by Levison Wood
‘It’s a shame nobody thinks about the organic waste, too,’ I said, holding my breath against the stench.
‘It didn’t used to be so filthy here. The Christians used to keep pigs here. They’d keep the streets clean of all the waste, just by eating it away. But then the government came along and told them they all had to be killed. Swine flu, they said, but the real reason . . .? Well, because the Muslim neighbours complained. So now Cairo is filthy again – and all because they won’t let Christians keep pigs. Now, all the shit just gets thrown into the Nile. Your beautiful Nile, Lev. These people are killing it for their religion.’
We stood in silence for some time, watching the locals work.
‘Come on,’ said Ibrahim, threatening to shed another tear. ‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet.’
Taking my hand, Ibrahim led me through more narrow streets where barefoot children stood in the doorways, waving as we passed. Coptic priests sauntered like bearded angels through the shadows and religious icons hung from ropes slung across the streets. In the sprawl, donkey carts, driven by small boys, delivered yet more rubbish for the locals to sift through.
After some time we stopped before the face of a half-finished apartment block, and Ibrahim led me up a forbidding set of stairs, loose wires dangling down like dead spiders’ legs. On the second floor, we arrived at a wooden door, already hanging open.
‘Yasser?’ yelled my guide – and, at once, a man approached from the shadows within. Barefoot, in old grey trousers and a sleeveless vest, he had one of the saddest faces I’d ever seen. He extended his hand in embarrassed welcome. ‘Come in,’ he said, staring at the ground as he spoke.
‘Shaay?’ he asked, unable to look me in the eyes.
‘Thank you,’ I replied, and he shuffled away to make it.
When he returned, I sat on a low sofa, on which were arranged a collection of brightly coloured stuffed toys. The living room was tiny, barely enough space for the sofa and a small table – and it was only when Yasser opened the curtains, allowing daylight to spill in, that I understood the reason for his shyness. He was hideously disfigured.
As he turned to us, I couldn’t help but look at the scars across his face. Several of his fingers were missing, and for the first time I realised he had been walking with a pronounced limp. Nobody said a word, as if daring me to ask. I turned, instead, to Ibrahim.
‘You wanted to understand the Copts,’ he said. ‘Well, here’s a Copt. Ask him anything you want. Ask him why he is the way he is. He won’t mind.’
In the window, Yasser stood with shards of light across his ruptured features. On the wall behind him was a large poster depicting the Last Supper. Sensing my reluctance to ask, he began to speak. ‘It was a Tuesday,’ he said, softly. ‘The 8th of March 2011. I was driving back from my work as a garbage collector. It was late, almost midnight, when they stopped me in the road. A gang of men, all of them Muslims, all of them with big beards, even though they were young. They can’t have been more than twenty-two, twenty-three. One of them asked if I was a Christian or Muslim.’ He paused, the memory so painful to bear. ‘I couldn’t lie. I told them I was Christian.’
Yasser faltered, turned away from me and stared out of the window. Raising a stumpy hand, he wiped away a tear. As he began to shake, Ibrahim went to his shoulder, whispering some words of consolation into his ear. Whatever he said, it seemed to give Yasser strength. He left the window and came to sit beside me.
‘I didn’t know at the time what had happened. There had been fighting between the Muslims and the Copts, after our boys made a protest against the Muslims burning our churches. That was when the Muslims started to attack our areas. They dragged me out of my car and set it on fire. Then they beat me – first with sticks, then with a metal pole. Then . . . they took a sword and tried to cut off my head.’ He drew a half-finger across a perfect line that ran across his face, from ear to ear, just below his eyes. ‘After that, I was on the ground – but that didn’t stop them.’ Slowly, Yasser began to undress, revealing the full horror of his torture. Across his back were the wounds where he’d been stabbed and whipped with wire and chains. On his legs were the slashes the Muslim boys had made with their sword, and in his groin and shoulders were yet more stab wounds. They’d even torn the skin off his buttocks, trampled his kneecaps, cracked his skull in three places with the pommel of the sword. ‘After they were done, they rolled me up in a sack and dumped me in a skip. They thought I was dead. They were putting me out with the rubbish, saying we Christians are nothing but filth.’ Yasser paused, choking up. ‘But I was rescued. A man came and saw the sack was wriggling. It was me inside, covered in blood, my brains hanging out in the bin. That man took me to hospital. It was two weeks before I woke.’
