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Sydney Morning Herald
a day ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Below deck: Why smaller boats rule for cruising down the world's longest river
This story is part of the July 6 edition of Sunday Life. See all 13 stories. It's mid-afternoon on the Nile and I'm watching the scenery glide by from the top deck of the Agatha, warm breeze tugging at my shirt. Every couple of kilometres we pass a village of flat-roofed mud brick houses shaded by date palms. Between each village is a luscious green sandwich of wheat and lucerne fields set against toasted sandstone hills. Ox carts plod and creak in a nimbus of dust. It feels as old as the Book of Psalms. The story of Egypt is the story of the Nile. It is this river that has made life and civilisation possible here. Until the building of the dams at Aswan, the river flooded every year, delivering a rich cargo of fertile silt to the farms along its banks. Extending from the river, a filigree of canals and capillaries irrigate fields of wheat, cotton, rice, barley, grapes, and fruit trees. Where the irrigated fields end, a wilderness of sand and rock begins. The Nile River cruise between Luxor and Aswan is a slow and languid voyage past the ribbon of greenery that rescues Egypt from the parched sands of the Sahara. Most travellers sail aboard the big vessels, which can carry between 40 and 150 passengers and travel in a convoy of five or six, tying up side-by-side along the riverbank at night. Then there are boats like the Agatha, traditional dahabiyas with a single row of cabins that accommodate 10 to 20 passengers on the bottom deck while an expansive upper deck offers couches and tables beneath a shady awning. If the wind is strong, the crew hoist the sails but most of the time our dahabiya is towed by a tug at about the speed of a paddling duck. One evening we tie up beside a village. A walk takes us through fields of date palms and mango trees and up into stone-covered hills, dry and lifeless in contrast to the oasis at their feet. On another evening, we berth alongside quarries that provided the sandstone for the great temple at Karnak. A couple of times we swim in the river. It's cold, and the current is too strong to swim against it, but we launch ourselves upstream of the Agatha and drift until we can grab the side ladder. Loading The upstream journey along the Nile from Luxor doesn't take you through the Egypt of grand temples and monuments, although the Temple of Khnum at Esna is a showstopper. One of the last temples built in Ancient Egypt, its columns are encircled by hieroglyphs of birds, snakes, human figures and mysterious symbols painted in pastel colours. Sunrise paints the river scarlet. One morning, I'm on the top deck just as one of the crew wearing a gallabiyah, the long, loose, unisex Egyptian robe, appears with the morning coffee. We're tied up at a marshy island in the middle of the river. It's so quiet I can hear donkeys braying on the far bank, 200 metres away. Fisherman row past and herons stalk among the reeds while tiny kingfishers hover overhead, watching for a telltale swirl in the water. Except for the morning call to prayer echoing from an unseen village, it's a morning that Moses might have seen.
The Age
a day ago
- The Age
Below deck: Why smaller boats rule for cruising down the world's longest river
This story is part of the July 6 edition of Sunday Life. See all 13 stories. It's mid-afternoon on the Nile and I'm watching the scenery glide by from the top deck of the Agatha, warm breeze tugging at my shirt. Every couple of kilometres we pass a village of flat-roofed mud brick houses shaded by date palms. Between each village is a luscious green sandwich of wheat and lucerne fields set against toasted sandstone hills. Ox carts plod and creak in a nimbus of dust. It feels as old as the Book of Psalms. The story of Egypt is the story of the Nile. It is this river that has made life and civilisation possible here. Until the building of the dams at Aswan, the river flooded every year, delivering a rich cargo of fertile silt to the farms along its banks. Extending from the river, a filigree of canals and capillaries irrigate fields of wheat, cotton, rice, barley, grapes, and fruit trees. Where the irrigated fields end, a wilderness of sand and rock begins. The Nile River cruise between Luxor and Aswan is a slow and languid voyage past the ribbon of greenery that rescues Egypt from the parched sands of the Sahara. Most travellers sail aboard the big vessels, which can carry between 40 and 150 passengers and travel in a convoy of five or six, tying up side-by-side along the riverbank at night. Then there are boats like the Agatha, traditional dahabiyas with a single row of cabins that accommodate 10 to 20 passengers on the bottom deck while an expansive upper deck offers couches and tables beneath a shady awning. If the wind is strong, the crew hoist the sails but most of the time our dahabiya is towed by a tug at about the speed of a paddling duck. One evening we tie up beside a village. A walk takes us through fields of date palms and mango trees and up into stone-covered hills, dry and lifeless in contrast to the oasis at their feet. On another evening, we berth alongside quarries that provided the sandstone for the great temple at Karnak. A couple of times we swim in the river. It's cold, and the current is too strong to swim against it, but we launch ourselves upstream of the Agatha and drift until we can grab the side ladder. Loading The upstream journey along the Nile from Luxor doesn't take you through the Egypt of grand temples and monuments, although the Temple of Khnum at Esna is a showstopper. One of the last temples built in Ancient Egypt, its columns are encircled by hieroglyphs of birds, snakes, human figures and mysterious symbols painted in pastel colours. Sunrise paints the river scarlet. One morning, I'm on the top deck just as one of the crew wearing a gallabiyah, the long, loose, unisex Egyptian robe, appears with the morning coffee. We're tied up at a marshy island in the middle of the river. It's so quiet I can hear donkeys braying on the far bank, 200 metres away. Fisherman row past and herons stalk among the reeds while tiny kingfishers hover overhead, watching for a telltale swirl in the water. Except for the morning call to prayer echoing from an unseen village, it's a morning that Moses might have seen.
