Egypt part 5. Five Stars

Five Stars

          If you're ever stuck shopping for a special gift, a Nile Cruise should do it. I'm going to pass it on when I can. It's an experience I won't forget and it did shake us out of our rural utopia of backaches and home repair. Luckily, our hosts had done it some years before; and although the experience has suffered somewhat, we benefited from their trailblazing, not to mention historical knowledge. 

towel crocodile provided by the
cleaners

     Day one began early with a walk across the gangplank to the big reception doors on the side of the vessel. That was an exciting moment. I fumbled with the video button on my phone and got some shots of peoples backs grunting luggage. But it turned out not to be our vessel. We walked right through it and out the other side. And into the big reception doors of another vessel. And out the other side. And into the big reception doors of another vessel. And out the other side. Each ship provided a grand hotel lobby designed by Trump Inc. All variations on somebody's idea of senseless opulence. I lost count but we finally came to a stop. Up a carpeted staircase to a circular mezzanine surrounding the Trump Inc. chandelier. Up another carpeted staircase and down a carpeted, darkly paneled corridor. Now it's getting low, tight and sort of ship-like. Framed paintings suggested the atmosphere of a Mozart era seraglio. Dark haired beauties wearing sultry expressions and clothing revealing anatomies unlike any seen ashore. Our two cabins were at the very end of the corridor. Top floor, full stern behind. Each cabin was crammed with two beds, a single blocking the large glass window and a double blocking everything else. Other amenities included a warm cabinet refrigerator, empty; drawer fronts that easily came away in oneś hand; wobbly light fixtures with very little light; one distant electrical outlet; and a small drinking glass. The mystery of the fetid

dampness was solved when I discovered a persistent drip wetting my back when visiting the loo. That also explained the wet carpeting. A crew member lifted out a ceiling panel revealing a water tank partially wrapped in electrical tape which clearly needed more electrical tape. We got that and a towel for the floor, but the drip never stopped and I found it best to take a small umbrella to the loo.

    It had been ten days since we arrived in Cairo and eleven since I last saw my old coffee machine. Or any coffee machine, surprisingly. All coffee up to that point had been brewed from Nescafe crystals and powdered milk substitute, so the cafeteria coffee reflux boilers and real milk were a welcome relief. Actually, as cafeteria food went, I thought it was pretty good and I wolfed down lots of it. What was disconcerting was the view out of the high window. River water lapped up at about eye level reminding one what the view might be like from one of the lifeboats, if you ever survived the rush out of the dining room. Further, it was best to forget the depth of the Nile channels. The draught of this monstrosity couldn´t be much. We were likely sitting in the bilge while sipping our watery coffee.

  The deck just above our berth held rank and file of sunbeds, a little swimming pool, an expensive masseuse, an expensive bar, and a lot of awnings to hide under. The deck offered a nice view of the surroundings including a lovely assortment of fellow tourists, mostly from Germany, running from just fat to clearly obese; and proudly naked. Or just. We spent a lot of time enjoying the view.
    These gigantic floating hotels must number in the hundreds. Often we would sail in the company of two or three others, enjoying their diesel exhaust and disturbing racket. In port, they would tie to each other sometimes in tens, reaching out into the channel. The most charming craft on the river was certainly not our floating hotel but the local sailing vessel, the felucca with its ancient, elegant, curving lanteen rig. They hardly look like efficient sailors but I noticed the prevailing wind blew upstream while one could always rely on the current to bring one home. We did spot a few two-masted excursion lanteens called dahabiya. These really evoked a by-gone period and the fact that every one I saw was dragged by a tug did not convince me of their seaworthiness. Whatever, when I dole out my Nile Cruise gift package, itś going to be on one of these.

Egypt part 4. Comfy interlude

Comfy Interlude

     Our challenge is to get out of Cairo and up to Luxor and on to our 5 star luxury liner. This Nile cruise is the whole reason we are in Egypt and something we began to really look forwarded to. 

