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Vagabonding
Backpackers' ball at the Sultan Hotel
With Flaubert's 1850 letters as a guide, our correspondent explores the enduring allure of opera, orgasm, belly-dancing and other Cairo clichés.
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[03/14/00]

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[03/14/00]

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[03/13/00]

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A lotus-eating stay on a Greek island ends with a life-changing midnight encounter.
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[03/11/00]

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Belarus cracks down on bottle traders
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[03/10/00]

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What the film lacks in authenticity and artistic value, it makes up for in quirky moments of satire. When the main character joins what he thinks is a "freedom march," for instance, it turns out to be a gay pride rally; when he shows affection for his young American nephew, he is accused of being a pedophile; when he relaxes in his room with a late-day sheesha, the fire marshal kicks in the door and hoses him down. Although there are a few scenes that take digs at Egyptians (when the main character is stopped at the airport for suspicious-looking luggage, he declares, "It's OK, I'm an Arab!" and the other passengers flee screaming), the movie is certainly a reinforcement of traditional Egyptian values. Relationships take precedence over rules, individualism is suspect and family is more important than money.

When we return to the Sultan Hotel, our obligatory post-film discussion turns into a heated argument between Stu the Wrestler and Orgasm Girl about American imperialism. Relishing their roles as agitators, the two North Americans lay into each other -- Stu citing statistics and examples of how America is a benevolent, impregnable superpower, Orgasm Girl quoting stats and examples of how America is an insidious, bullying neocolonizer. Not up for the Patented America Debate (an endless polemic that invariably surfaces whenever strong-minded Americans share hostel space with strong-minded near Americans), I go to bed early.

In a way, though, both Stu and Orgasm Girl are correct: America is, at this moment in history, both a benevolent superpower and a bullying colonizer. The thing is, we of Team Sultan are -- without really being aware of it -- a manifestation of that neocolonial instinct.

Unlike its Persian, Greek, Roman, Arabic, Ottoman, French and British predecessors, this American-influenced (but by no means American-dominated) colonialism is affecting Egypt not by military occupation, but through global osmosis: through international wealth and the strength of the dollar; through free trade and technology; through the passive threat of standing armies and nuclear bombs; through information media and pop culture; through aid workers, the English language and -- yes -- the surplus of good-natured budget tourists from America, Europe and Japan.

Just as ancient Rome found it was easier to maintain its empire when it treated its subjects as citizens and contributors, and just as the old Arab empire multiplied its influence by incorporating the diverse practical knowledge from within its ever-growing borders, those of us in the Sultan Hotel are part of a dynamic, hybrid strain of what might be called (to use a word that is largely pejorative these days) an American-style empire.

Even in our $2.35 beds, even as we smoke sheesha, drape ourselves in kaffiyehs, practice our Arabic and question the merit of our own societies, each of us is an inevitable extension of our own culture. We are travelers, yes, but we also constitute -- to a greater extent than Flaubert and his cronies in 1850 -- a de facto, somewhat innocuous (and decidedly unpretentious) occupying force.

As I drift off to sleep, I realize -- with a twinge of trepidation -- that I've run out of original, legitimate reasons to avoid the pyramids.

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To travel the historical sights of Egypt is to invite information overload. Whereas less than 5 percent of Egyptian land is arable and the local oil output is a mere drop compared with Egypt's cousins in the Persian Gulf, this old Pharaonic land has repeatedly proved to be an inexhaustible source of ancient relics.

Just last year, for example, 200 new mummies (thought to be part of a necropolis that held as many as 10,000 preserved human remains), some of them wearing golden burial masks, were discovered in the western desert. A mere four months ago, ancient symbols carved into a limestone cliff -- believed to be part of the earliest known alphabet -- were discovered west of Luxor. Also near Luxor, the temple precinct near Akhmim, which is still being excavated, might join Angkor Wat and the Vatican as one of the world's biggest religious complexes.

Someday these discoveries may find a special place in the Egyptian tourist canon, but for now, none of them comes close to rivaling the popularity and allure of Gîza, Saqqara and Dahshur. Cowing to the inevitable, I arrange a trip to the pyramids on the morning of my fifth day in Cairo.

Next page | What the pyramids really mean