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.
‘I want every one of your names! Right now.’ Taking a pen out of my pocket, I helped myself to a piece of paper from the desk and shoved it in front of the major. ‘If I’m not treated with some respect, I’ll have the lot of you sacked. I’ve been sitting here being interrogated for two hours. I demand to be released.’
The bald man forced a grin. ‘Sit down, friend. We are not interrogating you – we’re just doing our jobs . . .’
He might have been grinning but, in his eyes, I could see disappointment. This man’s bluff had been called, and he was backing down; now his family wouldn’t get my cameras, memory cards and satellite phone after all.
‘If what you’re saying is true,’ the major began, ‘you’ll be happy to show us your photographs.’
A sudden thought struck me: the camera the major was picking up was loaded with the pictures I’d taken of the Aswan High Dam as we came into port. Taking pictures of strategic assets was not a good idea in a country like Egypt. I reached out to snatch it back, my mind scrambling for something to say.
‘Fine! You can see everything. I’ve nothing to hide. Let me show you . . .’
Quickly, I flicked through the pictures and opened them again at the start of the memory card. Here, rather than pictures of the Aswan High Dam, were endless images of camels, lizards and the sand dunes of the Nubian Desert. I was back to being a hapless tourist – if I couldn’t fight my way out of this, I would have to bore them into letting me go.
‘So this is Gordon,’ I said. ‘He’s eight years old. You can tell by his teeth.’ I held the picture still for a good ten seconds before clicking to the right. ‘And this is a goose. You’ll notice it’s a male from its size, rather than the black colouring around the tops of the wings – which is actually identical in both sexes. Did you know they can fly over five thousand miles as part of their migration? And . . . you see the boulders in the desert? Formed from millions of years of freeze–thaw conditions that create an onion skin effect on the granite . . .’
I could see his eyes rolling back in his head.
‘Okay, enough!’ He forced a smile again. ‘You may take your things.’
Careful not to show my relief, I packed up my bag and stormed out of the office. Outside, once I was clear of customs, I stopped to take breath. Aswan stretched out before me, my first stop on the final leg of this voyage. Before setting off, I checked my bag: camera, memory cards, satellite phone, all still intact. The only thing missing was the envelope of cash. That was still hidden in the major’s back pocket.
You win some, you lose some, I thought, relieved to have finally broken through.
But this wasn’t the last time I would get ripped off in Egypt – and five hundred Sudanese pounds was the least of it.
‘For you, I’ll do a special price,’ said the man at the end of the telephone. ‘Thirty-four thousand dollars.’
My jaw hit the ground.
The man on the line was called Tarek El-Mahdy. I’d been put in touch with him by Moez, and his words came back to me now: ‘He’s probably one of the few men in that country you can trust. But that said, he’s Egyptian, Lev – he’ll want cash, and lots of it.’
With over three million kilometres of off-road travel under his belt, Tarek was the go-to man in Egypt. He ran a tourism outfit called Dabuka, taking wealthy clients on 4×4 safaris into the desert. Many of his punters were rich Americans and Princes from the Gulf, and he knew how to get things done. What I needed were the security clearances to leave Aswan and all the support the security would need, transport, food and safe accomodation, to continue the expedition – and it seemed they didn’t come cheap.
‘Anything is possible,’ he said in broken English, ‘but it takes money. And it’ll take at least twenty-one days to get the necessary permissions. Whatever you do, Lev, don’t try and leave Aswan. Believe me when I tell you – you are under house arrest. Well, I mean, hotel arrest . . .’ He laughed at his own joke.
After escaping the border police, I had checked into the Mövenpick Hotel on Elephantine Island, a small island in the middle of the Nile, so named because of the elephantine boulders that form its banks – and because, long ago, it used to be an ivory trading station. The hotel looked like an airport control tower, a hideous incursion into the otherwise spectacular setting. I had been here for less than two days, but already I could feel the eyes of the Egyptian authorities on me. As I took a felucca across the river, I’d noticed I was being followed – and, as I checked in, the same man sat in the hotel lobby, pretending to read a newspaper as he kept his eyes on me. The next day, when I tried to leave the hotel, the manager himself asked me to join him for lunch. It was an odd request, but it wasn’t until he began a barrage of probing questions over the first course that I realised he was, in fact, a government agent, tasked to write a report on my movements. What Tarek was saying made me anxious: the prospect of not moving for three weeks made me want to be sick. This was the last place I wanted to be stuck.