    Luxor is located at the big kink in the river about 700 km up river. Luxor used to be Thebes and it was the capital and cult center of middle and late kingdoms. East bank is the city, west bank is the grave yard. It takes some 7 hours by car and over 10 hours by train to reach from Cairo. A line of three in front of a ticket window never, ever moved so we followed online advice and decided to buy our tickets after boarding. Early in the morning, we dragged our stuff onto an empty train feeling smug and paid the fare, receiving a scrap of torn paper with arabic pen strokes. One stop later and our seats were challenged. Two stops later and we found ourselves standing. With ten hours to go. I retired to the noisy space between the cars and sat on my duffel trying to read my paperback. Alex succeeded in being given a seat by an egyptian gentleman who even now chats with us on WhatsApp.

   Luxor: what a relief! Oh my goodness! Our Airbnb on the west bank offered a clean rooftop terrace all to ourselves. I got very excited identifying the Temple of Hatshepsut on the far hillside. At our feet, farmers tended lovely green plots of grain and sugarcane starts. I wiped my finger on the tile. No black. Just a bit of Sahara dust which never left us. From here we had an electrical outlet and a wifi contact with our bankrupt airline and coronavirus. We spent the whole day up there, and in the evening watched a loud, muslim wedding reception in what must have been the grange hall. Free apple juice in back-to-school cardboard boxes. Simple, dirt streets. Cheerful children. Steet falafal for supper.

     Next digs lay across the river where the other half lived. We had a night in the palatial Pavilion Winter, an extension of the old Luxor Winter Palace Hotel. From the grand staircase, almost 100 years ago, Howard Carter announced the discovery of Tut's tomb. Lavish reviews show up on Trip Advisor, and, yes, with its enormous private garden it did look like a suitable place to spend one's winter. Alex swam in the heated pool and I began to feel far more important than I deserved.
      

Egypt part 3. The Icons

The Icons

     It's all about the pyramids. Isn't it? Really. The pyramids, sphinx and, oh my god, Tutankhamen. King Tut. Teenage heart throb, died at 19. So lovely, so golden. And it's all here. The whole story and all the wonderful goodies. All laid out in this gloriously old fashioned, dusty museum from the turn of the last century, which is about when he was discovered. He's upstairs in a glassed-off window suite with a lot of his tomb furniture set out in the hall approaching. As soon as you enter the great hall of the museum the draw is palpable. Right past the ol' Ramses colossus and straight up the stairs. There's time for the alien Akenaten later. Past the huge, garage sized sarcophagus boxes, once nested like russian dolls. I loved the detail of the heavy metal hauling rings on the corners. 

The Golden Mask

     And the coptic shrine a highlight with its four, delicate, adoring golden goddesses protecting each elevation, hands outstretched, facing inward. Inside was once an alabaster refrigerator containing four alabaster mini sarcophagi containing his lovingly mummified guts. Ear your heart out, Donald Trump.
     The nesting coffins a ridiculously over-the-top execution of golden workmanship. Crazy beautiful, that Nubian gold so soft and smooth.
     It might have been 10 GB pounds to get in, I don't remember, and whatever cost and difficulty to get there; but it leaves a big, big impression. It tells a big story of human devotion, human effort, and human weakness. Weakness in the mortality of the half deity, and weakness in the mob psychology of the adoring followers.
   Back on the street we look across the glittering Nile, wide, drifting, graced with the odd felucca sail. Don't look too close, there's plastic pollution all over our planet and this is no exception. Before the old Museum stretches a new development project under construction to open the public space like a Paris jardin de la ville. Too bad about the garish Ritz-Carlton that grabbed the waterfront first, but the intention is clear. Right there is El Tahrir Square, which is actually a big, congested round-a-bout. If you type Cairo into google maps it will drop you on the obelisk of El Tahrir Square which commemorates the revolution (I've forgotten which one). I'm pretty sure a lot of rough neighborhood was cleared away for all this grandness, I know because our apartment is just there off the square.
    But we really came here to see the pyramids. And they are in Giza, roughly
14km away from our pin drop on El Tahrir Square. Too far to walk. Perfect for Uber. My tip for this part of the trip is to make sure your Uber driver is taking you to the Giza Necropolis, not Giza. We went to Giza and it was an eye opener. First, an elevated flying freeway took us, at great speed, on a tour of the most frightening maze of vacant, unfinished, 20 storey apartment blocks you'll ever witness. As far as the eye could see. How a society could afford to construct such useless, costly structures... I don't know. And all of them the same: reinforced concrete skeletons infilled with mudbricks, soaring to great heights, all with dead, empty eye sockets of windowless holes. Never occupied, perhaps like the empty tower blocks being built on the south shore of the Thames. A sudden off ramp onto the ground and we find ourselves on narrow dirt tracks, dodging goats, and wandering aimlessly through the canyons as the driver looks for the pin drop of Giza. "No, No. Pyramids. Pyramids." He does't speak english but he understands. We are out of there.
    The pyramids are located on a high plateau of land rising suddenly above low housing squalor of suburban Giza. Opportunistic guest houses saturate the approaches but, luckily, the plateau remains relatively unscathed. It is the very edge of the desert and it is our first step off the relatively green, congested Nile valley. From here it is open, vast, dry dust. Sort of like the sea, but lifeless. To walk out that way too far would be pretty stupid. Of course the forms are obvious. There they are. Nothing is hiding them. As you approach from the ticket office, one lies behind the other. They are small mountains surrounded by remarkable pavings that are staggeringly old. There are a few scattered blocks lying about which have been sloughed off, but most of the original limestone blocks that formed the smooth skin have been recycled by ancient builders. You sort of wonder if you stood there long enough you might be crushed by the next eroding block the size of a mid sized car.

