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Hurghada clings to the Red Sea on Egypt’s northeast coast. Until a few years ago the business and hopes of the small town were muted and it is still a quiet place. Not somnolent but dispirited. Buttoned down and anciently waiting, without any real expectation, for the fulfillment of what its shoreline suggests, but has yet to deliver.
The buildings in town boast fringes of splintered brick and concrete and pedestrians step over the rubble without comment, just as they ignored the healthy cockroach population sharing their dwellings. Contemplation of such trivialities is discouraged. Hurghada’s underdevelopment leaves a clear view to the sea and the horizon beyond. That is the point, a cultural hodgepodge whose smells and sounds dissipate quickly in the crash of waves, conjuring the ponderous intimacy that qualifies it as a beach town.
My brother Hadwin and I step off the bus arriving from Luxor into a cluster of dusty-robed youths asking, with very serious eyes, to lead us to various local hotels. I have been wearing the same pair of green cargo khakis for twelve days and it had been twice that long since I have tried to draw even the blandest conclusion about anything. Visiting Egypt is like watching for cricket for the first time: You have no idea what is going on, but you still do your best to enjoy the game. It was hoped that a nest on the beach would restore our enthusiasm and patience. Both are important qualities in North Africa.
Like its namesake during the Second World War, the Casablanca hotel is a disquieting place. Posters of Humphrey Bogart adorn the walls and the floor is patterned by small, well-worn tiles of white and yellow. There is no other decoration. The first evening of our stay the owner introduces himself as: “Ash – Mr. Ash.”
Dark skinned, looking to be in his early thirties, he runs the modest lodging with help from a good natured quasi-servant, Mustafah, a young guy who found us at the bus station. The only guests, we are shown to a spacious room on the second floor where we glimpse the ocean by anchoring ourselves and hanging out the southern window.
The following morning we purchase our way onto an outgoing scuba rig for some snorkeling. The Red Sea is saline and buoyant, but the seas are high, six feet high, and pour water through my tube as I try to get my first looks at a reef. At our second stop I manage to borrow a spout with a one way valve and have better luck. By the end of the afternoon Hadwin and I have survived a throng of burly scuba divers, two small but menacing barracuda and the shadow of what appears to be a goldfish bred with a submarine. The captain assures me after I scramble on deck that it is just a gentle Napoleon wrasse and then we’re like a boat full of ostriches. Everyone’s heads are in the water to gawk at the, slowly circling, shadow below.
On the way to land, I press myself flat on the top deck of our shallow-keeled tour boat. The waves pitch me in wide arching zigzag. Looking up, the sky is revealed, then a cross section of two-toned sapphire sea and coffee stained escarpments, then sky again. The lower deck is cluttered with florescent flippers, tea cups and thinly veiled insults from the mainly Russian and German tourists who are ubiquitous in Hurghada and worry the locals with their disregard for the sea life.
After returning to the docks, we return our flippers and plod to the Casablanca and a tepid shower before dinner. As I wait downstairs, under the watchful eyes of a Humphrey Bogart poster, for my brother, a middle aged Egyptian barges into the hotel waving a smoking tin lantern, hung from a chain, and chanting. He walks through each room trailing the acrid smell of sage – lots of it, like the chimney on a steamboat – and finally paused on his way out to demand payment. Bewildered, I shoe him off the porch and go back to playing Tetris with the television remote. Mr. Ash appears a minute later and sniffs.
“Did a man just come here?”
“Yeah some crazy guy smoked the place out and hit me up for money.”
The normally stern owner doubles over. He is still laughing as the holy man shows up for the second time and begins to jabber at me from a window. Mr. Ash says a couple words in Arabic, and hands the man a bill from his pocket, explaining: “He bless the hotel every week. It’s alright.”
Hadwin chides me, “You ready for some grub double-o seven?”
We agree, before leaving, to hit the town with Mr. Ash later that evening, but upon returning, find only Mustafah.
He grabs my sleeve and tells my brother, “Mr. Ash say he want you meet him at Penis Bar.”
“Whoa, hold on a tic…did he just say penis bar?”
“Yes, yes, Penis Bar!”
“Mustafah, are you sure…?”
The young Egyptian cuts us off. “I get car for you. He take you. Ok?”
We obviously have some misgivings, especially since Mustafah had been winking at me since arrival, but it is decided that Mr. Ash cannot be stood up. The cab driver listens to Mustafah, stone-faced, and then speeds toward the “penis bar.” Ten minutes later we pull up in front of a cluster of small, occupied metal tables and chairs. Mr. Ash is waiting for us below the sign, which reads: Peanuts Bar and Grill.
