Around the World in 50 Years (7 page)

Later, as we drove back toward our trailer, I asked Ihab if the sharif was badly disappointed about not bagging a gazelle.

“I don't think so,” he smiled. “He's always wanted a ride in an automobile. And—oh, yes—he asked if you might have another pair of shoes. A little smaller.”

All the next day we toiled in the scorching sun, nailing and boarding the camper floor back together, pounding the buckled aluminum sides into place, straightening the struts underneath. The following morning Steve drove the axle and one of our spare spindles to a welding shop in Tobruk. It was late afternoon before the work was finished and we were ready to roll. We'd lost two full days, and the undercarriage still had three bad cracks that we'd have to weld in Cairo, but at least we were getting back on the road.

Just as we were leaving, Grumpy came trotting over to our camp on a camel. The chief had sent him: Did we happen to have any shoe polish? Brown?

 

CHAPTER 4

Weighed Down in Egypt's Land

As we neared the Egyptian border town of Sollum, the sun was directly behind us and setting, a large crimson wafer quickly consumed by the immense appetite of the Sahara. We figured our timing was perfect, as dusk was usually the best time to reach a border post. If we arrived any later, the border might be closed for the night; if we arrived much earlier, the guards had time to waste, and they'd often waste ours in the process; if we arrived at dusk, when the guards were eager to finish duty, they usually wouldn't bother with a thorough search of our equipment. A thorough search was the last thing we wanted since our prohibited items included an illegal revolver, hundreds of undeclared dollars, and a half case of bourbon. I was particularly worried because Egypt required visitors to prove that they were
not
Jewish, and I could not do that.

We crested a bald, round mountain, and Egypt spread out before us, four distinct strips dwindling into the dimming twilight. To the distant left, and stretching over the horizon, the darkened Mediterranean broke black and white on the beach; to its right, the coastal strip, perhaps a mile wide, containing the beach, the border town of Sollum, and the thin trail of asphalt stretching east toward Alexandria; farther right, the escarpment of rugged, barren hills, a geological arrow aiming east-southeast; last, and barely visible, was inland Egypt, mile after mile of rock-studded sand, devoid of life and hope.

We coasted down the winding road to the base of the mountain, where a guard waved us off the road and toward the passport office. The big room was dim and filled with thick cigar smoke. It was furnished with splintered wooden desks, cracked leather armchairs, two pictures of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, two pictures of the Aswan Dam construction, and four army officers. (In most developed nations, passport control is handled by a specialized civilian department; in Egypt, as in most Arab countries, the military controlled the frontiers.) The officers were in their undershirts, their fat arms and faces sweating in the airless room. They were suspicious and arrogant. And in no hurry to get home.

After they'd learned that three of us were Americans, they ignored us for an hour and smoked their Cuban cigars. Then the interrogation commenced: Where had we been? Why had we come to the United Arab Republic? (This was, at the time, the formal name for the nominal union of Syria and Egypt.) Where would we be staying each night? How much money did we have with us? Were we planning to take pictures of the Palestinian refugees? What kind of work did we do? Where were our parents born? Were we connected with the American government in any way? Why did we have a big trailer with us? (Why indeed?) Had we ever visited Egypt before? Had we ever been to Israel? Were we planning to go there?

I became annoyed, but knew the officers were just waiting for one of us to lose his temper. When we'd gotten our visas weeks before, we'd filled out all the forms and answered all the relevant questions. Our passports were in perfect order, but the officers were determined to continue their game.

“You, what work do you do?” they asked me.

“I'm an art director for advertisements,” I answered, using the cover story we'd contrived for those countries that barred foreign journalists, to credibly explain why we had so much film and such professional cameras.

Then they asked our religions. We each replied with a different Christian denomination, all true except for mine. I'd rehearsed this many times, even learned some Protestant prayers and religious theory, but my lip nevertheless trembled as I answered, and sweat bathed my forehead. The officer looked at me closely. Across North Africa, my prominent nose, dark eyes, and olive skin were oft mistaken for Arabic, whereupon I usually nodded modestly, congratulated the interlocutor on his perceptiveness, and pretended that my dear old dad had been born in such-and-such Arab country, usually picking one that was on a friendly footing with the one we were in. But it wasn't going to be so easy this time.