    A short walk and then you realize that there must have been hundreds of these pyramids all over the place. It's a cemetery. But there are three big ones. And then there's the sphinx. It sits apart, below and somewhat dwarfed by the pyramid of Kahfre. The site has scale and majesty in keeping with it's age.

Egypt part 2. The Street

The street

I'll try to get this to
play, but it's just
a lot of car noise wih
 pedestrians having
 close encounters

    Cairo is home. Second time in Africa for me, but first time in North Africa. I'm a little surprised at the state of the place. After doing some reading, I chose to stay downtown to get a feel for the older architecture and to enable walking to popular spots like the Egyptian Museum. Isolde came prepared to explore the souks in the poorer Islamic quarter and, of course, the pyramids are really why we are staying in Cairo. 

bakery

    As we set out onto the street it's glaringly obvious we are foreign tourists. Shirt, hair, shoes, skin, language, knapsack, the bewildered look, it's so obvious. Surprisingly, we are often greeted with a cheery "welcome to Egypt," or "where are you from?" The early anxieties slowly ease as we get lost and then find our way again. Flash around, "where are we?" Oh. It's right there.

Walking around are a lot of women in full black peering through mail slots. And guys in floor-length dressing gowns. The street signs just aren't there, not even in Arabic. What my google map says doesn't show up in my actual reality and street view doesn't exist so there's no double-checking with an image. We find we have located ourselves in the middle of the DIY tech neighborhood. The shops are really tiny, cluttered; and the windows jammed with boxes of modems, digicams, motherboards, laptops, microphones, headphones, cabling, battery boosters, and earbuds. And that's just the stuff I can identify. Then the next shop, a meter and a half away, is crammed with the same stuff. Sometimes it spills out onto the street like a fruit stall and you have to step over stuff. The pedestrian course is never clear. Or carefully paved. A dirt section here, then a boulder of hardened concrete, a person cooking something, ten meters of shiny tile covered in diesel filth, broken mud bricks, an abandoned car. A couple of old guys smoking a hookah and looking at you. I reminds me of walking in the mountains. You can't look up because you'll fall down. It took us a while to figure out how to cross the street. Just find somebody you think you can keep up with and position yourself just downstream and try and stay in their traffic shadow.
    OK, Isolde. Off we go to the street market. As we weave our way east, things get even shabbier. Shabby Shiek. Now we enter kitchen appliance land. Roads blocked by rickety delivery vehicles wobbling under towers of boxed washing machines, fridges, dishwashers, microwaves, all that stuff. The sidewalks become canyons of the stuff, most of it stays in the box to avoid street contamination. And it's the same as the DIY electronics land, every shop is selling the identical thing. And they are tiny shops packed together in whatever corner of street level space available. But this isn't the souks, oh no. We open onto a sort of intersection with a freeway soaring over it. The crowds thicken. There's a mingle of traffic and pedestrian that approaches perfect solution. Equal parts. One dissolved into the other, moving in a sort of slow Brownian Motion. Then, down the sidewalk and the stalls begin and it is the most chaotic arrangement of useless stuff you've ever seen. I suppose it's a shopper's delight, but I'm entering one of Dante's levels. The main drag becomes a covered corridor so tight I have to step into somebody's tent to let a wide, black bedsheet go by with somebody wrapped inside. Looking at me. Then a guy yells and shoves a wide hand cart spilling bread rolls through. Overhead dangle pillows and fabrics and naked mannequins. It's impossible to tell the tent, the display, the product or the proprietor apart. It's all part of an intentional confusion, I'm convinced. Pause with curiosity and you're dead. They pounce. First of all it must be established that they have a close friend or relative who lives just down the road from you in Italy. Or California. Then you're let into a special secret about something. Then comes the invitation to have a little tea. No, No! It's free, no pressure. I'm not trying to sell you anything. Then the soft, silken hands slowly close around your common sense and stifle it and you find yourself looking at the Treasure of Indiana Jones uncovered for the first time and it's mesmerizing. Alex fell into such a trap and after half an hour snapped to the reality of her shopping bag full of exotic spices. Price: $400. US dollars, but disguised as egyptian pounds with too many zeros. It's an experience. Luckily we had Isolde there with her cheat sheet of Arabian numerals and a clear understanding of human nature.

