Where else in the world on a summer weekend with perfect weather and a stunningly beautiful sea ��" turquoise shading to indigo ��" would you find a total of ten people sharing a holiday beach of silvery sand with a shoreline of some one and a half kilometres? Perhaps such beaches exist unknown to my friend and me who were posing the question, but, in our respective experiences, beaches in much colder climes, even in howling wintry gales, can muster more people, admittedly walking rather than sitting and swimming ��" and they tend to be public beaches. It was the first week of June and Egypt's North Coast was just setting up for the season, which takes off later in the month, hence the paucity of beach-goers reflecting the lack of owners staying in their summer holiday properties. The tourist village we were staying is one of the older and more attractively designed and better-built (by the armed forces) North Coast developments some 20 to 30 years ago. Many of the roads are curved and there are leafy, almost rustic, footpaths between the buildings. Complementing the gardens of the villas and chalets, there is a luxurious use of public space, the land not then being at today's premium prices, which has been planted for common use and turned into recreational areas for adults and children. The North Coast tourist development, extending along the highway from Alexandria to Sidi Abdel-Rahman and then on to the coastal resort of Marsa Matrouh, is characterised by the brevity of its high summer season. One of its least attractive aspects is the inaccessible wall to wall nature of regimented tourist villages in many stretches, particularly between Alexandria and Marina. These allow only a few rare glimpses between of the Mediterranean across pristine dunes and sand, some of which, in any case, is the property of the armed forces. Although Bedouin, Settlers, and Holiday-Makers ��" Egypt's Changing Northwest Coast (The American University in Cairo Press) was published in the 1998, many its authors' then observations still ring true. In addition, the invaluable mid-1990s interviews, always including a concern with change and development, of the anthropologist authors Donald P. Cole and Soraya Altorki in the field, preserve local people's then perspectives on the region's transformation. The Bedouin of the title have inhabited the region for many centuries, the settlers predominantly came from the Nile Valley and Delta, notably in the 1960s when the State introduced local government, health and education services and development programmes. The holidaymakers, almost entirely Egyptian, are those visiting Marsa Matrouh from around the 1950s and the tourist villages from the 1980s, although in the last decade the Government has been paying more attention to attracting foreign visitors, which would undoubtedly extend the high summer season. Cole and Altorki observe that an essential feature of the tourist development of the North Coast was the elite's retreat from Marsa Matrouh, as the formerly exclusive resort with its select hotels gradually became more popular with cheaper hotels and flats to rent. However, both governmental and private employers bought property in some tourist villages for use by their employees, although they are very much in the minority. The North Coast is a semi-arid strip of the Western (Libyan) Desert. The Alex-Marsa Matrouh highway bisects the two diverse worlds of the tourist villages on the sea and the Bedouin communities extending into the desert, their low houses and shops surrounded by groves of the famous Mediterranean fig trees. The main livelihood, however, of the former nomadic agro-pastoralists is raising and trading livestock. The holidaymakers use some of their shops and services, especially the excellent fish the Bedouin cook to order. A few kilometres inland from the highway, turning off the highroad some 30 kilometres before Marina and also off the by-pass road cutting through the desert to Al-Alamein is a fascinating, almost surreal, town called Hammam. It has developed from the core of its old Bedouin market, with basic shops and services, including the caretta (covered donkey cart), to extend towards the coast. It feels like a desert frontier town, although the actual frontier with Libya is some 400 kilometres to the west, and has an extraordinarily varied selection of imported goods from personal toiletries to home fittings and furnishings, many of the more specialised and sophisticated shops being closed out of season. Back on the highway about 10 kilometres before Marina is the Zahran Centre, also open only in the summer. It comprises a large branch of the famous Alexandria supermarket of the same name, and various and numerous other shops and services ranging from a ultra-luxurious and expensive patisserie to fast food joints, plus an open-air cinema theatre. The Zahran Centre really comes to life at night and stays open all night, in accordance with the habits of many staying in the villages. It is a microcosm, accessible to the public, of the exclusive North Coast experience, which also embraces dedicated beaches, seaside toys for adult and children and concerts by popular Egyptian and foreign singers. Just over 100 kilometres west of Alexandria and just past Porta Marina is Al-Alamein, which entered the world's history books for the defining battle that took place there during World War II. Visiting its military museum, designed to advance the cause of peace not glorify war, and the three large foreign cemeteries, the Commonwealth, German and Italian respectively is a moving experience. However, the Al-Alamein warfare left a lethal legacy in the Western Desert: the minefields that maim and kill the Bedouin and impede development. Only a fraction of the landmines, still among the most numerous in the world, almost 60 years after they were laid, have been cleared despite the best efforts of Egyptian and a few foreign individuals and organisations. Until the governments of the countries responsible belatedly make a concerted attempt to clear the landmines for which they were responsible, the hedonism of the North Coast will always be countered by this deadly unwanted inheritance.
Faraldi has lived in Upper Egypt and then Cairo, since 1991, working in higher education and as a researcher, writer and editor.
