Memphis Barker lives like a pharoah with a whole riverboat and the nation's archaeological treasures all to himself. Shortly before dessert, on my third day aboard The Oberoi Zahra luxury Nile cruiser, I was passed a mobile phone to have a word with the customer manager of Sakkara Tours, who had organised the trip. I owe my name to an ancient Egyptian city and at that moment my kingdom occupied the whole of the ship, from the pool to the cigar room β including a population of 45 staff, though not a single other guest.
A touch of the loneliness Ramesses might have felt washed over me. For days the only people I had spoken to were being paid to attend to my every wish.
Pleasant company, but liable to throw themselves at anything I might happen to drop β such as a teaspoon β as if it were a live grenade. All other 26 cabins on board were empty. The scheduled cocktail parties had been cancelled. There was no hubbub in the dining room. The flow of tourists has turned to a drizzle since the revolution in Advertisements in the UK show tanned couples on Red Sea beaches, as they always have, but newspaper reports have offered a different impression; protests, and then, in the summer of , a massacre.
The military coup which brought Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power left behind a trail of dead Muslim Brotherhood supporters. Now there was only me, who may or may not have fulfilled the "elegant" dress-code required for dinner.
What splendour it was though, not least in my dark wood and marble presidential suite. The journey ran smoothly, with the four-deck cruiser moving at a pace which felt like something between a trundle and a jog. The city of Aswan β once a colonial hub for the English β bustles towards the port, from where we departed. Up the river, north to Luxor, the towns give way to great stretches of farmland on either side. Each morning, I would drag back the suite's curtains, which covered the ceiling-to-floor windows, with priest-like care.