Egypt part 1. Cairo, Anyone?

Cairo, Anyone?

This experience has a dissonant thread running through it. And it begins before the beginning. It was one of those times when you open the drawer while packing the night before and the passport is not where it's supposed to be.

Here's the Shortened long story:

waiting for a passport, Italian style

   
Our plan of a leisurely train ride to Bologna for lunch before going on to the Milan airport morphed into an early trip to the US Embassy in Florence. There we split while I waited for a temporary passport and Alex went on with her train ticket. We teamed up again in crowded Bologna to find the train schedules to Milan all scrambled by a fatal derailment. I had spent a lot of time planning and purchasing our connections at Trenitalia.it. Now all that effort did nothing but prove my naivete in trusting that these things actually work. Pioneering new routes through uncharted territory (including the frantic Milan underground) we met our plane before takeoff only to find that AirItaly had gone bankrupt, adding more evidence to a developing theory of mine. They courteously placed us on some arabian aircraft and off to Cairo we flew. 

      All cities look dazzling approaching in the night air. I tried hard to identify stuff from my memory of the map, but it’s really only ever a bunch of lights. I think we arrived at quarter to 5 in the morning. Terrified, actually. Everything was in Arabic which I remembered must be read from right to left. But that didn’t help. We knew to look for the government guy selling visas and I had to ask him a couple of times before I believed him. Cash only. US Dollars. A hundred of them. Then passport control with my paper passport. Then out on the dark street crammed with hustlers in taxis. A particularly slick con artist had his own little podium where he was pimping cabs in elegant english. OK, OK. Off we go in a battered car across the parking lot where he had to stop to wash his hands and bow to mecca for a few minutes. Half an hour later we’re downtown in a pretty grotty slum just off a grand waterfront roundabout. He’s got the window down asking directions until we work around to the front of a corrugated steel and wrought iron gate where we got dumped on a broken sidewalk. 6AM. Dark. Not blending.
     The dark iron gate creaked open and a sort of Arabian Gandalf character beckoned us in. Then into an intimate phone booth of an elevator. Then some fiddling in the dark with a key and into a bright white room smelling of paint and fresh floor varnish. Not bad for the price. Everything looked new, including the cardboard furniture and plush velour bedspreads. I took off my fetid hiking boots, admiring the shiny varnish pine flooring, and checked the facilities. Bidet, good. Overhead hot water tank had to be switched on. The loo had a mysterious chrome nozzle thing down there and I tried the

view out back

 knob on the side sending an arc of water across to the floor in front of the sink. Got it. No loo paper. Mirror spanking clean, sink OK; but Damn! I stepped my socks into the puddle of water. Dabbing the bottom of my wet sock with the towel I left a distinct black stain. The bottom of my feet were black. I wiped a finger across the tile. Black. Across the varnished pine. Black. Across the carboard furniture. Black. Kitchen counter? Black. And so on around the apartment, out the door, down the lift, onto the street and throughout Cairo, actually. Everywhere. The place is hopelessly filmed in a diesel soot mixed with desert dust. Where it's been cleaned lately, it's hard to spot; but it's there. Where it hasn't been cleaned, which is everywhere outside, it covers everything in a thick, brown cake giving the city a monochrome miserableness. The Cat in the Hat's relentless spot. I had a look out the window just to make sure. And more than just dust, there's a lot of other stuff accumulating as well.
  It was early morning and an emergency check for

