Exhausted, I surfaced from this endless, monotonous journey through the deserts of the Middle East. I took a shower, collapsed on the bed and fell asleep.

Rachel’s Trip to Cairo - 10–13 April 1996

Rachel’s Trip to Cairo

10–13 April 1996

I used to come to Cairo all the time when I was still working for the multinational. I loved it, I was always impatient to be back in the sun, in this dreamlike city, eager to melt into the vibrant crowds, to let myself be swept up in the intoxicating atmosphere you only find in the south, in a world turned upside down like Egypt which is a mass of contradictions – clinging to the past but far removed from its 3000-year-old history, open to the world only through the narrow chink of tourism, peaceful only in its monuments to the dead. This is why we come, we are attracted to the exotic, we leave conformity at home. Egypt is a miracle whose existence depends entirely on the Nile delta, the meagre market gardens, the fellahs who look as though they have stepped from a bas-relief. But agriculture requires irrigation and I was working for a company selling pumps and sluices, turnkey solutions, payable in dollars. This was how we looked at things – it was the only way to look at things – a market needs suppliers. We were suppliers, and we knew everything there was to know about their needs, their weaknesses, their endless tales of woe. We called it market analysis, an essential part of a global marketing strategy. The minute we got a green light from head office, we descended on the country like locusts in some biblical plague. By the time they had a chance to look up and say ‘Allahu Akbar’, we had the whole country kitted out with pumps and sluices and deep in debt for the rest of its days. No longer would the waters of this legendary river flow serenely to the sea as they had done for thousands of years to the haunting cries of helmsmen in their dhows, the absurd croaking of the gulls and – at auspicious moments – the happy gurgling of a chubby baby kicking in his basket of bulrushes carried by the sacred waters. We had dammed the Nile, diverted it, churned it, filtered it, canalised it, pumped it, fertilised it, cycled and recycled the water and only then, pumped it back – filthy and reeking – so that the ancient, troubled Nile might flow onwards to the sea. No longer would people wait for the Nile to flood as a sign from the gods, something to be celebrated like New Year. All this we did for thirty pieces of silver and a 5 per cent baksheesh: we changed the course of a history as old as the world. They need to update their hieroglyphics.