By Mursi Saad El-Din Last week I followed in the footsteps of English travellers along the banks of the Nile -- that stretch of the river, to be precise, that lies between Luxor and Aswan. Dodging the pressures of work, my wife and I managed to squeeze a five-day family couple residence on a Canadian cruise. And as we boarded our luxury boat, the five-star Nile Romance, my mind went back, as usual, to times of old, when the Nile was a regular track for travellers of all nationalities but especially the English. I had become acquainted with what it feels like to be floating on the surface of our life-giving river through the books written by them. Indeed hundreds of books have been published by European travellers, but some stand out. This is not only due to the detailed accounts of Nilotic adventures they contain but equally to their sympathy with Egypt, the love of the country that their writing reflect. Names I will always remember include Edward Lane, who was in Egypt for two long stretches in 1832, and whose book, Manners and Customs of Modern Egyptians is a frequently published classic. A recent edition has indeed appeared with the American University in Cairo Press, with a comprehensive introduction by Jason Thompson. But there are other memorable books as well: Harriet Martineu's Eastern Life: Present and Past (1848), Sophia Poole's An English Woman in Egypt (1844), Lucy Duff Gordon's Letters from Egypt (1960), Amelia Edwards's A Thousand Miles Up the Nile (1848)... One thing all travellers to Egypt seem to share is fascination with the Nile. Many took a dahabia from Boulaq, in Cairo, travelling all the way up to Aswan and sometimes even further; they describe weeks-long journeys, one of which stands out more than the others. It was the trip of Lady Duff Gordon who not only travelled on the Nile but actually lived on it for many years -- until her death in Egypt in 1869. She had come to a warmer, drier climate as part of her treatment for tuberculosis, but she decided to live on a boat, sharing the lives of peasants, with whom she sympathised very deeply and about whom she wrote home regularly, creating the material that was to make up her famous book. Most travellers waxed lyrical about dahabia journeys, but the most detailed accounts are given by Amelia Edwards and Florence Nightingale, the Daughter of Japhet -- her pseudonym -- who came to Egypt with her family, hired a dahabia called the Sphinx, and a dragoman named Khalil Ibrahim. Dragomen in those days were more than simply tour guides who gave information on the sites visited, they also acted as go- betweens and guards, facilitating contact with local inhabitants and protecting the visitor. The Sphinx, we are told in Daughter of Japhet's book Wandering in the Land of Ham, was "about 70 feet long and would measure, I believe, between 30 and 40 tonnes. From stern to midship is a raised poop cabin, which is divided into several compartments. The deck in front of the cabin is occupied by the crew when working the boat..." Here as elsewhere the dahabia in itself seems to have been the subject of much fascination, and accounts of trips on the Nile always include information on the vessel, its provisions, its crew, the kind of mood it inspired in the travellers... Though I was on board an altogether different kind of contraption, I couldn't help making comparisons between past and present. One thought that kept haunting me through the duration of the cruise was that, the breath-taking beauty of the landscape notwithstanding, Egypt was always conscious of the value of tourism -- something that shows in the testimony of the precursors of the contemporary tourist. In the end who can help being drawn, as if by magic, to all that the Nile has to offer, whether on the Sphinx or the Nile Romance?