Cairo in the morning

complimentary coffee came up blank. Knives, forks, microwave, fridge all brand new. Fridge didn't work because the wall socket had no current, but that got fixed. But no coffee. Into our luggage and soon we had a cup of tea going. It's the first step to feeling at home. I forced through the paint-sealed balcony door for a bit of fresh air. Dawn in Cairo. Empty street. I could spy onto the roof of a next door building and there was a woman leaning over the parapet seeing what I was seeing. Me for the first time, her probably not at all. I'm sure she must have missed the jumble of junk littering the roof gutter, and the abandoned car, and the confusion of satellite dishes, and the spaghetti of wires. But she didn't miss the quiet. I did, because I had no idea what what coming. Our single pane balcony doors soon resonated with the traffic below once it started up for the day. And on into the following night and every night thereafter.      

      Isolde arrived late that night, coming from London on her own. We arranged a cab for her from the smiling taxi pimp at the airport. He sent us reassuring phone photos of their rendezvous and I walked out onto the street to meet her. I waited a long time, worrying just like a parent is supposed to. I stood there in my white shirt trying look easy to spot because the building entrance certainly wasn't. It was approaching 2 in the morning, fewer and fewer cars going by. But I spotted her near the intersection, next to some headlights. I walked up, relieved, reached into my pocket and gave the driver a tip. We hugged. "Who's that guy?" She said. Who. "The guy in the car?" I had tipped some innocent stranger probably a day's wage. She had been dropped off previously without me noticing. Laughing, hugging, reunited.


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post script

I wrote this in my travel notes after leaving Cairo- 

Next time, I would skip Cairo. The museum is being moved to the pyramids and the government is moving East to a new city of several million people. Cairo is expected to double its population and perhaps it is best left to the Egyptians. So far, Luxor is far nicer! There is an airport here and a car rental would get one to Giza much more quickly than the train.

fatigued by obligation

I'm floating on a floor constructed from my fantasy. Layer upon layer like sediments deposited over time: Tile, adhesive, concrete, heating tubes, polystyrene insulation, waterproofing membrane, more concrete, iron reinforcement, structural support, prestressed concrete beams, excavation, wall reinforcement, foundation reinforcement, prestressed concrete perimeters. It's a lot. Layer upon layer of anxiety. It's the history of the restoration of this damned building. This damned building that will certainly fall down as soon as the earth thinks it's time to shake off the dust.
   But I decided to resist the forces. The inevitability of time. I'd done it before. I couldn't cut it as a member of a team. I thought what the hell? Do or die. My way or... Screw it. I only need 15, 20 years. I'd done it before: The bike store. The house was right, the builders were wrong. I could do this according to me and take as long as I needed.
     First thing: inspiration from a partner who could see through the fantasy to the hard details. That would be Alex. The girl who has such a loose idea of hard details that she didn't mind packing up the house and moving into a primitive derelict with a one year old daughter and a second newborn still nursing. Secondly, a solar relationship.  South facing. Large southern wall. Big solar "gain." South slope. Good roof. Pretty good walls. Enough land. Thirdly, a constant drip of on the job training. Hit a brick with a hammer and see how it breaks. If you do that often enough you find that, counter intuitively, you must strike toward the center to break off a small chunk. And so it all proceeded, chip by chip.

     Twenty years later and I'm finished. Not the house. Me. I'm weaker, more tired. I'm an inch shorter. Dried up, wrinkled. My back hurts. Some say it was a foolhardy project. Let them come and sit in my house. In front of the fire, or in the morning sun. It's true that some of it is a bitter disappointment. The underfloor heating remains disconnected. What a waste! The woodstove that is supposed to heat the water is a flawed concept not to mention a rotten execution. My flue pipe and plumbing for the thing is one blunder after another. When the rain blows, water penetrates the windows and the house is damp. But when the sun shines, which is often, we bask. And I have a proud moment. I have a brief moment when our plaster is what I see and not the rotten rubbish that is the wall underneath. It's a metaphor for something.
    Happy birthday me. I'm 70.

Legend of Ciuccio

Dogs are people to their families. Friends outside the family can sort of get it, but I don't think the emotional relationship is enough to see the obedient animal as a real person. They have personalities and however you characterize the relationship, they connect in a family kind of way. They are pack animals and the family is the pack. 

