Demonstration outside Luxor Temple, Egypt

Just had the scariest, most terrifying and painful experience of my life over in Luxor City, Cleopatra Street. It lasted at least 20 minutes but it seemed like much, much longer. I went over to Luxor City from the West Bank, crossed the bridge and went into the city centre. There was this demo in support of President Mubarak, THAT WAS FINE I will tell you about it in a moment. The scary experience was having root canal treatment at the dentist, which I wasn’t expecting at all.

Well I hope I have got your attention, all the media outlets, news, TV because that is the kind of sensational reporting you are doing. I wish you would report on Luxor properly so the FCO etc would down grade the travel advice for us. Now let’s have a little non sensational reporting of facts from Luxor.

Back to demo so we are driving along going to the dentist and at the bottom of Station Street, just in front of Luxor temple. There were a maximum of 100 people, some in cars, some on foot. I did not feel at all intimidated and was quite obvious filming on my mobile. They were shouting in support of Mubarak saying “if you go you leave us to burn” and “ElBarade is with the Americans”. If you speak Arabic I think you can hear it quite clearly.



At the dentist there was quite a bit of discussion and this very nice gentleman translated for me. A dentist waiting room is quite a good straw poll as there are Christian and Muslim, men and women, old and young. The only group who probably not represented were the poor. The comments made were
• It is only Samir Farag (governor of Luxor) is 100% bad. Mubarak was good and bad.
• We need Mubarak.
• He kept us out of war (there was quite a lot of nodding of heads at this one)
• Outside (the country) he was good only inside he wasn’t.
• He was surrounded by bad people.

As we drove back it was business as usual in Luxor, men were working on the road putting in kerb stones, quite a lot of cars were speeding as the police aren’t bother with cameras. There was also building works going on as there is nobody controlling that either and if you get a house up it might stay! In Al Gezera village it was normal daily life as well.


So from a peaceful, safe and sunny Luxor salam