Yasser was visibly shaking now, but I didn’t have a thing to say.
‘I haven’t told anyone the full story,’ he admitted. ‘Not even my wife and children know what really happened. I haven’t been able to work since. I don’t like leaving the house any more.’
The only words I had were pathetic, useless things: ‘I’m sorry . . .’ I said.
‘It is God’s will,’ Yasser breathed. ‘I must forgive them. They know not what they do.’ At this, he wiped away another tear, leaving me uncertain whether he believed it or not. ‘I hope God will forgive them, too,’ he said as Ibrahim and I readied to leave him in the dark recess of his bedsit. ‘But that,’ he said, finally, ‘is none of my business.’
Despite being one of the most infuriating, bureaucratic and frustrating countries to walk across that I had ever encountered, I couldn’t help but feel in awe of the welcome I received at the Pyramids of Giza. The night before I was due to leave the city I’d been summoned by the Minister of Antiquities, Mr Mamdouh Eldamaty, who said he’d got a little something for me.
I won’t even attempt to describe the last remaining ancient wonder of the world, except to say that the pyramids here are the most inspiring human structures on earth. You can imagine my surprise then when I turned up at dusk, just as the enormous yellow tombs were being lit up for the evening sound and light show. ‘Straighten your collar,’ said Ibrahim with a beaming grin. That afternoon he’d insisted on taking me shopping to buy a jacket and some smart shoes, but it was all part of the surprise. I couldn’t have expected what I found.
Beyond the new wall that divides the rickety city of Giza from the boundaries of the desert, a walkway led past the ticket office to an open space right in front of the Sphinx itself. There must have been well over a hundred chairs placed facing the looming giant, and every one of them was filled.
There were journalists, well-wishers, film crews, soldiers as well as the ambassadors of all the countries I’d walked through, the British Ambassador John Casson, the governor of Giza and of course the ministers of tourism and antiquities, and all of them stood to welcome me and bade me sit at the front with the glowing pyramids against a starry desert night behind me.
I was overwhelmed by the incredible support I’d received, not to mention a little embarrassed by all the attention. I knew Egypt wanted to use my expedition as a means to promote tourism and show the world that the country is safe, and, well, good on them. I hope that the tourists do come back – Lord knows the Egyptians need them. So for all the theatrics and political platitudes, I was truly humbled to have been received by so many rather important people in the same spot that Napoleon and Alexander had once stood gazing up at one of the most magnificent human creations on the planet.
The ambassador, governor and ministers all gave short speeches in praise of my little stroll and made gifts of more plaques to add to my luggage-allowance-burgeoning collection but it was the words of Ibrahim that meant the most to me.
‘It isn’t the walk that’s important, or the politics, or what you show to your people, or even the sense of achievement that you’ll get – it’s what you learn yourself, deep inside. And I hope you’ve learned that Egyptians, like people everywhere along this great r
iver will look after you.’
I wanted to say that perhaps they had kept me too safe, but decided it was churlish, and actually he had a point. Whatever people’s politics or religion, I had been looked after, here and elsewhere. In Sudan and further South it was the normal people that I had met day to day that had shown me the importance of the kindness of strangers, without which I could never have reached this historic place.
‘Not far now, Lev. Are those legs going to make it?’
‘They have to,’ I said taking one last look behind towards the infamous Tahrir Square, where the headquarters of the ousted President Mubarak still stood as a charred black skeleton, a symbol of a dark past, a revolutionary present and an uncertain future. Ahead, to the north, the Nile unfolded through the suburbs, flanked by industry and progress and beyond it, the delta I had dreamed of for so long. Behind me my police escort revved their engine as a signal for me to get on with it.
