The water is not at all summery — this is January after all. At the bottom there are stones encrusted with salt. I discover just how sharp they are when I get back to the beach, my feet striped with crimson marks.
I have to work hard to keep the waves from knocking me off my balance. I have absolutely no desire to fall into this awful water — there’s so much salt that the water tastes bitter more than salty. Eventually I find myself in water up to my shoulders and I lie down carefully stretching out my neck to protect my eyes.
It is indeed impossible to sink. But you can’t really swim, either: your legs keep getting tossed up like a floater. It’s more comfortable on your back: you sit on the water as if in a large armchair. It’s so funny! Hop! With one easy push you turn on your own axis. Hop! You turn in the other direction. You spin like a top, and just like a child watching a spinning top can’t conceal its joy and delight, so I too share my impressions with William, not in words, but with a ringing laugh.
The sun apparently wants to follow my example and have a swim. It’s already slowly sinking into the sea. Or maybe it just wants to look closer and see who’s having such unabashed fun there laughing and tumbling in this big salty puddle.
As the day’s ending I can’t refuse William’s invitation to spend the night in his house which makes the hospitable Jordanian sincerely happy.
At home, especially for me, his wife prepars a dish of chicken with rice. For dessert they offer me their wedding photographs. I open the album — it is empty. What’s this? I opened it from the wrong end: here albums, like books, begin with the end. Though, it’s the end for us but for them it is the beginning.
In the morning William persuades me to go have a look at a beautiful mountain valley not far from their village. Our conversation turns out to be more interesting than the view.
“Tell me,” asks William, “is it true that in Russia there are people who put their old parents in the care of special institutions?”
“That is true,” I answer. I don’t go into details, knowing that here it’s impossible to abandon elders or sick children, that it’s impossible to leave the neediest people without help.
William asks about the relationship between men and women. News about our “freedom” in such relationships is renowned even in these parts.
“I was engaged for a whole year,” says William. “And all that time I did not even touch my future wife. And I am happy it was this way.”
William actually practices his religion. When the time to pray comes he leaves me and goes to pray.
So what can I say about this striking “freedom” in male-female relationships? Or about the old people’s homes and the orphanages? How can I explain this to him? And I tell him about how the moral and religious foundations in our country were completely destroyed and only now are being restored.
In parting, William hugs me tight:
“You are the most surprising individual I have ever met.” And he adds with a secretive air: “You are like a sister to me now. Think of me as your brother.”
I smile to myself as William tells me something that I already know.
Chapter 4. Unexpected Egypt
First meeting
The ferry takes me across the Red Sea that separates Eurasia from the African continent. We are about to arrive in the Egyptian town of Nuweiba and I will step onto African soil for the first time in my life. But I’m not expecting anything good to come of this.
Egypt is one of the few countries where hitchhiking is officially prohibited. I’ve heard dozens of stories from friends about roadblocks where my friends had to get out of cars that had picked them up. Inside the car you have to hide from the police, to play “cat and mouse” with the police, as my friend Anton Krotov put itt.
Locals are prohibited from inviting foreigners to sleep at their house. By the same token it is prohibited to invite foreigners to visit.
Sleeping in a tent is prohibited.
All these prohibitions are supposedly aimed to improve security for tourists. In fact, obviously, they ensure income for the tourist business.
I don’t expect anything good from Egypt. Will I be able to hitchhike there? Or will it be a constant cat-and-mouse chase and I’ll get sick of it and quickly regret having come here?
These restrictive laws are not even the main drawback of one of the world’s most visited countries. The tourism network has ensnared the country and people’s minds so completely that Egyptians now perceive white people exclusively as walking fat wallets.
“The prices are automatically raised two or three times for tourists,” they told me about Egypt. I’d also heard plenty of stories from friends who exposed these frauds by being able to read the Arabic prices and pointing it out to the sellers.
“They ask for money for the smallest service. Even for things you don’t need and they’ll go on pushing them on you.”
I’d also heard any number of frightening rumors about the prevailing chaos and messiness in Egypt.
“Even in Jordan,” my friend Igor was telling me when we ran into each other in the port, “if they see some weirdo on the road driving in a slapdash way they say, ‘Oh, he’s got to be from Egypt.’”
Two or three hours ago to my question: “When will we leave?” the driver replies: “In half an hour,” and later he repeats the same thing.
“In fact, the bus won’t leave until it is packed to bursting,” explains Igor, a seasoned traveler used to the way things work in Egypt.
Finally, the last passenger who wants to go to Cairo gets on. They are carting a huge wheelbarrow filled with a mountain of trunks.
“But there’s no more room on the roof.” I look puzzled at the packed roof-rack.
“What do you mean?” Igor is also surprised. “It’s practically empty.”
Indeed, through some miracle and a few ropes, the driver and his helpers manage to tie on all the luggage of the last passenger. But just as I was hoping for our imminent departure, a huge cardboard box falls from the roof onto the pavement with a loud thud. The driver and helpers look on impassively. Then they decide to see what’s inside. The box contains nothing less than a TV set. Somehow no one is particularly worried. No big deal.
Cairo sketches
There are only a few truly large cities in the world. It’s just not easy to get an accurate count of the population, to separate the city from the suburbs, and so a few of the world’s biggest cities fight to be considered the largest and most populous: Shanghai, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, and Cairo.
Cairo! It’s hard enough for me to live in Europe’s biggest city, Moscow. And now Cairo!
I’m walking along sidewalks thick with pedestrian traffic on Tahrir, one of the main streets in Cairo. On intersecting alleyways the cars are parked so close together it’s impossible to squeeze between them, they seem to be leaning in for notso-tender kisses.
No turbulent river could compare with the noise rising from the madly rushing street traffic. And the noise gets even worse when the traffic jams. Car horns are used much more in Egypt (as in most Arab countries) than in Europe or Russia. Is it simply that the desire to communicate is stronger here?
I observe the language of traffic with amazement while still on the highway. The driver wants to pass: HONK! Giving a warning, apparently. But then once he’s already passing and even with the other car: HONK! As if to say, hey, I’m passing you, look out. And then once he’s passed: HONK! As in, everything’s fine, see you later. A tractor by the side of the road: HONK! A man walking: HONK! A donkey: HONK!
So now just imagine what happens in a city teeming with taxis when none other than a foreign woman is walking along the side of the road. All the taxi drivers salute me and offer their services, not suspecting that I can’t stand the noise.