Walking the Nile

by Levison Wood

  ‘And stop fighting,’ said Moez. ‘And, after they’ve hunted all the big animals into local extinction, they have to start farming, too. Farming together. Which means the first villages grow up, and then the first towns and, eventually, cities themselves. That, Lev, is how Ancient Egypt was born – and it was the same down here, for the Nubians like me.’

  For the longest time, we stayed staring at the etchings on the rock, before making the trudge back to the river. Where the sandstone cliffs tumbled into the water, Awad and Ahmad were waiting. Rolling their eyes at what they thought our indulgent foray into the desert, they reined the camels around and, again, we set off along the river.

  ‘Mr Lev . . .’ said Ahmad, with the air of a pirate, as we sat down to our lunch of fried goat’s liver and refried beans. We were on the outskirts of a village called Sorry, named because the English governor who had once ruled here had barely understood Arabic – so, when passing travellers asked him for directions, it was all he could say. ‘We would like to renegotiate our contract.’

  My eyes flitted between Ahmad and Moez, who was doing his usual best at keeping a straight face while he translated this wily Bedouin’s words.

  ‘You see,’ Ahmad went on, ‘we are quite tired of riding now. We would like to go home.’

  ‘Home?’ I said. ‘But there are more than four hundred kilometres until we reach Lake Nasser . . .’

  Beside me, Moez coughed. ‘Lake Nubia,’ he corrected.

  Four hundred kilometres north, the mighty Nile entered the third largest man-made lake in the world. Between 1958 and 1971, the Egyptian government had dedicated themselves to damming the River Nile at their southern city of Aswan – providing electricity for great swathes of North Africa, and creating an enormous reservoir in the process. The reservoir now straddles the border between Egypt and Sudan – called Nasser in the north, and Lake Nubia in the south. It was at the town of Wadi Halfa, sitting on the lake, that I planned to cross the border.

  In English, so that they would not understand, I asked Moez, ‘What do they want?’

  ‘Money, of course. What else do these Arabs want?’

  We had seen so much hospitality on the Sudanese part of our trek that, for a few weeks, I had forgotten the sullen malcontents who had sometimes accompanied me in Uganda and further south. Boston would not have been surprised by Awad and Ahmad’s sudden request; I supposed I should not have been either.

  ‘They’ve worked hard,’ I said. ‘They’ve been invaluable. Business is business. I respect that. Why don’t you ask them what they want?’

  Moez chattered with them in Arabic, his face growing more confused. When he was finally done, he reverted to English and said, ‘It isn’t money, Lev. It’s Ramadan.’

  ‘Ramadan?’

  ‘Ramadan begins on the 28th June,’ said Awad, as Moez translated. ‘We want to be done by the 25th, so we can go to our families.’

  ‘I have to tend my goats,’ said Ahmad.

  ‘And my wives will never let me hear the end of it if I don’t get back.’

  I didn’t need to check my diary to know that 25 June was only ten days away. The spectre of Ramadan had been looming over me as well; I still didn’t have the requisite permits to cross the border into Egypt, and if I turned up in Wadi Halfa at the start of the month of Ramadan, there was a big chance I’d have to wait until it was over.

  ‘It’s impossible,’ I said to Moez. ‘It’s like doing a marathon, every day, for ten days straight – and in this temperature as well . . .’ I did not like to say the other thing that would hinder us: the Sudanese had been so hospitable that we had already lost endless afternoons accepting water and chai and food from the overly friendly villagers we met – unable to refuse their overtures for fear of dishonouring them.

  ‘I don’t think we have a choice, Lev. These men are going home . . .’

  We set off in earnest the next morning, pounding along the highway close to the river. The water was beautiful here. We’d reached the Nile’s third cataract, the river pouring gloriously over boulders to form crests of perfect white. Sai Island sat in the rapids, with crocodiles basking on its banks – and, all along the riverbank, stood beautiful, colourful Nubian villages with their unique walled vaults, dome roofs and brightly painted gates: pink, green and blue formed a stark contrast to the yellow desert around.

