Off the Beaten Tracks

by Irina Bogatyreva

  * * *

  The driver takes me to see his sister. The wooden door of the apartment shows an image of Christ walking inside. In a glass cabinet are porcelain statues of the Virgin Mary and saints. The sister starts bustling about animatedly.

  After supper we go to the local church. At least twenty women have gathered for an evening meeting with the priest whom I don’t notice at first behind the podium.

  On the way to see their mother, the sister introduces me to her friends and I greet them all politely, carefully pronouncing the unfamiliar markhaba – hello. I’ve already screwed up a few times with the greeting as-salaam aleikum – who would have known that it’s only for Muslims, that Christians don’t use it?

  Europeans in Africa

  The next morning, my hostess takes me to see the famous Luxor church. We take a bus with a closed cab that does not seem intended to carry people. This church has a whole gallery of small sphinxes and large statues of pharaohs traditionally depicted in ceremonial step and clutching their seals, sometimes with little statues of their wives at their feet.

  Luxor is bursting with tourists of all possible nationalities other than Russians. Hurghada is not far away, but why would they want to take any time away from the sea, the beaches and hotels?

  Ignoring all the inviting calls I walk along the embankment and look at the even blue canvas of the river. My eye is accidentally caught by some interesting knick-knacks in a souvenir kiosk and the young Arab vendor is there right away. He starts a conversation in decent English, invites me inside.

  “But I’m not going to buy anything,” I warn him right away.

  “Of course, of course. Where are you from?”

  “Russia.”

  The guy looks me over with greater attention.

  “Would you like some tea?” He suggests once I’m inside and looking at the funny little drums and unusual one-stringed instruments.

  The vendor brings out a chair and some hot sweet hibiscus tea. When we’re already making friendly conversation, Ahmed – that’s the vendor’s name – suddenly asks:

  “So why are Russian women so easy?”

  I blink helplessly.

  “European girls too,” Ahmed explains, “but the Russians… When I heard you were from Russia I thought…”

  Hurghada, frequented by Russians, is very near to Luxor. But in order to find out about Russians’ behavior in other countries you don’t have to go to where they are as their fame extends far and wide.

  Later, in Luxor, I notice the special reaction to the mention of my homeland. Once I even asked a riddle:

  “I’m not going to tell you where I’m from. But I’m from a country whose women are known to behave pretty badly when they come here.”

  “I think I know where you’re from,” the Arab answered. “Are you from Russia?”

  * * *

  On the way from the souvenir shop I am once again attacked from all sides by all sorts of offers. The most tempting of them is to go down the Nile on a felucca, a small sailboat. And even though money is very tight I can’t resist the temptation and agree, won over by the discount.

  But when I find myself in the felucca with the boatman, the price rises from ten pounds to forty.

  “Ten pounds is the price if you can find three more passengers,” the swindler explains raising his eyebrows naively.

  Angry, I leave. But I swiftly get caught again by another tempting offer.

  “Khamstashara ginei? – Fifteen pounds?” I ask the twenty-year-old boatman for the fifth time.

  And he answers for the fifth time:

  “Aiva. – Yes.”

  “And you won’t ask for more afterwards?” I finally ask him directly, in English.

  “No.”

  One-thirty p.m. I note the time so that the boatman will take me for a whole hour and not skimp.

  Four-thirty p.m… I hang from the boat with my hand trailing in the cool transparent water.

  “Look,” Ali points at a brown object floating nearby. “It’s a crocodile.” I don’t have time to be afraid before he starts laughing, showing an even row of white teeth, a bright patch highlighted against his darkly tanned face.

  “They’re just palm branches.”

  I splash water at him and laugh along with him.

  He’s twenty-three and has a fiancée whom he’s known since early childhood. Their parents agreed a long time ago that their children would marry when they grew up. Now he just has to pile up some money and he’ll be good to go.

  We sail to the opposite bank and go to find something to eat. Ali won’t let me pay for the kosheri but I treat him to some tea. We can’t stop chatting. I feel like I live in this city and that I just went off this morning with my older brother to work – taking tourists around on our family felucca. And that for some reason there aren’t any tourists right now so we enjoy our time together, just the two of us, having fun, joking and chatting. We splash each other and fearlessly swim around in the Nile. What do we have to fear when we’ve grown up on these riverbanks? This river is our homeland, it has watched over my whole life, and I am dear to it. How could it be otherwise when I have seen myself in it every time I look into the water to see directly into its eyes. When evening comes we return home. Mama feeds us foul, and I help her feed the animals and mix up the bread dough for tomorrow. I walk down to the river to get water, fill the clay water-jars to the brim; when I tire I dip a mug into these same water-jars drinking down huge gulps of the fresh water with its familiar dear scent, and then I go to bed. Today has been a good day.

  On the threshold of Africa. Aswan

  Ali tries to convince me to stay:

  “Where are you going to go so late at night? Stay, you can leave tomorrow.”

  “No, I’m going now. If I have to I’ll sleep somewhere on the way.”

  For some reason I really want to go to Aswan right now. I head off towards the exit from the city. Luxor disappears along with the last rays of the sun. In the darkness mixed with the light of streetlamps I stand on the main road that leads to Aswan, Egypt’s southernmost city. There aren’t any roads that go further, just the water-route to Sudan.

  Will I manage to cross any distance at all today? Will I manage to find a warm place to sleep? There’s nothing to do but once again, for the umpteenth time, to hand over my whole life into the hands of He Whom I trust implicitly.

  An empty tour bus delivered me to Aswan at three a.m. Lucky for the policemen, this bus was driving past their post and generously agreed to take me along for free. Otherwise these guardians of public order, shocked by my appearance, would have had to let me get into some other random car since I categorically refused to go back to Luxor.

  Aswan greets me with a warm southern night as if the true Africa were pressing me to her breast. Despite the late hour the streets are filled with people and the souvenir shops are open. I’m surprised, though this suits me. Where better to look for a place to stay than among people? I go down one of the main streets, walking past the cheery souvenir kiosks.

  “Hello, hello!” a young Arab shopkeeper hails me.

  This time I won’t try to avoid conversation. I’m right: a stool and a glass of hot tea are quickly produced for me. A few of the merchants, mainly young guys, crowd around me, asking questions and expressing surprise. One of them is already offering a present: a little scarab-beetle, one of the symbols of Egypt.

  “Where will you spend the night?” asks the guy who first noticed me.

  “In some cheap hotel,” I answer, seeing that none of my “admirers” have thought to invite me home, or are just shy.

  The same Egyptian, very forthcoming, offers to accompany me. One hotel turns out to be closed and we go into another one.

  “Hello, you are looking for a room?” The employee sitting behind the desk quickly gets down to business when he sees me. Another young, rather well-fed Arab stands next to him, elbows on the desk.

  “Yes, I want your cheapest room.”

&n
bsp; “Of course, forty pounds.”

  “Oh, no, I’d like a room for fifteen.”

  “We don’t have rooms for fifteen,” the well-fed Egyptian butts in; he is evidently the boss. The man behind the desk falls silent.

  “But I will only take a room for fifteen,” I shrug.

  “All right, we’ll give you one for thirty with no shower.”

  “But I’ll only take one for fifteen,” I start putting on my backpack.

  “My last offer – twenty.”

  “I only have fifteen pounds.”

  “I’m afraid we can’t help you.”

  I turn towards the stair and my astonished companion follows me.

  In the stairwell the fat guy chases me down with a serious, somewhat angry expression on his face, although he began the conversation calmly and wasn’t at all desperate to keep his customer.

  “But where are you going? You won’t find anything cheaper!”

  “Well, I’ll spend the night somewhere else.”

  “Where?!”

  “Well, probably in somebody’s house.”

  “Whose?!” He is really surprised.

  “Well, your place, for instance.”

  The guy stares at me wide-eyed.

  “Well, OK,” he says finally.

