Dramatis Personae

I stepped out of the cool, dimly lit mosque of Muhammed Ali into the heavy sun soaking the terrace above the dusty buildings of Cairo. Coated in a dull shade of ochre and dirt that had thickened through the rainless years, each structure blended into its neighbor in the layers of smog that obscured our view of Giza to the south. We were at the silver-domed Citadel, or Salah al-Din Al-AYoubi, where the medieval nemesis of Richard the Lionheart had built a fortress to protect Cairo from the crusaders.

We’d taken our shoes off to enter, passing trios of visitors sitting cross-legged on the red carpet and propped against the support columns as they listened to droning guides, and exited the other side onto the terrace where the light blinded me. At the stone railing, with the dusty mudbrick city as a muted backdrop, stood a full-bearded blond European in brilliant white linen--from skull cap to kaftan. This Viking stood with his arms stretched to the sky and his face tipped upward as he swayed in the breeze that fluttered his garment. A second man sat observing while a third, wearing a shoulder-mounted camera, filmed the scene.

He was a Belgian rapper making a music video and, in my opinion, doing a smashing job.  

Andrew and I came to Egypt at the end of COVID, convincing Mom and Dad to join us, and while I snapped a lot of pictures of pyramids and obelisks, it was the people that I took home as my treasured souvenirs. There was Cathy Jones, the manic United Airlines ticket agent, with her gravely voice and thin, straight hair that blocked her face so that she peaked out at the world from between two blond and frayed curtains. She shook like an emaciated Led Zepplin groupie dying for a cigarette as we convinced her to move us to a better connecting flight. 

There was the scatty British expat with prep-school English that we met in Luxor. He’d lived his life working for the British government in Romania and was either too arrogant to be bothered with being polite or (as I gave him the benefit of the doubt) too absent-minded to notice his rudeness. At least he looked old enough to pass for absent-minded, with his thinning gray hair and comfortable paunch. Dressed in business casual with rolled back sleeves and carrying an old laptop and books, he dithered about where to sit in the reading room of the Winter Palace Hotel, trying to claim every available spot, until he finally dropped his laptop and knocked the battery out with a clatter. He hadn’t a clue as to what he’d done or how to fix it until Dad, extending remarkable courtesy and forbearance, picked things up and replaced the battery with a smile, saying , “That should do the trick, looks like there wasn’t any damage!”

This apparently meant that our new friend was honor-bound to remain with Dad for life because he was then held hostage, forced to listen to a stream of opinions on everything from the weather to the Empire to America. Lord Expat was not a fan of the Colonies, though he’d never visited.

Then there was Maurice. 

Andrew and I had decided to take a sunrise hot air balloon ride over the sites of Luxor and were sitting in a boat, being ferried across the Nile to the launch site on the west bank. Across from us were two men, both black and each carrying a box of pastries and a cup of coffee from the hotel. One was completely enormous, with so much muscle and meat that his biceps and quadriceps threatened to erupt from his white v-neck t-shirt and linen pants. He topped it off with a jaunty fedora and the whole effect was so dapper–he looked terrific. His companion wore the traditional djellaba and skullcap in white and was about half the size of the other guy–that is to say, normal size.

I would have bet my life they were American. “Hi!” I said, “Where are you from?”

Big Guy looked up from his phone and said, “San Francisco.”

“Oh! What do you do there?”

He glanced at his friend and said, “I’m in broadcasting.”

I tucked that away, thinking, Hmmm–that’s vague enough to be suspicious.

“Where are you from?”

Interesting tangent: Dad is nervous enough about international travel that he swears it’s unsafe to openly admit being an American—better to let them think you’re a Canadian or something—and when people abroad ask the inevitable question, “Where you from?” He always says, “Alaska.” 

Truthful. To the point. Just like Dad. He banks on the hope that other populations are as ignorant about geography as the average American (most of whom wouldn’t be able to place Alaska). However, in an odd twist of fate, the local slang for Luxor is Alaska. Which meant that when my completely oblivious yet honest American father tried his standard answer on the Egyptians they’d smiled as if to say, “Yea, pull the other one.” Or sometimes they’d say, “Welcome home” with a sarcastic smile–Egyptians love a good joke.

