WB: All’s Well That Ends Well

May 26, 2006

Billmon:

It was at that point – when the results of all my worrying and frantic scampering around downtown Cairo were on the line – that I finally realized how silly I was being, acting like some cartoon stereotype of the Type A personality. If I was meant to ride the train to Luxor, I would: inshallah, if God willed it.

All’s Well That Ends Well

Posted by b on May 26, 2006 at 21:43 UTC | Permalink

Comments

I love travel stories.

Posted by: Groucho | May 26 2006 22:22 utc | 1

I do like billmon’s new style. It is more human. I think he is having a good holiday!

Posted by: Araneidae | May 26 2006 22:26 utc | 2

Wonderful and surface tension filled story. One that resonates even more as someone who has had simular travel adventures. It made me sweat…lol

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 26 2006 22:58 utc | 3

Wonderful words!

Posted by: beq | May 26 2006 23:01 utc | 4

A great piece Billmon, just spectacular!
Brings back memories. Years ago, when I was in India, there was a phenomenon I never understood: Fresh banknotes were decidedly prefered over those–nominally equal–showing signs of wear. I never got caught in quite your situation, however!

Posted by: Gaianne | May 26 2006 23:26 utc | 5

Heh This is the stuff that makes travel great.
I don’t get off on tourist expeditions much ie going to the imperial city, monkey forest, tower of london, chiefly because it really does restrict opportunities to interact with the people whose country you are visiting.
The locals are generally pretty used to meeting people from all four corners of the earth and at such places everyone has a clearly defined role eg ticket seller/buyer, guide/tourist etc which means the conversation is likely to flow along certain well worn grooves.
The thing is though, when you do find yourself in one of these places playing to type, sometimes completely serendipitously as it did in Billmon’s case, both parties will find themselves playing against type and actually having a genuine interaction. When that happens it can be much more fulfilling than when one has gone out deliberately seeking a ‘real’ interaction.
The business with ‘clean’ US dollars certainly isn’t confined to Egypt. I suspect it dates back to times and places that had very strict currency controls, which in turn encouraged two rates of exchange; the real one in bank windows and the other one, allegedly illegal, with street corner money changers.
Like all such enterprises (some MoA readers may recall the complex and only vaguely credible stories that used to support the multitudenous quality grading that various forms of pot had) the money changers compete amomgst each other to show that their product, in this case US bank-notes is better quality and therefore more valuable than anyone else’s.
In some of the former soviet and satellite states, heavly creased or grubby US banknotes are virtually worthless.
I used to wonder about this incessantly, because surely there must be someone who collects up all these discards and takes them back to their point of origin.

Posted by: Anonymous | May 27 2006 0:25 utc | 6

Billmon is a master writer.
He captured the perils of tourism and the sang froid of the Egyptians perfectly.

Posted by: waldo | May 27 2006 1:25 utc | 7

thank you, billmon, for the superb story-telling.

Posted by: andrew in caledon | May 27 2006 2:50 utc | 8

for some reason i picture this in film — with bill murry playing you.

Posted by: anna missed | May 27 2006 3:05 utc | 9

If I’m not mistaken — and I might be — didn’t the blood-red spot always portend an attack fromThe Mummy? Cue scary theremin music.

Posted by: ferd | May 27 2006 3:07 utc | 10

ahhh. my son is literally hovering over me waiting for the computer time. i had had it, i turned my mac on , ready to hit, OT and ask, ok, where is he? why haven’t we heard? i want to know, and by golly, it’s like opening a box of friggin rainbows.
more later, my son, so impatient, takes after his mom.
ahhhh. thank you billmon, a million millons worth

Posted by: annie | May 27 2006 3:07 utc | 11

Billmon, I don’t know if you read the comments here, but this is almost exactly like my story of trying to get home from Italy 10 years ago — including, “You come back tomorow” and the feeling that I’m an American dammit, and I’m used to having airline personel bend over backwards to get me on a plane! For a moment I was truely panicked as a counterguy told me there were no seats available until three weeks later. And I did feel silly, and it all worked out in the end.

Posted by: KenLac | May 27 2006 3:55 utc | 12

Just a beautiful story. The man can write about anything and make it edge of the seat wonderful.

Posted by: Bobb Bitchin | May 27 2006 5:07 utc | 13

Brad Pitt and angelina Jolie don’t have problems like this so they miss out on all the fun.Good post Bill.

Posted by: R.L. | May 27 2006 5:25 utc | 14

Billmon, I’m missing out on all the fun traveling with Brad. I’ll meet you at the train station in Luxor.

Posted by: Angelina | May 27 2006 7:58 utc | 15

It is so healing to read your stories. I believe there is nothing more revealing and eye-opening (about the country you are in and about yourself) than being at the complete mercy of the local population for some time. If you know how it feels to be “stranded” with a couple of pounds for a day or two, it might be just easier to grasp how the local population feels and handles the fact thay they are “stranded” for a lifetime for the lack of “power that cash can buy”.