We had lingered in Cairo for four days, but now it was time to leave. On the outskirts of the city, Turbo drove on ahead to check the route and warn army roadblocks of our arrival. It seemed that even with all the right paperwork in place you could never safely assume that the message had been passed on. The police would be on my tail every step of the way but, for the first time, that wasn’t at the front of my mind. There were only two hundred kilometres left between me and the port of Rashid, where I would finally meet the sea. I didn’t care about blisters or chafing any more; I was about to enter the delta.
The Nile Delta is the epitome of man’s mastery over nature. Once a vast swamp, it is now one of the most productive and fertile agricultural regions in the world. As I soon discovered, it is also one of the most densely populated.
North of Cairo, the delta truly begins, the Nile parting into two great channels, each bound for the sea. I had chosen to walk the western channel, meeting Rashid – or as it is more famously known, Rosetta – two hundred kilometres further on, simply because it was longer, and because I wanted to end my journey beside the city of Alexandria, in honour of Alexander the Great, who had spent so many years pondering the secrets of the river. For six days, I tramped through increasing humidity, following the main roads which weave between the two channels. Here, the highways thronged with traffic, the pavements still thick with the carcasses of abandoned animals. Street dogs, the ones that weren’t rotting on the pavements, barked viciously as I passed, and, on more than one occasion I was chased by a swarm of angry bees, bent on expelling this foreign intruder from their neighbourhood. My minders trailed me constantly, in a variety of police cars, motorbikes, and tuk-tuks – but, oblivious to them at last, I fixed my thoughts on the sea and continued to walk. All I could think about was the end.
It was 30 August when I finally arrived, dishevelled but elated, at the port of Rashid. Like so many Egyptian towns I’d passed through, Rashid was a hive of narrow medieval lanes and tall mud-brick houses. It was here that the secret to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs was first uncovered, because Rashid was once home to the celebrated Rosetta Stone. I stopped for tea at the fortress in which it had once been housed. It hadn’t been here for two hundred years though – instead residing in the British Museum ever since it was ‘discovered’ by a French soldier in 1799, much to the chagrin of the Egyptian authorities – but, for now, I was glad to be here, only a short skip from the end. Men in turbans gazed at me as I relaxed, and I greeted every single one with the most enthusiastic Salaam I could muster. When I was restored and took off again, children ran after me as they played. Fishermen, mending their nets in rusty doorways, looked at me curiously. Taxis vied for the roads with donkeys and carts, and market vendors cried out with offers of melons and mobile phones. Like everywhere else in Africa, this was a place where the old world met the new.
I clung to the river, now wider than since the delta began, and filled with fishing boats and nets. Above, there circled my very first seagull. Out on the river, the water was choppy and waves, stirred by the wind, crashed against the rocks below the promenade. Lost in a daydream, I thought back to the start of the expedition. Two hundred and seventy-one days ago, I’d stood with Boston above the tiny trickle in the middle of the Nyungwe Forest. It felt like a lifetime had passed since then. I knelt down and trailed my hand in the river. I could hardly believe that this was the same water that had emerged out of that muddy crevice months before and thousands of miles away.
The police were still watching. I let them. I didn’t care.
Ahead, the river widened even further as it made its final push to the sea. I’d imagined I would see it by now – the glittering expanse of the Mediterranean had lingered so long in my imagination – but the horizon was concealed by a concrete wave defence, obscuring all sight of the sea. All I could do was follow the road. Soon, with the town diminishing behind, the road petered out, the palm trees and fields slowly disappearing until only a barren waste-ground stretched out in front of me. Bunkers and barbed-wire trenches pitted the land, as if left over from some long-forgotten war.
I heard the sound of waves: stronger and stronger, crashing against the other side of the flood defences, seemingly growing angrier at my approach. This wasn’t how I’d imagined the expedition would end. I’d been dreaming of an idyllic palm-fringed beach – but, instead, I tramped into a militarised no-man’s-land. I supposed it would just have to do.