But Andrew and I like to live on the edge so we always answer with a cheerful, “Alaska!”

“Alaska??” he said, sitting up straighter, “That’s two!”

He paused, thinking, then said, “Hey wait--do you know Mel?”

I stared back, running through the likely scenarios and finally realizing that Big Guy had somehow met Dad, which I would have thought unlikely if I hadn’t known my Dad so well. We’d been here not yet 24 hours and already Dad was a person of interest. Who knew what would come next?

“Yea, that’s my dad,” I said tentatively.

“You’re Mel’s daughter?” And Big Guy smiled an all-teeth smile. “He’s so cool!”

I pictured my wonderful, 74 year-old father. Melvin. The one who can burp “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” who loves Consumer Reports and Craigslist, who survived the World’s Worst Attack of Kidney Stones and lived to tell the tale (over and over and over), and who recently bought a new pair of shoes that have a spring-loaded heel so that you don’t have to use a shoe-horn to put them on, combining two of his greatest loves: gadgets and footwear.  I looked at Andrew and he knew what I was thinking. Are we talking about the same Mel here?

“Thanks?” I said.

“You must have been the kid in high school who had the cool dad and all your friends were jealous because your dad was so cool!”

There was that word again. I pondered this view of my dad. Again, I point out that he’s extraordinarily wonderful–both as a person and as a father–but cool? That word had never come up. It’s okay, I’m not cool either. But here was this massive human being talking to me, who had waves of coolness coming off him, who seemed to have a unique opinion of things. Is it possible to become cool just because someone who is cool declares it to be so? I chewed on this.

All through this interview Cool Guy #2 didn’t say much but when we reached our destination we all got out and were soon floating over the Valley of the Kings and Djeser-Djesu as the sun rose over the white boundary of the Nile where all  life in Egypt converged in green rows of agriculture on either side of the river. Once finished, we headed back to the hotel along with the pilot and crew and we talked together easily, completely awake, as compared to our pre-dawn trip out.

“It must be nice that you’re nearly done for the day, what with the heat,” I said to our pilot, Hassan. It was Ramadan and working during the heat of the day was brutal. 

He smiled. “No, I’ll go deliver a baby.”

“You mean like a doctor? You’re a doctor?”

“I’m a gyna, a gyna . . .” 

“A gynecologist? An obstetrician?” 

“Yes!” That was the word he was looking for. His English was excellent, but “gynecologist” was a tough one.

“So you fly balloons in the morning, and then you go deliver babies during the day?”

He nodded. What a crazy place. Ballooning had been a family business but he’d gone to medical school, had a wife and two children, and now claimed to deliver as many as 60 babies a day. I found this last part hard to believe, even with the high Egyptian birth rate, but even if there were 60 births per week we are still talking about some serious reproduction going on.

Hassan pointed to Omar, another of the pilots. “He’s a–” again, looking for the vocabulary, “A doctor but for the mouth.”

“He’s a dentist?” I said, thinking that by now it made complete sense.

“Yes, and he works with computers,” he said, pointing to another crewmember. 

“A programmer?” Of course he was a programmer. Of course. 

Once back at the hotel and enjoying our breakfast of chocolate crepes, strawberry juice, cucumbers, and domiati we met up with Mom and Dad who were just getting going. 

“You’re not going to believe this,” I said, sitting heavily down in the upholstered chair. And I began to explain the encounter with our fellow Americans.

“Oh yea,” Dad said, with not a bit of surprise and without looking up from his phone as he scrolled through the morning news, his reader glasses slid far down to the end of his nose. “Maurice.”

“Maurice?” 

“You know who he is right?” Dad was patient with my ignorance and still hadn’t looked up but Mom was now interested in the happenings. This was news to her apparently too.