‘How do you get to thirty-four thousand?’ I asked.
‘Well, you’ll need an escort and a guide. Turbo will be perfect for that.’
‘Who’s Turbo?’
‘He’s a great desert guide and driver. You’ll love him. He’s brilliant with cars.’
He bloody better be for that price, I thought.
‘Then there’s all your food and water. No alcoholic drinks included! And the vehicle. You’ll need a support vehicle, plus fuel, taxes – and, of course, money.’
‘Fine, I get that but I’ve never had a support vehicle before. I’ve never had a driver . . .’
‘Well, this is Egypt. You must do things the official way.’
‘But thirty-four thousand . . .’
He cut me off. ‘Well, it’s up to you. No negotiation. I’m half-German, not some trinket seller in the market. You can stay in Aswan if you like, but I can guarantee you’ll never leave.’
He was right, of course. Since the last revolution, which saw another general take charge, Egypt had grown bored of its brief democracy and reverted to being a police state, only this one seemed more controlling, even more paranoid, than the last. Tourists, Moez had told me, are officially not allowed to wander outside of certain ‘permitted zones’ – those being Aswan, Luxor, Cairo, Alexandria, and the Red Sea resorts. No independent travel was allowed outside those areas without special permission and a security escort.
I listened intently to this mystery fixer on the end of the phone. I had battled my way through many things on this expedition, but agreeing to this – all because of Egypt’s totalitarian regime – was not what I’d expected.
Wearily, I mumbled my assent and hung up. That sort of money would not only break the bank, but it would max out my credit, bring a tear to the eye of my sponsors and bring into question the entire ethics of the expedition. But if I didn’t pay then the past seven months of walking, and several years of planning, would be a complete waste of time. There’d be no film, no book, and no money to give to the charities I’d wanted to support. In effect, it was pay or give up.
The next day, I decided to upgrade to the Old Cataract Hotel. If I was going to spend three weeks under virtual house arrest, it may as well be somewhere nice.
Three weeks later, I was going stir crazy.
I’d been trying to stay sane by sessions in the gym, swimming in the pool, and keeping abreast of the ever-changing political upheavals in the country I was now in. Now I sat on the terrace at the Old Cataract Hotel: waiting, just waiting. I hadn’t heard anything from Tarik, or Turbo, in more than a week, and I was beginning to wonder where all of my money had gone. Waiters in quaint black waistcoats and red fezzes scuttled along the opulent corridors and, outside, the fierce sun scorched the banks of the Nile. The hotel pool was still and the sun loungers glistened, unused. On the terrace, breakfast tables sat empty – yet all the places had been laid, in the vain hope that somebody would take a seat. Hamed, the chef, appeared forlornly out of the kitchen to see if there was anyone to cook for.
‘Mr Wood,’ he said with a forged smile. ‘Just you again?’
‘Just me, I’m afraid.’
It had been the same ever since I’d arrived. The tourists didn’t come to Egypt any more. Egypt has had a history of violence against tourists before, mostly perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists – during the 1990s, a spate of attacks saw trains blown up, foreigners kidnapped and shot, all culminating in the 1997 Luxor Massacre, in which fifty-seven German and Japanese tourists were disembowelled on the steps of the Hatshepsut Temple of the Valley of the Kings – but, until recently, things had been good. Aswan and Luxor were money-making machines. Feluccas and cruise ships filled every inch of the Egyptian Nile. It was the Arab Spring that had changed all that. In March 2011, the Egyptians took to the streets and forced President Mubarak into leaving office. Chaos reigned supreme, even despite Egypt having its first-ever democratic elections. Somehow, the Muslim Brotherhood – an organisation founded to resist British colonialism, and given to fundamentalism – came to power with the clumsy Mohammed Morsi at its head. Tourists stayed away and, for two years, there were shifts in power, political defections and more protests. In 2013, a second revolution occurred. Some prefer to call it a coup, as the former army commander Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ousted Morsi in what was effectively a military overthrow of an elected government. But the arrival of Sisi and the arrest of anyone with Muslim Brotherhood credentials had done little to instil confidence in the beleaguered tourist industry. Just four years ago, there had been hundreds of boats serving tourists out on the Nile, but now they were all mothballed, moored up, four or five abreast, on the banks of the river with only skeleton crews to keep them afloat. Shops were boarded up or left empty; now nobody sold trinkets and you’d struggle to find a plastic pyramid even if you wanted one. Tour guides fluent in ten languages were sweeping the streets or driving taxis, or otherwise sat idle in the coffee shops lamenting the good old days. As far as I could tell, all of them seemed to regret the revolution – the first one, at least – and blamed it on the ignorance of youth.
