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Show II' , - , 1- J.' Egyptian-style transportation. Egypt: a country of contrasts Editor's note: This is the third installment install-ment of a four-part series on Europe and the Mediterranean Mediterran-ean by Park City globetrotter globetrot-ter Shirley Smith. by Shirley Smith "Factory" is a popular word in Cairo, but its meaning changes in its journey across the Atlantic, down the Mediterranean and up the Nile delta from Alexandria. There are no production lines and whirring machines here in the "factory" Mah-med Mah-med took us to one afternoon in a back street of Khan el Khalili Bazaar. "Come with me to my uncle's gold factory," he had said, "and see how we make the kartouches (pendants with one's name in hieroglyphics) hiero-glyphics) for the jewelry stores of the bazaar. No need to buy, just look." But an hour later we not only had bought but had watched, tea glasses in hand, as Mahmed's uncle refusing, in the end, to take a tip. We were sorry we had offered. Mahmed, as much as anyone, personifies the Egypt that we, and you, will find: a country visited by most tourists for its past but with a present every bit as exciting and intriguing, with a people not only proud of their country but willing to share that pride with you, and in many cases amazingly amazing-ly well equipped to do so. Take Maha, for example our guide for our whirlwind stay in Cairo, an Egyptologist Egypt-ologist with a degree in Egyptian History who not only knows, really knows, Egypt's past but also loves and reveres her country and goes out of her way to share that love and knowledge with her guests. With her we visited the ancient step pyramid of Zoser, far across the endless sands from Giza, climbed hunch-backed into the towering tower-ing pyramid ; of,, Cheops, found the best spot for riding boats for want of a roof over their heads. The smog, the noise, the traffic and the dirt of the city are incredible results of too many people and too little money and space. Upper Egypt, by contrast, is a relative haven of peace and tranquility and early, early one morning we visited Abu Simbel, the amazing reconstructions recon-structions of the ancient temples, tombs and statues that would have been de-stoyed de-stoyed by the dammed waters of Lake Nasser but that now sit safely now on the the tranquil shores of the huge manmade lake. Later that day, transported trans-ported by jet to Aswan, we floated in a felucca, the age-old boat of the Nile, and visited with Saladin, an ebony-skinned Nubian whose boat we had hired. The next day we visited his home in a village half in today and half in the ancient world. Life here is proscribed, pro-scribed, as it has been from yiiiMiywyiii'if'''"''l'l"'l'111''' time immemorial, the women robed in black caring for the children and preparing prepar-ing food in the cool whitewashed white-washed kitchens, the men j working in the fields and gathering at the tea shops. But a quarter of a mile away 1 sits the Oberoi Hotel with its health club, swimming pool, I disco and bar. j In Luxor the relatively immediate past of Victorian England makes itself felt in I the Old Winter Palace Hotel, home in the past century to wealthy Europeans who came to observe the digging of the tombs across the Nile. Just down the street sits the ultra-modern Etap Hotel, its lobby a glitter of chrome and mirrors. And in between the two lies the Temple of Luxor, its obelisk and columns sitting as silent reminders of past glories. Once again we are bombarded bom-barded with i sense of the past and the present and the future that make up the world of Egypt. carefully formed the exquisite exqui-site piece, each character in each name shaped from tiny threads of gold and soldered to the solid pendant. From the 10 x 12 foot "factory" where three men, each a relative of Mahmed, sat creating earrings and pendants, our kartouche went down the hall to an even smaller room. We appeared to be in an apartment house and children child-ren peeked from barely-cracked barely-cracked doors as we walked down the dimly-lit hall, the single bulb camouflaging the peeling paint and littered floor. We were now in the polishing room and, after 15 minutes of dipping in this and rubbing with that, we came away with a beautiful, shiny kartouche "only 70 Pounds (about $72) for you because you are my friend" a friend for, if not life, at least an afternoon and a new understanding of what constitutes con-stitutes a street education. Mahmed, like many young men his age (19), gave up a formal education early in life, preferring the teachings of the marketplace, the bazaar and the intrigue that is the daily life of Cairo. And he was adept. For us he used English, widely spoken in Cairo; for others perhaps it would be German. Sure, he was trying to sell us something, some-thing, but he was also truly our friend, making sure we found our way through the maze of the bazaar, personally per-sonally bargaining for us on our next purchases and camels, sat cross-legged on the floor of a centuries-old mosque learning the fundamentals funda-mentals of the Muslim religion and walked in the poorest streets of the city (past goat legs lying in a pile after the sacrifice of the animals for the great feast of Couram Bairam) to see the most sacred Christian church in the city. It was also Maha who treated us to huge meat-filled meat-filled pancakes in the bazaars ba-zaars and shared a splendid lunch in the opulent Mena House Hotel at the foot of the Pyramids, explaining each i item on the menu and ! encouraging us to try new and different flavors. Cairo with its 12- or is it 13-or 13-or 14-million people, no one knows for sure, is a study in extremes. In the oasis of the Nile Hilton with its casino and elegant restaurants you could be anywhere in the 1 world. The wealthy of Cairo consider this the most prestigious pres-tigious spot to marry and an average wedding now costs upwards of $10,000. We watched such a wedding one night, the wedding party, family, dancers and musicians musi-cians making a circuit, to the admiring glances of hotel guests and friends, of the spacious lobby and a procession up the open staircase to the great ballroom ball-room where there would be feasting and dancing for a thousand or so. Out the door, across the street on the banks of the Nile, ragged families huddled hud-dled together to sleep in tiny |