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Published: March 10th 2007
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For most of the past five weeks, in spite of the bedlam that seems to lurk around every corner, Egypt’s managed to behave itself quite nicely. Trains have arrived on time, buses have dropped me off in certifiable bus stations, and not a single run-in with a donkey on the streets of Cairo has brought me to the operating table. It’s been, all things considered, a pretty smooth month. It’s also given me just the briefest glimpses of how close this country comes to the edge of absolute, inane chaos.
Now and then there’ve been inauspicious signals: at a bakery in Luxor, while I patiently queued for a fresh loaf of bread, swarms of men came bumrushing from the rear, waving their wrinkled one-pound notes over my shoulder. In Cairo, swallowed by a vicious, sharp-elbowed mob as I waited for a
schwarma, I had to be rescued by a friendly young Egyptian who plucked me from the crowd like a low-hanging fruit.
The next day, in the endless corridors of the capital’s Mogamma building, I wandered aimlessly in search of a visa renewal form. Bureaucracy had taken a heavy toll on the assembled crowd, some of whom seemed to be sitting on those dusty wooden benches since the reign of Hatshepsut. They sat and sighed heavily and - in at least one instance - changed their baby’s diapers on what looked like a sack of rice. Improbably, a young kid with a silver serving tray paced the hall, selling snacks and beverages. At each of the windows, where a portly woman with extravagant eye shadow shuffled through a stack of papers, an insurrection seemed inevitable. It was like a scene from a Hollywood disaster flick, the angry mobs desperate for a vaccine that’s in short supply. Shuttled from one window to the next, an ingratiating smile on my face, I could point to any number of better ways to pass an afternoon that involved serious head trauma. In the end, with an apology, a woman fussed and sent me on my way: there’s a two-week grace period on all tourist visas into the country, rendering an already wasted day even more pointless.
And so on my last day in Egypt, my heart swelling with fond memories of those cluttered bazaar stalls and sacks of spices, the oranges piled high on roadside carts, the old men cradling their
sheesha pipes like a lover’s body, the young boys walking arm in arm down the street, the women in colorful
hijabs corralling some restless tyke by the collar - swimming in all those fine, swirling thoughts, I stumble blindly into the treacherous stupor of Nuweiba. It’s from this lazy, dusty town that the ferry departs for Aqaba, and it’s here that I’ve managed to forget whatever lessons five weeks in Egypt should’ve taught me.
The fact that I’m leaving on a Friday presents no few challenges. For starters, I’ve pulled into town with a wad of Egyptian bank notes, in spite of the fact that ferry tickets are sold in US dollars. While this is as damning an indictment of the Egyptian pound as any, it’s a fact I’ve known about for close to four weeks. With no one but myself to blame for four weeks’ worth of breathless lethargy, I’m laboring under the mid-day sun, shuffling across the dusty streets of Nuweiba in search of a bank that’s open on the holiest day of the Muslim week.
I’m saved by a pudgy young guy who calls me over to his table at a quiet café. He’s watched me fruitlessly wandering from one bank to the next, and suspecting my plight, points me to a snack bar down the road. There I’m greeted by an older man in a denim shirt whose broad, dazzling smile suggests a lifetime of transactions at a very favorable exchange. He shuffles through a stack of crisp American bills and peels off a fifty, pushing a few chocolate bars on me before I go. The guy at the café gives me a cheerful thumbs-up as I trudge past, while the call to prayer goes ringing through the streets with the force of a whirlwind.
At the ticket booth things take a turn for the oh-shit: there’s an hour-long wait at the window, the cashiers having gone to the mosque for Friday prayers. A crowd begins to gather, garrulous men with big bellies and mirthful eyes carrying stacks of passports and hundred-dollar bills. It looks for all the world like the sort of assembly that would raise quite a few eyebrows around Langley, VA. There’s a rousing reception for a newcomer, a flurry of hugs and kisses that might be the most guy-on-guy action this side of
Spartacus. When the cashier comes back at half-past one, he works at a languorous pace that suggests he, at least, doesn’t have a boat to catch. After a heated encounter he closes the window and doesn’t resurface for ten minutes. The sun is high and baking, my forearms growing dark like a breast of chicken in a skillet.
Ticket in hand, I make my way across a broad, dusty, sun-scorched lot, the waiting area a cavernous cathedral of stagnant air and hopeless sighs. The disconsolate men who squat against the wall or sit on their suitcases look like the old crowds at Ellis Island, waiting for someone to go combing through their hair for head lice. The minutes drag into hours; a young guy in sandals circles the room, offering tea in plastic cups. Now and then, at some vague and hopeful signal, a few dozen guys will get up and surge toward the door, where they’re beaten back by a guard on the cusp of puberty. He has a shrill voice and rosy cheeks and, in spite of his youthful color, absolutely no qualms about giving men three times his age a healthy thwack on the head with a walkie talkie. The way the crowd responds - slinking back to their seats on the filthy concrete - makes my stomach do a few unhappy somersaults. I’m inching closer to the guard, hoping to provoke him in some way, just so I can lash out with some dubious claim about contacting the embassy.
There are buses to shuttle us to the ferry, and they arrive ingloriously, one after the other, looking as if they’d just been dredged up from the bottom of the Gulf of Aqaba. With a wave of his effete little hand the guard releases the crowd, and a mad scramble ensues, men hoisting their duffel bags onto their shoulders and holding onto their
kuffiyahs as they clamber aboard. Some are hanging from the windows or dangling out the doors, smiling these slightly lunatic smiles, as if the only thing more improbable than this wild dash for freedom is the prospect of doing it any other way. Then a couple of gleaming white buses sweep in, their engines softly thrumming, and you pretty much expect to see a JUS4WYTES license place nailed to the front. I’m reminded of the old news footage from the fall of Saigon, the helicopters hovering over the embassy, the desperate Americans trying to escape the bedlam. We form a neat line and file in with exhausted little sighs; the seats are comfy, the aisle spacious. There’s room for at least thirty more in the back, but in spite of a few useless entreaties, the doors wheeze shut. Readers who might be reminded of a certain lifeboat scene in
Titanic, FYI, will have at least one thing in common with their young writer friend.
We’ve boarded the ferry and cozied into our seats and made the stupid assumption that we’re on our way. But we idle - for twenty minutes, a half hour - while a long line of Egyptians get their passports inspected next to the snack bar. There are grumblings from a pack of German tourists, who undoubtedly would’ve had us out to sea at three o’clock sharp. It’s nearly six when we finally chug off, darkness draped over the Saudi coast in the distance, and a young waiter folding a dollar bill into halves and quarters beside me, trying to show off a trick that doesn’t quite work out the way he wanted.
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