RANSVESTIA

its accompanying green border cutting thru it and winding its way toward the Mediterranean.

We took a bus trip up to the High Dam at Aswan. On the tops of the nearby hills we could see rocket emplacements with the rockets mounted and pointing eastward. We went by a big installation with high walls and barbed wire fences around it with guard towers at the corners. It looked for all the world like one of our penitentiaries but upon inquiry of the guide I was informed that it was their fertilizer factory. A small measure of their paranoia about Israel, that they barricade and guard their fer- tilizer plant as tho the Israelis were going to drop a parachute force into it and capture it. At the dam itself we were permitted to take pictures downstream away from the dam but could not take pictures of the dam itself. There was a machine gun-carrying soldier at the lookout point to see that we didn't do it too. The Russians who built the dam left their marks all over it in the form of street signs, motor trucks, posters etc. One would not be allowed to forget this monument to Russian influence.

Back at Aswan we got settled into our cabins on the ship. Due to the fact that we were not the only tour on board and that there were a limited number of cabins we had to double up for the 4 nights we were aboard the Osiris. Our tour group numbered 22 of which 5 were men so I was one of 17 women. Fortunately back in Beirut I had found that one of them was quite compatible with me. That is she held some of the same political and social beliefs, subscribed to some of the same magazines and was intelligent enough that we could discuss things. So she and I teamed up to share this little stateroom which consisted of 2 3-ft.-wide bunks with about 2 feet between them with a small shower-toilet room on one side and a closet wash basin on the other. So it was very "chummy". However there were no problems, both of us used the bathroom to change in so nothing suspicious happened.

The voyage down the Nile was very interesting as one could see the life of the peasants (fellahin) along the banks - their farming, their herd- ing and their mudwalled towns. Children, dogs, camels, water buffalo, sheep, some cows and chickens. Egypt is a poor country and it is too bad that Sadat, and Nasser before him, don't use some of their money to im- prove the lot of their people rather than pouring it all into military hard- ware. The trouble with the whole Middle East is Mohammedanism with its eye for an eye philosophy and its "holy" war (a Jihad they call it) against Israel. Altho they have engineered a disengagement I doubt they will ever end the war because it is in the interest of the top dogs in the Arabian

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