Leaving the Sinai, maa'lesh

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I had planned to take the early 6am bus from Saint Katrin village to Cairo. That way I would get in to Cairo in the early afternoon, with plenty of time to find a hotel, catch up on e-mails, have a decent dinner, and so on. But you know what they say about the best-laid plans...

"I'm sorry..."

I woke up at 5am, and caught another amazing sunrise on my walk over to the bus station. The bus was sitting out front, which I took as a good sign. I didn't take it as a good sign when the driver arrived, tried to start the engine, and it turned over and died. A quick consultation with the driver and another employee at the back of the bus resulted in the ticket seller walking over to me and saying "No gas. Wait half hour."

This seemed unlikely, but I figured that the bus had made it here somehow, so it could make it back out somehow; Egyptian mechanics seem to be quite resourceful with cobbling together fixes on cars and buses. After 45 minutes or so of much fiddling in the engine compartment, the ticket seller came back over to me and said "I'm sorry. No bus today. Another bus at 1pm." Just like that my carefully crafted plans for the day were gone, and the Eygptian bus system had gotten the last laugh yet again.

I slinked back to my "Bedouin camp" and attempted to catch some sleep to no avail; my cursed insomnia continued. One of the Bedouin saw me, and asked what on earth I was doing there, since wasn't I supposed to be on the bus to Cairo? I told him the bus was broken, he laughed, said "no problem, there's another one at 1pm" and I said "maa'lesh."

Maa'lesh

Maa'lesh is one of those quintessential phrases that every traveler to Egypt must know. It means more or less "never mind," "don't worry," or "it doesn't matter", and is often said when something very much matters, but you can't do a damn thing about it. The bus is broken? Maa'lesh. You sat in Cairo traffic for an hour and were late for an appointment? Maa'lesh. The hot water heater has broken yet again? Maa'lesh.

Another important phrase is "in sha' Allah", literally "if God wills it." It is often tacked on to the end of any statement about the future, and I have found myself saying it constantly now when describing any future plans -- after all, why tempt fate? Therefore, "I will go to the pyramids tomorrow, in sha' Allah." "I will send some e-mail tomorrow, in sha' Allah," and if that doesn't happen, then maa'lesh.

Service taxis

I returned to the bus station around 12:30pm and a "service taxi" was waiting outside, along with a few other buses. "Service taxis" are vans that run specific routes between cities, and the driver packs in as many people as possible to maximize his profit. This is true Egyptian transportation (some sophisticated Cairenes later expressed vague horror that I had actually taken one in the Sinai). One of the service taxi drivers waylaid me and I was able to negotiate a cheaper price than the regular buses. Why not? I thought. I was wary of getting crossed by the Egyptian bus system again, and I absolutely had to be in Cairo the next day for Arabic class registration and testing. The taxi only went as far as Suez (as in, where the canal is), but there were many buses between Suez and Cairo, so I figured I was set.

By the time we rolled out of Saint Katrin village, the van was packed with Egyptians, Bedouin, and the lone foreigner (guess who). As we headed out into the desert, dust billowed everywhere, the driver played an Arabic music tape at speaker-distorting volume, and Bedouin headwraps flapped in the breeze. Despite "no smoking" stickers on the windows, every male Egyptian on board took the opportunity to light up, and frequently. Occasionally the van would stop to let out a Bedouin seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and then further on down the road the driver would pick up another Bedouin, also seemingly in the middle of nowhere. On the bright side, we seemed to get waved through military checkpoints quickly, probably because they didn't spot the foreigner in the back crammed between other Egyptians.

Eventually we made it to Suez, I took an uneventful bus trip from Suez to Cairo, and arrived in town around 9pm, completely wrecked and about 8 hours after I had planned to arrive. I checked into the first hotel with an available room and finally got the best night of sleep since arriving in Egypt.

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Comments

[che]

Maa'lesh sounds kind of like "Es Macht Nichts" in German. Of course my spelling is probably gefubared. Actually, your story reminds me (vaguely, and if you squint) of an experience I had in the south of France. Alas, it was all my fault. I spent all night partying with some fellow hostelers, slept about an hour, then passed out on the train leaving Nice. I was going to Cinque Terra, where it's good to get a jump on the rooms, about a 3 hour train ride. I woke up 6 hours later, having slept off most of my two bottles of wine, back in Nice. I had been to Cinque Terra, but not in a conscious state. I slept in the train station that night... Maa'lesh. Be well, amigo. Sounds like fun.