"What about going to
"Do you want to go?" he asked, cocking his head
on one side as he watched closely for my reaction.
"Can we afford it?" I replied, worried as usual about spending
the money.
"Forget about that for the moment, do you want
to go?"
"Mmm, yes, please!" I nodded and I had a
suspicion my eyes were sparkling with excitement.
So that was how we came to be sitting on an
Egyptian aeroplane at Paphos airport at
The airport car-park was pretty much like any
other airport but immediately beyond its confines was another world. George, the driver, edged carefully into the
traffic on the dual carriageway and we were swept along in the melee. Cars and lorries, nearly all of them scratched
or dented or held together with tape, converged on us. Salwar was giving us a running commentary about
where we were going, what we would see and where we would eat when I was
distracted by a huge box of dead fish, white and pink and bluey-grey, passing
the coach window. It was fastened to the
roof of a dirty red pick-up truck and completely open to the elements. I nudged Mike.
"I hope that's not our dinner!" I whispered and
he grimaced.
A few minutes later, I watched, fascinated,
whilst a lad of about 12, driving a donkey and flat cart with huge wheels,
effortlessly negotiated the teeming traffic on the roundabout. An unconcerned road-sweeper swept up dust and
litter from the gutter with his broom and dumped it into a small hand-cart, whilst
walking into the four-lines of traffic on the three lane road.
Palm trees, like I used to imagine in Sunday
school, lined the central reservation and although there was an overall feeling
of dust and dryness, I was surprised by the amount of greenery. We made our way through office blocks,
apartments, small fields and houses, and then we were surrounded by the City of
the Dead which went on for what seemed like miles.
"This is where the people of
I stared at Mike and then at the dilapidated
houses, many of which had no roofs, crowded together with barely a space to
walk between them.
"People actually LIVE in the cemetery?" asked
another passenger. "With all the dead
bodies? Ugh!" and his companion giggled nervously.
"They feel that the dead cannot hurt them!"
replied Salwar, calmly.
"At least some of them have electricity and tv," said
Mike pointing to sagging cables and an incongruous satellite dish.
Suddenly my attention was drawn to the fact
that we had left the main road, and were negotiating a narrow tarmac strip and
there in front loomed the decaying splendour of the pyramids.
"Don't forget, 'la-la-la' means 'no'. Stay close to me," shouted Salwar as she alighted
from the coach and went to stand a few yards away, holding up a large plastic
paddle marked '1'. The air was dusty and
warm and the sun shone from a pale blue sky, although a haze hovering over
To say that I was a disappointed was an
understatement. I don't know what I
expected, but a high-ceilinged room with an empty stone sarcophagus and nothing
else, seemed a bit of a let down. In all
the programmes I've ever seen, the burial chamber was filled with treasures for
the after life: jewellery, chairs, tables, dried flowers, the trivia of
everyday life but there was nothing. Not
even the dust of millennia. It had been
swept as clean as you can get a pyramid in the
The sun blinded us as we emerged from the stone
womb and almost immediately we were pounced on as a likely target by a young
man hawking his postcards. He spoke very
good English, but then as we were to find out, so many of them spoke at least
some English as it was the only way to make a living. Mike grasped my hand tightly and we stumbled
over the stones towards the coaches, accompanied by an incessant babble from
our young native companion. He gave up
eventually and we were able to look around us properly. The coach park was enormous, I thought there
were only a few coaches when we arrived but there must have been over a 100 now
and I couldn't for the life of me remember what colour ours was!
The pyramids looked exactly like all the photos
I'd ever seen of
An armed police man was arguing with a be-robed
man who wanted to bring his horse and cart down to the tourists, presumably to
give rides around the place. They
wrestled over the gun but a camel-mounted colleague had seen the incident and
he came to enforce the rule of law and the intruder was seen off. We watched him trotting up the steep
hillside; several times he looked back to see if the police were still watching
and they were.
"Look at all those police!" said Mike. "They're everywhere!"
"Yes. A
few years ago some tourists were killed by a madman with a gun. We don't want that to happen again,"
explained Salwar.
Despite the warm weather, I shivered.
Our next stop was a plateau which overlooked
the pyramids. Again it was crowded with
tourists and how the drivers manage to move their coaches around without incident,
is beyond me. The view was duly admired
and photographed and in the distance we could just make out the city of
We drove down to the Sphinx which nestles in
front of the Second Pyramid, that of Khafre (also known as Chepren) and into
which we had descended. To our right was
the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) and further away on our left was the
smallest of the three pyramids, that of Menkaure. Prominent on the sky line was a policeman,
cross-legged on his camel steadfastly gazing over the scene from his vantage
point on a nearby hill. Tourists milled
about, alternately dithering and then purposefully striding, as if in some
elaborate dance, whilst the Sphinx, settled and comfortable for millenia,
stared thoughtfully above our heads into the distance. Weather-worn and battered, it was an imposing
sight and to uneducated Egyptians this creation of part-lion and part-Pharaoh
must have been mysterious and awe-inspiring, maybe even frightening. It towered above us but was partly obscured
by the sandstone blocks and fencing in front of his paws. A better view could be had by joining a long
queue to stand on the specially built walls alongside the monument but as there
were only twenty minutes left before we had to get back to the coach, we stayed
where we were and watched the crowds.
Maybe I'm showing my ignorance, but I'd always
thought of the Sphinx and the pyramids as being in the middle of the