Egypt drew no distinction between Israelis and Jews, and we'd been warned that it required visitors to carry letters from their home churches attesting that they were members in good standing. I'd assumed I'd easily obtain such a letter from some priest or minister who wanted to strike a mild blow against religious discrimination, but they had all refused.

When the soldier asked me if I possessed such a letter, Steve, to distract him, started edging toward the door, purposely acting suspiciously.

“You!” the soldier shouted at Steve. “Come here. Show me your letter.”

Steve showed it to him.

“Where are you going?” he asked Steve.

“First to Alexandria, then to Cairo, and across into Jordan,” he answered.

“Jordan? How to Jordan?”

Steve told him we planned to drive from Cairo across the Suez Canal, then through the Sinai Peninsula.

“It is forbidden to go into the Sinai. No one is allowed. It is a war zone. Do not forget that we are at war with your ally Israel. Next year! You come again next year and then you can drive to Jordan. Next year there will be no more Israel.”

Finally, and begrudgingly, the officer stamped our passports, and we were free to move on—20 yards to the Customs Office.

We'd been warned that Egyptian Customs was tough, but we were not prepared for what awaited us. In a blazingly bright room, four clerks behind a wide counter were assiduously searching the luggage and persons of a dozen Arab travelers and workers. They dumped the contents of trunks and suitcases on the floor, untied knots, opened boxes, poked through tins of tea and cookies, pulled off nailed covers, probed for false bottoms, checked all labels, searched through pockets and trouser legs and shoes.

In a small room to the right, a teller was exchanging foreign currencies for Egyptian pounds at the highly inflated official rate. Although ten American dollars fetched eight or nine Egyptian pounds on the free market in New York and Beirut, and close to that on the black market inside Egypt, the government was offering only four and a half pounds, and imposing severe penalties, including imprisonment, on anyone caught entering or leaving with more money than they'd declared. We'd planned to double our Egyptian money by exchanging our concealed dollars on the black market, but we also risked more than doubling our stay in Egypt—behind bars.

In front of the customs house, in the driveway where we'd parked our vehicles and trailers, two officers with flashlights were searching through the car ahead of us. They checked the undersides, looked beneath the floor mats, felt behind the seats, emptied the trunk, probed in the gas tank with a rod, and searched under the hood. In a state where foreign goods were scarce and the currency weak, smuggling was immensely profitable.

For 20 minutes we waited our turn. Almost everyone ahead of us had trouble: Half of them had goods confiscated and half had to pay import duties. These were all for minor offenses, like bringing in a can of fruit packed in Morocco or having a new blanket not made in Egypt. What would happen to us if their search uncovered our gun, our bourbon, and our undeclared greenbacks? It was a hot night, and we sweated profusely.

Fortunately for us, it had been a busy night at the customs post. It was late, we were last in line, and the tired guard did not search us thoroughly. I assumed he was just reluctant to go plowing through two loaded cars and trailers, but his conversation convinced me that he presumed Americans were so rich they'd never smuggle anything. He handed us a set of temporary Egyptian plates and closed the office.

Steve resolved to find a better hiding place for our pistol, quickly change our undeclared dollars, and take a hit for the team by drinking all our bourbon. I shook a bit and breathed deeply; you need a certain kind of nerveless constitution to be a smuggler, and I didn't have it.

Morning dawned clear, bright, and dry, and the sun came up warm against a blue-white and cloudless sky. The Mediterranean winked at us with friendly blue wavelets. Steve and I plunged in, and even Manu shrugged off his morning torpor and followed. The warm, foaming sea embraced us, washing off the dirt and sweat of days, soothing us, carrying us from the land, taking us into another world. From the roof of the cloudless ceiling of sky to the clear depths of the sea bottom, it was a world of beauty and contentment. We were at one and at peace with nature, three bobbing specks in the friendly caress of an eternal sea.