If my brother was a martial artist, rather than a boon to the technical end of Chicago’s fine theatre industry, he would have been a boxer. No funny robe, no conscientious breath and open-hand, just good old fashioned, hard-panting fisticuffs. So I am confused when he ordered rum with his usual beer. Only afterward do I notice Mr. Ash’s Coke has become a shade lighter.
During Ramadan, the Muslim holy month in which the Quran was revealed, the majority of Egyptians fast from dawn until sunset. They are supposed to refrain from smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol as well. Foremost among the meanings of this custom is the teaching of self-discipline. For me, though, it is a moment of insight, of strengthened connection through the fraternal bond of cheating. Before that time, it had not occurred to me that the Muslim world-view was as individually pliable as the, predominantly Christian, Western fold from which I grew. Sometimes things need to hit you in the face.
Despite the drink, Mr. Ash is anything but undisciplined. He tells us how he had come to own the Casablanca as he steers his car toward a disco. Born into extreme poverty, Mr. Ash became a gigolo as a young man, catering to middle-aged European women who came down to regain their youth or piss off their husbands, as he describes it. Eventually he invested the money he had saved from his tricks into the hotel. Now he spends his days ordering Mustafah around, driving his expensive car in circles and frowning upon the entry requirements of every desirable foreign port of entry. He wants to visit the U.S., but cannot even get a tourist visa without more property (enough to give him good reason to go back when it expired.) Mr. Ash seems like a stuck, bored man.
I feel my age, my inhibitions and the non-stop train of liter-plus Stella bottles as I sit in the disco watching Hadwin dance (a frightening display). Mr. Ash asks if I want an introduction to a desperate looking German woman in her late thirties, but his graphic depictions of his early career have left me feeling noble. I wave him away. “Get on with it, you old hound.” He probably does not hear over the music, but still gives a look as if to say, “too easy.”
Energized by the Disco, my brother talks me into one more stop. I am sleepy but content to let the evening run its course, and I do not ask where we were going. After a drive that seems disproportionate to the size of the town, we stalk down a dark, questionable staircase, from the street, to a metal door guarded by three imposing Egyptians. They put their hands up to turn us away, but Mr. Ash speaks quickly to one, removing his hand from his pocket to shake, and the door opened in a burst of treble and sheesha smoke.
The inside of this odd cavern is set up better for a cockfight than a concert. A raised and railed bracket of concrete surrounds a miniature square, which butts up against the slightly raised stage. The place is awash in the sickly, yellow glow of a backroom poker game, which makes (exclusively male) clientele look especially seedy. We note that we are the only tourists this time. The workers notice too, and immediately motion for us to be seated in the lowered quad.
“I leave you now.” Mr. Ash whispers. “It would not be good for me to sit with you.”
A classically trained Middle Eastern singer is wailing into a crackling microphone. To our soused, English-speaking ears, his voice is the splitting, ethnic culmination of every child’s movie, mummy impersonation and “King Tut” picture we have ever seen. It is important and prayerful, scary and different and pulsating!
“What’s he saying?” We ask the bearer of our drinks.
“He say to put money in the cup and then the belly dancer will come back out.”
Nodding solemnly, we contribute to the wad of piaster notes. The singer receives it with a slight bow and flexes his range one last time in an impressive wave of vibrato. After that his skills degenerate into those of a bad wedding disc jockey. He mixes Arabic and English and pleads for more money. We are breaking his heart.
Eventually, the curtain shoot open and a vision of skin and dark hair, held together by spangled red cloth swirls, forward. She is sex and Jell-O and religion all mixed together and wrung into DNA.
The fuss at the door starts to make more sense. It is Egypt’s holy time equivalent of a strip club. After another drink and another round of money collection, the dancer returns for a second set. She looks all the more erotic for being fairly covered. This time, we are singled out and invited to try our hips out on stage with the graceful dancer. The eyes of dozens of Egyptian men drop the curtain on that one pretty quickly, however, and we walk outside after the performance, enchanted and very tired. While we sit down to wait for a taxi, sobered by the night breeze, the dancer appears around the side of the building, covered from head to toe, and sweeps past us without a word or glance. Incense and tobacco dust on our clothing is still wafting up and filling our nostrils.
Mr. Ash does not return with us. As our taxi smooshes cement pebbles deeper into the dusty streets, I look past the charm of its torn upholstery, out of the window, past the piles of defining brick to where I know the ocean is; by its shadow and its smell, then I relax and close my eyes in the backseat, letting the dizziness from the drinks suck into my chest. Soon the wrasse will have swum on, and I will be gone on another bus. This time bound for Cairo.
Copyright © 2006 David Kingsley
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