On the road by the posts there are barrels standing like chess pieces; cars can’t get past the posts at top speed because they have to navigate between the barrels. This rusty dented barrel, painted in the colors of the Egyptian flag, is none other than a symbol of Egyptian statehood.
You can draw conclusions as to the military preparedness of the menacing forces of Egyptian law and order from the uniforms alone: ill-fitting pants coming apart at the seams, boots with scuffed backs, sweaters stained with foul.
At the post in the village of Baris the policemen call me into their concrete shelter with one wall missing. They pour sweet cane syrup out of a plastic bottle into a metal bowl. Everyone breaks off a piece of white bread and dips it into the syrup which drips onto the ground, their pants and sweaters.
“Khalas! – I’m done!” I pat my belly.
“Le? – Why?” They push the bowl towards me suggesting that I eat more.
* * *
It’s no wonder that tiny little Israel took over the whole Sinai Peninsula in just a few days. These guys are brilliantly sloppy and, it seems, utterly unsuited to do battle.
A van shows up at the post near Baris and agrees to take me. Five kilometers later, though, I get stopped at the next post. And when I’m all ready to start making a fuss they explain to me that I forgot my map at the last post and they radioed ahead and asked them to hold us. Ten minutes later my familiar policemen come driving up to return what I’d forgotten.
“Shorta mushkele? – Police problems?” they ask handing me the map and remembering my recent complaints.
I smile without saying anything acknowledging my error.
The van takes me away while the policemen line up on the road and wave goodbye to me. Their guns swing uselessly at their sides bringing to mind little boys who have run and played all day and are tired; now their mothers will stick their heads out the window and call them home. We had a good time playing. It was awfully fun. Too bad we have to finish the game and part ways. But maybe not forever.
One more familiar faith
I leave Aswan in darkness again. What am I looking for with night coming on? The moon lies in the velvety dark sky with horns raised. It feel tired, lie down and admire the stars probably thinking about something personal. The moon is lying down! I can’t tell whether it’s waxing or waning the way I could if I were looking at the moon in my own country. In Russia the moon is always on guard, always standing up, while here it’s lying down. I tear myself away from it but I keep looking up to check if it’s still reclining.
The tall dark-green grass ripples by the roadside, playing with the warm southern breeze. Where will I spend the night? The cars don’t notice me in the darkness and if they do see me they are just surprised. Aswan is a tourist city and the drivers probably think that I need an expensive comfortable tour bus.
All the same, an old car slows down. There’s a whole family inside: mama, papa, a fourteen-year-old daughter and nine-year-old little boy. The women don’t have headscarves, so they must be Christians. I wonder which kind they are this time. The girl speaks English, putting together the words memorized for dictation with difficulty.
“You’re Christians?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Orthodox or Catholic?”
They have a hard time answering, searching for the right words.
“Protestants?” I guess.
“Yes,” answers the girl.
So now I have met with representatives of all three main Christian confessions. I give my usual answer to the question of where I will spend the night: “In my tent.” The father falls into obviously perplexed thought. Finally, they decide to take me to their village church, where the elder will most likely allow me to spend the night.
“You see,” the head of the family explains, “we’re forbidden to invite foreigners into our homes.”
“Of course, of course,” I reassure him.
It’s clear that his perplexity continues. From the back seat, where I’m sitting next to the boy and girl, I can see the mother’s concentrated profile fixed on the father. He probably feels this profile too even if he can’t see it. The mother says something gently to the father and he turns towards me.
“But we’d still like to invite you to our house if you don’t mind, of course.”
“I’d be delighted!”
No perplexity remains, the tense atmosphere disappears. The mother, son and daughter all start talking at once, laughing. The father happily speeds up.
“What do you usually eat for supper?” At the house, the girl translates her father’s question.
“Whatever there is.”
In the middle of the living room, at a big table covered with a white tablecloth is a large platter of hamburgers (god knows where they came from!) We fold our hands and pray. The father thanks the Lord for having brought me to their home and asks that He show them the important message they are meant to convey to me.
The next morning, when I’m already leaving, the father hands me a slightly worn book with a colorful cover.
“This is the New Testament in English,” the girl explains.
“I’ve been dreaming of having a copy.”
I’d given away my own copy a few days ago to that Orthodox woman in Luxor, the one who took me in and treated me to sweet sugarcane at the campfire.
* * *
The road from southern Egypt to Cairo seems to run alongside one long endless village. For this reason every time I get out of a car I find myself in the thick of Egyptian life.
“Hello! How are you?” Little boys yell to me from their village cart hitched to a donkey.
“Where you go?” A group of young men walk up to me in business-like fashion.
Often someone invites me over for a cup of tea, worries that I’m hungry. They exchange e-mail addresses with me and promise to write.