  Our task was simple but punishing: six kilometres an hour, eight hours a day, missing out only the sun’s most vicious hours. The further north we came, the fewer habitations we passed. The land grew wilder, the cliffs increasingly jagged – every day, the same as the last. By the time we came within a hundred miles of Wadi Halfa, Moez began to know people in the few settlements on whose outskirts we camped. In Wadi Halfa itself, his brother Mazar waited for us, eagerly working on the papers that would get us over the border.

  ‘Wait until you see it!’ he kept exclaiming. ‘Halfa is green and beautiful, and full of wonderful Nubians . . .’

  Three days away from our destination, we left the river’s immediate bank and joined the main highway, ten kilometres inland. In our dash to the border, we gazed on the great Nile from afar, its glistening waters obscured by a fringe of verdant palms.

  On 24 June, we stopped to rest by the roadside. As the camel boys brewed chai, a lorry ground to a halt and a friendly face bawled out: ‘What are you doing walking? Has your car broken down?’ We had heard as much all day, everyone eager to stop and ferry us to the border – and everyone unable to comprehend that walking was what we’d set out to do. I was finding it hard to believe myself. My feet were swollen so badly that my boots barely fit, blisters were forming beneath my calloused skin, Moez was limping – and even Ahmad and Awad had begun to complain about saddle sores.

  ‘There are still fifty kilometres to go,’ I said, kneading my feet. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘They’re going home tomorrow,’ Moez replied, shrugging.

  We forced ourselves on: ten kilometres, twenty, then thirty and more. By the time evening loomed, a great expanse of blue glimmered on the horizon. ‘Lake Nasser,’ I whispered – before quickly correcting myself: ‘Lake Nubia . . .’

  Just two miles distant lay Wadi Halfa. There has been a settlement at Wadi Halfa for millennia. Once an Egyptian outpost, and an important stop-off for armies heading into the Sudan, it is now the end of the railway from Khartoum, the gateway to Egypt. Before we had reached the outskirts of town, a crowd had gathered underneath the sign that welcomed visitors. A throng of men in military and police uniforms were waiting and, in the middle of them, the town governor, mayor and several journalists stood with none other than Moez’s brother, Mazar, and their mother. It had been years since I had last seen Mazar. Between them, they held a hand-painted banner aloft. In block capitals, the banner proclaimed: ‘WALKING THE NILE’.

  Bewildered – and not a little numb from the pain still searing through my feet – we entered the crowd. In a second, Moez’s mother had thrown her arms around him. Mazar reached out and pumped my hand, before embracing me himself.

  ‘Well done!’ he said with a dry smile. ‘You dragged my brother home. He’s usually too busy to come and visit . . .’

  ‘We didn’t get it, Lev. The authorities shut down on us.’

  We had spent the night in Moez’s family home, in the centre of the dusty town, with Awad and Ahmad camping outside with the camels. Now, we stood on the roadside, watching them disappear into the south – two old pirates who I’d miss enormously.

  I turned to Mazar, who looked chagrined. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You don’t have permission to walk over the border. They wouldn’t agree to it. No foreigner’s ever walked from Sudan into Egypt. It just isn’t done. Not even the Sudanese do it. We’re forbidden from doing anything more than taking the ferry from here, all the way up to Aswan.’

  Aswan lay 375km across the border, at the very head of the lake, deep inside Egypt. The Wadi Halfa ferry famously carried passengers all the way, but th
at had never been my intent. I cursed, inwardly. There is nothing more problematic in Africa than a border crossing.

  ‘Normally,’ I said, ‘I’d try and sneak across at night, or . . . pay somebody off. Only, I risked a sneaky crossing three years ago – when I was driving the ambulances to Malawi. I ended up in an Egyptian jail. They deported me after that.’

  ‘Things are different in Egypt now, Lev. You do things by the book, or not at all.’

  Mazar was right. Since the last time I had been to Egypt, the country had been transformed by the revolutions of 2011 and 2013, both of which had removed presidents from power. The nation I was about to enter was not one I knew, nor one I understood – not yet. The consequences of appearing to be a risk to national security by making an illegal border crossing didn’t bear thinking about.