“He’s Maurice Jones-Drew. He was a running back for the Jacksonville Jaguars–well, he played first for UCLA and was All-American. He can do 40 yards in 4.3. Now he works for the NFL Network.”

Broadcasting–of course! I knew it sounded suspicious. And Dad knew this guy? Maybe Maurice was more right than I’d originally thought. 

Dad talks with everyone. Completely everyone and whenever he can. He approaches strangers and starts up conversations without hesitation, he coos at babies and tells little girls in frilly dresses how pretty they look. He jokes with other men about being married (though he’s been happily married for 50 years), makes dad jokes like they’re going out of style, and is unapologetically and enthusiastically the American Tourist wherever he goes. You might think he’d try to blend in, with his talk about being from Alaska, but he’s not and he doesn’t. He is a huge personality and a strong presence wherever he goes and people are usually intrigued by him and respond in a variety of ways. By the end of one day with Mom and Dad in Amalfi, our guide Salvatore swore, “I’m-a going-a to-a getta a tattoo-a of-a your-a face, Mel, to putta on-a my-a backa!”) No lie. 

Apparently Dad had met Maurice in the reading room at the hotel and had struck up a conversation  as he was wont to do. Maurice had noticed Dad’s enormous blue BYU ring (Dad’s hands are massive and the ring is the size of a pipe fitting) and, seeing the Y, asked if he’d gone to Yale.

“Ha! No! BYU!” Dad said proudly and after the initial introductions he’d launched into a strong opinion about BYU’s quarterback, Zach Wilson, who in the 2nd round had gone to the Jets. Apparently Maurice had just been covering the draft for the NFL Network and was impressed with Dad’s comments–did I mention that Dad’s wild about sports? He’ll say he only likes BYU football and the Braves, but I’ve never found a sport he wasn’t up on. One time I slyly tried to find a sport about which he couldn’t carry on a conversation. I failed. He may not like a sport, but he can recite the major players, stats, and latest pertinent controversies in a way that would make Google jealous.

Maurice had been thoroughly impressed with Dad’s reasoning about why the Jets are an excellent place for Wilson, to the point that I wouldn’t have been that surprised to hear that Dad would be appearing next week as the NFL Network’s surprise guest commentator with his new best buddy, MJD. 

Dad is cool. Who knew? 

Eleanor and Enrique were (respectively) French and Mexican octogenarians who’d been living together for 20 years and owned the premier company for luxury dahabiya cruises on the Nile. If questioned about the uniqueness of their lives, Eleanor would shrug with the haughty, effortless elegance of the French, her deep eyes carelessly glancing around her as if to say, “But of course.”

She held court on the upper deck, sitting in the shade wearing her flowing robes and large turquoise rings on her wrinkled hands that had been mellowed to a golden brown. She was normally short, but in her rattan chair propped high with cushions she seemed much taller and sat very straight, gazing back and forth as she oversaw the crew loading the last items at Esna for the week’s sail up the Nile to Aswan. 

Enrique, who spoke four languages besides his native Spanish, had a large and boney, angular face with sunken eyes and large teeth. His  jet-dyed hair was tied with a dirty bandana and he wore a light blue djellaba decorated with small coffee stains. He refused to wear shoes and whenever he was on land and things got particularly toasty he’d scamper from shade to shade to protect his feet, with his staff in one hand and his black hair and robes flapping. He smiled easily and enjoyed conversation with the guests and quickly found Dad to be a willing companion. Moving quickly between the two boats as we prepared to sail, he checked this and that, introduced himself to people, and looked as if he felt the same amazement and wonder as we did though he’d been sailing between Esna and Aswan for 10 years.

Together the couple managed a weekly group of 20 tourists for each boat and while Enrique oversaw the shore excursions, Eleanor seemed to be in charge of organizing guests. We’d originally booked the only two panoramic rooms on the Assouan, Nour el Nil’s oldest and least expensive ship, but when it came time to sail we were upgraded to the Agatha, the newest of the fleet. Due to COVID there were only 9 of 20 spots booked and only two ships sailing that week. The other, the Adelaide, was also at half capacity. Eleanor had moved and grouped guests, knowing through experience and her continental je ne sais quoi where each party would be most comfortable. 

