Red Nile

August 4, 2014
The longest river in the world, the Nile, is utterly predictable, according to British journalist and novelist Twigger (Dr. Ragab’s Universal Language): “For all its floods and famines and small tantrums, this is a river you can rely on.” Twigger, in turgid, silty prose reminiscent of the river’s flow, winds his way from the Lower Nile to its sources: the White Nile, which rises from a still-undetermined source in Rwanda, and the Blue Nile, which rises near Lake Tana in Ethiopia. Yet, the story of the Nile is the story of its inhabitants, and Twigger offers tales of the men, women, and animals that helped create the legendary character of the Nile. He skims along the river, delivering stories set on its fertile banks: the death of philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria at the hands of Peter the Bigot; Shajarat al-Durr, the first and only Sultana of Egypt; Ibn al-Nafis, the physician who discovered, perhaps in the ebb and flow of the Nile, a model for human circulation 400 years before William Harvey; Napoleon’s defeat of the Egyptians at Cairo; Gustave Flaubert’s sexual enchantment with Egypt; and the building of the Aswan Dam. Twigger’s history intrigues, but like his subject, regularly overflows. Maps & illus.

July 15, 2014
A rich tapestry of Nile lore and legend, stretching from theancients to the fall of the latest tyrant.British author Twigger (Dr. Ragab's Universal Language,2009, etc.) lived in Cairo for seven years before fleeing the revolution in2011. Here, the author compiles a vast compendium of drama and history aroundthe attempts to control the Nile. Somewhat chronological but hardly linear,Twigger's labor of love meanders, much like its subject. History itself beganthere, in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, from which emerged not one butthree Niles: The Blue Nile rises in Ethiopia; the White in central Africa; andthe mighty Red flowing from Lake Victoria (fed by the Kagera River coming downfrom the so-called Mountains of the Moon, which Twigger maintains is the Nile'strue source) to the Mediterranean Delta. Why is it red? That is the color ofthe silt, as well as the rare algal bloom known to turn the surface red andkill the fish, which might explain Egypt's first plague: the "river of blood"Moses created when he struck the surface as dictated by God. Nonetheless, redis the color of blood, life, violence, passion and revolution, and the Niledelivers each in turn. The earliest inhabitants of the areas around the riverwere hunter-gatherers who followed the river as the game roamed and probablygave their things away as they moved rather than hoarding what they could notcarry. Especially fascinating is the lore surrounding the powerful anddangerous animals that haunt the river and were depicted by ancients as demigods:baboons, hippos and crocodiles. Indeed, the Nile gave birth not only to madkings and caliphs, from Cleopatra to Hakim, Napoleon to Lord Kitchener, but thetheory of blood circulation, understood by Ibn al-Nafis 400 years beforeWilliam Harvey.A painstaking work of research and careful observation.

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