  ‘What are the options?’

  Moez said, ‘It’s Ramadan in two days . . . but there’s a boat that leaves tomorrow afternoon. After that, nobody knows when the next one will go. There may not be another one until after Eid, and that’s more than a month.’

  ‘So it’s take the ferry, or sit it out, and hope something changes . . .’

  ‘You’re welcome to stay, Lev.’

  I knew I was; I had been welcome to stay in almost every village we had passed on the way north. But Egypt was right there, so close I could almost touch it – the final country on my way back home.

  I wandered out into the dusty street, turning in the direction of the lake. The border was tantalisingly near. I wanted to put my feet on Egyptian soil, wanted to know I was walking the final furlong, wanted to leave the contradictions of Sudan for something altogether different.

  My mind was made up. If the ferry was the only way I could cross, I would take the ferry to Aswan, then find a way to negotiate the security pitfalls, backtrack to the border and continue the walk from there.

  ‘Moez,’ I said at last, ‘I’m going to need a ticket for that ferry.’

  THE MOTHER OF THE WORLD

  Upper Egypt, July 2014

  The ferry horn blared out across the water. From the gaggle of passengers on deck, I looked down and saw Moez disappearing off the gangplank, down into the tussling crowd on the dock. Soon, his jellabiya and turban had disappeared among a thousand others. I watched as his noble face and eagle nose turned with a smile, and knew he was happy to have completed his mission, to have shown the best of his land to a foreigner. As the ferry drew away, across the glittering water, this proud man – who it still seemed I had never truly got to know, even after two months’ companionship – evaporated out of my life as quietly and mysteriously as he had entered it.

  The ferry sailed north, across the waters of Lake Nubia. Then, without any declaration, we crossed the invisible line between Sudan and Egypt. The crystal waters underneath us had become Lake Nasser, and stretched north for more than five hundred kilometres. At their head sat the ancient city of Aswan, once a frontier post for Ancient Egypt, guardian to the southern kingdoms and inland Africa; now, a modern metropolis guardian only to the High Dam. It was to be almost a day before we reached it – and every one of those hours was to be an ordeal.

  The deck was baking beneath the sun, but the place was so packed that I had no hope of getting below, even if I had wanted to brave the passengers, packed in like cattle, who sweltered underneath. Shoved into a corner, next to a spit bucket, I shared the space with hundreds of jellabiya-wearing Sudanese who spread themselves across the deck like a carpet of flesh, moving only to pray or piss. Occasionally, people tried to pick their way to the communal cookhouse inside the belly of the boat – but I decided to avoid it at all costs; the stench was unbearable and the meals, served on metal trays, put me in mind of some prison cafeteria: endless beans and sickly chai.

  For long hours, my entire being was focused on moving myself and my packs into the ever-shifting shade. Occasionally, I found myself by the balustrades and gazed out across the glistening waters of aquamarine. On both sides the desert rolled past, seemingly unchanged by the passing of the hours: red mountains to the right, rolling orange sands to the left – and, on the shore, an infinite number of bays, creeks and valleys. As I stared, through the shimmering heat haze, a new form of terror started to touch me – this was a desolate no-man’s-land, famous only for being an area into which foreigners, and even most Egyptians, could not venture. For the first time, I was glad to be on this packed boat, this tiny piece of hell floating up the lake with the current. I’m glad I’m not walking around this, I thought, bitterly. To hell with the rules of this broken expedition.

  Twenty-two hours later, Aswan came into view. On the banks of the lake stood military radio masts and radar domes, vast barracks and endless barbed wire fences. It all seemed an ominous welcome into my final country. Beyond stood the prized possession itself, the reason for all the protection: the Aswan High Dam, the biggest in the world. The sheer grey wall emerged out of the sparkling lake like an enormous sculpture, its very presence inspiring awe. Perhaps, I thought, there was something about Egypt that led Egyptians to build big – after all, it was the predecessors who had built the Great Pyramids, still hundreds of miles to my north.

