Starting in Giza, maybe 20 minutes after boarding at Cairo, the cement and brick apartments give way to farms and the cars are suddenly gone. Transportation is by donkey now and they're everywhere--in the streets, in the fields, in the yards behind the mud-brick houses. The men all wear galibiyas, and with their wives and children bouncing along on the backs of the donkeys they could be the Holy Family on the flight into Egypt. Twenty minutes south of the largest, most cosmopolitan city in Africa, little has changed in 2,000 years.
There are no women on this train. Did I say no women? I am not happy about this since I expect to be harassed. But no one does. I turn to the view but the windows on my "first class" coach (foreigners are allowed to ride on no other coaches) are as cracked and filmy as those on the Chicago subway. I doze to pass the time.
This trip will take 14 long hours all the way up the Nile Valley. I've brought fruit and cheese to tide me over, but the boys who come aboard carrying baskets up and down the aisles filled with something that looks like solid brown ice cream cones are getting my attention. They smell delicious and I learn later they're a chewy sweet made with hand milled grain and molasses—solid as a golf ball and about as digestible. The boys are barefoot and wear dirty gaibiyas, but as they go about their work laughing with each other, they don't look like they mind their jobs much. The little girls who make straight for me pointing fingers at their mouths are another story entirely. They're seized roughly and shoved screaming from the car.
I have been delighted in my few days in Egypt to watch my preconceptions shatter. For example, even the poorest-looking man and boy has a terrific haircut. Nobody has a beard. (That doesn't mean they're not devout Muslims: The overwhelming majority bear the telltale prayer bump in the middle of their foreheads.) Teenage girls walk together holding hands and when they pass me they say Hello! Welcome to Egypt! Even the boys hold hands. I might have looked too long at the first woman I saw in the full face veil, gown and gloves, but she too called Good Morning! as she passed.
We are stopped at the station in Naj Hammed, still at least six hours from my destination in Aswan, when it dawns on me that something isn't right. A five-minute wait becomes 25 minutes, becomes more than an hour and by then I've found a "conductor," pointed meaningfully to the Arabic "Aswan" on my ticket and looked at him questioningly. His response is to point me back to my seat. People continue to come and go from the train but no one looks put out. Just then a man who has joined my car asks in perfect English if I know what's going on.
It seems the district where we're stopped has been hotly contesting the outcome of the parliamentary elections, and many of the locals are camped across the tracks intending to stay until a reelection is called. These local protests have been going on for weeks and have stopped traffic in both directions on the railways as well as the highways, keeping people, food and fuel from getting anywhere at all.
Osama explains this with what I come to know is typically Egyptian patience. A 48-year-old English professor from Cairo, he commutes the 14 hours to Aswan each week to teach. Between us we decide it would be better to try to hire a car to get us the rest of the way, and so begins an Egyptian adventure I guess I've come here to get.
An Adventure Begins
First comes the haggling with taxi drivers schooling like sharks as we emerge from the platform. Soft-spoken Osama grows louder and more animated as he and a driver begin haggling over price. They walk away and reunite several times (very Egyptian) before he tells me the driver wants an extortionary 400 Egyptian pounds—many, many times the price of my train ticket for the full route. But we have little choice: I know the protesters will outlast me.
For the next few hours Osama talks to me about the revolution last January and the continuing protests with the same air of understanding mixed with exasperation that I've heard from many Egyptians so far. Egypt was already very poor but it's getting poorer by the day as tourism dries up. (I can verify this: I have seen no tourists anywhere and have not liked the spectacle I make.) Osama says simply, "We are fed up." His share of the cab ride will consume his entire earnings from the teaching job he must travel so far to keep.
But my new friend has lots to talk about and I am enjoying myself anyway. Among our many topics:
Economics: ("Explain foreclosure to me: How do people in rich America lose their houses?")
Domestic life: ("Why do children leave home before marriage?")
Religion: ("Are all Americans atheists?")
Music: (He likes Elvis Presley and Barbra Streisand—"even though she's a Jew"—which detours us onto the Israeli question ("All Jews are Israelis and all Israelis are our enemies.") I already know how Egyptians feel about America's support for Israel and am not surprised when he says that America is controlled by Jews. For some reason that doesn't make us enemies. Osama clearly distinguishes between American people and the government, despite the fact that in the U.S., the people are the government. I am grateful that among his requests for information he doesn't ask me to explain this.
He wants help shedding the remnants of a British accent learned in school, so we chat about language and expressions for hours. ("What's a 'hub'?" "What is 'dude'?" "What's a 'snack'?")
