Amitav Ghosh - Incendiary Circumstances - A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times

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 Canal: 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."

"Have you had any news from him? A letter?"

"No, nothing," she said, leading me into their house. "Nothing at all. The last time we had news of him was when Ismail came back two months ago."

"Ismail's back?"

"Praise be to God." She smiled. "He's back in good health and everything."

"Where is he?" I said, looking around. "Can you send for him?"

"Of course," she said. "He's just around the corner, sitting at home. He hasn't found a job yet — does odd jobs here and there, but most of the time he has nothing to do. I'll send for him right now."

I looked around while I waited. Something seemed to have interrupted the work on their house. When I'd last seen it, I had had the impression that it would be completed in a matter of months. But now, a year and a half later, the floor was still just a platform of packed earth and gravel. The tiles had not been laid yet, and nor had the walls been plastered or painted.

" Hamdulillah al-salama. " Ismail was at the door, laughing, his hand extended. "Why didn't you come?" he said as soon as the greetings were over. "You remember that day you telephoned from America? Nabeel telephoned me soon after he'd spoken to you. He just picked up the phone and called me where I was working. He told me that you'd said that you were going to visit us. We expected you for a long time. We made space in our room and thought of all the places we'd show you. But you know, Nabeel's boss, the shop owner? He got really upset — he didn't like it a bit that Nabeel had got a long-distance call from America."

"Why didn't Nabeel come back with you? What news of him?"

"He wanted to come back. In fact, he had thought that he would. But then he decided to stay for a few more months, make a little more money, so that they could finish building this house. You see how it's still half finished — all the money was used up. Prices have gone up this last year, everything costs more."

"And besides," said Fawzia, "what would Nabeel do back here? Look at Ismail — just sitting at home, no job, nothing to do…"

Ismail shrugged. "But still, he wanted to come back. He's been there three years. It's more than most, and it's aged him. You'd see what I mean if you saw him. He looks much older. Life's not easy out there."

"What do you mean?"