  Two miles wide and almost a mile thick, the Aswan High Dam represents the biggest man-made influence imposed on the Nile in all history. To many it is a symbol of man’s dominance over nature – to others, like Moez, a mark of utter arrogance. To me it represented my final hurdle, and beyond it lay the final stretch of my journey.

  I had lost a day to the lake and, as the ferry disgorged its manifold passengers, I fought my way through the throng to disembark.

  No sooner had I begun to wend my way through the crowds on shore than two customs officials ordered me to one side. With my head hanging low, I followed them. I already knew how this was going to go. I’d been anticipating arriving in Egypt with utter relief, but I was under no illusion that this was going to be easy. Fifty years of dictatorship had turned this country into a virtual police state – and the two revolutions that had upturned the country in the last three years had only made matters worse. I had travelled in Egypt twice before, in the days before the revolutions, and even then I had spent a good deal of time either under arrest or being followed by the secret service.

  ‘American?’ demanded an official in a leather jacket and dark Ray-Bans.

  ‘English,’ I corrected him.

  He simply sneered: ‘This way.’

  The soldier led me along a murky corridor of the customs building, away from the queues of Sudanese travellers. Inside a large side office, another man – this one in the uniform of a major – considered me from behind his dark sunglasses, smoking a cigarette. On his desk, amid haphazard piles of paper, stood an Egyptian flag. Behind him hung a stained photograph of the country’s current ruler, President Sisi. A former military commander, Sisi had become president only a month earlier, while I was trekking through the deserts of Sudan. It had been Sisi who had announced the deposition of Egypt’s former president, Mohammed Morsi, after the uprisings of 2013 – when millions of protestors took to the streets to demand that the increasingly authoritarian and Islamist government step down.

  ‘Where have you come from?’ asked the man behind the desk.

  ‘Well, the ferry comes from Sudan . . .’ I told him my story, presenting a copy of Sudan’s Tribune newspaper, its front page showing Moez and myself on the long trek into Khartoum.

  The major didn’t look at all impressed. In one long drag, he finished his cigarette. ‘Where is your permission?’

  I had faced this question countless times before. In Uganda, I had fought it with officiousness of my own; in Sudan, with humility and respect. Here, I would have to play the hapless tourist if I wanted to find a way through.

  Soon, more men were arriving – some border police in uniform, others agents with no uniforms at all. It began to feel as if they had scented blood – everybody wanted a piece of the action.

  ‘Name!’ barked the first.


  ‘What is in this bag?’ demanded the second.

  ‘Destination!’ declared a third.

  The questions came thick and fast: first, my satellite phone singled me out as a spy; then, my cameras as a foreign provocateur. It was only as the major unearthed an envelope from my day pack that a distinct calmness settled over the room. There was no doubting the reason why: in that envelope was all the cash I had been given in exchange for the three camels in Wadi Halfa, the morning before I set off. I had been hoping to change it into Egyptian pounds in Aswan.

  I saw the glint of greed in the major’s eyes as he slid the envelope into his pocket. ‘They’re worthless here. You can’t change them outside . . .’

  One of the other soldiers, a weasely bald man, interjected: ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to confiscate all your machines as well. This camera, these medicines, this knife . . .’

  My heart plummeted. I could understand their taking the machete – even though it galled me to lose the one piece of kit I’d relied on for so long in the jungle. But the prospect of losing all my photographs filled me with dread. As the man began collecting everything into a pile, I could see the greed in his eyes. These, my precious belongings, were going to make nice presents for his family.

  I needed to change tack. My hapless-tourist act wasn’t working.

  ‘You’re not taking them!’ I stood up, slamming my passport in front of the major. ‘You. Sir. What is your name?’

  The major peered over his glasses, startled.

  ‘What is your name?’ I repeated, louder and with more force. ‘I am here working directly for the Ministry of Tourism. I am a good friend of . . .’ I racked my brain for a name, something Moez had told me about Aswan. The name I came up with was apparently the only person who could get me the permits to walk around Lake Nasser. ‘. . . General Mostafa Yousry! I am here writing a book for the good of the Egyptian people.’

  Across the room, ten pairs of eyes stared at me. When none of them spoke, I continued my barrage.