"President Nixon's Middle East visit," reports White House Correspondent Dean Fischer, "is the most exhausting story I've ever covered. Like most reporters accompanying the President, I get only about three hours of sleep each night. It's an early-morning-to-late-night job just to report the story--I write my files in the wee hours of the morning."

Covering a string of one-night stands is nothing new for Fischer. "It's like a presidential election campaign transplanted to an exotic clime," he says, recalling his days aboard George McGovern's rattling bus-train-airplane caravan two years ago. "But in this case, the fatigue is compounded by the difference in time zones between the U.S. and the Middle East." Fischer had expected to recover from transatlantic jet lag during the President's stopover in Salzburg, Austria, but it was in Salzburg that Secretary of State Kissinger threatened to resign, and sent the press corps into a stretch of unanticipated overtime work.

For all his fatigue, Fischer's trip had its compensations. "The Arab tradition of hospitality," he says, "is alive and well. When we arrived at Sidi Jabir railroad station in Alexandria, members of the press were each presented with a fresh flower by gracious Egyptian girls. At the Alexandria Sporting Club, we were plied with Arab pastries and cool glasses of lemonade." Egyptian crowds all along the route cheered wildly for the two Presidents and directed huzzas at the press corps riding by--until recently a rare experience for Americans in Egypt.

Cairo Bureau Chief Wilton Wynn, whose service as a Middle East journalist dates back nearly three decades, reported on the reactions of Egyptians to the Nixon trip. Though at the start of his assignment he was unceremoniously evicted from his quarters at the Nile Hilton to make room for "the likes of Dean Fischer," and had to take up temporary residence on a Nile riverboat, his experiences quickly took an upward turn. "In the little town of Kafr az Zayyat," Wynn writes, "the crowd dragged me up to the front row to stand beside the mayor as the presidential train roared past. Later, villagers--all total strangers but understanding that I was an American--insisted on pumping my hand and begged me to stay for lunch."

At week's end, Wynn flew to Beirut to fill in for Bureau Chief Karsten Prager, who was in Damascus gauging the reception accorded the Nixon entourage. After the Syrian capital, only visits to Israel and Jordan lay ahead before Dean Fischer and hundreds of other weary whistle-stoppers could return to Washington for a good rest.

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