At 9am this morning my driver, Hassan, picks me up from my hotel in Hurghada and we drive the 300 kms to Luxor in the Nile Valley to board the Nile cruise. He's all smiles, eager to get going and very open to a conversation. Fortunately his English is good enough to have one. After we get through the formal greetings and I tell him where I'm from, he asks me how I liked my hotel. On seeing my gesture of ambivalence, he gets it immediately and launches forth—Terrible coffee, terrible food, yes?—and too many Russians! (This was a common complaint I heard from cab drivers, boatmen and others in Hurghada.) Confident his listener won't disagree with him he continues—These are difficult people. These are cheap people. Many are very bad, they come here only for for sex! —I privately think, well, they are here on holiday and escaping from minus 30F degrees! —Do you mind if I smoke, and offers me one—No thanks, but you go ahead, honestly. Everyone smokes in Egypt. He lights up, and once we get on the main road he quickly accelerates to a cool 130km/hr and holds steady at that, no matter what. Hassan drives like an Egyptian. And by now I'm used to this driving style: always very fast and confident, with a very liberal use of the wrong side of the road, often for no apparent reason, but almost always good natured and courteous. He takes advantage of the whole width of the road to set himself up perfectly to take every curve without ever slowing down, so for a right curve he starts well on the right shoulder to give him some flare out room if he needs it as he accelerates through the corner. Whenever he catches up to someone, it's two toots on the horn and we're passing, sometimes on a blind corner, why not? After all, any driver worth his salt coming in the opposite direction abides by the same code and will hug tight to the shoulder on his side and with a wave or toot, let us through. When he lights up his second cigarette I good naturedly point at the prominent No Smoking sticker on the dashboard and he's says with a laugh—Only for Russians! They smoking (sic.) in my car continuously and drinking vodka, sometimes they smoking hashish, so this is why I have this sign. I don't want to burn up my car. This car is for my children. (BTW, I'm not mocking his quite excellent English, I'm just trying to accurately report the flavor conversation.)
After a while he tunes in to some Egyptian pop music and we race on, the windows down, music blaring. It's great to be on the road again, away from those God awful Red Sea package hotels where people seem content to eat swill, and from what I could observe, entirely ignore the fact they're in Egypt. I point hopefully to a sign that says 270 kms to Luxor and he says—Yes, In shaa'Allah—you see? God Willing, everything is In shaa'Allah. About 10 minutes further on he points out the severely mangled burnt-out cinder of a car wreck beside the road—Tsk, tsk, tsk, In shaa'Allah, You see? I do see. And he accelerates. After a time he tires of this radio station and I suggest, finding some Umm Kulthum, knowing that every Egyptian reveres this singer from the 50s and 60s, actually everyone in the Arab world.—You know Umm Kulthum ?! After Umm Kulthum , there is no more music! After much twiddling with the radio he intense, dark wail of her voice fills the car and he sings along reverently.
We pass a shady rest area, but Hassan obviously disdains any place where tourist buses stop—Why pay 30 pounds for a cup of tea or coffee? he reasons, I don't want to be near tour buses either, and after another 500m we pull up to a grimy, dusty Egyptian tea house, open to the weather, where small groups of men are sitting around in the shade smoking Shish and drinking tea. We choose our spot and order tea and Turkish coffee. The crowd seems friendly and many know Hassan, but I'm definitely a curiosity judging by the looks I'm getting. A large pitcher of cold Nile (pronounced "Neel") water is ladled out of a terra-cotta jar near the entrance and brought to the table. I play it safe and don't touch the water, he understands, rubbing his belly and nodding in my direction. After 20 minutes we're back on the road speeding through a landscape of dramatic escarpments, dunes, and even the occasional Accaccia tree, which he points out with great pride. —Make a good photo!
After another hour we reach the Nile Valley and the dusty city of Qena. The road is suddenly a lot busier with cars, school children, family groups, tuk tuks, donkey carts, and many trucks, most outrageously overloaded with sugar cane or sacks of produce. All the women are covered up, with headscarves or covered completely in chadors. There is all manner of produce being sold along the roadside, tomatoes, melons, greens, lemons, peppers, potatoes, and the market scenes are loud and lively. Hassan of course, doesn't slow down much and the horn becomes his best friend. I snap photos with my phone of dusty streets and glimpses of endless groves of date palms and sugar cane. At one point we pass through a town around the time of the noon call to prayer, but I don't notice the many groups of young men sitting beside the road terribly eager to answer the call. Another half hour, we cross a bridge and we're suddenly in the chaos of early afternoon Luxor: dust, buses, pedestrians, donkeys, motorcyclists and still, he still drives like a madman. We pick up Ahmed, my guide, who will accompany me on the cruise and we drive to the cruise boat tied up along the Corniche to check in and drop my bags. Along the way I glimpse a row of Sphinxes below the road then around another corner, an ancient temple that must be the Temple of Luxor. Oh my God, now I'm plotzing! After he drops us off, Hassan will visit his mother for a shower, a quick meal, then it's straight back over the mountains to Hurghada to be home to his family by nightfall In shaa'Allah. Driving like an Egyptian.
