Deja Vu
I
keep seeing the same backpackers. Now admittedly I sometimes appear to be
mildly prosopagnosic. For some reason it took me six months or so to
learn to distinguish Sophie Marceau from Catherine Zeta Jones, and the
words “You look familar but I don’t... ah well it IS Canberra...” have
admittedly passed my lips on more than one occasion -- in some cases
more than once during the same occasion... to the same person... I think. But the same backpackers really have
kept on appearing, despite us being on rather different itineraries.The Usual Suspects
The New Zealanders
- was on a daytrip with them from Amman up to the northern ruins of
Jerash, Ajloun Castle, and Umm Qais. Ran into them again in front of the
Monastery at Petra - they were staying at the same hostel. Ran into
them again at Dahab and ended up diving Blue Hole/Canyon with them.The Ex-Brit (now Oz) Teacher - was in the same hostel in Wadi Musa and bussed down to Aqaba. A week later we were in the same hostel in Cairo.The Australian Teacher and her Uni student son
- first saw them on the climb up to the Monastery, met them on the way
to Dahab, same hostel in Cairo, a week later the same train to Aswan.Hypothesis One
Could
this be destiny? Could there be some sort of... Higher Purpose in these
re-occurring meetings? Ancient wisdom decreed that the ancient sites
we’ve been visiting should be laid according to precise orientations of
the heavenly bodies, and it is the winter solstice period, after all.
Well, I was born with both Sun and Moon under Capricorn, and Mercury in
Aquarius, and those of you with an interest in astrology will realise
that this is precisely why I’m so rational and non-superstitious -- and
hence why this hypothesis is unacceptable. Anyway, no higher purpose has
yet been made obvious.Hypothesis Two
Could
they be following me for some reason? Perhaps, but then that’s a little
paranoid, those doing the following are not suspicious-looking for’ners
but innocent-looking Antipodeans, and besides no-one has collapsed
dying into my arms, pressing upon me a statue of an Egyptian gyrfalcon
and gurgling “You must keep it safe from urgh---”. No, there have been
opportunities aplenty to acquire large quantities of statuary, not to
mention spices, scarves, sand sculptures, perfume, and papyrus, but I’ve
been steadfast in my refusal. Furthermore, those providing the
opportunities have used less of the dramatic collapse technique, and
more of the “Yes? Hello? My friend? Welcome? Which country are you from?
Aussie Aussie oi oi? You want statue of falcon very nice?” approach.Hypothesis Three
Could
I be following them? Now I’m not consciously doing so, but it is a fact
that the nexus of all our travels was on the 18th of December in Petra,
a dead city of unquiet tombs. Could one of these tombs have been
unfortunately disturbed by a sextet of Antipodeans? They do say the
spirits of the dead can possess the living in their sleep... but then
again they also say that the positions of distant collections of rock
and gas at one’s inception means something special. No, I think it’s
fair to say that if I were to believe this hypothesis, it wouldn’t just
be an unquiet tomb that was unfortunately disturbed.Hypothesis Four
Speaking of Inception, perhaps we’re in a simulation of reality.
Although this may sound as absurd as the previous hypotheses, the
probability of this is apparently quite high - somewhere between 30% and
99%+. Simulation provides a solution to my Sophie Marceau and Catherine
Zeta Jones confusion -- they really did used to be rendered with the
same model. Sorry for getting a little Truman Showesque here, but what if I
were never expected to actually go to the Middle-East, and hence
precious simulation resources were never allocated in time to simulate
it fully. This explains why the same backpackers keep on cropping up;
why the same tour group appeared at the Egyptian Museum, Saqqara, and
the Mosque of Sultan Hussan; why Siddig El Fadil was working as a
security guard in Cairo; and why there were quite as many clothing and
lighting stores in the Downtown region as there were. Limited computing
resources also explains why I managed to end up staying in a building
keynoted by my guidebook (but not in the context of its hostel) -- there
are only so many fully simulated buildings in Sim-Cairo.The Yacoubian Building
Sharia
Talaat Harb is one of the major streets of downtown Cairo, running from
the Midan Al Tahrir intersection, where stands El Mugamma, the
monolithic seat of Egyptian bureaucracy, up to the eateries of Midan
Orabi. Number 34 Talaat Harb is the Yacoubian building, though its
entrance is easy to miss, being lined with displays of clothing from
adjacent shops and looking like the entrance to another clothing shop to
the casual glance; it's easy enough to inadvertently walk past it, as I
did on many an occasion. Its foyer is unpromising, with well-worn
marble floors, and grimy green walls. There are three separate airwells
visible as you climb the dimly-lit stairs. Even on sunny days the
airwells are dark and dirty, with decrepit fire escapes spiralling down
from the upper floors to the littered ground. The lift, however, is
charming: an ancient creaking thing of wood and glass big enough for two
passengers and the doorman, who’ll close its gates properly, press its
buttons, and return it to the foyer once done.“The
Yacoubian Building” is the title of a renowned modern Egyptian novel,
reportedly the highest-selling Arabic novel since its release in 2002.
