Fear Over Personal Safety Gives Rise to Hard Times in Egypt Tourist City : Valley of the Kings: Luxor lives by tourism and, for now at least, tourism is dead, killed by a campaign of violence by Islamic fundamentalists.

It’s a rare day when Ahmed Soliman has a guest at the Amon Elgazira, his tiny hotel near the Valley of the Kings.

Mahmud el-Gillany Hassan used to take tourists on the Nile every day under the billowing sails of his felucca, “Karen.” Now he goes 10 days without a customer.

The story is the same with Abdel-Rahman, who rents donkeys to take tourists from the Nile to the tombs and temples in the Valley of the Kings, and guide Gaber Abd-el-Rady Ahmed-el-Kawamly, who tells them what they’re seeing.

“Everybody’s so sad now, and it’s not our nature,” Soliman said.

Luxor lives by tourism and, for now at least, tourism is dead, killed by a campaign of violence by Islamic fundamentalists.

Soliman employs two people in addition to his family in his five-room hotel and is trying not to lay them off. He even hustles for taxi fares in his old Peugeot to earn enough to feed his three children and the staff.

“What can I do?” Soliman asked. “They go one month, two months without pay. I have to go out and get money to pay them.”

This is what two years of terrorist attacks have brought Egyptians, especially those in cities like Luxor with little industry except tourism. Radicals bent on destroying Egypt’s largely secular system and installing an Islamic regime have hit tourism as the top money-earning enterprise.

Four foreign tourists are among more than 360 people killed in the violence. Hundreds of thousands of potential visitors have gone elsewhere, depriving the struggling economy of billions of dollars.

It was in Luxor that the violence began, in June, 1992: a rock-throwing incident or two, a bomb the size of a large firecracker near the Karnak temple complex, an explosive of the same size thrown at a French tourist bus.

The people of Luxor quickly made clear they were offering no support to the militants, so the violence moved north. Peace has reigned in Luxor for two years, but still the tourists stay away.

“Here it is very safe,” said Hassan the boatman, sitting on a bench in the shade of a Nile-side tree. “We just don’t know why the people stopped coming. We are all against what is happening in the country. We help the police. There is no problem here.”

Like everyone else in town, Hassan believes tourists will return. But when?

Luxor, 350 miles south of Cairo, is a gentle place where the worst an outsider should expect is to be conned out of half a dollar by a smooth-talking horse-cart driver. It’s always been a dream for cultural tourists, visitors interested in the array of temples and tombs built when Luxor was mighty Thebes, capital of ancient Egypt.

But today’s Luxor is a lonely paradise, enjoyed by a few Japanese tourists, fewer English and Germans, all taking advantage of fantastic tour bargains.

Gone are the long lines of sightseers leading to King Tut’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Majestic Nile cruisers, once packed with foreigners on the run from Luxor south to Aswan, now carry Egyptians lured by cut-rate fares.

Business has been so bad that Luxor’s largest luxury hotel, the Isis, offered Egyptians and foreign residents Easter-weekend rates of 152 Egyptian pounds, including air fare from Cairo. That’s $45.

A slightly lower-scale establishment offered two days and a night, with transfers, tours and a complimentary bottle of wine for one Egyptian pound--30 cents--on payment of $49 air fare. The normal round-trip air fare for residents is about $58.

Hotel managers talk of closing until things improve.

Telling evidence of terrorism’s toll lies at the Nile’s east bank, down two flights of steps across the corniche from Luxor Temple.

A complex built there in the good times before 1992 consists of a multimillion-dollar tourist center and 50 boutiques.

The tourist center has yet to be inaugurated. Of the 50 shops, four are open.