A Journey, Part 5. Smoke, Mirrors & Machismo

From the few weeks now spent in the Middle East, we were already becoming used to the prevailing gender polarization that manifests itself in so many ways. Everywhere, the theme of men in the public limelight and women occupying the private shadows, was repeated. I noted in my journal that while just about every man smoked, I handn’t seen a single woman smoking in public. 

Leaving Damascus, we continued south and crossed from Syria into Jordan. Knowing that our entry to Africa would be through Eritrea via Jeddah, we approached the Saudi Embassy in Amman to see if we could get a transit visa, but were told that we first needed a visa for Eritrea. The closest Eritrean embassy was in Cairo and so a few days after arriving in Jordan we left the car in a customs store in Amman and took a bus south to the red sea port of Aqaba, to board a ferry for Egypt.

I’d given up smoking a little short of a year earlier and as a reformed smoker I will never forget the five hour bus trip to Aqaba. We were accustomed to non-smoking buses and trains, where smokers would take the opportunity of a stop for a quick fix. This trip was the exact opposite; smokers ruled the bus leaving the non-smokers to flee for fresh air at every opportunity. It turned out to be the same on trains in Egypt where no-smoking signs in carriages served a purely decorative role.

Once in Egypt, we planned to travel down the Red Sea coast of the Sinai peninsula and then across to St Catherine’s at Mount Sinai before heading for Cairo.  From Cairo, we would travel up the Nile to the delta and then down to Aswan, visiting the major historical sites on the way.

This was one of the most frustrating periods of the journey. If Syria was hassle free and hospitable due to lack of tourists, I found Egypt to be exactly the opposite. I don’t think it’s that the Egyptians are any less friendly than people from other countries, but rather that the abundance of tourists seems to have created a veneer of hardened individuals, intent on profit and well practiced at deception, that can be hard to penetrate and that unfairly shapes ones perceptions about what Egyptians are like as people. It’s not something that is unique to Egypt or to travel; Hidden agendas and deception are often present where vested interests exist and external or public buy-in is required.  I certainly see much of this surrounding the everyday events on today’s larger political, commercial, and military stages.

From the time that we got off the ferry in Nuweiba until we finally left for Jordan from the same port a few weeks later, we were subjected to a near constant barrage of misinformation, almost all aimed at parting us from our cash. Just trying to find out where the bus station was yielded half a dozen different explanations, in each case too far to reach on foot and accompanied with an offer to take us there for the best price. In the end we found the bus station ourselves, a short walk from the port. In this environment, we soon learned a few rules of the road, the main one being always to regard any solicitation with deep suspicion. But the downside of rules like this is that while they may offer some protection against charlatans, they also reduce the likelihood of genuine and meaningful interaction.

Some of the scams we encountered were elaborate. On one occasion, while walking up a main street in Cairo, a tout approached us with the usual offers for hotels and Giza. Almost immediately, a car pulled up alongside and a uniformed man jumped out and roughly bundled the tout into the back seat before confronting us. Claiming to be from the secret police, he demanded to see our passports. This all happened in a few seconds. Then he fired off more questions about where we were going, why we were consorting the man, and demanded that we come with him. I insisted that we were guests in Egypt, free to walk in a public street. As the exchange drew on and grew more heated, I noticed that he was becoming increasingly edgy. Realizing that it might be a scam, I started making more noise, demanded to see his identification and walked around to the front of the car to note the registration number. No sooner had I done this than he shot back into the passenger seat and they sped off. Looking back, I shudder to think what might have happened had we got into that car. This wasn’t the safest time to be travelling in Egypt – in the months leading up to and following our visit, 27 tourists were killed by extremists.

Although this was the most frightening instance of deception that we encountered, in Cairo the next scamster always seemed to be waiting in the wings. To make matters worse, it was nearly impossible to walk any significant distance with Hayley without lewd cat calls from ever present groups of youths, strutting their stuff and full of the bravado that thrives in the group and evaporates in its absence. The truth, I’ve found, is that while machismo masquerades as a public display of individual manliness and courage, in reality it’s more a mask used to obscure insecurity. When a large dust storm finally blew in, we were only too happy to take the train south to Luxor.

I’ve been fascinated by the ancient Egyptians for as long as I can remember, possibly because there’s so much mystery surrounding their endeavours. Starting more than twice as long ago as the beginning of Greco-Roman period, so much less has survived to shed light on how and why they did the things they did. In Greece and Rome, I’ve never had much difficulty in imagining the Greeks or Romans in their ancient roles, but for some reason I found this more difficult in Egypt. The sheer persistence of the kingdom, enduring for more than three millenia before Egypt finally became a province of Rome in 30 BC, seems alien in today’s world.

Of all the historical sites, it’s images of the temple complex at Karnak, with its massive graceful columns and numerous detailed carvings, that remain with me more than any other. In the statues and friezes we get glimpses into their daily lives and the truth that many aspects of their civilization were little different to ours today. This was a male dominated world, with records of only a handful of female pharaohs. Friezes showing piles of severed phalluses and hands are reminders that war has always been barbaric and brutal. Among the powerful at least, the fear of mortality and death was pervasive; It’s a telling truth that most of what we know about ancient Egypt has been gained from the elaborate tombs designed to ensure the smooth transition of the rich and powerful to the afterlife.

Today it’s hard for me to separate the cause of many of the ills that beset us from the history of male dominance in our societies. So many of our institutions, including business, government, and of course the military, have been designed for males, by males. Should we then be surprised that males continue to dominate? I think not. Institutions designed for intense competition, with conflict and dominance playing an central role, will naturally appeal to the male psyche rather than the female, which is centered more on nurture and cooperation. Despite this, the tendency is to regard this as a failing on the part of women. My view is that it’s not a matter of aptitude at all, but of inclination.

Instead of bemoaning the gender imbalances in our institutions and trying to alter women to partake and perform equally in our male dominated realms, I sometimes think we might be better off turning the analysis around to address other imbalances. Why is it the men who haunt our streets and fill our prisons? Who are those obsessed with power? Who dominate through use of force and violence? In South Africa, we’re beset by violent crime, but it’s not the women we’re afraid of. I suspect that if we males could somehow change our ways to leave our societies without violence and with empty prisons, then the gender bias elsewhere might disappear by itself, along with a host of other problems that plague us.