I was startled: I had only very recently met a group of Bohra Muslims. On my way to Cairo from Calcutta, I'd had to stop at Amman airport to catch a connecting flight. I'd met them at the airport. They'd been stranded in Karbala for several days after the invasion. They'd been very worried, because some members of their party had American and British passports. But when they got to the border, it had been all right; the guards had let them through without a word. "We're Muslims," they said, "so it didn't matter." In Karbala they'd stayed in a Bohra hotel, they'd said — very well run, clean, comfortable. It was an odd coincidence.
"Why did you come through Jordan at a time like this?" he asked. I explained that the trip had been arranged a long time back.
"I traveled through Jordan too once," he said. "It was a nice place then. But look at it now. Have you seen the pictures on the TV news? They're frightening. That man…"
"I want to kill that Saddam Hussein," bellowed his father. "He's spoiled everything." The thought of that lost car was sawing into his flesh.
"This war's going to be a disaster," said his son, shaking his head. But he had a look of relief on his face: at least his father wouldn't be able to send him back there now.
"Did you ever come across Nabeel in Iraq?" I asked.
"Nabeel?" he repeated after me. "Nabeel who?"
"Nabeel Idris Mustafa Badawy," I said. "From Nashawy."
He thought for a moment and shook his head. "No. I didn't even know he was there. It's a big country, and there are so many Egyptians there…"
A pickup truck drew up outside in a flurry of horns. The washbasins began to crash together, the women began to ululate. The groom had arrived. Abu-Ali paid no notice. He was shouting: "…he doesn't know how much harm he's doing to his country…"
Many of the men in the room went rushing out to receive the groom. I slipped out with them, unnoticed. Abu-Ali was still shouting: "He has to be killed, as soon as possible."
Everywhere in Egypt people seemed to be talking of killing. In the taxi out from Cairo, the six passengers had all agreed that Saddam had to be killed. But then somebody had added, "And what about the Man here? Hasn't he got to go first?" This met with a chorus of approvaclass="underline" "He's going to die, the Man"; "…and if someone wants to kill him, he can count on me for help."
Never before in Egypt had I heard ordinary people so much as criticize their president in public, among strangers, far less talk of killing him, even if only metaphorically. I looked out the window, half expecting the driver to stop the taxi. But soon enough he too was talking of killing — the Iraqis, the Americans, Palestinians, Israelis, Saudis…
It was as though the whole country had been startled suddenly out of sleep and fallen out of bed, fists clenched, swinging wildly at everything in sight.
The fact is that it has been a long sleep, and on the whole the dreams have been good. So good that in the dreamtime Egypt has floated away from earth into the upper atmosphere.
For the past few years the principal sources of Egypt's national income have been these: the repatriated earnings of its workers abroad, Western aid, and tourism. Oil and fees from the Suez Canal follow, but not close behind. Life aboveground — where most countries have their economies — has contributed increasingly little. A few decades ago Egypt used to grow enough food to feed itself and export some too. Since then, in exactly the period in which India and China have gone from dependency to self-sufficiency in food, Egypt has reached a point where it has to import as much as 70 percent of its grain. To pay for its food, it needs foreign exchange. And so tourism has become a desperately serious business, a matter of economic survival.
Minds are hard at work thinking of ways to make Egypt ever more attractive to tourists, ever more fantastic. A year or so ago they hit upon the idea of turning a town into an opera set. Luxor, they decided — the ancient Thebes — would be just the right setting for Verdi's Aïda. It needed a fair bit of work to turn a real town and some real ancient Egyptian ruins into an Italian's fantasy of ancient Egypt, but they did a thorough job. Luxor got new roads, new hotels, and miles of brand-new wharfs along the east bank of the Nile. The wharfs are now lined with steamers, often two or three deep: great floating hotels, several stories high, with many decks of cabins as well as restaurants, bars, saunas, gyms, swimming pools. They bring ever-increasing numbers of tourists to Luxor. Last year Egypt had about two million tourists. Almost every single one of them passed through Luxor.
A very large proportion of the tourists come in the steamers. They are taken to the ruins and back again in air-conditioned coaches. The adventurous few take horse-drawn carriages. All the petty difficulties and irritations of traveling in Egypt have been done away with; the only Egyptians the tourists ever encounter are tour guides and waiters (the number is not negligible).
Outside the temple in Karnak is a large notice, prominently displayed. It catches the eye because it is entirely in Arabic. The notices at the monuments are usually in several languages — Arabic, English, French, and sometimes even German. But in more ways than one, this notice is not like the others. It contains a list of do's and don'ts for Egyptian visitors — don't make a noise, don't climb the monuments. It ends by exhorting them to behave in a manner "appropriate to Egyptian culture." I read it carefully. It makes me think of my aunt in Calcutta, who wanted her money back after visiting the lion sanctuary at the Gir forest in Gujarat. "Why," she yelled at the travel agent, "they were just sleeping, lying in the dust like lizards. Shouldn't someone tell them that they've got to behave like lions?"
I think of stealing the notice, but the tourist police are watching. It seems to me like an icon of the contemporary Middle East: something inestimably precious is found under the earth, and immediately everybody on top is expected to adjust their behavior accordingly. In this case the pipeline doesn't take anything away — it brings people in and whisks them through, hermetically sealed.
In the evenings, when the cool breeze blows in from the Nile, the people of Luxor gather on the promenade along the riverfront. The steamers are brilliantly lit. They are a bit like glass cases at an aquarium: they seem to display entire cross-sections of an ecological niche. The strollers lean over the railings and watch: there's a honeymooning couple, peering nervously from behind the curtains of their cabin, people sitting at the bar, a trim old lady pumping away at a cycling machine, the waiters watching television. The best time to watch the steamers is dinnertime. The tourists file up the stairs, out of the bars, and into the dining room. They sit at their tables, and then the lights are dimmed. Suddenly "folkloristic troupes" appear, dressed in embroidered fustans, and break into dance. The tourists put down their silverware and watch the dancers. The strollers lean forward and watch the tourists. Egyptians watching foreigners watching Egyptians dance.
What if the strollers burst into dance? I ask myself. What then?
In the meanwhile the steamers help to keep Egypt's economy afloat. But it would take only one well-aimed blow to push it under — something that would at one stroke send large numbers of Egyptian workers back from the Gulf, put a stop to tourism, and halt the flow of ships through the Suez Canaclass="underline" something just like the invasion of Kuwait, for example.
Of course, then there would be an increase in Western aid. The $7 billion debt for armaments might be canceled (as it has been). There would be no need for an economy anymore. The fantasies of military strength would become real. The whole country would be a weapon, supported by the world outside. Just like Iraq was, for so many years.
3
Fawzia was standing at the door of the new house; she saw me as I turned the corner. "Nabeel's not back yet, ya Amitab," she said the moment she saw me. "He's still over there, in Iraq, and here we are sitting here and waiting."