Before moving on, we visited the British WW II cemetery just past Sollum, a large, flat, sandy rectangle filled with several thousand simple headstones, shaded here and there by a tree or a flowering bush, the result of diligent care. Beyond the walls were no trees or flowers, just the dead sands. The gravekeeper clarified that the Anglo-Egyptian War Monuments Commission maintained the cemetery, one of a dozen that dotted the North African desert from Tripoli to Tobruk to the grand entombment at El Alamein. They held the remains of 35,000 Commonwealth soldiers who had died fighting to tie the tail of the Desert Fox when Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had been sweeping across Africa toward Suez, attempting to link up with the Japanese somewhere in India and conquer the world. The turning of the tide would come at El Alamein; the stemming of the tide had been here, at Sollum.

We walked among the neat rows of identical gravestones, all shining white and pure in the afternoon sun. Interred here were drivers and troopers, flight engineers and artillerymen, privates and sergeants, Canadians and South Africans, all brought from distant lands to perish on this uncaring killing ground. We read the inscriptions.

Tell England, Ye who pass this way, I died for her and rest here content.

We will always remember you when the rest of the world forgets

—MUM AND SISTER

If love could have saved, you would never have died.

The desert wind blew mournfully down the hedge of barren hills and across the graves as it swept to meet the sea. The eternal Mediterranean played a funeral sonata on the keyboard of the shore. The sun sank lower over the wasteland.
Every soil is a brave man's country
.

Our heads bowed, our eyes filled with tears, we walked in silence toward the gate. I looked at the last tombstones and thought of those who cherished these men but would never see their distant resting place.
In alien earth he lies, not for him the last, long slumber under friendly skies.

We left the cemetery and stood gazing with misty eyes at the barren hills, the encroaching sands, the fruitless earth. The sun was on the far side of the mountain now, well along on its nightly journey into the Sahara. The wind picked up the somber lament of Taps as we headed east toward Alexandria.
He gave the greatest gift of all, his own unfinished life
.

By the next morning, the road had turned into a jagged torture track of loose white rocks against the whiteness of the desert. At one particularly treacherous spot, a crew of some 60
fellaheen
wearing white robes and turbans, their faces covered with dust, appeared like apparitions—bent to their labors, kneeling on the harsh, hot roadbed. They struggled without aid of tractor, grader, or drill, attacking the reluctant rock with hand and muscle and primitive tools, chopping it with chisels, hitting it with hammers, carting boulders away on their backs, straining and sweating in the heat, descendants of the pyramid builders, still slaving after four thousand years.

Nine miles east of El Alamein the road swung close to the sea. We stopped and plunged into the beckoning pale water, washing off the hot dust of the deserts of Egypt and the cold dust of the cemeteries of the world. Then it was on to Alexandria, the Pearl of the Mediterranean.

There is no other city in the world like Alex, and the world can be thankful for that. It's a Coney Island full of fun-loving crooks, a carnival of affable criminals, a rowdy reunion of ex-cons. No metaphor can totally capture the carefree carnality and casual criminal spirit of the city, but here is what happened when we met the picaresque denizens of Alex and learned, the hard way, that the Pearl was only paste.

As we drove in through its outskirts, Alex was smoky and congested, with steel mills and cement plants in the midst of residential sections. Collapsing tenements stood beside caves dug into the hills, and people lived in both. It was a mess of overhead wires, trolley tracks, pushcart vendors, drying wash, muddy streets, belching smokestacks, blowing sand, littered alleys, unrelenting noise, and thousands of street urchins.

The kids swooped upon us as soon as we reached the edge of town. In seconds they jumped on the flat top of the camper, climbed onto the canvas roofs of the cars, hopped on the running boards, crawled across the hoods, and tried to wriggle their skinny arms into any opening, begging for
baksheesh,
or taking what they could. As soon as we chased them off, they came charging back, heaving pieces of sheep dung, shouting and laughing when we flinched.