Overlooking the city from the hillside, a Hollywood-style sign in Minya welcomes tourists to the traditionally conservative city’s more urban atmosphere. (photo courtesy of David Harvey)

Standing in the spotless entryway of my friend’s apartment,
I stared down at the crisp lights reflecting off the gleaming white tiles. My
feet were covered in black grime. I had removed my shoes but was terrified
about leaving tracks. I was itching furiously because of the wicked sunburn
across my neck and forearms; countless mosquito bites and the strange rash on
my upper arm added to my discomfort. I could smell, ever so faintly, the soft
odor of pine-scented cleaning solution over the pungent funk I had accumulated
over the last three days. The thought crossed my mind, if only for a second,
that my latest Egyptian adventure had not been worth quite so much trouble.

It had begun as most of our trips do. I was headed out the
door, and my roommate Wesley Horne shouted out something like, “What about
middle Egypt,
maybe Minya?”

“Yeah,” I shouted back. “That’s where all the terrorists
grew up.”

Minya, as I had learned over the year, was once a thriving
tourist stop between upper and lower Egypt. Those taking the longer, overland
route to Luxor and Aswan
in the south would often stop in Minya because of its beautiful riverside
cornice, friendly environment, bustling markets and few remaining ancient
Egyptian monuments. Through the late 1970s and into the 1990s, violent Islamism
was frequently linked to students of Minya
University, and the town gained a
reputation for breeding terrorism. These days, according to several sources,
tourists need constant security supervision. Our trip would be postponed a few
weeks, until the end of the semester.

Horne and I had moved out of our apartment shortly before
school finished and took up residence in a nearby hostel. During the move into
the hostel, my cab driver tried to take me to the pyramids despite my
insistence — in Arabic — that I knew where I wanted to go. The presence of
backpacks automatically signified to the driver that I needed someone to think for
me, apparently. It took a bit of arguing — in Arabic — to return downtown. Over
the next few days I got used to the cab drivers assaulting me outside of the
hostel with offers to take me to the pyramids and the sphinx. If I didn’t know
any better I would think that this was all Cairo
had to offer.

After a few days of being treated like we had just arrived
in the city, we were both finished with school. On May 29, just before 4 p.m., Horne, Kevin Staight and I met for the
second time this semester at the Ramses Train Station downtown. The last time
we had been trying to reach Gaza
and found ourselves detained by military police in Ismailia,
75 miles north of Cairo, after
first being delayed by a train conductor strike. This time we would be heading
153 miles south along the Nile River
to Minya.

Just as it had been during our trip to Gaza,
we arrived at the station with minutes to spare before the train departed. Now,
at the end of the semester and after various adventures, we weren’t phased by
the lack of seats. Staight and Horne, true to form, quickly turned two empty
baggage racks between cars into makeshift beds. I took a spot on the floor with
other seatless passengers, some in tan slacks and collared shirts, some in
flowing gray galabeyas. Forty minutes later, with the train still at the
platform, Kevin quipped, “Is there another strike?” Minutes later we departed.

We were expecting a heavy security presence in the city, and
the numerous uniformed army soldiers on the train confirmed our expectation.
They were all young and wearing gray dress uniforms with metals and ribbons on
their lapels. We arrived sometime after 9 p.m.,
and two of the young men walked with us, chatting in English. They asked where
we were from and why we would come to Minya. As we passed the tourist police I
was certain we would get out without a real escort. Instead, we were stopped at
the door and asked to have a seat in the tourist information office.

As Horne chatted with the tourist police officer, who was
trying to push tours and offering to find us a taxi and escort us around Minya,
Staight and I played with a light-up map
of the area on the wall. We flipped switches meant to turn on lights and
highlight sights. The board had clearly been inoperable for decades. The
officer escorted us down the street to a cheap hotel where we managed to get a
room for about $10 a night.

Wandering the path along the cornice, the Nile River provides travelers with a scenic route to Minya in spite of officers’ efforts to escort tourists. (Photos Courtesy of David Harvey)

The hotel, much like the tourist office, had fallen into
disrepair. A fountain in the back courtyard was dry and collapsing. The walls
were filthy and its blue paint was chipped. The hotel was quiet and seemed to
me as though it was unused. We dropped our stuff in a room on the third floor
and headed out.

At the door, the security pressed us on our schedule and we
repeatedly explained that we only wanted to wander and to see the town. After
some debate we were able to sign a sheet of paper stating in Arabic that we
declined security, and felt safe to wander Minya.

We were expecting a conservative town, much like the Islamic
quarters of Cairo, but the crowds
in the streets reminded us more of a university town in the more liberal Luxor.
At one point, Horne jokingly compared it to Beirut,
Lebanon, where nightclubs
and Westernized dress are in high demand.

That night at the bar, we discussed the likelihood that
conservative movements would spring from liberal areas and that our
expectations of Egypt
had been consistently shattered since arrival. On our way out, Horne was pulled
into a hushed conversation with a fellow patron who offered him antiquities if
he returned at 11 a.m.

We hardly slept. The room was stiflingly hot and despite a
full can of bug spray I was eaten alive. Buzzing and itching kept me awake. The
air conditioner spewed heat. The camel blanket on the bed scratched but
provided my only layer of protection from the growing bug population.

The next morning we headed downstairs and were greeted by
six tourist police in dull, milky-brown uniforms. They were intent on knowing
our plans. After some debate we managed to sign another waiver, this time in
English, saying we wished to wander Minya alone and felt safe. We grabbed food
and headed back to the bar to meet with the black-market antiquities dealer.
However, our curiosity about the dark, hushed corners of ancient Egyptian
historical preservation remained only curiosities. He never showed.

We wandered Minya for most of the day, up onto the hillside
and through the desert. We walked along the cornice, which stretched five
kilometers along a lush and wide Nile
River. We wandered through a market
where we shared tea with some of the locals.

Around 4 p.m., we
headed to the train station and started our journey back north. We would have
two more stops, full of bugs, heat and without showers. In Al Fayoum, just
southwest of Cairo, we weren’t able
to shake the police escorts and our trip ended with a damper. Nevertheless, at
each stop we discovered more of Egypt
and crumbled predetermined images of where we visited.

As I arrived at my friend’s apartment where I had left my
belongings three days earlier, I felt like a wreck. Her apartment was spotless
and I was anything but. I thought, as I entered the room, that perhaps the trip
wasn’t worth the trouble, the pain or the effort. But just like our February
trip to Gaza, it was an experience
I will remember. It shaped how I look at Egypt,
the country where I spent the last year studying and that still has so much
left for me to discover.