Down The Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s SkiffBy Rosemary Mahoney277 pages; LE 165
In her attempts to purchase a boat to row down the Nile, the unmarried American writer, Rosemary Mahoney, resorted to telling locals in Aswan that it was a surprise present for her husband. Women, be they foreign or local, do not row along these waters, and certainly not alone in a fisherman’s skiff.
An award-winning travel writer and cultural annotator, the subjects of Mahoney’s past works are as disparate as the lives of women in Ireland, and her teaching experiences in China. Inspired by a love of rowing and a fascination with the Nile, Mahoney’s object in “Down the Nile was to row the 120-mile stretch of river between Aswan and Qena, on her own.
Of the potential obstacles she would face – among them tight security (it was 1998, the year after the Luxor massacre), limited finances, and her own fear – the cultural barrier would prove to be the greatest.
The locals trip over themselves offering to take her to Qena (for a reasonable sum), but dismiss as preposterous the idea of her going alone. The need to find a boat, however, leaves her with no choice but to keep trying with Aswan’s felucca captains and fishermen.
Mahoney grows weary – from the relentless heat, the disbelief she is constantly met with, and having to repeat the story about her fictitious husband, “who was perpetually asleep in the hotel. Insofar as the misfortunes of others can be funny, Mahoney gives her experiences a hilarious retelling.
On the verge of defeat she happens upon the stoical Amr, a local felucca captain who flouts the desperation – and lecherousness – of his fellow oarsmen. As well as providing Mahoney with the boat she needs, through his friendship he gives her an insight into the reality of the lives of the locals.
In rich detail, Mahoney depicts living conditions bordering on destitution, and livelihoods at the mercy of tourist dollars; and the people’s generosity in spite of it all. She describes the frustration behind the cheeky chat-up lines, the surprising amount of drinking and drugs, and the phenomenon of sex tourism operating quite openly.
This she contrasts with her profound experience on the Nile. “I knew how far this water had traveled through time and space, and what in the world it had inspired. Because the Nile idly, mindlessly slid down the incline of the African continent, human beings had been able to develop civilization; sitting on top of this water was like being reunited with my origins.
Throughout her journey she draws on the accounts of countless other adventurers, from the ancient Greek explorer Herodotus through to Gustave Flaubert. At regular intervals she inserts their relevant observations on the people and the places she encounters; highlighting what has changed along the river and more often what has remained the same.
Of the sunrise on the Nile, Mahoney proffers Florence Nightingale: “It looks.so transparent and pure, that one really believes one’s self looking into a heaven beyond, and feels a little shy of penetrating into the mysteries of God’s throne. Mahoney rows alone, but is accompanied in spirit by those who have traveled it before her.
She is not shy of descriptive writing herself; at times excessively so. But for the most part reading Rosemary Mahoney is an unadulterated pleasure. Her “coffee-colored Nile bisects farmlands and palm trees, and winds around bushy green islands inhabited by birds of every color. Her characters are vivid, defined by their unmistakeable Egyptian humor and mannerisms, and are conjured in perfectly weighted sentences.
If the Nile is the heart of this book, Mahoney’s accounts of the people she meets, her immaculately researched histories, and her experiences on the river, are its arteries.
It is at once an adventure story and a cultural expedition, emphasizing man’s insignificance in the greater scheme of nature, and his fundamental sameness beneath cultural differences. Importantly, Mahoney writes with sobriety, free of both the dewy-eyed romanticism and the arrogant Orientalism that blights so much travel writing.
And her enthusiasm for both the place and her project infuses her prose with a tremendous current, matched only, perhaps, by that of the great river beneath her.