Uniquely, for this dog, she chose the pack she wanted to belong to. We didn't go to the breeder, we didn't go to the dog show, we didn't go to the kennel. She tried a few options. She ran with a few others, but she came to us. From the wild. Really. We already had a dog. A beauty. We rescued a puppy, a white lab-marimana mutt and gave it shots and food and freedom and a safe place and a couple of baby girls to play with. And we called it Mozzarello because Mozzarella might be a girl's name. And maybe we gave it a little too much freedom because one day a mangy, black, little girl dog started hanging around. They were too young to be really serious about each other but the relationship began to annoy us. The little mangy black dog wore a short length of rusty chain dangling from its collar. We assumed it was a runaway with a bad upbringing. You know, damaged goods. Italian dogs can be mistreated. We didn't feed it, we latched the gate, we discouraged the relationship. We didn't want fleas.

And then, one day, the gorgeous white dog with all the good fortune life can bestow, ran away. Just up and left. We called around. We raised a fuss. We got the community to go looking for our dog. Some suggested a farmer might shoot a loose dog who gets into the chicken coop. Others suggested a hunter might be eager to take up a lovely, new dog. Anyway, Mozzy was gone. We presumed that the black bastard mutt led our dear innocent away, that they ran off like a couple of bandits on a chicken hunting spree. After all the little black girl had been identified as the type of rough neck sent in to root out wild boar.   

The lovely white lab never returned. And was never spotted. We were heartbroken. But one of our theories didn't hold up because the black mutt did return. Regularly. We would shoo it away but all it would do is give us a disappointed look.

OK, Fine! Lets take a look at this skin eczema. And here's some left over food from our real dog. And that's how Ciuccio (Chew cho) adopted us. The name derived from the Italian for a baby's pacifier. Probably because she did pacify our girls. She didn't seem to miss Mozzy. She seemed to like to hang around with us. It was a perfect fit, actually. She got virtually excessive freedom. I guess we were flattered by her good taste in a new family. We relied on her judgement and she delivered. And when we made the drives up to the new house at LeCoste, well, that really paid off for her because this was dog heaven. No hunting and lots of wild rabbits. Yes, Ciuccio was a hunter. Boar, deer, porcupine, fox, mice, rats, and lovely, delicious rabbits. That dog was no fool. This was a good gig.  

 She lasted a long, long time through a beautiful but difficult period of our lives. With every new day, she would astound us with her keen, independent intelligence and understanding. She didn't need lessons. If you didn't want her to pull on the leash, she'd stop. If you wanted her to walk at your heel, she would. I suppose by quickly proving to us she could do these silly things she might get us to stop asking. And we did. She lived virtually her whole life without a leash or closed door. When the house at Borgo Petroio was little more than a shell that we camped in, she killed the rats, protected the vegetable garden from rabbits and deer, greeted guests (and their pets) with a friendly wag and a floppy ear. And she made a wonderful mischief with anyone on the estate that we didn't like. She taught the little girls a thing or two like how to eat a fresh rabbit, and if you had the stamina, she would lead you to the most far reaching dark corners of this wild estate. If we snuck off on foot, she seemed to sense it in her sleep. She would bound ahead, then check back that we were still on course, and leap ahead another twenty meters as if to drag us along. Once underway, she would suddenly vanish, and suddenly, when you least expected it, she would overtake from behind at full speed, frightening twice. Once when you thought you'd lost her for good, and again when she would fire past. On these "walks," she made no sound; but at night, what a racket. She was smart enough to stay out of the firing range of wild boar or porcupine, but that didn't stop her from non-stop confrontation for whatever time it would take to clear the area.

    She survived. She would drag home corpses of long dead creatures. She could crunch through bones, swallowing fish and foul without a problem. She even survived a couple of poisonings which killed a number of pets on the estate.

And when she died, she died with grace. A seizure left her bewildered and walking obsessively as if she was trying to find something she remembered, some place where she could begin to put it all back together. No anger, no aggression. A curious, impatient walk outside, then in again. Not hungry. Manic. Alex let her out again in the dark and she never returned. Or perhaps she returned to the wild whence she had come. She was so like us, and she knew it before we did. 

We're not going to replace her because we can't.