The Fayoum

Lake Qarun has attracted people to the Fayoum oasis for thousands of years. Since the time of the pharaohs, human beings have been drawn here by the vital, life-sustaining water that stretches from sand to sky as far as the eye can see and promises survival for all living things who make their homes beside it. In this desert land, water is unquantifiably more precious than gold or oil, saffron or amethysts, although all these are found in Egypt as well and are highly prized for their worth to the outside world. But in the desert, it is water that counts.

On a side note (and to gripe yet again about the lack of environmental awareness in Egypt), I'll point out that, as is the case with most natural resources in this country, Lake Qarun has been exploited and abused by the Egyptians who live near it. Soil drainage from the farms on its banks has contaminated the water with organic waste, metals, and pesticides, and over-fishing has depleted what fish population has managed to survive the toxic pollution. A study of the lake published in the International Journal of Environmental Sciences concluded that as "Lake Qarun is a closed basin with a high evaporation rate...[and the] only source of water in the lake is the agricultural and municipal drainage from the surrounding communities...the water quality of Lake Qarun has significantly deteriorated" (Gupta and Abd El-Hamid, 2003). The seagulls that circle overhead are a striking visual reminder of how salty the lake has become; 225 km from the Mediterranean, the typically ocean-dwelling birds are now a common sight here.

Despite the state of Lake Qarun, the surrouding oasis of Fayoum is a peaceful paradise of date palms and clear blue skies, as different from the frenetic, noisy, dusty mass of people that comprises Cairo as can be. The dirt roads that wind among the scattered houses--some simple huts used by the local people, others grand villas where wealthy Cairenes spend their weekends--are trafficked mostly by donkeys, the only motorized vehicles being the occasional battered Toyota pickup carrying farming supplies. Water buffaloes, ubiquitous in rural Egypt, graze among the stands of palm trees.

Whose imagination is not vulnerable to the ideal of the Oasis? A rare green place in a vast desert, a haven of calm and relaxation, a place to shed the cares of life and enjoy a little much-needed vacation. Thirty of my coworkers and I traveled to my boss' house in Fayoum last weekend and spent a day eating, drinking tea, and wandering lazily up and down the roads in search of scenic photo ops and local pottery. Although everyone I was with was Egyptian, they approached Fayoum with the same preconceived notions of the Oasis as I did--and were far less shy about acknowledging them. I was not the one snapping pictures of little boys on donkeys; they were. It was my Egyptian coworkers, not me, who insisted that we visit the pottery shops where Fayoum craftsmen sell their wares, and once we were inside complained loudly within earshot of the proprietors that everything was overpriced. We trooped boldly into peoples' backyards so we could pose with a view of the lake behind us. Cameras swinging, we peered through windows, stepped delicately over the mud on the path, and asked a local man if he would let us ride his horses.

What it turned into was a dichotomy between urban and rural, wealthy and poor, educated and uneducated, tourist and local. It is a dichotomy you expect when Americans visit Egypt, but is more startling when it is Cairenes visiting Fayoum.