Pt1 - 7: THE EAST DELTA BUS TO ST CATHERINE

 

We already had our tickets for St Catherine courtesy Ahmood, Motas and a leetle baksheesh well spent. They’d swerved through the South Sinai bus terminal at Abbassiya en route to the plane for Luxor and bought them for us, so this morning we could strike out on our first journey as free agents with a short head start – we knew our way around the bus station and we didn’t have to hustle for tickets. Beyond these small certainties though, anything could happen. From now on even the simplest things we took for granted in our daily lives back home, the things we did automatically, satisfying our most basic needs, would be a challenge. We would have to rely on our wits, to adapt, to be agile, to concentrate, to stay alert and aware, to do our research, to assess options, to make calculated choices, to observe cultural sensitivities. We would have to think on our feet, be careful who to trust, to finely tune our scam radars and bullshit detectors. The game was truly afoot.

It was heavily overcast as we took the taxi from the Gezirah out to Abbassiya. We arrived in plenty of time to go through the security check - conducted by a couple of smarmy young characters in civvies who behaved like military police and nicked Tess’s tomato juice – and to watch the concrete compound come to life.

The oil-stained bus bays were empty as yet but the ticket office was open and two men moved about chattering in the gloom inside. A natty chap in a loud red-and-white striped shirt and black bow tie appeared and pottered about in the shabby little kiosk, shuffling the bent tables and wiping them down. He looked incongruous, like a vaudeville comic, in this cold grey bunker. A few heavily stubbled older men in grubby galabiyahs wandered around in a choreographed pretence at sweeping.

Passengers began to trickle in, including five other backpackers, and there were animated exchanges at the ticket window. A young Scottish woman travelling alone came across to compare tickets with us, unsure whether she’d actually got what she asked for. She had, and we would be neighbours for the trip. She seemed relieved to have a couple of Jurassics for company.

At length the gates of the compound were unchained and swung open to admit a ‘fifties refrigerator on wheels, all rounded corners and rusted chrome. This was the 11.30 bus to St Catherine.

We bundled our gear in the belly locker and climbed aboard. Foreigners were up the front and as first ticket-holders we were directly behind the driver’s seat, a dubious honour in light of events. Our new friend Louise sat across the aisle and at the window beside her a taciturn young English guy fussily unfolded a vast, detailed map of Egypt as though he meant to follow every millimetre of the journey on it. Together with the Austrian girl behind them and the young German couple in the seat behind us we would develop a unique bond by the end of the day.

The bus was almost full as our driver, an Arab Sammy Davis Jnr I’ll call Ali, steered us out of Abbassiya only ten minutes late – it took him that long to get the flapping electric doors to shut properly. The East Delta Bus Co. scheduled five hours for the trip so we allowed six, which meant we should still arrive in St Catherine with light to spare. We had no accommodation organised and would have to find our way around.

As we trundled through the endless suburbs of Cairo I noticed a commotion on a street corner. I couldn’t quite make it out at first but when we drew alongside I could hear screaming and wailing coming from the centre of a small knot of onlookers jostling each other for a better view. The group parted to reveal a young woman rocking back and forth on the pavement and flagellating herself with a leather strap; whether in grief, religious ecstasy or some desperate madness, something about this scene epitomised the teeming crush of the city and seemed the perfect note on which to say ciao Cairo.

After more than an hour we gradually emerged from a monotony of squat apartment blocks and onto a sea of sand as we bounced along the road to Suez. Military installations and billboards lined the highway for several kilometres on the fringe of the city and then it was dunes, dunes and more dunes.

The only comment worth making about Suez, and even then just for the shock value, is that the toilets in the bus station are the second foulest in Egypt after Abbassiya. There is no genteel way to describe tip toeing through the turds all over the floor, so I won’t. Suffice to say the name of this industrial slum should be spelled Sewers.

After we passed under the Suez Canal and emerged onto the Sinai Peninsular the trip began to get mildly interesting.

The Gulf of Suez appeared on our right though at first it was difficult to distinguish from the steel grey sky. Presently we pulled up at the first of three checkpoints, 44 gallon drums full of concrete arranged to force vehicles into a slow zig-zag for a few hundred metres and manned by about twenty armed soldiers. Strictly speaking, the Sinai is a militarised zone and permits are required to traverse it. Motas assured us they weren’t really necessary so we hadn’t bothered getting them. We were a little nervous when an armed soldier and a fat guy in civvies with a pistol poked in his belt huffed aboard.

Happily, the fat guy gave our passports a desultory glance and handed them back. I was so relieved I hauled out my Old Holborn – yes, Egyptian public transport is gloriously politically incorrect. Rolling durries is a spectator sport in the Muslim world and all eyes were immediately upon me, including Ali’s. He bought his face close to mine, his right eye looking straight at me, his left eye scanning the horizon beyond.

“Grass?” he asked, leering crookedly.

“No, tabac Ali…see” I held the rollie up to his nose.

“Ahhh…” he inhaled luxuriously. “Cooloombian, yes?” he let out an impish little laugh. Soon I’d be wondering if Ali hadn’t pulled a few quiet tokes himself.

We pootled on down the Suez coast with nothing much to look at save the odd resort that occasionally popped up on the shoreline. These were strange, surreal buildings that looked like moon bases out of a Ray Bradbury novel. Indeed, there must be a law requiring these places to have the word “moon” in their title, Moon Beach Resort and Valley of the Moon to name but two. The landscape is certainly lunar enough.

Ali’s driving became steadily more erratic as the miles rolled inexorably by. He began pulling over for every Ahmed, Abdul and Habib who flagged him down from the roadside, no crime in itself except that as soon as they fought their way on through the chomping doors they parked themselves down on the step beside him and drew him into animated conversation. Ali gesticulated wildly, chain smoked his Cleopatras, fiddled around in his ticket bag, took money and dispensed change all at the same time, often with no hands on the wheel and barely a glance at the road ahead. I mean, the bugger only had one eye on the road even when he was giving it his full attention.

It was dusk and we were already well behind schedule when we finally turned inland after Abu Rudeis and began the winding climb into the Sinai hills. If we thought the trip had been thrilling enough already it was about to get positively hair raising.

Ali didn’t see the need for headlights as he barrelled into the gathering gloom on the wrong side of the road. Tess is a nervous passenger at the best of times so you can imagine her delight in having a front row seat for what happened next. I still have the scars on my forearm where she gripped me at every turn in the single-lane strip of rutted, potholed bitumen which, just to add another level of interest, was salted in loose sand drifts. Young Louise suppressed screams of terror which escaped her clenched lips as fearful whimperings, the fussy English guy stared hard at his reflection in the window and I could hear the Germans behind us swallowing guttural “Wow!”s.

As we sped through a blind mountain pass the lights of an oncoming vehicle suddenly rounded the bend ahead. Tess buried her face in my shoulder. At the last possible moment Ali arced up his lights, blasting the approaching driver with full high beam and forcing him off the road. Ali chortled hugely and killed the lights again. The guy was a bloody psychopath.

Ali went on amusing himself with this homicidal chicken until, eight excruciating hours after rattling out of the bus station at Abbassiya, we spied the lights of St Catherine through our tears.

Next time: Lost on Sinai...