I came to from my daydream to see a man standing in the hotel lobby, dressed in a pair of surfer’s shorts, a trendy T-shirt and flip-flops.
‘Mahmoud Ezzeldin at your service!’ he declared. Then, when I only looked at him oddly, he said, ‘Mr Wood? It is me – Turbo!’
I rubbed my eyes. The man I’d been waiting for, all this time, was the most unlikely Egyptian I’d ever encountered. Thirty years old, with fiery red hair and a hybrid American-English accent, he looked more like a tourist than I did.
‘We’re set,’ he announced, striding over to grasp my hand. ‘Everything’s in order, chap. You ready to rock Lake Nasser?’
The truth was I wasn’t at all. Perhaps it was the three weeks of enforced indolence, or perhaps it was the memory of how bleak and inhospitable it had looked from the deck of the ferry, but I’d almost hoped I wouldn’t get permission to walk around the lake and could just continue my journey north from Aswan. The last place I wanted to go, after Sudan, was back into the desert – and backwards, at that. But it seemed Turbo, and his boss Tarik, had secured permission.
‘Thirty-four grand didn’t go to waste, then?’
Turbo smiled. ‘Nope! It’s all good.’ I knew what that smile meant: it had taken every penny to pay my minders, guides and expenses; and he had had to move heaven and earth to get the police, army, security service, Ministries of Information, Tourism, Antiquities and Borders on side. Wearily, I stood up.
‘That’s the spirit, Mr Wood. We leave this afternoon!’
It took four hours, rattling along the lonely desert highway in a 4×4, to reach the border, stopping only to present our papers to bewildered policemen at isolated checkpoints. As we followed the lake’s western bank, the bleak desert stretching out on our right, I decided it was time to get to know Turbo. Once this journey began there were still a thousand miles between me and the delta, and I didn’t want to walk them in silence.
‘I have to ask. Why do they call you Turbo?’
‘I like cars,’ he said, plainly. ‘Especially classic cars. I organise rallies in the desert and meetings for classic car owners. Oh,’ he added, ‘and people think I’m a bit hyperactive.’
Whoever those people were, they weren’t wrong. We drove on, Turbo bouncing behind the wheel – and I found my mind straying. Was Turbo a government agent, reporting on me like the hotel manager had done? There was only one way to find out. I decided to ask.
‘Me?’ he balked. ‘An agent of this corrupt, Third World government? You must be joking! I can’t stand them. Police, army, politicians – it’s one big racket here. No, Mr Wood, I’m a Bedouin. We don’t do jobs.’ He flashed me a smile. ‘What, never seen a ginger Bedouin before? I was an architect for a while, but I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting in offices or wearing a hard hat. I’d much rather be out in the desert. Look . . .’ And here he slowed the car to a crawl, the blue waters glittering outside. ‘I know you don’t want me tagging along, but it’s the only way, trust me. Nobody has ever walked around Lake Nasser – foreigner or Egyptian. You should feel privileged. You can’t imagine the bullshit I’ve had to go through to get the permission. You see, these government officials are so stupid, they don’t realise how ridiculous it is to prevent tourists exploring. Anyway, you’ll barely see me. I’ll keep a good distance and just meet you at a prearranged rendezvous where we can camp . . .’
‘You mean – you’re not walking?’
‘Walking?’ Turbo laughed. ‘Why walk when I have a car? I’ll go on ahead, warn you about police checkpoints, book you into guesthouses. I’ll carry the supplies. I even have a cool box for soft drinks. Feel, there, under your seat . . .’
I reached down, and produced an ice cold can of soda, sparkling with frost.
‘It doesn’t feel . . . right,’ I admitted. ‘It isn’t in the spirit of the expedition.’
‘These government officials don’t care about that! And it won’t only be me, Lev. There’ll be police escorts, when the police can be bothered. I’ll have to taxi a soldier or two. Look, don’t sweat it, because you don’t have a choice. And, besides, how is it any different from using a troop of poor camels to carry your gear?’
