It is impossible to be ambivalent about Egypt: no matter where you find yourself, she seduces you.
The sandy air of Cairo catches in the back of my throat like the full-mouthed Arabic words that I love so much. Cheerful geraniums poke their red faces on to the street and their scents vie for supremacy on dusty streets littered with fresh horse droppings, melon-flavoured shisha smoke and the unmistakable and dominant aroma of Turkish coffee.
Almost a thousand kilometres to the south the steady stutter of rural life in rustic Aswan lies out of reach of the aural shadow of the hooting, revving and clip-clopping Cairo. And to the east the Red Sea is ribboned in watery layers of turquoise, lapis lazuli and indigo.
One of the best ways to catch more than just a passing glimpse of the flickering stills of life in Egyptian cities and towns is to travel on her two grand waterways - the Nile River and the Red Sea.
The felucca we step on to is very similar to the other traditional boats in the tourist navy that patrols the river. The rig has a large sateen sail that is suspended between two poles, the third edge of the triangular sail is left open. The boat itself has a wide bed and the open deck is edged with cushioned seats that are a touch on the high side. The wind has died down to a playful whisper and we glide into the Nile. I peer into the murky water and admonishments from friends ring in my ears. "Don't put your hand in the river. Don't eat any produce irrigated from the Nile's waters. Don't don't don't."
I come face to face with the distinctive Cairo Tower that resembles a magnificent pylon of filigree bamboo, and the Dead or Alive song plays in my head, You spin me right round baby, right round, like a record baby, right round, round, round We've been sailing in circles and I've faced the tower 16 times and my head is spinning.
Our sense of being tethered to an invisible spot in the Nile is broken when lunch is served. The salads in ordinary glass bowls are served at luncheons across the world: fingers of cucumber, squares of beetroot and red pepper bracelets. But the accompanying dishes are delicious and rich in flavour: garlicky baba ganoush, grainy humus, dense wands of kefta, kebabs and the spiciest mini sausage that convinces you that you really should have just one more.
Boats are embedded in the history of Egypt and as a traveller slides down the river in any one of the varieties of boat, the imagination does not have to stretch too far to insert the traveller in time ago, nor yet leap back again to the present. Egypt is one of those enduring countries whose right arm of modernity leads her left arm of antiquity into the new millennium - or is it the other way round?
Mr Digui goes by the nickname of Dok-Dok. The octogenarian is a composed Cairene, dressed in a plumbago blue galibeyah and he sits straight-backed on a sofa under an idle fan attached to a sagging roof. I smile at him as I ascend the steps up the bank and he waves. I wave back. He summons me. I reverse down the steps and cross the paved courtyard and enter his riverside open-air office.
He pats the floral sofa next to him and I sit. We smile, saying nothing, our eyes fixed on his fleet of feluccas that are tethered to the bank below, but his mind has to conjure up the image of the boats because his eyes are pearl-white with cataracts. He touches my arm, turns and taps a press clipping behind his head; it relates his personal details and the history of his flotilla.
I walk through his modest workplace, tracing a finger across the crimson Arabic words on the blue wall, and my illiteracy is at complete odds with how at home I feel on Dok-Dok's turf. I want to sink into one of the mismatched chairs, point at the meaningless words and say, "maa maAHnaa haaza?" and wait for an old man's patient explanation, but I have no more time and I don't know if my host has any English. The only symbol I recognise is the universal red star and crescent on the medicine chest.
I run a hand across the bucolic assortment of chairs, their sticky, torn cushions covered in mismatched patterned folds of fabric. I thank Dok-Dok for his invitation, we touch hands, and with slow heels I rejoin my travelling group. I met an old man on a blustery February afternoon, spent less than 90 seconds with him and I will remember him for a lifetime.
Boats have featured in Egyptian life for 5 000 years as most Egyptians lived near the Nile and used boats for transport and their livelihood. The oldest physical evidence of boats in Egypt are the Abydos which are believed to have been intended for the afterlife of Aha, the first Dynasty I ruler of Egypt, about 2920-2770 BC. Ancient Egyptians believed that upon death the pharaoh joined the sun god Ra and sailed down the Nile. The dates and time span in Egypt make my head hurt worse than brain freeze. It's hard to get my mind around a date that's half as long as a telephone number. How long ago is 5 000 years? I try to work out how many generations are represented by that number so that I can get a sense of the passage of that time span. I haul out the calculator - it's about 166 generations. This knowledge doesn't help; I cannot relate to that temporality.
In the rustic southern city of Aswan, we board the Sonesta St George and embark upon a three-day cruise down the Nile. The St George is a handsome boat with its distinctive decorative black scrollwork on the sides and its munificent boughs of sweet-lipped bougainvilleas that tap against the panorama window. Out on the deck it is colder than I imagined the weather would be and I am trying to read Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie, so I go down to the bar where I snuggle into a comfortable chair and watch the soft sand hills slide by, low pyramids of topaz sand.
An elderly guest asks a waiter to help him turn his chair to face the river and the waiter obliges with a ready smile. The man has just lowered himself into the chair and placed his two walking sticks at his side when his wife arrives. She has no fewer wrinkles than her husband, but her limbs are stronger; the waiter leaves. "I intended you to sit there when I brought you down," the wife says in a voice that suggests she has more ice in her G&T than alcohol. The man's watery hand wavers in the cold distance between them. "Hold my hand darling," he says, reaching for hers. "No!" She hisses. Death on the Nile lies forgotten on the table next to me, it cannot compete with the real-life dramas that play themselves out on the St George and for the rest of the cruise I am drawn to eavesdropping on conversations and lip-reading between passengers. Listening to the planning and observing the manipulation that goes on between guests, I am able to appreciate the rich fodder that a river journey would have provided for a mystery writer like Christie.
