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Hurghada, Egypt
 Photo: Goran Turudic
Hurghada, Egypt
 

Hurghada, Egypt: A Stopover By The Red Sea    
By David W. Kingsley

Hurghada clings to the Red Sea on Egypt’s northeast coast. Until a few years ago, the business prospects and hopes of the small town were muted, but it is still a quiet place. Waiting, without any real expectation, for the fulfillment of what its shoreline suggests, but has yet to fully deliver.

The buildings in town are sinking into the ground like atolls and boasting fringes of splintered brick and concrete. Pedestrians step over the rubble without comment, just as they ignore the healthy cockroach population sharing their dwellings. Contemplation of such trivialities is discouraged.

Hurghada’s underdevelopment leaves a clear view to the sea and the horizon beyond. That is the point. Great mounds of spaghetti Napolitano and hot bowls of lentil soup welcome sea goers back in the evenings and energize them toward the bars. Hurghada is a cultural hodgepodge whose smells and sounds dissipate quickly in the crash of waves.

My brother Hadwin and I step off the bus arriving from Luxor into a cluster of dusty-robed youths asking, with very serious eyes, to lead us to various local hotels. I have been wearing the same pair of green cargo khakis for twelve days and it had been twice that long since they were rolled compactly into my pack at home. My head swims with accents and antiquities. Everything is completely undigested. Snapshots of tarnished brass and chalky temple walls, I stop trying to draw even the blandest conclusion about anything. Visiting Egypt is like watching for cricket for the first time: You have no idea what is going on, but you still enjoy the game – at least for a while. The hope is that a rest on the beach would restore our enthusiasm and patience.

Both are important qualities in North Africa.

After a hagglers-waltz, a short Egyptian in jeans and a leather jacket offers a room at the Casablanca Hotel for ₤20 a night and after an arched eyebrow and a shared shrug we plod after him, eastward, through a short grid of side streets, to find out what he is selling. Happily, besides a pleasantly evocative name, we find that the two storied brick building is close to the water.

Like its namesake during the Second World War, the Casablanca is a stark, unsettling place. Posters of Humphrey Bogart adorn the walls and the floor is patterned by small, well-worn tiles of white and yellow. There is no other decoration.

The first evening of our stay the owner introduces himself as: “Ash – Mr. Ash.” Dark skinned, looking to be in his early thirties, he runs the modest lodging with help from a good-natured quasi-servant, Mustafah, the young guy who found us at the bus station. We are shown to a spacious room on the second floor where we glimpse the ocean by anchoring ourselves and hanging out the window.

The following morning we buy our way onto an outgoing scuba rig for some snorkeling.

The Red Sea is heavily saline and while we are buoyant, the waves are high, and pour water through my tube as I try to get my first looks at a reef. At our second stop I manage to borrow a spout with a one way valve and have better luck. By the end of the afternoon I have survived a throng of burly scuba divers, two small but menacing barracuda and the shadow of what appears to be a goldfish bred with a submarine. The captain assures me after I scramble on deck that it is just a gentle Napoleon wrasse and then we’re like a boat full of ostriches. Everyone’s heads are in the water to gawk at the, slowly circling, fish.

After returning to the docks, we return our flippers and plod to the Casablanca and a tepid shower before dinner. As I wait downstairs, under the watchful eyes of a Humphrey Bogart poster, for my brother, a middle-aged Egyptian barges into the hotel waving a smoking tin lantern, hung from a chain, and chanting. He walks through each room trailing the acrid smell of sage – lots of it, like the chimney on a steamboat – and finally pauses on his way out to demand payment. Bewildered, I shoe him off the porch and go back to playing Tetris with the television remote. Mr. Ash appears a minute later and sniffs.

“Did a man just come here?”

“Yeah some crazy guy smoked the place out and hit me up for money.”

The normally stern owner doubles over. He is still laughing as the holy man shows up for the second time and begins to jabber at me from a window. Mr. Ash says a couple words in Arabic, and hands the man a bill from his pocket, explaining: “He bless the hotel every week. It’s alright.”

We agree, before leaving for dinner, to hit the town with Mr. Ash later that evening, but upon returning, find only Mustafah.

He grabs my sleeve and tells my brother, “Mr. Ash say he want you meet him at Penis Bar.”

“Whoa, hold on a sec…did he just say penis bar?”

“Yes, yes, Penis Bar!”

“Mustafah, are you sure…?”

The young Egyptian cuts us off. “I get car for you. He take you. Ok?”

             

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