I was stumped for an answer. I supposed it wasn’t.
‘I’ll never be more than a few miles away,’ Turbo said. ‘That is, unless you want me to roll alongside you, as you walk?’
‘I think I’ll manage.’
‘Then it’s settled!’ Turbo beamed, and brought the car to a halt.
We had reached the Sudanese border, directly opposite the shore where Wadi Halfa sat. As I climbed out, into the implacable sun, I muttered, ‘It all seems rather ridiculous, Turbo.’
Already, he was swinging the car around to go back the way we had come. ‘Welcome to Egypt,’ he said drily, and disappeared into the north.
It was to take a week to reach the northernmost point of the lake and return to Aswan. On the first day, I passed the famed temples of Abu Simbel. Devoid of a single tourist, they looked all the more glorious, the great stone faces of ancient pharaohs gazing out over water and sand. Over three thousand years ago, the temples had been hewn from a mountainside by Pharaoh Ramesses II as a lasting monument to his Queen Nefertari – but, like everything in Egypt, they had been victims of the will of the government and the damming of the river. When the Aswan High Dam was built, submerging the desert to create the great lake – and driving tens of thousands of Nubians out of their homeland – the temples had been painstakingly moved to where they now stood, watching me tramp silently by.
Occasionally, I could see the tracks of cars out in the desert, the only sign that the shoreline wasn’t entirely uninhabited – but, as I navigated the cliffs, beaches and bays of the lake, I began to see a profusion of other life that was entirely unexpected. Fifty years ago, when this land was plundered to make the great lake, all kinds of life had been wiped out – but, across the generations, it had slowly returned. The Nubians might never come back to this part of their homeland, but trees and bushes had sprung from the desert beaches, small forests had grown up, and at night I could hear the scuttling of rattlesnakes and vipers, the rustling of rats and foxes. When I woke the first morning, to the glistening splendour of the lake and the pink hue of the desert, I could see the tracks of wolves who had come padding through my camp as I slept.
‘There’s talk of hyena, too,’ said Turbo, shaking his head. Lake Nasser was to be the only part of my Egyptian odyssey where the authorities would allow me to camp, and Turbo had joined me – only, like the Bedouin in Sudan, he refused to sleep too close to the water. ‘Because of the crocodiles,’ he said. ‘Big bastards. And scorpions. It’s the little ones you have to watch for. The small yellow fuckers can really ruin your day.’
‘That’s why the government doesn’t let tourists down here, is it? Because of the wildlife?’
‘Ha! The real reason the government doesn’t want people down here is because of the smuggling.’
‘Smuggling?’
‘It’s prime smuggling territory, coming over the border from Sudan.’
‘So, people don’t come here because the smugglers are dangerous?’
‘You’ve got it wrong, Lev. The government doesn’t want the smuggling to stop. It’s worth too much money to not let it happen. Look around you – all of this could be prime farmland. Instead, it’s wasted, so that the smugglers can bring in camels, guns and drugs from Africa . . .’
‘What do you mean, Africa? We’re in Africa . . .’
‘No, I mean Africa – the Africa over there. Egypt isn’t really Africa. We’re almost civilised here – not quite, but almost.’ He paused, changed tack. ‘Did you see the car tracks out in the desert?’
I remembered seeing them in the sand north of Abu Simbel.
‘That’s the smugglers,’ Turbo confirmed. ‘Usually Bedouin. Tribesmen from the Sinai or the coast, they do deals with their mates in Sudan and bring all sorts of shit this way. All the guns in Palestine, where do you think they come from? Hashish – yep, that too. And gold – there’s plenty of that in Sudan. Antiques from Kush, diamonds from South Africa.’ He paused. Where once he had been enjoying telling his tale, now he seemed solemn. ‘Those smugglers don’t mess around. If they see anyone, they’ll kill them, throw the body to the crocodiles and change the plates on their car. They can’t afford to stop the supply route, so if you see anyone in a 4×4 that’s not mine . . . well, hide.’
At that moment, Turbo stood up, poured the dregs of his morning coffee into the sand, and moved towards the car. Climbing back in, he waved goodbye, choked up the engine, and left me in a cloud of sand and dust.
