Posing as ‘Indians’ on Sept 11, 2001

RUCHI LAMBA recounts how India came to the rescue on a holiday which, given the unexpected circumstances, could have turned unpleasant for two young female tourists

Most people wouldn’t forget a boat cruise on the Nile river in Egypt. But few would classify it under tragic memories the way my friend Mona and I do. It was September 2001, and we were on a holiday. Mona is Indian, but raised in the United States and our families have known each other for a long time. I was still living in Sydney in those days, and travelling has always been a passion. Mona and I decided to meet up and travel through Egypt together.

After we were done with the sights in Cairo, Luxor and Abu Simbel, we took a four-night boat cruise from Luxor to Egypt which stopped at smaller towns on the way. One night, when our boat was docked outside a remote town near the Sudanese border, I took the opportunity to wander through the local market and pick up a few trinkets. As I got back to the boat around sunset, I noticed everybody congregated around the television set in the bar area. I dismissed what looked like an action film on screen, until I noticed the concerned look on Mona’s face. Some of the other tourists on the boat were weeping. It was then that I noticed that they were watching a CNN news flash. But the reception was poor and we could barely figure out what had happened.

One of the boat’s waiters told me that the belly dancing party scheduled for that night had been cancelled due to the war.

“What war?” I asked.

“The American war,” he said. “Military planes are flying over all US cities dropping bombs.”

It was at that moment that the second tower of the World Trade Centre went down on the screen.

“Who is attacking the US?” was the question on everybody’s mind that evening.

“Egypt,” another waiter told me. “Those pilots were Egyptian, so you see, Americans think that Egypt has attacked America. It is not safe for you to be here now, if they found out you were an American, well, who knows what would happen to you.”

“But I am not an American,” I thought, but I knew what he meant. I was even more concerned for Mona, who was traveling on an American passport and had a sister who lived in New York, quite close to the Towers. Mona’s own flight back to New York was cancelled, as were most of the flights in the region.

Nobody seemed to have any exact details about what had happened and most of our news was being filtered through the Arab perspective. President Mubarak of Egypt was being quoted as denying responsibility for the attack, people were celebrating the decline of the US empire in the street, and there was a sense of mistrust in the air. There were fears of American retaliation, even talk of an atomic bomb being dropped on Cairo or Luxor. The possibility of western tourists in Egypt being arrested also seemed very real. We realized that we might be stuck in a nation at war. To avoid any possible trouble, we decided to underplay our western upbringings and tried to pass as Indians. We put on Indian accents and kept dropping names like Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai in every conversation. We changed our accommodation in Cairo from our five-star resort to a more modest hotel instead. We sipped hibiscus tea at the local tea shop and smoked hookah with elderly burkha-clad women. We smiled sweetly at the young men who pledged their love for us, and we promised them that we would pass on their marriage proposals to our parents. We ate local breads baked right in front of us, and told our hosts it reminded us of our grandmother’s roti.

A few days later, it was obvious that there wasn’t much to be worried about, and that there wasn’t really a war between Egypt and the US. But we continued to embrace our Indian identity, because being Indian opened up a lot more doors for us than being Australian or American ever had. We saw the real Egypt, beyond the usual tourist fare. People were a lot more welcoming and the shopkeepers gave us better bargains. It made the trip a lot more memorable, and despite the tragic memories of 9/11, we were able to enjoy a real holiday out of it.

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