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Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff
by Rosemary Mahoney
Book Reviewed by:In 1998 Rosemary Mahoney took a solo trip down the Nile in a seven-foot rowboat. This is the unforgettable story of her trip down the world's most historic river, overcoming both cultural and natural challenges.
When Rosemary Mahoney, in 1998, took a solo trip down the Nile in a seven-foot rowboat, she discovered modern Egypt for herself. As a rower, she faced crocodiles and testy river currents; as a female, she confronted deeply-held beliefs about foreign women while cautiously remaining open to genuine friendship; and, as a traveler, she experienced events that ranged from the humorous to the hair-raising - including an encounter that began as one of the most frightening of her life and ended as an edifying and chastening lesson in human nature and cultural misunderstanding.
Whether she's meeting Nubians and Egyptians, or finding connections to Westerners who traveled up the Nile in earlier times - Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert among them - Mahoney's informed curiosity about the world never ceases to captivate the reader.
The River That Flows the Wrong Way
ON THE DAY that I hoped to buy a rowboat in Luxor, Egypt, I was awakened, as I had been every morning in Luxor, by a Koranic antiphony drifting from the Islamic boys' school next door to my hotel. With all the zeal of a Baptist preacher's, a young boy's amplified voice shrieked repeatedly in Arabic, "There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his witness!" and a shrill chorus of his schoolmates howled the words back at him. I got out of bed and went to the window - at 7:00 a.m. the glass was already warm as an infant's forehead - and discovered that during the night many colorful cloth banners had been strung above the corniche, Luxor's Nilefront boulevard. In hand-fashioned Arabic characters, the banners read, "Welcome Mister President of the Government, Muhammad Hosni Mubarak, the Leader of Our Victorious and Progressive Destiny." Scores of teenage Egyptian soldiers in black uniforms, woolen berets, ...
Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff records Rosemary Mahoney's solo journey rowing down the River Nile - a river that flows south to north, which intrigues her*. Mahoney's prose is lovely: "The more I learned about the Nile, the less forbidding it seemed. I had so often imagined rowing on the Nile that doing so had begun to feel less like a fantasy and more like a memory that only wanted its corresponding action rightfully exercised." Her descriptions of the scenery, topography and animals of Egypt paint vivid pictures in the reader's mind...continued
Full Review
(887 words)
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(Reviewed by Diane La Rue).
Some people categorize Rosemary Mahoney as a travel writer, but she is much
more than that label suggests. Her intellectual curiosity, fearlessness, and
ability to craft beautiful prose, along with her uncanny knack for being in the
right place at the right time, have led to her success.
Her first adventure occurred when she was seventeen and sent a letter to her
idol playwright Lillian Hellman, asking for a summer job. What she thought would be a
summer sitting at the feet of her mentor ended up with her being a servant to a
rude woman.
Mahoney's memoir of this summer is titled,
A Likely Story; One Summer with
Lillian Hellman, and while reviewers praised her writing, some people
criticized her for invading Hellman's...
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