I've loaded some pictures onto my iPad and I pull it out to show him. He loves this. When we get to a photo of my son in his college band uniform, Osama wants to know what that big black spot in his earlobe is. I tell him it's an earring and smile to myself while he digests this. He's heard that depending on which ear is pierced, a man declares whether he's gay or straight. I tell him I've heard that too and couldn't tell him which is which, but I can assure him with all my heart that this man is not gay. Osama is deeply relieved. "Ah, GOOD!" he says.
Perhaps the longest conversation we have concerns Egyptian and Western values, sparked by my question about why there isn't a word for "boyfriend" in Arabic. (You're either a fiance, a husband or a wife. In Egypt, there's no trying someone on to check the fit.)
The answer centers around love and loyalty, he tells me. While a woman can live without a man, no man can live without a woman. But when you marry, it's for life. If a man and woman enjoy each other and aren't married, where is the commitment? What if there's a child? What about the larger family? The larger society? How do people grow old and take care of each other if there's no marriage? Osama's commitment to his family is as clear as the bump on his forehead, and the same God that inspires that commitment is telling him to take care of me. He believes that if not for the train delay we would never have met, and isn't Allah wonderful in making us new friends?
During all this talk the high-speed ride in a rattle-trap car on a two-lane stretch of broken pavement and rubble has me frozen in blinding terror, so I kind of overdo it agreeing with how wonderful Allah is. The Egyptian way of passing slower vehicles is simply to pass between them and the oncoming cars, which often have no headlights. It is very dark outside now. In one instance we are passing between such an oncoming car, which itself is being passed by a very, very large truck with no headlights. Now there are four cars in two lanes heading right for each other. Suddenly Osama explodes from his seat and bellows something at the driver, and we roar back into our own lane. I think his God is trying to convince me of the wisdom of Osama's belief.
Occasionally the driver slams on his brakes to cross a two-foot-high berm of rubble strewn across the road. This is traffic control, Egyptian style. The farmers who live in the apartment-like villages on the left of the road must cross to reach their fields on the right. Too many have been killed by drivers who wouldn't stop. Now, problem solved.
Once or twice we stop for petrol—a black market item these days and hard to come by—before we arrive at a gathering place for microbuses headed in all directions. Our driver hands us over to another driver, who stands by his tiny van shouting "Aswan! Aswan!" until it's packed to the glass. Eleven Nubian men come aboard—very black Egyptians from the south—and join Osama and me.
Much more arguing and hand waving so my red bag with my computer won't end up with the others on top, more money promised, and we're off.
I have chosen the rear seat for us—a mistake—thinking it will have more leg room. It doesn't and not only that, every pothole and "ramp" as Osama calls speed bumps launch me squarely into the roof. Though I will be squashed by it for the next four hours, I am glad my bag is with me. We use it as a table between us for the goodies Osama fishes from his bag.
We have traveled barely an hour before Osama erupts once more shouting at the driver. I think we must be lost because he makes a u-turn and heads back the way we came. Soon we arrive at a brightly lit cafe in the middle of nowhere and all the men get out. I just sit there with my what? face on until Osama leans in to explain that they had all pulled out their cigarettes intending to light up. I can't imagine what that airless microbus would have been like with 11 smoking men inside. Once more I am grateful for Osama's company.
It wouldn't have taken us so long to reach Aswan if it hadn't been for the police checkpoints. At each stop, boys no older than my son shouldering American-made weapons walk around the van, always stopping for a better look at me. At one stop they ask the men in the front seats to get out, and Osama begins talking pretty fast. They ask for my passport, then check his ID, and then they let us go. The story Osama gets is that as a tourist I am not allowed on public transportation because the police can not ensure my safety. This sounds fishy to me. I have never felt threatened (except for the driving) until they showed up. They let us go because Osama tells them that we are traveling together.
If he had not been there, the police would have removed me from the van in that remote checkpoint and it could have been who knows how long before I'd have been allowed back on my way. Osama says that if not him, Allah would have sent someone else along to look after me.
By now it is very late. With travel, four days of all-night traffic noise and 5 a.m. calls to prayer, I have had little sleep my whole time in Egypt. Once we're in Aswan Osama hires another taxi and delivers me right to my hotel, hauling my bags three flights up and seeing that I am comfortably checked in. This is also very Egyptian.
Taxis and microbuses to Aswan? 675 pounds ($112.50, or six times the price of my train ticket.)
My debt to Osama? Priceless.
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