Throughout the next days, I took Turbo’s advice, keeping to the creeks and gullies, out of sight and out of mind. The walking was hard but it was much cooler here, and at least I was close to the water so – unlike in the Bayuda – I’d never run out. Sometimes I saw more car tracks in the sand, but for several days the only people I saw were illegal fishermen across the water, or the distant glow of a campfire at night. Turbo was never far away, and always on the end of the satellite phone, but this was the first time in the trek I’d felt truly alone: no Boston, nor Moez, nor any porters constantly chirping in my ear.
On the fifth day, mindful of Turbo’s advice, I crested a sand dune and, for the first time since setting out, the stark landscape was broken by human habitation. About a mile away, at the bottom of a valley, completely isolated from the main body of the lake and accessible only by a small channel, sat what looked like a farm. Even at this distance I could see the glint of a tin roof, and the shapes of disused tractors rotting in the scrub.
For a long time, I stopped and stared. There was no way around the valley, not without making a twenty-mile detour to circumnavigate the channel. I was not sure my legs or feet could take that – but, more importantly, I was not sure the permissions allowed it. I dreaded to think what it might mean if my government overseers discovered I had gone off-piste.
But, all the while, Turbo’s words were in the back of my head: This is a place for smugglers, Lev. If they see you, they’ll kill you. The supply lanes are too important.
I proceeded carefully, keeping low amongst the boulders on the banks of the lake, and following natural wadis – dry, ancient riverbeds – to get as close to the farm as I could without being seen. With the sun beating down, I stopped to catch my breath where a fishing boat was tied up among the reeds. In its meagre shelter, a thought hit me: perhaps I could steal the boat and avoid the house completely, by rowing through the lake until the coast was clear? For a moment the temptation was too much – but then I imagined being caught in the act, and consequences that didn’t bear thinking about. No – I would have to do as I’d done so many times before: put my life in the hands of a complete stranger.
The farmhouse sat on the other side of the channel. Cautiously, I waded through the water, my boots sinking deep into the mud as I cast stones into the deeper parts to scare away whatever crocodiles lurked there. On the far bank, a few camels grazed, unperturbed by the stranger clambering out of the creek, and fish plopped around in the shadows.
No sooner had I set foot on the bank than there was sudden movement up ahead: the unmistakeable noise of a human being treading on gravel. I took one step, one step more – and there, between the parting bushes, stood a man in a white vest, a shotgun in the crook of his arm.
I froze. The man stared at me. In that moment, I imagined a hundred different possibilities – but all of them boiled down to this: I was a trespasser, a stranger in a strange land, hundreds of miles from the nearest village, staring down the barrel of a gun.
A voice flurried up, somewhere beyond the gunman. ‘Lev!’
At first, I hardly recognised my own name. Then, as the man stepped aside, all my terror evaporated. Behind the man stood Turbo, waving cheerily.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked. ‘I thought you’d have reached here hours ago . . .’
Turbo was standing outside the tiny farmhouse, happily drinking a glass of chai. Deeply relieved, I pushed through the reeds and clasped the eccentric red-head by the hand.
‘This is my friend, Osama,’ he said, patting the gun-toting man cheerily on the back.
‘Like Bin Laden!’ he said with a wicked grin and a wink.
I didn’t know what to say.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Turbo, ‘he’s harmless. He’s just a local hunter.’
‘I grow crops out here, do some fishing,’ the man named Osama explained, as he offered me chai, his gun now over his shoulder. ‘Sometimes I shoot crocodiles, too,’ he added, as nonchalantly as if he was talking about his morning commute.
‘For fun?’
‘No,’ Osama replied. ‘For handbags. And because one ate my father’s leg.’ He pointed to the side wall of the shack, against which was propped an enormous skin, hardened by salt. Next to it was a massive skull, shiny and white, bleached by the sun. ‘Would you like to see my pigeons?’ he asked, with the enthusiasm of a child wanting to show off his new toy.
I looked sidelong at Turbo, who only shrugged. ‘Sure,’ I said.
Inside the house, a stark room containing only a bed and a single chair, was a single bookshelf – on which a family of pigeons had nested. ‘Baby pigeons!’ Osama announced. ‘Nobody gets to see baby pigeons . . .’
‘Is he mad?’ I whispered at Turbo.
‘Not really,’ said Turbo. ‘He just likes the solitude. But he won’t get it tonight.’
‘Why not?’
‘This, Lev . . . this is your guesthouse!’
‘Sorry there are no spare rooms,’ said Osama, seemingly coming back to life. ‘You’ll have to sleep on the trailer.’