Its author, who once had a dental surgery and whose father had an office
therein, borrows the building’s name and location but nothing else,
having taken care to absolutely change all the details of the building
and its residents so that the novel is entirely fictional, or at least
(given its subject matter) plausably deniable. The building in the
book/movie/TV series is in “the high European Style”, with “balconies
decorated with Greek Faces carved from stone”. The real building is Art
Deco, entirely devoid of balconies, and low on decorations, with the
exception of some handprints on the grimy walls of the first floor, and
“N Yacoubian” set in metal Art Deco script together with a decorative
design also in metal on the wall inside above the front door.The
Yacoubian building is full of suites. There’s a creator of wedding
dresses on the second floor, and a respiratory doctor on the third
floor, for instance. The American House hostel is split between a suite
on the fourth floor, where its reception, common area, and several
bedrooms are located; and a suite on the second, where the remainder of
its bedrooms are to be found. There's a peddlar who appears to sleep on
the first floor landing, with his goods bundled in plastic bags. The
hostel comes as a great surprise given what lies outside its doors: It’s
clean and bright with high ceilings, reasonably comfortable beds, clean
bathrooms with decent quantities of hot water, and paintwork worth
complementing the interior decorator on.Hostels
While there are ideal attributes one looks for, pretty much everything is optional.- Clean
bedding is good and having two clean sheets is even better -- a few
places have provided only bottom sheet and doona -- but there’s always
the option of using the sleep sheet if necessary.
- Bug-free
is Very Important. Given a choice between bug free but dirty and
bugridden but clean... well there is no choice: use the sleep sheet and
enjoy an uninterrupted non-itchy night anytime. Sometimes there isn’t a
lot of choice, though, and leaving the light and fan on can cut down on
problems.
- Comfortable mattresses and pillows - prod and pray.
- Hot water is a good thing; hot water that isn’t time and quantity limited is a bonus.
- A
room of one’s own can be lovely, but what’s backpacking without
spending a significant percentage of nights with 3-10 of your closest
friendly strangers?
- Secure storage... can be unavailable.
- TV in a private room is a negative -- there’s the temptation to actually use it; although TV in the common area can be ok.
- Pool? Room Service? Minibar? Hah!
I Hate Tourists
They
come in their coaches, with their badges labelling them as being part
of group X, and their guide perhaps bearing a flag or placard to enable
them to regroup when multiple groups intersect. They are a wave of
movement and obstructed vision and chatter, and they look at the same
things and they take the same photos. Tourists attract touts and
souvenir stands. If noone bought statuary, spices, scarves, sand
sculptures, papyrus, and perfume from in front of the Treasury, there
wouldn’t be a stall there to damage the magic. A general rule is the
fewer visitors there are, the more magic a place is.I Pity Tourists
They
come in their coaches, with their badges labelling them as being part
of group X. They only have a short while to experience Ancient Site: The
Good Bits Version. Their guide gives them the blurb, they snapshot
snapshot snapshot, and then it’s time for them to be shepherded to the
next Good Bit. They don’t have the luxury of time, of getting off the
beaten path and being able to sit quietly and absorb and reflect, of
being able to see things at their own pace. They don't have the luxury of saying “I like
it here. What the hell, I’m going to stay a few more days”.I Envy Tourists
They
come in their coaches, with their badges labelling them as being part
of group X. Their path is set; they don’t have an excess of
possibilities and the paralysis of too many options. They are part of
group X. They have fewer meals alone than I do.
Hypothesis Five
Independent
travel used to be more difficult. Way back in the day, if you wanted to
see the sights of the Middle East (and didn’t want to join an invading
Army), it was generally considered a good idea to spend a couple of
years learning Arabic, dress in a local fashion, dye your skin, pretend
not to be European, and hope that the tribespeople would let you through
their territory. There were no travellers’ cheques, ATMs or wire
transfers. You carried what you could carry. There were no travel
guidebooks, and above all there were no hostel booking sites.While
you can just turn up to a city, look at a ho(s)tels until you find one that suits best, it’s so much easier to do it on Hostelworld
when you can rely on the experiences of those who have come before.
Thousands of ho(s)tels are likely to be located in Greater Cairo
(population 18 million), but only 62 ho(s)tels are listed, of which only
5 have a rating of 90% or above. As backpackers, we're looking for roughly the same things in a hostel, and of course if one is booking on
an immediate-need basis then the chances of the top few hostels being booked-out
during the Christmas-New Year period is high. Yeah, that’s probably the
real solution.Pattern Breaks
I
don’t expect to see any of them again this trip. The New Zealanders
should have been home for more than a week, the Ex-Brit should still be
in Libya, and the Australians will have headed back north. I’ll be on a dahabiya (a small safari boat) with a small tour group on Lake
Nasser with somewhere between Aswan High Dam and Abu Simbel until the
14th -- there’s no other way to visit most of the sites on the lake without sailing there.
