jencat | Egypt, and not getting political

I've been a little glued to the news channels for the past few days, watching Cairo with a kind of heartsick fascination. I've rarely visited a city that caught my imagination so utterly, for all that I saw comparatively very little of it. I have an overwhelming memory of the first time I stepped out onto the hotel balcony and saw the traffic streaming, dozens of lanes wide, across the October 6th bridge, and how hypnotic the view became when the sun came down and the lights came on. I could live without seeing the southern temples and tombs again, for all that they were immensely impressive, but I have spent the past two years convinced I would go back to Cairo again.

It's a little sickening, staying somewhere like the Hilton in a city like that (and it wasn't exactly a personal choice but that's package holidays for you. They are Not Generally My Thing) but it meant that the footage streaming on the news channels (and Aljazeera English especially) became very familiar. The bus station under the bridge where thousands of protesters were marching past is right infront of the Ramses Hilton. The museum is across the road and round the corner. The torched ruling party headquarters, then, was right next to that.

It wasn't that you couldn't get a sense of how unpopular Mubarak was/is/has always been while you're there, if you cared to listen at all. Our Egyptian tour guides were pretty upfront about it, both in the city and on the Nile cruise, but the sense was always there that, hey, that's life and what the hell are you going to do about it?

Tunisia was pretty surprising, but I don't think it was exactly expected that Egypt was going to kick off next, and not quite like this. I keep watching the news with a sense of dread - on one level because one of my mother's Australian cousins has been living in Cairo for some of the year for a long time now, and so far as we can tell his parents and kids in Perth haven't heard from him as of yet. Not surprising, given the international phone/internet blackout, and there certainly haven't been any anti-British/Aus sentiments (he was born here originally) so far as I can see. But worrying, nonetheless.

On the other hand, you can pretty much see the tourist economy collapsing before your eyes. And tourism obviously keeps so many many things going that I can't actually imagine what Luxor will look like this week, without (i'm assuming) the hordes. It's winter, peak season, and they're evacuating thousands already. I haven't heard a peep about there being trouble in Luxor, even after the FO started advising against travel there, and it almost seems premature. You could almost have a trip to Egypt and pretend that absolutely nothing was wrong, spend a week cruising up the river from Luxor to Aswan and back, and then off to Sharm, because (so far as I could see) nobody's protesting there right now? It's not being reported if they are...
A lot of people on those holidays seem to spend a lot of time pretending they're not travelling in a real place populated by actual local people, and they get away with behaving however the hell they want to behave because they're keeping the local economy going. It's not pretty though.

It's preying on my mind, which is absurd on several levels as I'm nowhere near the place and only vaguely understand what's going on from where I'm sitting. But it's because Egypt was one of those places where I felt uncomfortable a lot of the time while I was visiting... where it doesn't necessarily feel right being a traveller. It definitely doesn't feel right being a common or garden tourist, but what can you do? The money's got to come from somewhere. (don't get me wrong, it's not even a poverty thing - I didn't leave Australia feeling relaxed and settled, put it that way.)

I'm worrying about Egypt on a daft level... I start feeling that things like this are a crack in the veneer of civilisation, and what comes through always disturbs me. I'm worried because they nearly accidentally torched the museum because it was next door to the NDP headquarters. I'm worried that they were in a situation on Friday night already where people had to take time out from protesting against Mubarak to form a human chain around the damn museum to prevent looters. And they still broke in during the night and were caught stealing two mummies, destroying them in the process. The mummies are stored in a climate controlled viewing room that seemed pretty secure when I was in there. My brain can't even process that this happened. Now people are standing on street corners with clubs, trying to protect their homes from looters. There are civilian-instigated, armed roadblocks, and more people are dying.

I have no idea what outcome would be best for this - and neither does the rest of the world apparently, apart from maybe there not being another Iran. Mubarak has to go, of course, but what on earth will fill the vacuum, considering it would have to be a completely different way of the country working without the corruption? Fundamentalism is one way around that, but I'm not sure how it would improve people's lives considering it does not sit well with the tourist industry, and where else is the money going to come from? Also, not great when there are a substatial portion of Christians in the population, and they were already burning churches in Alexandria last month I recall.