Outside, a flat-topped wooden cart sat under a tree. ‘It’s okay,’ I said, not wishing to offend the madman’s hospitality. ‘I don’t mind sleeping on the floor . . .’
Osama only gave one of his cryptic smiles. ‘You don’t want to do that.’
‘Why not?’
Quickly, he snatched up a stick from his veranda and hooked up a shirt left drying on one of the boulders just outside. Something fell from the collar onto the sand – and, with the speed of an Olympic javelin, Osama speared a rogue scorpion right through its back. As he held up the gruesome creature, it wriggled in the throes of death. With his forefinger and thumb, he pulled off the tail and threw it into the bushes.
‘Too many monsters.’ He grinned and walked away, presumably to feed his pigeons the remains.
It was the end of the month of Ramadan, and the feast of Eid Al-Fitr was upon the town of Kom Ombo.
Two days after a fitful night at Osama’s farm, we had reached Aswan – but I had already had my fill of the city and didn’t plan on staying long. Lingering only to ditch all my camping gear and all my other redundant pieces of kit, I crammed everything into an old British Army issue desert satchel and set off. I was about to embark on a different kind of journey. The path from Aswan to Alexandria would be a thousand miles of roads, towns and cities; it was no longer snakes and scorpions I’d have to watch out for – it was internal politics and secret police.
By the end of the second day, I had come fifty kilometres along the river, to find that Turbo had already booked me into a guesthouse at the town of Kom Ombo. Famous for its great temple, dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek – protector of ancient men from the powers of the Nile – Kom Ombo was originally the ancient city of Nubt, a ‘City of Gold’, and it was as a centre of trade into Nubia that it had originally made its name.
In the morning, I woke to find Turbo standing over my bed. A squint at the clock on the wall told me it was not yet 5am, and outside Kom Ombo was still smothered in darkness. Usually, we tried to be on the road by 7, but today was special. It was formally the end of the month when Muslims around the world fasted. Turbo was bouncing energetically from wall to wall. It was time, he told me, for us to eat.
Blearily, I got out of bed. Naturally, I hadn’t been fasting throughout Ramadan – and neither had Turbo. It wasn’t until this very moment that I’d even considered he might have been Muslim, let alone one who prayed.
‘It doesn’t apply if you’re ala safar – a traveller,’ he said smiling.
The police escorts who had trailed us up the road from Aswan had taken advantage of this particular loophole too – sneaking a crafty cigarette or sweet chai whenever they could. I supposed Turbo was not so different from those Christians back home who only went to Church for weddings and Christmas – all he wanted to do was make an effort.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s go and join in morning prayers . . .’
How could I resist?
In Kom Ombo, the local sheikh welcomed us warmly as we followed crowds of men into the open courtyard of the town mosque. About half the men wore traditional jellabiyas, and the other half Western dress – just jeans and T-shirts. Turbo was very much in the latter camp. Around us were young men and old men, many proudly wearing a dark bruise on their foreheads from striking their heads on the floor of the mosque during prayer. ‘It’s called the alamit el salah,’ Turbo whispered. ‘The mark of prayer. Or, if you prefer it, a raisin . . .’
By the mixture of dresses, beards and raisins, there seemed to be a widespread representation of the Islamic faith here: the devout, strict adherents, as well as the more casual, pragmatic types like Turbo. Among the men, I saw several Salafists – these men, in strict traditional dress, were standing together, but somehow apart from the rest.
‘They follow the wahhabi doctrine,’ explained Turbo. ‘It comes from Saudi Arabia. There never used to be any here. My mum used to say that, in the ’60s and ’70s, no women ever wore the veil – and anyone with a beard would have been considered barmy. But it’s different now. Lots of poor Egyptians went to find work in Saudi when I was a kid, back in the ’80s and ’90s. When they came back, they looked like relics from the Middle Ages. That’s what Salafism is – they think the oldest form of Islam must be the purest. Now all the women look like . . . bloody ninjas.’
I looked at the men he was pointing out. You could spot the Salafists by their long black beards and the absence of a moustache.
‘They look like Abraham Lincoln.’ Turbo chuckled. ‘Look, you hang out over there, at the back. It’s about to begin . . .’
