March 19 - April 3 2006 / Egypt and Jordan: In Desert Places
Astonishments of Egypt, Jordan and the Solar Eclipse
Part 2 - The Total Eclipse by the Mediterranean
Before sunrise we manage after much confusion to sort ourselves into our various buses (WHY does this seem so complicated? argh, I long to organize the whole thing myself!) and begin with a massive traffic jam caused by unusual rains last night. It takes about an hour and a half before we are finally out of Giza and on our way to the desert to the West. It’s like an inch of snow in Florida, screws everybody up completely.
But finally we are on our way. At first there are these peculiar enormous partially finished "mansions" by the side of the road. We are told that rich folks buy the desert land and are supposed to be
"reclaiming" it (not reclaiming, claiming--it has always been desert) for these vacation houses. Mostly what we see are huge elaborate walls and a pretentious entrance, and nothing inside, or a wall or two.
Farther out, there are mud brick buildings or concrete buildings, some inhabited I think, some perhaps not, but it is hard to tell. There are herds of cream and black sheep and a boy or woman, or man minding them. Often these sheep herders are sitting on a low rise near their sheep. Once I see a small herd of camels with a herder. There are tiny mosques, some crumbling, some neat. There are people walking along the road. Lots of people stand to watch our convoy of buses, and some wave. We have lunch at a horribly garish and elaborate "resort" by the lovely Mediterranean Sea. They are shoving sand around with huge earth movers at the beach--well, they are making the beach I guess, and the whole place is just awful, with rows and rows of what look like condos, none seeming quite finished, and workers wandering among them slowly. Very depressing. We do understand though that this is still the off season for these places, and that all the people here are here for the eclipse. So that is good news for these hoteliers.
Eventually we get to Marsa Matrouh, and our wonderful hotel site by the sea. The sand is fine and white and the water a luscious intense cornflower blue. Everyone is excited, we have gotten this far.
There is the Mediterranean, right at the end of the rooms! There is a lovely big tent, bright red and elegant with geometric designs, and red carpets on the sand for its floor. I love it and I love that we are here in a tent in a land where living in such a thing, moving it with you, is a common thing. For many of these people are Bedouins.
John and I forego the dinner in the tent, we have eaten so much at lunch and there is too much to eat and we want to be sure to be in good health tomorrow. But we go down to the tent for the final eclipse day briefing, and discover that we must leave much much earlier than originally planned, we think because of the fact that President Mubarak will be coming, and the government want to secure the site early. I am very glad, since I had been concerned about a huge traffic jam on the way to the viewing site, and missing totality entirely. When we're told "and if we don't leave by 5:30 we risk being denied entry, there are calls of Leave at Four! But we're assured that a deal has been done and well be okay.
So to bed, with the faint shush of the waves just audible. The sun and the moon are moving to their appointment.
Eclipse Day
Well before dawn people gather in the red tent for breakfast, and then we load up our buses and are off by 5:30, through the nearly deserted streets. A very few people are about, they look at our buses and a few wave to us. Everyone here knows there will be an eclipse of the sun this day, but we a certain that none of them know what to expect. And of course this is short of totality, this area.
Our site is at Saloum, nearly to the Libyan border, a small resort town. We pass through many security checkpoints, and there are soldiers in black uniforms, and red and white ambulances parked here and there. I have been somewhat nervous about this part of the trip, because I know there have been incidents in this area.
There is a school, with a gay sign, Welcome to our school. We have heard that the president of Egypt is gong to be at our viewing site, and along the road are many, many soldiers in their black uniforms, policemen, many red and white ambulances, red, black and white Egyptian flags. It is a big, big day for this part of Egypt.
Everyone along the road wears the long robe, and all the women we see are fully robed in black. There are lots of sheep herds, and tiny groups of buildings, desert, mosques. At length the Mediterranean appears to the right, a blue strip that gets larger and larger. The sun rises and the weather is clear.
Finally here is Saloum. Welcome to Saloum says the arch over the security check. There are lots of young soldiers, a large parking lot beginning to fill with cars, flags and banners everywhere. The sea is so blue.
We drive through the town and up and up a large mesa. There is fog up here but I don't worry, for the sun has hardly gotten high enough to burn it off.
I am in hopes that we'll see the eclipse along with the blue sea, but no such luck. Instead we drive along the mesa, past large staging areas with tents and signs, lots of soldier types milling about, and finally here is our area, a large cement plaza sort of thing, with a few crumbling cement buildings to one side, and a scrubby field beyond. There are tents on both sides of the small road, and buses drive up and down, discharging their pax and driving off to some hidden parking area.
Everybody piles out and immediately claims a space on the plaza. Telescopes begin to sprout like strange bushes. White cloths are laid out. I find a spot with a curbing where we can sit for the long wait, and there is a spot of ochre dirt where I will b able to be a bit in contact with the earth, when I lie down to watch--lying down will be the best since totality is at 12:38, and in this latitude the sun will be almost directly overhead.
So we establish ourselves here. I walk around looking at equipment and taking pictures of people. It's a grand scene. People are intensely busy setting up stuff, checking cameras and telescopes, video cameras, making their rigs. I tape my welder’s glass to my brand new precious binoculars, and I'm ready. I discover there are some small sunspots, and I enjoy looking at them, my hands cupped around the sides of my binoculars so as to see only the green sun. Me and the sun alone.
We've been given box lunches but everybody eats them by about 9:30.
Stacks of chairs are found near the bathroom buildings, and people make off with them. I grab two and carry them in triumph to John.
