Desert Log Part 4: The Return

We spent our last night in the desert near the edge of another cliff; an earthquake had left the rim looking like a row of collapsing apartment buildings, complete with "alleys" 60 feet deep. The proximity (25 km) to the Dahla Oasis afforded our first contacts with other life forms in 7 days: pigeons roosted in the giant cracks, a crow cawed, and a weird hooting coo awoke me at dawn. We reached the edge of the plateau the next morning; in the photo with me and Bob it is possible to see the greeen stain of the oasis creeping onto the desert's anemic palor. We inched our way down the winding descent from the oasis, finally arrivng at an apparently deseerted military checkpoint. Uncle Bob begain to drive past, when it suddenly erupted with 18 yearold soldiers, one of whom brandished a large rifle with a serrated dagger at the end of its barrel. Apparently our descent had been illegal. However, after perhaps half on hour of shouting over the radio, the ranking officer had to let us go. In the meantime Bob had chatted with the boys cum soldiers. We suspected that they would have wanted to keep us longer, if only for a distraction. But we continued on, through the picturesque fields of Dahla, stopping at one town to look at the old architecture, and a temple from the Roman period done in imitation of Old Kingdom styles. We decided to break up the 10 hour trip back to Cairo by returning to the same lodge at Bahariyya Oasis. Returning to Cairo through Giza was a shock. The appreciation for other signs of humanity that I had felt in Dahla quickly evaporated in the hordes of aggressive vehicles and crowds of people living on top of each other.
We finally arrived and faced the staggering task of removing the dust from every surface that we'd carted with us. Now, countless loads of laundry and dishes and numerous hosings and air blastings later, the material goods are clean. As are the humans, though the week of sun and dry air left my fingernails brittle and face chapped. Am going now with Myriam to have "halawa": honey-wax to remove leg hair.