At Turbo’s instruction, I retreated to the back of the mosque, while he took up a spot on the front line. By the time all the men had entered, the mosque was crammed with two hundred devotees. Most had brought their own personal prayer mats, and they congregated in straight lines ten deep. At the front of the room, the Imam began the prayers – or salat – with a rhythmic recital of the raka’ah, in which the worshippers joined together in saying the Takbir. ‘Allahu Akbar!’ they cried. God is Great! As one, the crowd bent down on their hands and knees and fell to the floor, first kneeling and then pressing their foreheads to the ground. Even the old men seemed flexible enough to perform the operation with grace. The whole process was repeated countless times, interspersed with chanting from the Imam and repetitions from the congregation. It was such a mesmerising scene that I quickly lost track of time. In that moment, I deeply admired and respected the sense of purpose and community that Islam creates. Even Turbo – or, rather, Mahmoud – who was as Western a man as you could meet, seemed utterly devoted for this one moment in time.
The final prayer was uttered and the roar of ‘Amen!’ flooded across the courtyard. Everywhere, faces broke into smiles – and I could sense the eagerness with which everyone was looking forward to breaking the fast. Turbo turned to me, and slowly he opened his mouth to call me near.
Then all hell broke loose.
In a second, everything changed. No sooner had the last ‘Amen’ faded away, than two armed policemen thundered through the gates, thrusting anyone who stood in their way to one side. From the back of the mosque, I started; the policemen were heading directly for Turbo. I cried out to warn him – but, too late, they barrelled him aside, grabbing the man who had been standing behind him. Turbo twirled around, bewildered, while cries of protest went up across the mosque. The second cop desperately tried to pacify the baying crowd while the first dragged the arrested man towards the gates. On my tiptoes, I tried to see what was going on – but all I could see was Turbo waving his arms.
‘Lev, let’s get out of here!’ he screamed. ‘Fast!’
I didn’t need to be told twice. Shouldering my way through the protestors, I reached Turbo in the middle of the throng. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Muslim Brotherhood,’ he whispered. ‘Quick, before the mob turns on us . . .’
‘Why would the mob . . .?’
But, before I could finish my question, Turbo had already dragged me to the gate.
Outside, he turned to me and asked, ‘That man – did you see him?’
‘Not really. I just saw the police grab him. Who was he?’
Turbo shook his head as we hurried away from the gates. ‘Well, I was a bit suspicious. He had a black bag. Nobody brings a bag to the mosque.’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps it was a bomb, or some guns. He must have been Muslim Brotherhood, Lev. Some of the other people were saying they didn’t know who he was, that he wasn’t from here . . .’
By now, more and more men were pouring into the mosque to find out what the commotion was. Turbo and I raced the other way, stopping only when we were clear of the place and hiding behind a house.
‘What were the crowd saying?’ I asked.
‘It was mixed – that’s why it was so dangerous. Some of them were with the police, telling them to round up more Brotherhood supporters, grassing up their neighbours . . . but some of them were actually on his side, trying to drive the police away.’
‘Why would they do that?’ I asked, confused.
‘There’s still a lot of support for the Brotherhood. Don’t forget, after the first revolution, in 2011, Egypt basically elected the Brotherhood to government. Morsi was one of their key leaders. So there are plenty of people who sympathise – people you wouldn’t expect it from either. School teachers, farmers, taxi drivers – I know plenty of people who voted for Morsi. They’re normal people, but there’s such a divide in this country, it runs through every village.’ Turbo paused, if only to catch his breath. ‘It’s lucky we escaped, Lev. Some of the men in the crowd were blaming us. They thought we’re the reason the police were there.’
‘But . . . why?’
‘Well, the police have been following us since Aswan, right? They thought we’d led them to the mosque. They were going to lynch us.’
‘Wouldn’t the police have stopped that?’
But Turbo only laughed. ‘What power do you think the police have here? That’s why they waited until the end of prayers – they just wanted to do a quick smash-and-grab. Lev, the one thing you need to know about Egypt, the one thing we learned from the revolutions, is . . . it doesn’t take long for things to get out of hand here. Every man has a gun hidden away in his home. Honour killings, revenge killings, tribal violence – if you so much as look at their wives, some of these men will disembowel you. The police rarely interfere. There are whole districts they don’t dare enter.’
‘A bit like London, then,’ I said – but underneath, I wasn’t in a jocular mood. We’d only just begun this journey into upper Egypt’s rural heart, and already I was discovering the dark side of this blighted country.