A Nubian kind of day

Thursday, Nov. 12 -- Off to Philae, a really gorgeous temple and one that was relocated when the Aswan dam was built. My history's pretty shaky on this one, but I believe it was partially submerged after the first dam was built and faced total submersion when the high dam (Aswan) was built in the 1960s. It was partially under water for four years, the water level rising so high that it discolored the temple's walls. As a result, the Egyptians dismantled 40,000 blocks and rebuilt the temple on another site between 1972-80. In fact, 16 temples were relocated, at a cost of $85 million. To thank the countries that helped, Egypt donated four temples, including the Temple of Dendur, on display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Philae was built to stop the fighting between the Egyptians and the Nubians. The first temple, built around 360 BC, was destroyed and it's the second temple that's now standing, rebuilt in 285 BC in honor of Isis, the goddess of love. Philae means love, philosophy and wisdom. The temple once housed the obelisk known at Cleopatra's Needle, now in London.

This is another busy day -- we visit a perfume factory, a jewelry store and the street market, where everything imaginable is for sale, including galabayahs, Nubian caps, jewelry, spices, scarves and boxes inlaid with mother of pearl.

In the late afternoon, we board a felucca, an Egyptian sailboat with the sharply angled single sail, and just drift along the Nile for a couple of hours. We needed some down time, even if the mercury hit 100. Ken (Michael Phelps), Rita (Esther Williams) and Keven (Mark Spitz) took the plunge and contracted schistomiasis (aka bilharzia), a dread disease spread by the freshwater snail. We hope they survive. We wound up at a Nubian village, one of 1,200 such villages moved when the high dam was built. Nubians, I believe, are a race unto themselves, with Egyptian features but very dark skin. They originally lived in the southernmost part of the country and mixed it up with the Sudanese. The village was pretty squalid: many of the homes are made of mud brick and are quite primitive. On the other hand, a handful were more modern, including one where we spent a couple of hours and ate dinner with a family. Very warm, nice people with adorable children. Ussama asked us to bring candy and cookies to hand out to the kids, all of whom were pretty raggedy. The adult were smoking sheesha (a waterpipe with mild tobacco). Most of the women were covered and clearly lead hard lives. Sure makes you appreciate what you have...