The beauty of cruising is that your hotel literally waits for you while you visit the numerous ancient sites along the river. We take a small motor boat to the majestic Philae Temple which were relocated to Agilika island when the Aswan High Dam was built in 1960. The functional boats are all painted white with the odd colour band and are operated by the Nubians. As our unpretentious little boat chugs towards the island, Nubian men proffer naive, colourful jewellery made by Nubian women. There are wooden bracelets, beaded collars and necklaces made from small chips of indigo and turquoise that cost at most R30.
If you think that South African taxi drivers are wilful, then the Nubian boatmen will be way too gritty for you. Just like their land counterparts in Cairo, these men shunt their way into the tiniest of spaces, bumping and grinding against the other boats until they have jolted their way into a place at the landing dock. As our helmsman pounds other boats out of the way we sit hunched over, out of the way of a boatman that might thump us with the same frown of determination.
It is a relief to return to the St George and run up the narrow walkway and escape into the subdued atmosphere where the rich teak panelling, renaissance palette and crystal and brass allows a traveller to proceed genteelly. It is a quiet boat, but the piped music is perhaps a little too lethargic. However, the overall muted milieu does allow a traveller to relax and contemplate, and as I read God Dies by the Nile I can observe the same pastoral scenes as those described in the novel - parochial scenes that seem to have been playing themselves out against the same landscape forever.
Like all tourist boats, the St George must cater to the needs of the tourists - buffet dinners, fancy dress parties, games evenings, and so forth. Dining staff are excellent at catering for that one diner that swims against the culinary stream - the vegetarian, and this devotion might have been because our waiter had moon-eyes for our vegetarian. The courtesy and good service ethic was however consistent towards all guests and when I requested only the yolk of a fried egg, no white, the kitchen obliged. Food in Egypt is generally delectable, especially for vegans. It comprises traditional Mediterranean ingredients - tomatoes, aubergines, wheat, olives - the usual and delicious mezze as well as Western style food. "We take traditional Egyptian food and have to adapt it to Western palates," says Samir Ahdy, manager of the St George.
Life doesn't always run smoothly on the Nile cruisers, and the manager has to face the challenges as they arise. "One of our generators went out and we had only one left; we could either have lights or dinner, but not both. It was a dilemma," a smiling Ahdy recalls. But management is about solving problems and the situation was resolved when Ahdy phoned one of his friends and asked him to prepare the food; the guests were none the wiser.
Onboard activities are related to the demographics of the paying passengers, so we are obliged to tolerate the somnolent Frank Sinatra tunes. When our restless group approaches the resident singer to sing something that will elevate our heartbeats and our moods, he blinks with hurt, but he pushes some CDs towards us and let us choose music from this millennium. "You are babies here," he says with a petulant pout, pointing at his regular retired passengers. Prior research as to the average age of the regular passengers is an essential pre-requisite to booking a Nile cruise: if you want to hang loose then choose a cruise that caters to your party level.
The rooms on the St George are luxury comfort and there is a spa where you can pamper yourself, and a jewellery store where your love can pamper you. It's a floating hotel par excellence.
On another gusty day we disembark and I'm ill so I'm transported to the superb Hilton in Luxor where I collapse on to the bed without even closing the door. The disconcerted cleaner speaks in soothing tones as he lifts me up and puts me into bed beneath the covers. I sleep for the day, gulping greedily at water that he has placed on the bedside table. Egyptians are soft-spoken and hospitable people, unless of course they have a car accident. Then their strident voices hoot above the cacophony of traffic and their smooth faces crease with discontent.
Sharm El Sheikh is Las Vegas meets Waterworld and the bay is bobbing with a blinding vision of white boats waiting to take bevies of sunburned foreigners out to sea. We are the only South Africans on board the Almeera III and as we take our places on the cushioned decks, we are surrounded by progressively pinking Russians who are more concerned with the fun factor than the sun factor.
The Russians don't smile, well, not until the exotic dancer who looks no more than 17 hits the deck and shakes her bootie, then there are smiles all around. Wide molar grins from the men and frozen smiles from the women. She's clearly familiar with what to do with a pole and she celebrates her performance with a final flourish - a magnificent descent into the splits that makes everyone gasp and someone comment, "Hope she didn't get a splinter there."
The dive zones are a tad over-subscribed and of the two snorkelling areas our group visit, one has very few fish and the reef is dead. Bibo, the dive guide explains, "It's winter, there are less fish about." The second area is better for the snorkelers and for those of us who didn't dive into the freezing water, it was glorious to just dip and rise on the ocean and gaze at the banded blue opulence of the Red Sea.
Our travels come to a fitting end on the Nile Maxim, a sailing restaurant that offers a jewelled vista of the magnificent Cairo at night. Under the inky sky and the veiled moon, the communication tower is a diamond studded baton that conducts the night sounds of Cairo - sounds similar to those of the day since the city doesn't appear to put her head down. The river is alive with boats and swathes of rubies and emeralds and sapphires glitter on her black satin surface. It is cold out on the deck but I watch ordinary Cairenes walking the promenade around the river and I would love to be walking with them.
- Isabella Morris travelled courtesy of Flight Centre and Egypt Air. Discover the wonders of the Pharaohs, the majestic temples of ancient Egypt and the magical River Nile in five-star comfort. For more information about Egypt and travel products to this destination call Flight Centre on 0860 400 747.