The Nile by Toby Wilkinson

Author:Toby Wilkinson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780385351560
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-06-09T18:30:00+00:00

The Kuftis proved to be the most troublesome people that I have ever worked with.1

—FLINDERS PETRIE

North of Luxor, as the Nile enters the great, eastward bend in its course, the landscape of age-eroded limestone bluffs and lush green fields is reflected in the river’s gently flowing waters. Yet, by comparison with Thebes, there is a noticeable difference in the state of the banks, canals and verges: they are strikingly free from rubbish, cleaner here than anywhere else in the country. It is a small distinction, but an important one, for it reflects the independent character of the people in this part of Egypt.

The story of refuse collection is in many ways a parable of life in the contemporary Nile Valley. In the old days, people will tell you, rubbish used to be collected by private contractors, or rather by their armies of small boys who collected the refuse sacks from the roadsides at four o’clock in the morning, just before dawn. At the collecting depot, the organic waste was separated off and sold as fertiliser, earning the contractors a tidy profit. It was a successful system that suited everyone. Everyone, that is, except the authorities, who were jealous of any lucrative sector they did not control themselves. So, the contracts for rubbish collection were taken away from the private operators and given to big companies in exchange for large bribes. Service suffered, the streets and canals started to become choked with rubbish, but there was little that ordinary citizens could do: it was all part of the corruption and sclerosis of Mubarak’s Egypt.

But, in the rural south of the country, the doughty locals—always independent-minded and sceptical of their distant rulers—took matters into their own hands. In the towns and villages between Luxor and Qena, the inhabitants organise rubbish collection, sorting and disposal themselves. As a result, their surroundings are cleaner and greener. It is a metaphor for the divide in Egyptian society, not just between north and south (northern Egyptians think southerners backward; southerners find their northern compatriots rude and selfish) but between the centre and the provinces. The tension between central control and provincial self-assertion is a leitmotif in Egyptian history; nowhere is it more apparent than in this part of Upper Egypt.

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