Americans Abroad, No. 1
Morning sun at Luxor ©1989 UrbisMedia
“Meestah, meestah, lady fall, . . . lady fall down! Lady not get up!”
Just what I didn’t want to hear from the young Egyptian boy I hired as a “sheep dog” to keep track of the stragglers in the group I was leading.
It might be the worst nightmare for a leader of a package-tour group: a “packer” is down. Moreover, in this circumstance the temperature was 105 degrees, we were in the Temple of Karnak at Luxor, and the bus would not be back to pick us up for ninety-minutes. As I headed back toward that downed packer I muttered imprecations at the ghost of Thomas Cook, father of the package tour.
But why blame Cook? He was only responsible for bringing a lot of people to places they never would have gone to or gotten to on their own. That they might be just as careless or stupid away from home as they were at home could not be laid at his feet.
There are enough risks in foreign travel so that one doesn’t have to be careless and downright stupid to end up in trouble. Strange places and modes of transport, strange food, strange viruses and bacilli, and enough hazardous conditions to make an American torts attorney run out of business cards in thirty-minutes, all call for extra caution and common sense.
Nevertheless, out of vanity, orneriness, derring-do, or just plain foolishness, travelers and tourists will often get themselves into some of the damnedest predicaments. They will sometimes throw caution to foreign winds in a way that they never would at home. In foreign travel there is a lot that can go wrong if one is even a little unlucky. Something will almost certainly go wrong if one is a little stupid.
When I arrived back near the entrance to the temple complex there was a knot of people hovering over the supine body of Joellen (not her real name). Since she was already in the shade of a colossal statue of Rameses II (his real name); all they were doing was depriving her of air. She was clammy to the touch, rather gray in complexion, and mumbling in a delirium. She looked like a statue in fresh concrete. “Heat stroke?” I suggested uselessly to those in attendance. Shrugs and silence.
I’m no medical doctor, so like any fool I tried what I had seen in movies, a little gentle face-slapping and requesting that she speak to me. If I hadn’t been nervous and scared I would have laughed at myself.
There was no better place in the immediate vicinity to remove her to, a bit of good fortune in that Joellen had probably never heard the adjectives ‘dainty’ or ‘petite’ attached to her name.
Joellen was beginning to breathe a little erratically, which was beginning to produce the same effect in me, when my “sheep dog” came back with a French MD in tow. I moved aside, he took a quick look, felt her skin and my poor French picked up “insulin,” “ sucre,” and enough other terms to comprehend that his diagnosis was diabetes.
“Beaucoup d’eau, avec sucre, toute suite!” was the Rx, and the medecin sped off into the temple complex like a priest of Amun with the proceeds of the collection box. Maybe he forgot to renew his malpractice insurance before leaving for vacation.
The best we had was a liter of Coke. As it happened, another of our pack walked up just then, said that he, too, was diabetic, and the Coke might just do the job. Fine, except that when I poured some into Joellen’s mouth she burbled it out and shook her head from side to side so I couldn’t get more than a couple of drops into her. She was in and out of her delirium, but both states of consciousness refused to drink.
“Must be a Pepsi drinker,” I heard someone whisper.
The other diabetic insisted that it was imperative she drink plenty of the lukewarm beverage. But her hair and her blouse were soaked with most of it.
I could feel my frustration and anger rising. Shouldn’t this woman have taken precautions for something like this? She knew what the weather was like. She knew her condition. I didn’t know, because she had elected not to inform me about it. Were it not for the French doctor, we might be preparing her as the latest addition to the necropolis of the Valley of the Queens just across the river.
When the diabetic man volunteered the information that Joellen had been drinking rather heavily on the ship the evening before and wasn’t at breakfast this morning, I became even angrier. I tried to get her to drink again, but again she refused. Since I never took the Hippocratic Oath, I decided that perhaps more forcefulness would be indicated by the situation. Kneeling beside her I put my mouth close to her ear and whispered in my best bedside manner: “Listen, goddammit! This liter of Coke is going into you one way or another, but it’s going in because you’re not going to die and fuck up this trip for a lot of people!”
To my great relief, this threat, which I had only a vague idea how I could possibly carry out, worked. She began sipping, and in a few minutes was up on her feet and obeying every time I insisted she take more fluid. We walked slowly together along the corridor of recumbent rams and among the peristyles of the enormous ancient temples. Eventually, the others slipped away to avoid being around if there happened to be a relapse. I was stuck with Joellen, but confident that my “sheep dog” would herd the group back to the appointed bus pick-up on time so that he would get his salary and tips.
An hour later we were back on the air-conditioned bus and Joellen was chattering away about some souvenirs she had purchased.
On the advice of the other diabetic, I took to carrying packets of sugar tucked into the elastic of my socks against the likelihood of another incident. I did so up until a couple of weeks later when, as our ship was anchored off the Greek Island of Mykonos, Joellen announced to me about an hour before sailing that she had met a nice young gigolo that afternoon in the town and she was going to do a “Shirley Valentine” and jump the tour. I guesss it was my responsibility as her tour escort and fellow American to dissuade her from such foolishness and perhaps even danger; but I was remiss in that duty with the rather feeble attempt I made. When she boarded the tender for shore I told her that she would no longer be my responsibility, wished her good luck and handed her a few packets of sugar. I never heard from, or about, her, again.
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©2004, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 12.22.2004)