Readying myself for the final walk to the concrete barrage, I looked back over my shoulder. I would walk this last few hundred metres alone, but behind me a growing crowd had started to keep pace: not just Turbo, and not just my police minders; here were other guards in uniform, journalists, generals from the army – even the governor of Beheira province had descended for the expedition’s final moments. Like every other governor I’d met, he was dressed in a black suit and shades that made him look like a clichéd movie mafioso. Whatever I was about to achieve by setting foot in the ocean, he wanted to be part of it.
The path narrowed. Now, it was nothing but a thin streak of tarmac leading up to the wave break. That thick line of concrete had become my entire world: the end of the river, the end of a continent – and, for me, the end of a very long walk.
As I approached it, I didn’t hear the journalists baying behind. I didn’t hear the policemen, nor Turbo shouting his encouragement. The truth was, I was only half here. The rest of me was scattered, back across Africa, back along the river from which I had come. From which, in a sense, all humanity had come. Images were flickering through my head, the faces of all the people who had made this journey so wonderful: of Boston and Amani, meandering in the Nyungwe; of the porters who had abandoned us in the Tanzanian bush; of Moses and the AIDS orphanage in Kasansero; of the absurd reception on the shores of Lake Kyoga. I saw myself tramping with swollen tongue and lips through the heat of the Bayuda, with Moez and Ahmad and Awad lurching behind. I saw the frightened faces of the civilians scattering in Bor, the hordes of refugees making the best of it in their makeshift camps at Minkaman. And there, hanging in my memory, were the faces of Matt Power and Jason Florio, back on that blighted hillside in northern Uganda; the smell of fire and the sound of a dialling tone, as we scrambled to get help.
Lost in those memories, I reached the wave break. Up close, it appeared as a vast pile of concrete boulders. There was only one memory left for me now: the thought of the magical Nile, the river that had ultimately defeated me, like it had so many others. Perhaps, I thought, the river just doesn’t want to be conquered. Perhaps it never will.
Standing on top of the wave break, I could finally look out across the Mediterranean Sea. Europe felt close – and, with it, home. Elated to have made it, I stood there for what felt like an age, while the journalists, policemen and other assorted officials thronged behind me. It wasn’t until they were all shouting for attention that I realised: my elation had given way to something else. It was real sadness that was touching me now. There was nowhere left to walk. The sea, brooding and black and empty crashed against the
pile of concrete below me.
I turned and shook hands with Turbo. ‘Well done, Lev, you made it.’
But there was something I still had to do.
‘I promised myself a beach, Turbo. So I’m going to find a beach.’
With the rabble of followers trailing behind, I walked west, back along the track and around the bay until, at last, we came across a strip of sand.
‘Here’s your tropical paradise, Lev,’ said Turbo with a mischievous grin.
It was hardly that, I thought, looking across the dismal gravel filled with sun brollies and loungers, but it would have to do. At once, I took off, scrambling down the stones to reach the sand. Several hundred bewildered sunbathers turned to see what the commotion was – but I was already off, running headlong into the gathering waves and plunging into the foaming surf. The water was cold. It hit me like waking from a dream. I took another step, and another, and another – until, at last, I was fully submerged. The walking was done with. The expedition was at an end.
I was gazing into the sun-drenched north, thinking of Europe beyond, when the cheers rang out across the coast. At first, I took them for the cheers of the rabble who’d followed me – and indeed they were. But there was another voice, undercutting all the rest. ‘Stop!’ somebody was crying. ‘Stop!’ Between the cries came the shrill blasts of a whistle.
I looked back, at the hundreds of bemused faces staring at me from the beach. Through them all came one man: an Egyptian, in lifeguard’s clothing.
‘You’re outside of the safe zone!’ he screamed, waving his hands around like a madman. ‘You are not permitted to be here!’
I looked up. It seems I’d been caught out by bureaucracy yet again.
It was a very strange end to a very strange journey.