‘He who rides the sea of the Nile must have sails woven of patience.’
William G. Golding
I thought it was a small dog at first. But it was just the second interloper that admitted himself to the room I had paid for that night. The first was a turbaned goliath, who turned the key about two a.m., and took the other bed. No one at the desk warned me he was coming. The second was the biggest rat in the world, which tore through and into the bag of nuts and dates I had bought for the next part of my trip. No one at the desk warned me he was coming, either. You could hear his saliva. I never dared dream that a rat could make so much racket and, for a week after that, I never dared dream.
I needed to leave by four thirty in the morning anyway, just to have a chance at a ticket, on the train to Atbara. In The Season of Migration to the North, I couldn’t afford to be left behind. It seemed like the entire population of Sudan wanted onto this train, and I found myself slowly jostled to the side and further away from the ticket counter, until I was squeezed up kitty corner to a WC. In Sudan, this is not coveted time-share territory.
“La elaha ella’llah” “لا اله الا الله محمد رسول الله.” I shouted. There is none worthy of worship but Allah. A path opened to the counter. I was wrestling with Moses here.
When the train was finally overfull, we pulled out slowly, in that cobalt radiance that warns the desert that the sun is coming. I may have nodded off in my seat. I came awake to Saharan scenes of camels, Nubian goats, grass and clay-walled desert towns, receding ghosts in turbans and kansos, and five new friends in our facing benches. Omar, Khalil, Bakosh, Mohammed and Adziz were studying in Cairo, and I was on their school bus. They were to become my guides.
I didn’t really need them for the first encounter they tried to guide me through. I looked up to find a rustic white Arab staring at me from the crowded aisle. It was more of a leer when his two-toothed grin emerged. From the odor, bathing had not been one of his recent avocations. He made a great flourish of slowly pointing at me with his right index finger, pointing back to himself, and then protruding his lips into an open pout, before licking them. I was pleased for having missed breakfast, but I was now the focus of all the nearby attention.
“He says…” Began Bakosh.
“I got it.” I said, cutting him off.
I slowly pointed to him with my right index finger (although I must admit I thought of using my left one at first- but he likely would have simply killed me on the spot), pointing back at myself, and shaking it back and forth sideways. He wasn’t buying it. I could feel the ambient attentiveness rising. Once again, he pointed at me with his right index finger, pointed back to himself, and then protruded his lips into an open pout before licking them.
“He wants…” Began Omar.
“I know what he wants,” I snapped.
I repeated my previous action. He repeated his.
I mimed the use of scissors. He responded with a loud long-winded diatribe in Arabic.
“He curses you,” said Khalil. “And your tribe.”
“I’ll live with it,” I said and tucked into my rat snack.
About eight hours into our trans-Sudanese adventure, the locomotive’s engine died of prostration. No one seemed particularly surprised, and we all disembarked to share food, stories, comradeship, and rhythmic singing and clapping into the night. My tribe was impressed when I rolled out the Gold Kazoo, and each of them in their own different timing, came to me individually, to ask if I could send them one from my village when I returned home. I struggled with the dilemma a bit. If I told them I wouldn’t, I would disappoint them now. If I told them would, I would disappoint them later. I told them I would try. By the time I didn’t, I reasoned, they would be more willing to forgive me as being simply incompetent.
The earth trembled from the advancing rumble of the new engine about three in the morning. When I opened my eyes, the stars that hit the back of them, just about blinded me. This was the universe, writ large. I understood what had served as the fuel of the Islamic ascendency. Even with all this fairy dust in the firmament, however, Orion shone through in all his glory, now starting to right himself from his recumbency further south.
As daylight and the new engine pulled us into the Nubian Desert, I was introduced to the train inspector, Sayed, who introduced me his live-aboard girlfriend and to the near empty dining car. It was here I met Mick, an English teacher who looked like Rasputin. We spent too much time playing chess with each other and the tribe, and hardly any money drinking glass after glass of sweet mint tea.
* * *
I needed to get off the boat. I had gained five pounds since I boarded, and there was no place to put it.
By the time my tribe and I got off the trucks in Wadi Halfa, we would have felt bushwhacked, if there had been any bush. My shoes were shambles, and my pants should have been burned. But we still had to traverse Lake Nasser up the Nile to Aswan before there would be an opportunity to replace them with anything serviceable. Omar, Khalil, Adziz, Mohammed, Bakosh and I camped in front of what passed for a ticket booth on the shore, to secure a place on the boats. There were two old scows, roped together, that would make the two-day trip into southern Egypt next morning. It would take four days, twice as long as most brought food for. Both hulls had canvas canopy protection, but both were torn in so many places that you had to pick your spot carefully. Also, there was only one WC, only on one of the boats. You wanted to be close enough to be able to get to it in a hurry if you needed to, but far enough away that it didn’t become part of your intermediary metabolism during the voyage. We were about to discover that no place was safe. To banish any sleep demons, loud Arabic ‘Nyah-nyah’ music boomboxed around us the entire night. There were fifty young men waiting to board at the dock on sunrise. I met Peter in the queue. I knew he was different. He was a Ugandan studying in Romania. He was the only one with glasses. I was the only one with white skin. But everyone treated me like an esteemed visitor. Once the scows were underway, different groups vied to show me the finer qualities of their own hospitality. I was invited, usually by one of the older boys in the group gently taken by my elbow, to come and sit and share their bread and cheese and jam and foul and shai, or whatever little delicacy they had brought from their home village. The regaled me with stories and taught me magic. Peter taught me the words to ‘Malaika’.
And then the ridiculous happened. I was carrying my miniature chess set over the railing, from one scow to another, when I stumbled. Half the pieces spilled out and down into the Nile. They could see the shock on my face, and that was simply not acceptable. Much to the shock on the face of the captain, they began prying up floorboards. Knives and boot polish came out and, within the hour, I had a completely new set of pieces that fit as snugly into the holes in the chessboard as the originals. They were a work of art, especially the pawns. I still have the set and the memories it evokes, at home.
Views of the desert and the mauve mountains beyond the shores were magnificent. The main downside of the trip was the slope of the effluent leaning out of the WC. You couldn’t really get close to it. Any thought of going inside would have been suicide. Most of us just leaned over the railing and looked for clouds. The sunset filled the entire sky and fell directly into the long trapezoidal wake of our stern-mounted outboards. Abu Simbel lay under us. I saw a fox on the shore at the Philae Temple on the second day. We passed the Aswan dam late on the fourth day. By the time we arrived at Aswan town, it was ten thirty at night. The Egyptian authorities were in their own beds, or someone else’s. We would have to sleep on the boat, until after they had their breakfast next morning. It was Christmas Eve. Like my newly crafted chess pieces, and three kings, virgin queen, and the knights and bishops to come, my tribe and I had melted into the pageantry, pawns on the Nile.