The police keep refusing to let me on my way, consult with each other for a long time before finally cranking up their dark-blue clunker: it has two seats up front for the driver and one more person, then a little truck-bed behind with no doors and wooden benches. Despite their insistence, I throw my backpack in the back. My attendants sit down next to me. I pick up a stick of sugarcane from the floor and start awkwardly peeling it with my teeth. One of the policemen takes it from me and in a few seconds hands back a white piece all prepared. I gulp down the sweet juice looking back at the palms bordering the grey road behind us. Or the road ahead?
Conclusion
It’s ten minutes walk from my friends’ place in Tahrir to the airport-bound bus. What a shame it’s so short. I get the crazy idea of shaking the hand of every Egyptian in the city. But you can’t shake hands with all eighteen million.
They’re about to announce the flight. I understand that it’s almost impossible to leave. Can you really leave paradise so easily? Can you say: “Thanks for everything but it’s time for me to go… I have stuff to do at home.”
Of course I have stuff to do. Important and necessary stuff. But how can you leave paradise? A place where you are surrounded with tender care twenty-four hours a day. Where it’s impossible to feel lonely for even a second. Where people give you gift after gift with selfless and sincere warmth and goodness. Where the sky does not abandon you in daytime, shining with clear blueness, or night, showering you with sparkling gems whose weight you can sense even if you can’t touch them.
Where does this all come from? What did I do to deserve this?
When I left home exactly one month ago, and set off into the world, I left more than just my familiar comfortable home, my warm bed and regular meals, I also left the ubiquitous striving to plan, calculate and organize everything in my life the way I think it should be, the way I think would be best. But nothing at home had ever worked out the way it had during this month on the road. Why?
Here on the road, I stood in the dark on a path made through the snow in the outskirts of Erzurum, or near the rustling reeds of Aswan, bearing eloquent ev
idence of the roadside swamp, and I didn’t know where I would spend the night, whether there would be any supper after a whole day of active movement; whether I would be safe. I didn’t and could not know. I couldn’t organize or plan anything. As a last resort, I would turn round to ask. And He Whom I asked would delightedly extend hands filled with gifts to me – hands He Himself was tired of holding back. These hands are always extended, and I turn to them so rarely. And no wonder because I’m not used to being in paradise.
I’d travelled so much before. I’d accepted these gifts so many times before. But never before had they been so generous. Why?
Well, because they aren’t going to just fall on your head from the sky. They need hands into which He places them. Here, in these countries I’d gone through, I could see for myself how open palms were raised five times a day in order to accept and fulfill His will. You know this will when you give yourself entirely into His hands.
But it’s time for me to finish my story.
March – November 2009
Translated by Ainsley Morse & Mihaela Pacurar
THE DEBUT PRIZE
FOR YOUNG AUTHORS
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Debut launched its international publishing program in 2009. Three anthologies of Debut winners in English translation have been published. French, German, Spanish, and two Chinese editions have come out while Italian and Serbian editions are under way.
The prize was established in 2000 by Andrei Skoch, the founder of the Pokolenie Foundation for humanitarian projects. Debut is coordinated by the Booker-prize winning author Olga Slavnikova. A huge database of texts by young writers has been accumulated.
Awarded annually the Debut Prize is the largest and most authoritative Russian project today spotlighting young talents. Every year Debut receives up to 50,000 submissions from across Russia and worldwide. This new generation is declaring itself with increasing confidence in all literary areas.
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“Meet Russia’s young, exportable writers …” –
Publishing Perspectives
“Debut… a project of awe-inspiring ambition in a climate ripe for dystopian fantasy…” – The Guardian
GLAS NEW RUSSIAN WRITING
Contemporary Russian literature
in English translation
www.glas.msk.su
The premier showcase for contemporary Russian writing in English translation, GLAS has been discovering new writers and rediscovering under-appreciated past masters since 1991.
Based in Moscow, GLAS has published anthologies grouped around a unifying theme (e.g. revolution, fear, childhood, women’s views) as well as books by single authors.
With more than 100 names represented, GLAS is the most comprehensive English-language source on Russian letters today -- a must for libraries, students of world literature, and all those who love good writing.
Latest titles
Vlas Doroshevich. What the Emperor Cannot Do. Tales and Legends of the Orient.
Michele A. Berdy. The Russian Word’s Worth. A humorous and informative guide to the Russian language, culture and translation. 2nd rev. ed.
The Scared Generation: Vasil Bykov’s The Manhunt and Boris Yampolsky’s The Old Arbat.
Mikhail Levitin. A Jewish God in Paris. Three novellas.
T.J. Perry. Twelve Stories of Russia: a Novel I Guess. 3rd. ed.
Off the Beaten Tracks Page 30