On 17th November, 1997, at approximately 08:45, six men entered the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, southern Egypt, dressed as police. They were carrying AK47 assault rifles and knives. After killing the two policemen stationed at the parking area entrance, they moved into the temple, trapping almost a hundred tourists inside. Over the next forty-five minutes, moving methodically through the columned courtyards, they killed sixty-two tourists and wounded twenty-six others. Many of the victims were shot in the legs and then dispatched later at close range. Several, mainly women, were mutilated with knives. The dead included four Japanese couples on honeymoon, almost all of a Swiss tour group, and a five-year old boy. The terrorists subsequently hijacked a bus, apparently intending to continue their rampage at the nearby Valley of the Kings. But the bus driver took them in the opposite direction. When stopped at a police roadblock, the gunmen fled into the hills, and were found later, dead, in a cave. They had committed suicide. Notes were found on the bodies claiming: ‘We shall take revenge for our brothers who have died on the gallows. The depths of the earth are better for us than the surface since we have seen our brothers squatting in their prisons, and our brothers and families tortured in their jails.’
The massacre, termed an ‘accident’ by the Egyptian government, destroyed the Egyptian tourism industry for the next two years. Egyptians were outraged. Sensing that they had badly miscalculated, organisers and supporters of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya quickly distanced themselves from the attack. Some claimed it was the work of the Israelis, others that it had been planned and executed by the police to justify further repression and restrictions of personal freedom.
During the 1990s and early parts of the following decade, several major scientific studies of air quality in Cairo were conducted by different organisations. They revealed the immense economic and human health costs of some of the worst urban air pollution on the planet. Several of the studies pointed clearly to the severe effects on children in particular, including a significant lowering of IQ. The reports were never released to the public.
Air quality in Cairo is now much improved, thanks to a number of foreign-aid funded initiatives. When I was there in May of 2017, doing some additional research for this book and visiting old friends, you could actually see more than a couple of hundred metres. And yet, a few days later, not far from where I was travelling in the Western Desert, a busload of Coptic Christians were stopped at the side of the road by men dressed as police. They boarded the bus and opened fire, killing all aboard, including children. The Copts had been on a pilgrimage to the monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor. Islamic State claimed responsibility.
Since the revolution of 1952, which deposed King Farouk and the monarchy, Egypt has been ruled as a dictatorship by three presidents: Gamal Abdel Nasser until his death in 1970, Anwar Sadat from 1971 until his assassination in 1981, and Hosni Mubarak until his resignation in the face of the 2011 popular revolution. All were ex-army, supported by a cadre of loyal officers and extremely wealthy businessmen. At the time of publication in 2018, the army was back in control, having ousted the only democratically elected president in Egyptian history, the Islamist, Mohamed Morsi.
After years of civil war costing over 1.5 million lives, Sudan was divided in two in 2011. The conflict continues, in part driven by the struggle to control oil revenues. At last reckoning, over a million people have been displaced from Darfur, and more than two hundred thousand are dead.
In 2017, the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health estimated that over nine million people die prematurely every year because of air pollution, more than from war, smoking, and AIDS combined. Meanwhile, in the same year, the world’s eight richest people, all men, controlled as much wealth as the poorest thirty percent on the planet. And inequality is growing.
Tens of thousands of people now live permanently on the high seas, out of the reach of governments, moving with the winds and currents from place to place, living on their own terms. The choices are ours to make. Only the past is written. We control the future.