EGYPT: Love and rage amid the pyramids
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Names of love were scrawled on the desert rock. Written in camp fire ash, some were new and black, others were fading. Most were English language names; kids from international schools scribbling teenage declarations in the wind and the heat. A few were ensconced in hearts. They scrolled up the wall like history.
Hannah Loves John.
Love is like that. Sure it is. Bruce Springsteen sang those words. But this is not The Boss’ territory. This is bone-colored desert, where a voice can’t even summon an echo, a place that eons ago a river ran. Time stole the water, leaving only a bed of rock and sand. Most people come here now to go four-wheeling or to escape the crush and madness of Cairo. In the minutes before dusk, they seem a scattering of modern nomads, climbing the ridges and outcroppings, grilling hot dogs and settling in for sunset. From up here, the ragged city unfolds. And beyond that, gauzed in dust and amber haze, rise the Pyramids of Giza. They look like eye slits on the horizon. But their geometric perfection wasn’t enough to put them on a new list of the Seven Wonders of the World that included the Colosseum in Italy and the Great Wall of China. The pyramids had to settle for an ‘honorary’ status in a global Internet vote concocted by a Swiss adventurer.
Egyptians were furious. Some sensed a conspiracy. Architectural genius, they argued, should not be subjected to commercial whims and popularity contests. They have a point. It seems apparent that whoever voted in the ranking didn’t sit here at dusk, didn’t imagine all that came before him, didn’t revel in mysteries still unknown, didn’t gaze across an ancient plain where stone and young love endure against the elements.
— Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo
