Egyptian Odyssey

I learned basic Arabic with a creepy Egyptian teacher I snagged on craigslist for 15 US$ an hour. He was living the life of a demi-pasha, or, maybe, his own version of the Muslim afterlife, in Brooklyn, giving free rent in exchange for unspecified sexual favors to numerous young immigrant girls he found on CL. He also worked for the homeland security agency and tutored military and gov’t officials, ivy league students and scholars, charging three or four times what I was paying, as his star pupil and confidante. He introduced me to the perverse and counterintuitive idiosyncrasies of Egyptian society and a variety of colloquial Egyptian phrases, which are direct, easily memorized, and handy in almost any situation. The language, however, is by no means easy to pronounce with the typical cadence or understand when the Egyptians start conjugating verbs and tagging pronouns on with suffixes and prefixes you can barely hear and damn near never imitate.

The facades of Muslim society are manifold and misleading, few things are in reality as they seem to be from the outside. Of course, I only dimly perceived these complexities of when I road in on the ferry… sprawled out conspicuously on the floor of one of the crowded passenger salons, fully dressed, flat on my back with no sheet or cover on a badly decayed sleeping mat, earplugs inserted, without cash and worn out by one of those days which span multiple international borders and in which the events of many days seem to be compressed.

That day started at midnight in Tel Aviv, when Nirman and his two female friends picked me on the corner in the quiet northern neighborhood where I had been staying with the family of an Israeli soldier I met in Brazil on the boat to Ilha Grande. Nirman and I had met in Switzerland in a hippie community, and I was happy to see him again. We kept remarking how strange it was to be reunited. Nirman writes well, plays the guitar, can sing in Portuguese, speaks Italian, and lives pretty leisurely. I had my old faithful red Jansport backpack, a guitar in case, and a cheesy straw cowboy hat given to me by my close friend days earlier. We rolled in their hatchback through the windswept desert night and stopped at four in the morning at an ashram to drop off one of the girls, who was on a little sabbatical for the remainder of her pregnancy. There was a sign on the side of the road, ‘Ashram’, with a little drawing of palm trees. There was not a soul stirring in the ashram; the only sound was a slight rustling of the palm leaves grinding against each other in the wind. We helped ourselves to some figs and fruit, stretched, and skedaddled. Then, we drove on, down into a dry valley with jagged rocks all around. Around six, we arrived in Eilat, the Israeli town close to the Egyptian and Jordanian border. It was just before dawn, and they had to find an ATM for me, because, as usual, I didn’t think about the exit-tax and had no money. Afterwards, we parked the car in the parking lot of a big resort hotel, of which there are several, and walked, with the Red Sea and the dry mountains of Jordan to our left, towards the official bullshit buildings, at the southernmost point of Israel.

We were among the first people through the Israeli side of the border that day and passed through quickly. On the other side, in the empty, apparently neutral, and heavily guarded space between the national boundaries of Israel and the Egypt, there stood a few hundred mostly Russian tourists, the pupils of their blue eyes retreating from the morning light, and those eyes, all frozen stolid and grouchy as they looked at nothing in particular, bored, waiting in line. The walls conducted us towards a duty-free space with resplendent color, hypnotizing arrays of bottles, techtoys, cigarettes, and ties all in a row. Nirman and his girlfriend didn’t bat an eyelash at the arrays, all business. I followed their brisk pace up to the Egyptian building, with the black eagle emblem over the red white and black striped flag. Inside, already it was the atmosphere of Egypt. The guards were all slouching in their chairs, looking gruff in their white uniforms tucked into black boots. One stood up and saluted us with noticeable grace, he was tall with dark heavy eyebrows and a mustache under which he smiled ironically.

We passed through one by one, the x-ray machine, scanning our bags, my guitar, my body. More guards awaited us on the other side, to revise our baggage. Nirman and his girlfriend disallowed the search of their bags. They weren’t having it. Nirman let the mustachioed guy rifle through his stuff until he came to the little ornate painted boxes and decorative coin purses, which looked, by their elegance, to be his most prized souvenirs, always on his person. I marveled at how protective he became when mustachioed man came to them. None of my shit was dear or beautiful like this. I let them rifle through it to their heart’s content, unconcerned. Behind me, Nirman and his lady snarled at me, Don’t let them go through your stuff! I turned back to the guards, two or three of them were digging through my bags with great interest, but I remained apprehensive and quiet. Then, one of the guards pulled out a pornographic magazine, oh crap, I had half forgotten about those. Still, no big deal, I thought, as each guard sat down with his own magazine. I had Penthouse, Kiss Comixx, and some generic hardcore magazine I picked up in Spain at some point. I began to get antsy as they turned page after page, with concentration not overpowered by their eagerness. They were digging it, heavily.

I was putting all my stuff back together, ready to go, when the mustachioed guy gestured for me to come with him, with the porn mags in hand. It dawned on me in that moment, that I had underestimated the situation. I didn’t realize that porn is illegal in Egypt. Businesses get shut down for it, people go to jail. Mustachio escorted me to the other side of the building and into a room full of jovial Egyptians, who, upon my arrival, became more jovial, to the point where the head official had to herd some of them out of the room. The balding head honcho was very stern indeed. He looked at every single page of each magazine, as well, taking the images in, slowly, almost sanctimoniously, appearing not to hear my earnest, if mispronounced, entreaties in Egyptian. I said, please, I came to Egypt to learn Arabic and to study Islam, I didn’t know, etc. etc. He kept his head bowed, and the room was filled with silence, except for occasional outburst of shouting and laughter from those jocose guys who just couldn’t contain themselves. I could understand the senior guy’s diligence, however, because, without access to such materials, those pages of hardcore Spanish sex must have been a real delicacy. When he completed his meditation on the German Penthouse, he made a neat pile of porn, put both hands upon it, and pushed it across the table to me, saying, with obnoxious disdain, “Take this back to Israel.”

My mouth dried out and my forehead perspired. My stomach tightened and I swallowed hard. Then, he said, “Don’t come back to Egypt for six years.” He was serious. My whole intended Egyptian adventure came crashing down around me. I tried to bargain, beg, and he didn’t budge. They wrote some stuff on a little form, put it in my passport, and handed it back to me. Then, they brought in my bags, handed me the magazines and moved to escort me out of the country. My faced burned with shame as I walked out of the office. I was disgusted and didn’t want to carry the magazines another step, but they intercepted me when I moved to dump the magazines in a trash can. Next thing I knew, I was in a line that didn’t move and miserable with hundreds of sweating, grumpy Russian tourists. It took two and a half hours, and the less than twenty year old Israeli girls who interrogated me with unnecessary severity and antagonism made me show them the magazines. I was in no mood to cooperate and remained tight-lipped and openly rude, against my better judgment, angrily.

I sat down at a bench outside of the compound, finally, to take account of the situation in relative solitude, as the sun shone on the Red Sea and the breeze practically massaged my skin. It was a gorgeous day, but I was in hell, for the moment. I was in shock, in desolation, disconsolate, then came the taxi drivers. With difficulty, I began to recount my story to a hack who spoke seven languages. He asked me, did they put anything on your passport? No, they just gave me this paper. Throw it away, he said, you can go to Jordan and then to Egypt on a boat and no one will know. I perked up. He was talking sense, leaning back on an elbow, exhaling a great, nooo proooobleeeem. We rolled by the shining sea in his Mercedes with the windows down, carefree, with his assurances bringing me untold comfort and relief. It was nearly eleven o’clock in the morning.