Hundred-Gated Thebes

Just a quick note from a little trip-within-the-trip.

We’ve run away from Cairo for a few days down south (which, this being the Nile, is also upriver; it takes some getting used to) in Luxor. I’ve not been here for yonks - more than a dozen years - but it seems to be tottering along as well as anyplace in mad, ridiculous Egypt. It is, in reality, an overgrown village, and what would be an utterly unremarkable one were the place not saddled with the considerable vestiges of the days when it was, for quite a long time, a major religious and political center, and even, for a century or so, essentially the most important city in the world. Luxor is a corruption of Arabic for “The palaces”; its ancient incarnation is usually called Thebes, although that’s a Greek-derived word that would thoroughly puzzle the pharaohs whose stone countenances litter the landscape like so many titanic paperweights. For what it’s worth, they called the place “Waset.”

Because we were out until, by our standards, scandalous hours last night, and because our flight left at what military pals of mine tend to call “O Dark Thirty,” we’re taking it slow today. Mr. Muscato is happily napping up in the room, and meanwhile this is my view as I sit on the hotel’s riverside terrace, a nice icy Sakkara beer next to me and the prospect of a very good book ahead for the afternoon. Perhaps at dusk we’ll walk up to the Temple of Luxor, which is at its considerable best at that time of day, and then possibly a cocktail at the Winter Palace. There’s no rush; we’re here through the weekend, which is a very pleasant prospect indeed...

(Why, yes, I am bragging rather - how kind of you to notice!)