Egypt by Daniele Somenzi

1995 Egypt posted by somenzi daniele [25/02/2007 18:25]

Nicola, my travel companion of the moment, wins thanks to me 2 Alitalia air tickets to Cairo. So. We leave from Linate for Fiumicino and continue with an Airbus 300 to the Egyptian capital. A city I consider among the most chaotic in the world. There we rent a car that very evening and set off towards the Suez Canal, where we arrive too late to cross it; in fact at a certain hour it closes. So we camp, me in a tent and him in the car, a few hundred metres from the tunnel. It's September and the street stalls still sell watermelons, until midnight. Slept little for fear of night attacks. The following morning we are the first to cross from Africa into Asia. The ships pass through the canal and from a distance it seems they sail on the sand; the oil wells, including those of Agip, are there in quantity, especially offshore, on platforms in the Red Sea.

Later we arrive in Sharm el-Sheikh, where we sleep in the most run-down place in the country. Having inflated my rubber dinghy, which I had carefully packed and brought from Italy along with the usual two Graziella folding bikes, one for me and one for Nicola, we go around the tourist town pedalling past the shops; immediately we meet someone who'd like our bikes, so after using them a bit, we trade them with a souvenir seller, bringing home quite a few papyri to frame and other small local things.

The dinghy too we trade with the hostel owner.

An underwater dive with fins and mask was a must; Nicola took a few photos of me underwater at the edge of the coral reef. Then I didn't feel so well; as had already happened to me in Swaziland, I got a sunstroke on the head — and since I lost my hair, this happens to me, and there the sun really beats down — so my digestion blocked up and I vomited at night. Nicola was sleeping and I went to the toilet, which was so ugly and dirty that it made you want to vomit even if you didn't want to. Then the next day I didn't eat, and with a pill I recovered. A few more little trips in the area, and then with the car back across the Sinai peninsula towards Cairo.

Along the road, pools of oil at the roadside, some leak from a pipeline, or just the oil surfacing, proof of how much there is; it's like tar. I took a little in a small glass bottle; it now sits in my display cabinet at home.

Having gone back under the tunnel beneath the Suez Canal, we returned from Asia to Africa, the only place in the world where you can do such a thing; then, as we got closer to Cairo, we missed the few hours earlier, out in the desert without traffic and city chaos. Having returned the car towards evening at the airport, by taxi to a hotel on the edge of the airport — run-down, naturally, but decent — it was the same one where I slept with my sister Stefania and Nadia back in '88 when we came by car from Italy via Greece and ferry as far as Alexandria.

The following morning, a very early wake-up at sunrise and, after breakfast, a Fiat 1500 taxi with tyres down to the canvas and seats with the springs showing took us, with three cylinders working and one not, as far as the airport, 3 km away.

The last French atomic bomb tests at Mururoa were underway; it said so in the newspaper. The Alitalia Airbus 300 had finally arrived; we couldn't wait to leave. Egypt isn't the best of life, apart from the endemic things like the pyramids etc. As for living there, I think it's better to be in jail in Italy. A steward, during the flight, speaking in broad Roman dialect, to my question of whether Alitalia was looking for stewards, replied that if I didn't have connections I should forget it. Mah.!!!!