After returning from Luxor, I discovered that Queen Hatshepsut's Temple, which I had just days earlier visited, was the site of a tragic massacre thirteen years ago. Sixty-two people were killed — mostly tourists — by an extremist Islamic group that aimed to cripple the economy of the "corrupt" and "godless" government of Egypt.
There are a number of things that shook me about this discovery; one was, why didn't I know this?... This is a big deal, yet there are no signs of the tragedy there, nor had the subject ever come up in conversations about Luxor.
I understand that it is an occurrence that can happen anywhere these days, and living in the Middle East has desensitized me a little to knowledge of terrorist activities within the region. But still, this is a little different; it's intended to shock the global community... yet I never knew of it.
If I had known beforehand, I still would have went — they say the chances of being a target of a terrorist attack are less than getting into a fatal car accident here — but it would have certainly influenced the way I saw things... I am left feeling that Egypt does not deal with such situations well; they rely too much on tourism to keep them in memory.
There are a number of things that shook me about this discovery; one was, why didn't I know this?... This is a big deal, yet there are no signs of the tragedy there, nor had the subject ever come up in conversations about Luxor.
I understand that it is an occurrence that can happen anywhere these days, and living in the Middle East has desensitized me a little to knowledge of terrorist activities within the region. But still, this is a little different; it's intended to shock the global community... yet I never knew of it.
If I had known beforehand, I still would have went — they say the chances of being a target of a terrorist attack are less than getting into a fatal car accident here — but it would have certainly influenced the way I saw things... I am left feeling that Egypt does not deal with such situations well; they rely too much on tourism to keep them in memory.