When it is getting time for first contact, I arrange my sit-on and windbreaker on the ground, use my belly bag for a pillow, place my clock on my stomach, and wait.
I don't take my eyes off the place on the sun's limb where the moon will first incur. THERE IT IS, that tiny fuzziness, /contact! A cheer goes up from the crowd behind me.
So I lie there, my hat over my eyes, the sky blue above me, waiting and waiting, and looking and looking.
But as time passes, I wish more and more to be away from everyone, they re very noisy and they are talking and chatting and I know this is not what I want for my eclipse. Ha! We /Americans have taken matters into our own paws, I see, and a few people, needing what I need, have moved into the field behind us.
In urgent haste I pick up my chair and my binoculars and my clock and tell John, I’m going over there.
I find a place behind a noisome wrecked building, it seems to have used as a latrine by people, as there are small piles of dried human waste lying about. But I can also smell the cows that are grazing in the field just beyond. I find a place for my chair where the ground is not too nasty, and more importantly where I can see and be near a few bushes.
I sit and wait. I look at the shrinking crescent of sun. I discover to my delight a tiny reed-filled wetland nearly at my feet, beyond the rusted chain-link fence, and there are, wonderfully, frogs in it, bright yellow-green frogs, and they are trilling and croaking and splashing about. There are some fine birds, there is at least one butterfly, and there are the black and white cows, and some dogs among them.
I try taking shadow pictures (unsuccessfully it turns out), and sit and wait.
But finally I see that a few people have gone out in to the field itself. I need to be there, The light is sliding away, and I need to be on the land.
I leave my chair behind in the unclean place and go into the field.
The light is sliding away, away. A little wind picks up, and the temperature drops. I step farther into the field. Nobody stops me. There are low desert plants growing amid the litter. I see abandoned slippers, old cans, paper of every kind, odd pieces of metal. I see birds darting and shooting above the bushes. I hear the dogs barking.
The light is sliding, sliding, sliding away. The light is grey, or watery, silvery.
The crescent is small, getting so small now.
I walk quickly farther into the field, into a kind of circle of sand. I stand very still with my hands clasped in front of me, letting the light settle over and around me.
I walk quickly farther still into the field. I see no people, no houses, no humans in front of me, only the desert there and the small plants.
All at once the terror overwhelms me, the hopeless terror, the abject and profound fear. The light is going now, swiftly so swiftly, and running away like water, flowing away like water out of the world.
I hear the powerful shouts of frightened people behind me, I begin to cry out, I am so afraid and I cry and sob and call out.
The light flashes away!
The sun is black, the sun is black, the radiant corona streams away in glory around it, the sunset colors burst at the horizon all around m and I am there in the middle of the world surrounded by sunset and darkness.
A huge prominence of orange leaps from the upper left limb. A cry goes up behind me,
I drop to my knees, I lift my arms in supplication, in homage, in joy and fear together.
I remember to take a few images of this but mostly I look and look, with my own eyes and with my instrument. How glorious, how glorious!
The dogs howl in dismay.
Then color appears at the lower right limb, pink, orange, brilliant neon pink and orange, a wide and wider band of it. Behind me the people cheer louder and louder and THERE IS THE SUN COME BACK AGAIN.
We are saved once more, our tiny earth given life by this star, in the same way as the return of the flooded Nile each year gave life to these people.
I return to John and he comes to greet me. Everyone is laughing and smiling and happy. I take a few pictures to show this.
How, oh how can all this scene be explained.
For an hour or so we wander up and down, taking in the sights, And then our buses come, and we drive back across the desert, and back to our hotel and its red tent.
Flowers of yellow and lavender. The birds skimming over them, The dogs and the cows. The fat yellow-green frogs splashing about in their questionable tiny wetland. Frogs. The frogs went silent about three quarters into totality. At a half hour before totality, a loudspeaker nearby crackled into sound: the recorded call to prayer, ghostly in the thinning light. Again ten minutes later, and then, astonishing in its appropriateness, FOUR MINUTES before totality, the breathy sound travels on the dying light, a kind of wild abandonment to fate in its tone. Later I read that there is a prayer in time of catastrophe, and I am certain that that was it.
Our Egyptian guides had been quite skeptical about the whole thing. Not any more. Our best guide, Mohamed, said that he cried, he didn't know why.
Well, what else could one do?
A day of transit only, back to Cairo. We drive back across the desert lands, here and there a herd of sheep or goats, tended by a lone herdsman or two, most in long robes of brown, blue, or tan, blowing in the wind. Long stretches pass with no human places to be seen, only the vast desert, with its scattered low plants, subtle undulations, and now and then, at the horizon, bluffs rising, the great landmarks for those that know them. The road is good, there are some cars, some trucks, Sparse dwellings and other indeterminate buildings, some are small mosques with crescents rising from little towers, some are tiny sturdy buildings with two windows, or no windows, high up on the walls to allow the heat to escape. Often, inexplicably, a lone person, barely visible, walking in the desert on a path known to him or to her. And if it is a her, she is unmistakable in billowing black.
What life is that, that these women live?
I forgot to tell that we stopped at the place where the battle of Alamein was fought in WW 2, and the commonwealth cemetery there. How moving, that these soldiers that died here in the desert should be buried here. Many of the headstones have inscriptions made by their families. Many of the graves have a lonely cactus planted by them. That these young men who came from a country where there would be lovely flowers at their graves should now have a dry, prickly cactus--it is so painful.
Why cannot we learn, still and still.