Time of India
10-06-2025
- General
- Time of India
How Nietzsche and God helped Israeli hostages survive in the tunnels of Gaza
More than a century ago, Friedrich Nietzsche famously declared that 'God is dead.' But in the fetid, pitch-dark tunnels beneath Gaza—where air was scarce, food scarce still, and the future nearly absent—God and Nietzsche coexisted. For dozens of Israeli hostages taken during Hamas's brutal October 7, 2023, attack, survival meant something more than physical endurance. Inside those underground cells, belief returned with unexpected force—sometimes in the form of sacred verses from the Book of Psalms, other times through the secular wisdom of Nietzsche's existential despair. What united them was the same core truth: the need for meaning, for something to hold onto when everything else—light, freedom, identity—was stripped away. Omer Shem Tov 's Psalm 20 and Nietzsche's 'Why' Omer Shem Tov, 20 at the time of his abduction, had been a secular Israeli, waiting tables and planning a post-army trip to South America. He was seized at the Nova music festival, along with friends, and quickly spirited into the Gaza tunnel network—lowered underground in a plastic tub. Days into his captivity, without access to clocks or sunlight, Shem Tov began to pray. He clung to Psalm 20—'May the Lord answer you on a day of distress'—a passage that, by eerie coincidence, his mother was reciting back home in Herzliya, unaware her son had adopted the same verse as his mantra. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Good News: You May Be Richer Than You Think Undo For him, faith didn't emerge as sudden revelation, but as necessity—a response to isolation, uncertainty, and fear. He began blessing his food, making promises to God, and vowed to don tefillin in prayer if he ever returned home. But if God gave him ritual, Nietzsche offered something else: a reason to endure. A saying frequently repeated among hostages was drawn from the German philosopher, popularised by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl: 'He who has a why can bear with any how.' It had reportedly been spoken by Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American hostage, before he was executed by his captors. The phrase reverberated through the tunnels like scripture. One hostage later had it tattooed on his arm. The Rediscovery of Faith in Captivity Shem Tov wasn't alone in finding God in Gaza. Other hostages, like Eli Sharabi—who survived 491 days in captivity only to learn that his wife and two daughters had been killed—described saying the Shema Yisrael prayer each night and attempting to recite the kiddush over water when wine wasn't available. Ritual became resistance. For many, Jewish observance wasn't imposed by identity politics or external pressure—it was personal, a lifeline in the most dehumanising conditions imaginable. One hostage described saving a bottle of grape-flavoured drink for the Sabbath prayer. Others placed their hands on their heads in lieu of skullcaps. To the captors, it may have seemed like theatre. To the hostages, it was meaning. Nietzsche Underground And yet, alongside God, Nietzsche endured. Stripped of everything familiar, hostages turned to a philosopher who had buried God in the pages of The Gay Science but also taught generations that suffering could be endured if one had a reason. In the absence of hope, they made purpose. In the absence of time, they made ritual. Even Shem Tov's captors unwittingly played a role. After an Israeli military unit passed above ground, the gunmen handed Shem Tov reading material they had recovered—suspecting hidden codes. Among the texts: religious literature, and a printed card of Psalm 20. No names, no signatures. Just the verse. It mirrored the exact same card that had been handed to his mother months earlier by a hostage support group. The Fragility of Life, the Tenacity of Faith At one point, Shem Tov spent 50 days in a dark, suffocating tunnel cell. He was given a biscuit a day, a few drops of brackish water, and suffered asthma attacks that went nearly untreated. In desperation, he begged God to move him—anywhere else. Within minutes, his captors relocated him to a better chamber. Whether miracle or coincidence, he saw it as divine intervention. From there, he survived through quiet cooperation—cleaning, cooking, helping clear debris after tunnel collapses. He maintained the Sabbath. He saved a bottle of drink for a moment of blessing. He kept faith alive in a place designed to crush it. Now home, he prays daily with tefillin, just as he promised. He has toured Jewish communities in the US, speaking not only of suffering but of resilience. His mother, too, now observes the Sabbath. Theirs is not a tale of religious conversion, but of rediscovery—of how stripped of society's noise, ancient traditions and modern philosophy became tools of survival.
