Racing the Pyramids

As is the case with most people in the world, the Pyramids were close to all I knew about Egypt before I moved here. During the weeks when I was preparing to leave the United States to move to Egypt, there was little I could visualize about what it would be like, but I imagined a sunny apartment, and the Pyramids.

I kept meaning to visit the Pyramids after I moved here, but I never got around to it. People came to town, I would show them the sights, but I always seemed to be occupied with something work-related on the day that they would visit the Pyramids.  As my first year here approached its end, and a return trip to the United States neared, I suddenly realized I still hadn’t been there.  I got nervous.

On the one hand, after a year, I could say that these ancient edifices were, in the context of the current struggles of an overpopulated, underemployed society of Muslim Arabs, about as relevant as a shipwreck is to a fish.  It was not really an essential experience.  This dead pile of rocks was not connected to the revelatory experience that I’d had, in this living society with live problems. 

Yet I knew that, as was the case with me before I came here, all that most people in the U.S. would know about Egypt was the Pyramids; thus when I came back, I would surely find myself in many dozens of session of small talk in which the other person would have no recourse but to ask me, “So, did you visit the Pyramids?” If I said no, they’d doubt I’d really been in Egypt.  With my lifelong tendency to feel guilty whenever accused, I might even start to doubt it.  It became apparent to that I would have to go just for the sake of not sounding stupid in case someone asked me.  But it was very late when this finally became apparent.

It came down to the very last day before I had to fly back. I had a long magazine article to write. I was making good progress hammering away at the thing, clear-headed and not having to move backward.  But when I finished the article, I checked my watch. I had determined before that I had to start at 5 p.m. getting ready to go to the airport.  It was now 2 p.m. Three hours. I lived just a half-hour from the Pyramids. But there might be traffic. And I might not know which entrance, and so on. But I figured that even if I got lost and lost some time, I would still be able to spend a half an hour at the Pyramids.  That would just qualify as having been there.  I instantly decided to go. I bolted down to the street and hailed a taxi.

Soon I could see the Pyramids from the highway, hazy in the background with run-down apartment buildings blocking most of them from view.

( “The Pyramids.” Capital P. Meaning “those three.” As if those are all of them. Although there are many pyramids all over Egypt, as many schoolchildren know, and forget after they finish school. And anyway the three Pyramids at Giza are actually five, if you count the auxiliary servants’ pyramids, or is it six, as any tourist knows, and forgets, back at the hotel.)

I remember I had been crestfallen after some jaded long-timer told me that there’s a McDonald’s near them. As we pulled into their neighborhood I saw that it wasn’t true. It is true that the big urban blob Cairo has spilled so wide that it encroaches very near to the Pyramids of Giza. But the government at some point must have realized it would be counterproductive to let slums and gift shops overrun the monuments themselves.  So there’s still enough sand around them to preserve that ancient ambiance.  And behind the Pyramids is only bare desert, looking the way it’s looked for thousands of years.

(On the other hand, the Luxor Temple, located down south in the city of the same name, really does have a McDonald’s obscenely close to it, golden arches peeking through the stone columns, not to mention multi-lane roadways on all four sides of it.  So: It can happen.)

I got to their gate and starting power-walking up their hill (not running; it was June and too hot for that, even though the sun was going down). Tour guides were trying to get my attention so I would hire them to give historical explanations of the sights in pretend English, but I ignored them. I didn’t have time for that.  I continued striding as directly as possible toward the Great Pyramid, the middle one.  I realized that I had to go inside it. Just in case I never came back. Being on the site qualified as being there, but being inside it was definitely inarguably being there.  Some young male (official? unofficial?) told me that the entrance was closed that day, but I didn’t let that discourage me. And lo, he had been wrong. So I went inside.

Someone had told me that it was boring inside, with all the gold and treasure removed long ago and put in museums, and she was right. There’s just a little stone box where the mummy used to lay.  Nevertheless, it was the core of the thing, and I couldn’t be disappointed.  Like many tourists do, I climbed inside and laid down. I paused for a few seconds, staring up at the grey grooved rock above me. Then I got up. I had to go. I was now done visiting the Pyramids. I had to catch a flight.

As I left, I paused, looked over my shoulder and obliged myself to try to appreciate this giant triangular structure.  So hyped.  Not so pretty up close; a bit like a rubble pile, since most of the exterior stones have been stripped away by centuries worth of locals who used them for other structures. (Philistines! Perhaps literally.)  As for “mysterious”?  Not that I could perceive.

Then I got it:  They’re old. Really fucking old. And still here. Plus, being 3-D triangles, they’ve got a geometrical panache that is, in itself, enough. The Pyramids didn’t need to prove anything to me.  They weren’t going anywhere.  I, on the other hand … I took some pictures and left.

--May 2003