about to board the boat that would carry my friend Elissa and I along the Nile for the next two days. “Some are five star, some are four star, some are three star…” He jumped out to see what ours was. Scrap the tour itinerary and its “5-Star-Cruise Boat.” Turned out, however, our boat, Magic, was pretty nice, and as we drifted down the river from Aswan to Luxor, I discovered cruising is perhaps the ideal way to travel. We had started the whole expedition two nights before with a 14 hour train ride from Cairo to Aswan in southern Egypt, a packed day on arrival and a 3am wake up the “next” “day” to see the magnificent tombs of Abu Simbel. Abu Simbel is a place that really catches you, not like some historic sites that look like a postcard you’ve seen a hundred times – the greatness of it is palpable, Ramses sitting there four times, each of him 20 meters high, his numerous wives featured at 2 meters high, the whole thing dragged up a mountain as the waters of Lake Nasser encroached upon it following the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Clearly preservation of 3,000 year old massive stone carvings and wall to wall hieroglyphics was not on the top of the dam developers’ minds.
Magic was a welcome change of pace from the hustle of sightseeing and lack of sleeping, and we floated blissfully down the river, surrounded by retired Germans with experienced tans and ballooning bellies. At risk of sounding shallow, I’ll now turn from ancient world heritage sites to tell you about Khaled and the cruise men. Being two of three girls on board under the age of 60, it didn’t take long for us to garner a little attention from the young, all male staff who seemed to lie in wait like drooling flies for the catch of the day to come in. Chief among them was Khaled, who approached us almost as soon as we’d stretched out our albino ankles on the chaise lounges. About 24 years of age, he wore sneakers and faded jeans, the butt sinking low, “Massage” written on the back of his baby blue T-shirt. Bee-lining over to us, he stammered: “Can you give me a 5 minute hand j…Ah! I mean, can I give you a five minute hand massage?” He proceeded to stroke Elissa’s hand, as she attempted to focus her gaze on the deck railing. Lucky for me, the crew called tea time and everyone on board flocked to pick up their Nescafe and cookies as if they’d been labouring in the salt mines for hours since the all-you-can eat lunch buffet two hours before. Upon my return, Khaled was finishing up, but we had a feeling he would soon return.
Sure enough, that evening we found ourselves sneaking off the boat to have tea and shisha with him, following the instructions of some covert operation which he had conjured up in a hurry (or been planning ever since he first laid finger on Elissa’s thumb). While the portly Germans tottered off to marvel at the temple of somethingorother, Khaled marvelled at Elissa. I was there too. A few sips of tea in, Khaled played his cards. “I like you. I like you very much,” he stated, and then that question that’s always a little awkward 10 minutes into a first “date”: “Do you like me?” He found Elissa’s smile “beautiful”. Mine was not, I have to assume. I offered to leave them, but Elissa was not too keen. At some point musicians and dancers showed up and we were dragged up to twirl, and twiddle on the violin-like instruments that sound hideous if you don’t know what you’re doing. Blessedly for everyone in a 100 metre radius, that experience was short-lived, and we soon retreated back to the boat, Khaled skulking along three minutes behind us.
Later that evening, Elissa and I gave the boat bar a try. “Unnnnbreak my heeeaarrt, say you’ll love me againnnn… unnndo this hurt…” droned through the place, making the few unsmiling people in the room smile less. Khaled must have been DJing. By the end of the trip, we’d heard that song in hotel lobbies, restaurants and our weary heads far too many times. Egypt seems to have a love affair with western heartbreak music. There’s an elevator up to a popular rooftop bar in Cairo that starts “My heart will go on” as soon as the doors close, perhaps a bad omen for the couples heading up on their dates. The grocery store I shop in has a music loop about 5 songs long, at least one or two of which is also “My heart will go on”. Celine Dion is a household name, almost as commonly known in Egypt as Canada Dry.
We saw Khaled again the next day as we lazed about on the deck waiting for an acceptable time to include vodka in our juice. There was a staircase leading up to the top deck where we were, and for the rest of the day we saw his head popping up every ten minutes like a gopher on a spring day. But it wasn’t Khaled’s happy day. No, sadly, he was left to massage the hands of others, dreaming of times gone by. The next day, we reached Luxor, bidding Magic and Khaled goodbye. we can only imagine his heart will go on.
tararachael 