Aswan—I'm feeling smug about having arranged my three-day felucca trip down the Nile ahead of time until the driver who picks me up at my hotel shows me to the boat. It's a lot more rickety than Captain Abdullah's felucca of a few days ago, and THIS one I'm going to be stuck on for three days. There is no one else yet on the boat.The first thing I notice is there's no head. None.
The second thing I notice is there are no life rings or anything other than the boat itself that floats.
The third thing, and the one I'll be paying for at least a week beyond the trip, is that we'll be sleeping on just the wooden deck with a blanket on top. My ex used to call me "the princess and the pea" because my broken and abused back prevents me from sleeping on anything less than a royal mattress.
I don't mind waiting a long time for the other passengers to arrive, but they turn out to be only one—a Canadian from near Toronto who has been traveling for three-and-a-half years. He's 30-something, handsome, and completely filthy. He cadges an extra toothbrush off me and neglects to say thank you.
While we wait for the others we chat about where we've been and what our plans are. He has been on every continent, often without visas and covering his costs by working illegally. He is a chef by training but mostly he gets carnival work in Australia and France—hugely well-paid because he works on commission, earning as much as $4,500 for a couple of weeks. He sleeps by the side of the road, hitchhikes, buys junk cars in some countries and sells them when he leaves, and apparently gets laid—a lot.
He has an ugly cough from sleeping on a cold train stopped north of Luxor. Between coughs he mumbles through a scarf and I can barely hear him, but we're not together long before he starts slamming Egyptians ("They'll look you right in the eye and lie to your face.") When the Nubian captain and mate arrive it's clear their English is very limited, and Steve the Canadian starts talking to them in mocking monosyllables like they're Chinese coolies in an old American movie. I'm embarrassed for every white person these men have to tolerate.
At one point he demands that they speak in English because he's sure they're talking behind his back. He says things like "We pay good money. You work." And when he asks for lemon for his tea while they're struggling to relight the gas stove, he holds out his cup and huffs, "do you understand LEMON? Do you care about any of us at all?" He will keep this up for three days and I'll get royally sick of him. I can't imagine how three-and-a-half years of world traveling can do anything but humble you, but this guy is an asshole and has the social skills of a rock.
Our boatmen are Sayid and Captain Mustafa, who's been working the felucca for 20 years and seems serious about his work. Though the captain is only in his 40s he has practically no teeth from years of chewing sugar cane. In fact even Sayid, age 27, has black and decayed teeth. I will learn later that Egyptians not only suffer large-scale premature tooth loss, one in five has diabetes. Nonetheless, though I've never had a sweet tooth and never put sugar in my coffee, I'm loading up while I'm in Egypt and damn the consequences.
Before we're done eating darkness falls and so does the temperature—by about 30 degrees. We can see our breath and I'm freezing. I ask for a blanket and get one. Steve has a down sleeping bag plus a blanket and still finds more to complain about.
I put on everything I can think of and climb under my blanket with my iPad to read. It's still awfully early but there's nothing left to do. The boatmen tie up for the night and bunk down under the bow deck.
It's about 10 p.m. and very dark under our deck-mounted tent, but outside the stars make night into day. I realize I hear snoring and it's not coming from the side of the boat where Steve is. I roll over to relieve my back—I'll be doing this all night—and land right on someone's hand. It doesn't stop the snoring.
By now I really have to pee. What was I thinking with all that tea?
All night I roll—one side to the other, on my back, on my stomach—all the time trying to avoid whose-ever hand that is. I have no idea how long I hold my bladder hoping for someone to wake up and give me a hand getting to shore, but then I hear the gentle trinkle of someone peeing off the boat. I'm really pissed not to be a man.
Eventually I hear the distant call to prayer and know there'll be enough light soon for me to get off the boat. When the light is up but no one else is, I can't stand it anymore and despite my back I lift the two-ton plank and slide it along a mast-line to steer it toward the shore. This takes some doing because the boat has drifted out to the end of the bowline. I pull the boat closer and purposely run it aground.
I say my prayers and walk down the rickety 8-inch-wide plank to step ashore. I find some bushes...and relief. The relief, however, comes at a price. That was a lot of tea I drank. My cuffs are soaked.
I get aboard with a lot more back pain and effort, and I've brought some sand on the clean deck with me. When the boatmen get up they're obviously not happy about this, or about pushing the boat out of the shallows. They point accusing fingers toward sleeping Steve and I smile hoping they'll put something in his tea.
Kwan and Maria
Thank God today we will pick up two new passengers—Kwan, a Korean student who just finished a semester studying in Budapest and is traveling for the rest of the year—and Maria, a "much older" Korean researcher who had quit her job and is almost finished with a year-long journey through Africa and the Middle East.
The first thing Maria wants to know is what the facilities are like. It's funnier now than it was last night, and I tell her with restored humor what to expect. The absence of accommodations plus the increasingly frigid weather have her doubting the wisdom of the journey. I want the company and persuade her to stay.
She is great company. Her English is excellent and she insists with gentle good manners on getting what she wants—like landing on shore at reasonable interludes for hunting out facilities, meaning bushes.
One such landing is at Elephantine Island where Sayid's village is.
Sayid takes us to his house and introduces us to his family. He is unmarried and lives with his parents, his little brother and sister and her husband and baby. The house is made of mudbrick covered with brightly colored stucco, and is built around a large open-air courtyard where cooking, meals, prayers—everything takes place.
In a very tidy, dark parlor we meet his family and look at terribly stiffly-posed wedding photos. His mother brings us tea and his sister lets me hold the fattest baby I have ever seen. The little boy can't be older than five or six months but he weighs as much as a toddler. A HEFTY toddler. His face is so black all I can see is his eyes. I hand him back when Sayid's mother brings us the tea. More tea.
That night around 10 p.m. Maria and I decide we'd better pee once more before crawling under the covers, but the water is shallow here and we can't get anywhere near close enough to put down the 10-foot plank. The boatmen do their best to pull the boat in, even standing barefoot in the freezing water. She looks at me laughing and asks how I feel about peeing off the bow. A wild wind is rocking the boat.
What the heck, part of the experience. But I'm hanging on for life. With all that tea we both have to get up once more during the night. These jeans will never be the same.
On my last day, thank God, the wind is too wild to sail (we'd taken on water a couple of times yesterday as we tried tacking through it). Mustafa uses my Egyptian cell phone to call for a van to pick us up. It takes us all the way to my hotel in Luxor and I'm one happy traveler.
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