  Now it’s my turn to be silent.

  “Only, don’t get any ideas,” I decide to make myself clear. “I just need a place to stay, and that’s it.”

  “I’ll give you a room,” he says and directs me down the hallway to one of the hotel rooms. “Here.”

  It’s a little room with a bed, bedside table, dresser, shower and toilet.

  “Oh, well, I feel bad, I’ll give you fifteen pounds all the same.”

  We’re sitting in the dining room. Right now no one else is around. The young manager still hasn’t managed to overcome his amazement.

  “Wait,” he says.

  In a minute he comes back with a plateful of cheese, bread and jam. I don’t wait to be asked and start eating.

  “Do you know what this is?” He waits for me to eat everything before asking this question. “This is breakfast. But it’s not included in the price of the rooms for twenty pounds.”

  “Ah, I see. Thanks!”

  His eyes are still wide-open in amazement. But who does he find so amazing? Probably himself.

  Funny cordon

  “Lya, lya, lya – No, no, no.” I yell at the ambulance driver and in desperation add in Russian: “Don’t do this.”

  But to my dismay he wants to rescue me all the same and brakes at the roadside police post. I get out of the car with a distressed and displeased grimace. The driver watches me go guiltily and with sympathy as if accompanying me to the scaffold. “It’s not your fault, brother,” I want to tell him: “It’s not your fault that I don’t know how to say in Arabic: a little further or a little closer but not at the police post.”

  The gazes of the policemen flock to me like moths to a flame: a single foreign woman with a backpack climbing out of an ambulance at 1.30 a.m. I hoist on my backpack and in my despair start walking into the darkness thickening beyond the police post knowing full well that this is senseless.

  “Hey! Ma’am! Please!”

  The same old story for the hundredth time.

  I have to play “cat-and-mouse” with the police every day and very nearly every fifty kilometers. They manage to catch me pretty often but I tear away from their claws every time. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s hard, but it’s always fun.

  So even now I can’t hold back a grin when I find myself surrounded by about eight hefty soldiers with automatic weapons blinking helplessly and discussing something amongst themselves. I recognize the Arabic words mit vein – “where from?” which one of them says to the other, evidently about me. And I shock the poor policemen even more by saying in Arabic:

  “Min Rusiya. – From Russia.”

  “Tatakalyam arabik?! – You speak Arabic?!” Their eyebrows shoot up.

  “Shvaye-shvaye. – A little.”

  “Shvaye-shvaye.” Cheered up tremendously they repeat after me.

  The first fright passes – I’m a foreigner but at least not from another planet, I even speak like a human being, in Arabic, that is. Their faces grow warmer and the policemen become brave enough to start questioning me.

  I hear the familiar le – “why”, which apparently relates to my most recent mode of transport, and start giving them my usual spiel:

  “Ana seikha. Min Rusiya – Tyurki, Ordon, Syuriya, Mysr. – I’m travelling. From Russia to Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Egypt.”

  “Mashi? – By foot?”

  “Lya mashi. Mashi shvaye-shvaye. Ana seiyara beduni fulius. – Not by foot. A little by foot. I go by car with no money.”

  “Beduni fulius,” one of the policemen repeats this unusual combination, all the more unusual coming from a foreign girl.

  “Aiva, seiyara beduni fulius. Lya taksi, lya bus, lya shorta, lya mushkele. – Right, by car for no money. No taxi, no bus, no police, no problem.”

  The last two phrases provoke a flash of delight, but it goes silent suddenly. The boss is approaching. All the bosses at all the posts look suspiciously alike as if they all had a special subject at school: rules for police-boss behavior.

  They’re always dressed better than the others, but never in uniform. The relationship between the boss and his soldiers recalls that between a grandee and his vassals. He often sits at a desk somewhere in the shade if it’s daytime, or inside if it’s night. If he wants to smoke someone takes out a cigarette and gives it to him, and someone else lights it; if he gets thirsty yet another guy goes running for a Pepsi. The boss accepts these services as his due, with a self-important and arrogant look. It all reminds me of kids playing at being king. One sits on the throne while all the others serve him. Until someone thinks up a coup.

