Funny, he doesn't look Jewish

"George Bush, he's a Jew?" the felucca captain asks me.

He's just been telling me how Muslims and Christians get along in Egypt like brothers. Yes, there's some hyperbole in this, but by-and-large all that I have seen and read shows that Jews and Christian have been able to live safely and prosperously in Muslim countries like Syria and Egypt.

He's told me, his felucca captain, that his religion commands him to be kind to everyone, Jew and Christian.

Yet he assumes George W. Bush is a Jew because George W. Bush has waged war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I tell him that, no, George Bush is Christian, and he nods his head incredulously, maybe a little skeptically.

Luxor is scenic, but the aggressive expectation for bakteesh, tips, by the Egyptian peasants who "guard" the monuments is more trouble than its worth. On one hand, my heart goes out to them because these people are truly poor. But even an easy mark like me has his limits.

This felucca captain, for example, gives me a fair price for the trip, but then ingratiates himself with every flattery he can imagine, asking if I can help him find a good job in America (I tell him he will be competing with Mexican immigrants, but he ignores that), asks me to buy him a new cell phone, takes my jacket from my hand, puts it on, tells me he'd like something tangible to remember me by (because in these three hours to him I have become like a brother, he tells me) since money flies out of his hands so quickly.


This ruin, by the way, is from one of Ramses temples, the fallen monumental statue the inspiration for Shelley's "Ozymandias."