We arrived to find the other guests aboard the Agatha were five Millennial Parisiennes: Elsa, Joanna, Rafael, Jordan, and . . . Kevin  (“Eet was a veery popular name when I was born–from Home Alone.”)

As we sat together for our initial lunch we began the customary chatter and introductions.

“Where are you from?”

“Paris,” said Elsa, the slim one who looked as if she could have passed for Audrey Hepburn with her dark-eyed, gamine face surrounded by a stylish pixie cut.

“What do you do there?”

“We produce social media content for the fashion houses’ Asian markets. Kevin and Joanna work together. Rafael has his own company. Right now I am making a short stop-action film for Lacoste.” Her voice was soft and despite her quiet confidence I sensed she was careful with her English, speaking as correctly as she could as if she were stepping on stones across a creek.

She pulled out her laptop and was happy to share the unscored film that was nearly ready. 

Not having heard properly, Dad spoke up, “Who do you work for?”

“Oh many companies . . . Yves St. Laurent, Jean-Paul Gautier, Dior, Armani. . . .”

“Who’s that?” He asked, turning to Mom. So much for being cool. 

But I was impressed. Awed even. On the Cool Scale, this felt even a few points ahead of our brush with the NFL.

Relationships among the Gallic group were ambiguous but Rafael and Elsa seemed to be a couple, though in a very low-key, comfortable with each other’s bodies kind of way. Joanna, taller and blond with Dutch blood, a straight neck, and a long stride, seemed to prefer listening and she worked with Kevin who was the most talkative and friendly/confident of the group. Tanned, manicured, and well-traveled, Kevin spoke the best English and claimed a Norwegian boyfriend back home in Paris–though if you’d told me that he and Elsa were together I wouldn’t have thought twice, given their intimacy. Jordan, who seemed to be the youngest and barely out of his teens, held back in a deferential way from the others. He had a high, pubescent voice, with a conspiratorial tone that could be easily heard over the others when he spoke. He was thin and hunched with an effeminate slouch, but was friendly and smiled easily.

They spent most of the week trading off the hammock, scrolling through their feeds, flipping through the latest issues of Vogue while lounging on the low couches along the deck and taking a bracing swim whenever the boat docked along the banks (all except Jordan who had a fear of water). They fit every stereotype Americans could conjure about the French–fashionable, aloof, sophisticated, and casually relaxed on principles of public nudity.

If nothing else, they were fun to watch and even more fun to talk with. We’d usually spend breakfast at separate tables prepared on deck by the crew, then come together for a joint lunch and dinner, though they often ate dinner later than we did. At first the conversation was safe, flowing through the shallow currents of “Where are you from?” “What do you do?” “What is the job like?” and “Where else have you been?” but then, as Mom and I spent our days painting while the river and reeds slipped past, they became curious and wanted to see what we were doing and began to praise and exclaim over my amateurish attempts to capture the beauty I saw.

“I would love to learn to paint!” Elsa said with sincerity though I’d seen her animation and already thought her exceptionally talented.

Kevin pulled up pictures of a friend’s work who created scarf motifs for Hermes. Yes Hermes. “Would you ever consider collaborating?” he asked and I choked a little on the “Whiskey Egyptian” that our steward Hassan had kept me supplied with since we’d set sail. Huh, collaborate. That’s cute. But regardless of the legitimacy of their ridiculous praise, I loved them for it.

But by the third day we’d all become accustomed to each other enough to feel some solidarity when it came to the other boat, which followed 100 meters downstream in our wake. During the day we might stop at a local highlight–say, the temple to Horus at Edfu, or the tombs and quarry of Gebel el-Silsilah, or the temple to Sobek and Horus at Kom Ombo–and on shore we’d mingle with the passengers from the Adelaide.