Posted by: mimi | May 27 2006 15:02 utc | 16

Isn’t a travel writer always supposed to paint himself as the hero?
Like when Peter Matthiessen (I think) wrote about his harrowing flight over jungle in Africa? It was getting late in the evening, and if you didn’t spot your jungle landing strip before the sun went down, you’d almost certainly die in the trees. But Matthiessen really, really wanted to fly that night, so he pestered and cajoled and then bullied the pilot until a bad decision was made to fly. Fuel low, sun setting, circling, circling, frantically scanning the jungle canopy in the fading light, the tiny landing strip was spotted, and Matthiessen laid complete blame for the near-death experience . . .on the pilot’s bad decision to succumb to bullying. (If I recall correctly.)

Posted by: ferd | May 27 2006 15:50 utc | 17

Brilliant is only word that I can say for this.
Billmon is a National Gem/(Resource) of the USA.
Why the Fuck do the NYT and WAPO ignore this guy?
PS Billmon: Africa is ALL cash, remember next time

Posted by: Cloned Poster | May 27 2006 16:43 utc | 18

[Billmon gelebt en der Faery Landt,
und Sie alles sind deine wortlicher’s,
zählen, ‘eins, zwei’ … zu kartofflen]
http://tinyurl.com/haqyw
Das is der Großansicht von Afrika.
Das Bronzezeitalter war lebendiger als Y2K.

Posted by: Andre Schweitzer | May 27 2006 17:08 utc | 19

Brings back memories of me traveling through the Middle East and Southeast Asia in 1977. Congratulations.
…now, how does one get that kinda job?

Posted by: Darryl Pearce | May 28 2006 0:22 utc | 20

Billmon, this is terrific travel writing. The narrative just swept me along, and your interactions with the Egyptian people were funny and touching at the same time, especially the poor guy who was your savior, knowing all along that he was not going to get a windfall at the end, but sticking with you anyway.

Posted by: janeboatler | May 28 2006 12:05 utc | 21

God damn that was good. I don’t know how a writer’s brain can be busy taking and living in the moment like that and then still remember all of the details for crafting later.
We need to get you away from that office more often and into the real world, man.

Posted by: kevin. | May 28 2006 20:51 utc | 22

Billmon,
My husband and I spent almost a month backpacking through Egypt back in 1982. Wow, does this bring back memories! (Do the people in Cairo still climb through bus windows at bus stops?)
We took a two-night trip from Aswan to Abu Simbul on a barge where the rats raced past our heads as we tried to sleep on the deck at night. Now THAT was fun! In Egypt we had some of the best and worst times of our year-long travel adventure.

Posted by: Susan S | May 29 2006 3:31 utc | 23

Thanks so much Billmon. Reading you is the next best thing to being there. Reminds me of the Cairo scenes in Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, and my own confluences of a lack of liquidity with a lack of vocabulary. Cheers.

Posted by: PeeDee | May 29 2006 6:02 utc | 24

Billmon,
At first I was midly annoyed about the lack of political commentary, but your writing carried me past that and soon I slipped into memories of similar wide-eyed, adrenaline pumping travel experiences. (I can only barely imagine a more chaotic knot of people than Lagos Airport.) Damn you’re good.
Can I — perhaps with some assistance from some of your many other admirers — commission you to write a travel book? I’m thinking sort of a 21st century Baedeker, one where you trot the globe, mixing on-the-spot personal tales with political commentary germane to that spot, perhaps how it ties into the big ball of twine.

Posted by: Bragan | May 30 2006 13:00 utc | 25

This is why Richard Cohen et al. are so scared. Billmon can outwrite any of them. Next — the screenplay, with Bill Murray as Billmon.

Posted by: Aigin | May 30 2006 17:43 utc | 26

Billmon, took me a few days to get to this – doing some traveling of my own and was ¡gasp! without internet access for five days – but what a treat to come home to. My travels were much more local – southern coast of Maine – but your travelogue side has me writing more in my journal than I have in months. Surely the story of sharing a smallish beach house with my brother and his not quite human snoring will not resonate in the way of your Cairo adventure, but thanks so much for the inspiration to start writing. It also brings back memories of crossing the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico by clase ordinaire bus. I’ve been away too long. Can’t wait to read your Luxor installment!

Posted by: conchita | Jun 1 2006 2:05 utc | 27

Billmon
Very well-written travel account.
I have travelled fairly extensively in the Arab world including living in the Gulf for a few years and I must say that Egypt was by far my least favorite country ever visited. I simply could not handle it, which surprised. Happy to hear that someone could handle and thrive in that enviornment, but it sounded to me like you too almost lost it.

Posted by: jg | Jun 2 2006 2:15 utc | 28

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