  The boss often knows English. But this doesn’t really help us come to any understanding. This time too he commands:

  “A bus is on the way, you’re going to Luxor.”

  But Luxor lies behind me, I’ve just left the city.

  “I’m not going to Luxor, I’m going to Aswan.”

  “No, you’re taking the bus to Luxor!”

  “I don’t need a bus, I need a free car.”

  “There are no free cars!”

  “So how do you think I got to Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Egypt from Russia?”

  The boss has no answer for this and after giving his subordinates some kind of orders he leaves. The soldiers look at me with sympathy, expressing clearly that they’d be happy to help but do not have the authority to act against the will of their boss.

  Like an enormous hedgehog with splayed spines, swaying from side to side, a tractor comes crawling by, its trailer filled with sugarcane.

  I point to the treat:

  “Oh!”

  One of the soldiers tears off, still holding his gun, catches up to the tractor, yanks off a piece of cane and starts peeling it vigorously with his teeth on the way back. Pleased, he offers me a piece of the white sugarcane which I take right away. The policemen and soldiers watch me attentively like nannies pleased they have a treat for their “charge.”

  Suddenly, an empty tour bus appears and generously takes me on board for free. Before boarding I turn back to my automatic-weapon-bearing yardkeepers:

  “Shukran! Masalyam! – Thank you! Good-bye!”

  “Masalyam!” They yell after me waving.

  * * *

  But the game heads in a new direction every time.

  I’ve never been kicked out of a car before, though this didn’t prevent the policeman leaning in the driver’s window from interrogating him tediously and at length about how a foreign woman got into his vehicle, where she is going and… At one point I suddenly started speaking loudly in Arabic:

  “Mafi mushkele! Tammam! Yelle, yelle!” – There’s no problem! Everything’s fine! Let’s go, let’s go!”

  The discou
raged policeman didn’t know what to do with a foreign woman unexpectedly speaking Arabic and he had to let us go.

  Afterwards I learned to cover my face with my hand as we approached the police posts. When the policemen see only a headscarf they obviously take me for a local woman.

  Sometimes I break the rules shamelessly.

  With a firm stride I walk past the post towards the road and the unknown. For the first few seconds, the policemen can’t believe their eyes. Then they wake up and start calling to me:

  “Hey! Ma’am!”

  I don’t turn round, I keep looking ahead and imperceptibly increase my speed heading towards a saving turn I can see lying ahead. Just a few more steps and… The voices grow quiet, I disappear from the soldiers’ field of vision and they evidently decide I’m merely a vision not to be chased down. They probably just repeat to themselves: “Auzu bi lliakhi min ash-shaiti radzhim – I turn to the Lord away from sly Satan.”

  But the “cat” doesn’t always let the “mouse” go so easily.

  One time I walked past a post under cover of dense night. But slightly further on I ran into an ambush: a patrol car on the side of the road. I decided to convince the two policemen who came leaping out that I did not in fact exist. Not responding to their cries I proudly and fearlessly moved off into the darkness. But when I decided I was already safe the timid hum of a motor came from behind. Turning back I saw that a police van filled to bursting with policemen and soldiers was creeping along behind me in first gear.

  Knowing that I had no chance I nevertheless kept going, choking with laughter. Finally, I decided to have mercy and stop. The policemen came pouring out onto the road and began moving towards me cautiously while I held onto my sides chortling and swaying rhythmically to and fro. After a few seconds of extreme confusion, finally some of them became infected with my laughter and smiles flickered to life on their faces one by one like streetlights in twilight. I laughed out loud wiping away tears from my eyes.

  * * *

  The posts in Egypt are located every fifty kilometers; it seems I managed to spend time at all of them. Each post has between five and thirty policemen and soldiers. No enemy could sneak past them. At least, no foreign girl with a backpack, that much is for sure. As for the rest, inshallah – as God wills it.