There was a stocky family of four from Montana who seemed remarkably red around the necks in their tank tops and baseball caps. The young boys were remarkably well-behaved, given the hours they were required to spend listening as our enthusiastic guide determined that his four-year degree in Egyptology would not be wasted. I was so bored I usually ditched the group to explore on my own and was grateful there was someone left listening to take one for the team.

Then there were the Norwegian thong-bearers. I wouldn’t point out such crass points of interest as their selection of underwear if it weren’t for the fact that they were so blatantly meant to be seen. Though to be fair, they had the figures to pull it off.

And rounding out the manifest was a French family consisting of a haughty, divorced mother and three teenage children: an older, curvy brunette of 18 working on the theme of “Tight and Revealing,” her younger blond sister of 16 in a mini skirt and Doc Martens, and then a brother of perhaps 15. He was at that stage where his upper lip was fuzzy and soft, his voice crackly, and his hairless legs scrawny in their basketball shorts as he awkwardly shifted from leg to leg, listening to our guide’s lectures.

At Edfu the woman stood erect in her wide-brimmed hat and large sunglasses, observing the world surreptitiously with deliberate ambivalence, and the three children hung on one another as bored teens might do. At the next glance the girls were entwined in each other’s arms, soon followed by the older one laying herself on the boy’s chest as if she were face-down on a massage table ready for a rubdown.

I had my own sunglasses and noticed the disturbing intimacy right away, and a So that’s how it is in their family! registered briefly in my thoughts. Things didn’t get any better with each shore excursion. They touched and caressed and kissed, laying their faces on each other’s chest while the mother stared into the middle distance with ennui.

At the end of the week the passengers of the Agatha came again together for our noon meal of freshly caught perch and at the far end of the table the conversation in animated French grew louder, emphasized by bursts of laughter. I focused carefully to follow the French and Else, seeing my concentration, leaned over and said, “They’re talking about the other boat!”

“The other passengers?”

“Yes, they are saying how glad they are that they are on this boat and not on the Adelaide.”

Which is something Andrew, Mom, Dad, and I had reflected on frequently during our quiet moments together but I wouldn’t have been confident enough to assume that our Parisian friends felt the same way in our poor company.

“Really?” I said, “We’ve said the same thing! The other boat seems so. . . .” I wasn’t sure how to politely finish.

“Strange? The boyfriend and girl are all over each other.” Her tone implied some disgust.

“Boyfriend? I thought that was a brother.”

“Ah, no. That is the boyfriend of the older girl. The mother and younger girl have one of the large rooms to themselves. She reserved the other large room for the other daughter and her boyfriend.”

“That’s her boyfriend?” I said again, wondering if I had missed seeing another passenger. That skinny kid with the baggy shorts? With that fully formed sexy one? 

“Wow,” was all I could think to say. “I’d seen them all being creepy with each other but I thought that was just a French thing. Something cultural.”

“That is not a ‘French thing’!” Elsa retorted. “That is strange even in France!”

I laughed and said, “Well it just makes me even more glad we’re here with you instead of over there. Eleanor must have been watching us closely that first day, making sure that our rooms and companions were going to match up.”

I thought of her sitting regally in her chair, watching us all interacting that first day on the deck. She must have known exactly which of us should be together and which should be on the Adelaide. By the last night, when the crew announced after dinner that there would be dancing, then pushed back the tables and pulled out the drums and pipes, it forced even Dad to get decked out with bells and let loose with the moves. The night was so full of the fun and romance of a week on the Nile filled with pleasant company, and the men were suddenly no longer waiters and valets but musicians and dancers with amazing rhythm that we had no choice but to join in.

Most people would have put the two American groups together and then paired the French as well, but not Eleanor, she somehow knew exactly who would mix well. Though a cynic would say that the job wasn’t as hard as all that–she just took the odd jobs and stuck them on one boat and left the rest of us to ourselves. Or vice versa perhaps–who's to say who the irregulars are anyway? But regardless, she was a pretty good psychologist.