Obeying the Rules

One of the highlights of living abroad is having family and friends stop by for a visit. Last month, my parents finally made the long flight to see Egypt. I would like to say they came to see us but I think we all know better. Hubby and I provided a lovely free hotel and home base for their exhaustive tours of the region.

I shouldn’t complain too much, however, since I was lucky enough to be able to participate in many of these tours. The highlight of their visit was definitely our Nile cruise. The cruise took us from Luxor and the Valley of the Kings all the way to Aswan and points in between.

The second morning of our cruise we headed into the Valley of the Kings. Sadly, the photo at the top of today’s post is pretty much the only photos I have of the Valley of Kings. Instead, I have littered today’s blog with photos from the Valley of the Queens and Hatchupset’s Temple, both of which we saw later that day.

I’ve never been very good at following the rules. If everyone goes left – I have to go right. If the sign on the wall of the tomb says, “no photos allowed” then I have to try to be that much more discreet and only take photos when no one is watching. After all, I’m a local and the tourist rules don’t apply to me.

It turns out that my judgment may have been a wee bit off on the photo issue. My bad!

As soon as I took my camera out of its cute pink case, my father started hissing, “Typ0! Put that away! Didn’t you see the sign?” (The fact that he called me Typ0 instead of using my real name was odd but I simply assumed that the desert sun was finally getting to him.) I rolled my eyes and explained that I had taken photos of hieroglyphics before. The signs were there to scare off people without cajones.

My problem has always been that I don’t see logic and limitations when they are screaming my name at the top of their lungs. Besides, I told myself, “It’s only against the rules if you get caught.”

With my camera held discreetly low and the flash off, I wandered down the corridor of the first tomb and clicked away, paying as little attention as possible to my father who was busy shaking his head and trying to pretend he wasn’t with me. I started to get greedy about 20 feet into the tunnel and took two photos of the same thing when I heard a man clear this throat next time.

“Busted!” I grinned. “I’ll put it away. Promise!” I proceeded to do that very thing until I noticed that the man was glaring at me in a rather unfriendly manner. “I swear, I’m putting it away and won’t take anymore!”

I could hear my father muttering, “I told you so!” under his breath in an agitated, embarrassed, and yet worried for his only daughter kind of way.

The man showed me his official looking badge and demanded that I give him my camera. Hell to the no! Not my adorable pink camera with matching leather case! No! I was horrified and unable to hear anything outside of the voices in my head telling me to run, reminding me how much the camera cost, and worst of all that my father had been right! As I watched my camera disappear into The Man’s galabeya, I kept pleading with him, “I’ll delete the photos. It’s not a problem. I’m so sorry! Just please give me back my camera!”

I swear that The Man smirked as he walked away because by then my father’s rather loud, “I told you so’s” were drowning out even the guides. My mother, on the other hand, assured me that she had taken great photos without getting caught and would be happy to share her pics with me when we got home. Yay her.

After about ten minutes of fretting, The Man walked by again and I decided to go local on him and demand my camera back. “I’ll delete the photos, just give me the camera. Now!” Evidently, he noticed the tremor in my voice because he simply said that he would return it to me after I exited the tomb.

“Fine then, I’ll leave now!” I was less than half way through seeing this tunnel but I didn’t care. “Just give me back my camera!”

The Man shrugged and walked back toward the bright opening behind us while he mostly ignored all of the things I was telling about how I lived in Egypt. “There is a 2000LE fine. We will go find your guide now.”

“You’re going to tell on me?!” I thought incredulously. “It’s not bad enough my parents are in a shame spiral of doom from which they may never emerge because my transgression was witnessed by so many people, but now you want to tell our guide? That’s low!” Instead, all I said was, “Oh.”

At the top of the tunnel, The Man turned instead to the ticket taker and handed him the camera. Ticket Man was far smarter than I initially suspected. He turned my camera on and was whizzing through my photos (which were fantastic, thank you) before I could even plead my case to this fresh set of ears. He mumbled something about the photos being 50LE each in the shop and handed me the camera.

Shaking, I began deleting the photos one by one. When Ticket Man demanded the camera back to make sure that I had done my penance, I realized that he was going to check and took the camera back with a scowl to remove the one or two I had hoped to get away with.

Locals reading this are likely shaking their heads that I was stupid enough to get caught and that I didn’t just offer the man some baksheesh (bribe) to get the camera and photos back on the spot. About two hours after all of this happened, I was saying the same thing. But when the blood is pumping so loudly and all you can hear is the sound of your heart beating a mile a minute, your husband yelling from continents away, your father seething disapproval… Well, things as logical as bribes don’t occur to you quickly enough.

In the end, my father was right, I was wrong, I could have bribed my way out of the whole thing and still had photos, but instead all I have is this sad tale of my descent into delinquency. I hate I told you so’s. *pout*