My hand quickly located what is commonly referred to as the "oh-shit-handle" just above the backseat door of the rapidly accelerating Land Cruiser. Hamid, the driver, had shifted the thing into first gear and reacquainted the pedal with the floor in order to make it up a steep sand dune. We did and for a second, I thought we were going to fly over the top. But instead, the car froze. Mohammed got out and quickly opened my door.
"Come see, mister. This is the beginning of the Black Desert," he said with his persistent smile.
Stepping out onto the unconventional desert terrain made me pause. Smoldering black rocks littered the desert floor and the valley we were overlooking was a swirl of dark brown and tan. We drove further along the craggy terrain and came to the foot of a large mountain, peaked with pitch-black volcanic rock. An appropriate metaphor could be the snuffed butt of a cigarette, butt-up. If you don't like that one, try a charred tree stump.
The off-roading was rough, as off-roading should be, and was made more so by a lack of comfortable seats in our large vehicle for my even larger posterior. We rumbled continuously through the creatively named Black Desert, several kilometers south of the Bahariya Oasis in western Egypt, until we hit highway again. Mohammed happily explained the few natural nuances of the area from the passenger side and I listened as I steadied myself while our truck tackled a small foothill.
It was about thirty minutes till we reached the real reason I had weathered a cramped four-hour bus ride from Cairo at an hour in the morning when nothing should stir. The White Desert, another cleverly deemed locale, started to make its presence felt once we veered off the solitary desert road and onto its progressively lighter colored terrain. Huge boulders and formations made entirely of chalky white calcite rock began to jut their way skyward from a sand-covered floor in bizarre shapes. Sculpted by the Mediterranean at a time when scientists believed much of North Africa was underwater, many of the shapes closely resembled animals, plants and Henry Kissinger.
Really, Mohammed and Hamid were leading me through a showroom of nature's oddities in white. The rock formations were indiscriminately placed chess pieces, punctuating the horizon line in all directions. The negative space of it all and the lack of wind or noise of any kind gave the desert a haunting quality that was both soothing and eerie. As was proving to be quite often the case, the description of what I was seeing in my beaten copy of Lonely Planet Egypt was a marked understatement.
We had just made sunset when we reached the spot Mohammed had deemed perfect for a campsite. As if having a gaunt lad waiting for me at the bus station with my name scrawled on a piece of paper and a filling, sumptuous lunch at the hotel where the tour began wasn't enough, my guides emphatically turned down my offer to help them set up camp. Instead, they suggested I stand on one of the rocky outcrops a few meters away and watch the setting sun illuminate the whiteness of the chalk into a spectrum of colors. Without too much of an argument, I took them up on their suggestion and was visually rewarded. Besides, as I write this, I'm still uncertain as to what 'setting up camp' entails anyway.
Once the sun finally went down and I had enjoyed a calm and serenity I couldn't remember ever experiencing prior, I walked back to the truck. Behind it, was a roaring fire over which traditional Bedouin cuisine was being prepared by Mohammed and Hamid. Leaning against the truck were several large screens covered with decorative rugs. More large rugs were placed on the ground and topped with a small wooden table. My guiding twosome spent the next hour or so preparing a simple meal of grilled chicken legs, pepper-inflected rice and a tomato and potato concoction. When finished, the two guides – Bedouins themselves – placed generous portions of their home cookin' on the plate in front of me, along with a cold beverage and an artfully sliced orange. Above my head, a lamp shown down on me so I could eat under a spotlight. Mohammed and Hamid retreated a couple of meters away to the desert darkness to eat the remnants of what they had prepared.
I sat down behind the small wooden table, cross-legged style, and immediately felt silly. They were treating me like a pasha (pronounced in Arabic as basha, since the language is without the letter 'p'), a slightly tongue-in-cheek term of respect accorded to restaurant/cafe guests and anyone you want to butter up. Pasha was a title appointed to the governor of the area and any fuddy-duddy of importance during the days when the Ottoman Empire held sway over everything Egyptian. It was odd enough that they were calling me "mister", let alone anything traditionally associated with authority or affluence. A peek at my faded shirt and tattered jeans, and it was clearly obvious, I possessed neither.
I had one mouthful of the deliciously spicy pepper rice and then dramatically put my spoon down in a sort of pampered protest. I turned to my right and told the voraciously eating silhouettes to join me, in fact demanded it. They refused at first but eventually made their way to my table. I was after all, the Pasha.
The three of us chowed down and Mohammed, whose English was near flawless, and I discussed a variety of topics over the next two hours. I learned that Koreans were the pashas of choice for the desert safaris he conducted on behalf of the hotel employing him because they were the most enthusiastic and, "because they are so small we can take many of them in the car." American and British tourists were OK, present company included I'm sure. Germans were tougher to deal with but none elicited more groans from Mohammed than the Gulf Arabs. Coming from their own scenic desert landscapes, tourists from Dubai, Saudi Arabia and the like obviously expected more when they came all the way to Egypt to visit another desert, Mohammed explained. Wealthy pashas from those oil-rich states were used to a certain level of comfort; they even needed to have porta-potties transported for them in a separate truck.
Once the food and conversation had expired, Hamid had constructed a small, white tent and then proceeded to lay out a couple of mattresses with blankets on the sand. He then extinguished the fire.
Mohammed, still smiling, pointed at the tent. "We have made the tent for you. Please, mister."
"Where are you going to sleep?" I said in slight bewilderment.
"We always sleep outside."
"Really? Right there, out in the open?"
"Yes, we are Bedouin. It is traditional." Mohammed said as he zipped up his brand-name leather jacket and put his cigarette out on his designer shoes.
"I see. Can I sleep outside, too?"
"As you like."
"I like."
Everyone knows deserts get cold at night and the White Desert was no exception. They had turned my screened pasha parlor into a resting place for yours truly. While lying there, encased in my fully zipped and buttoned jacket, under a sleeping bag and three heavy blankets, I began to wonder if I had made a mistake. Mohammed had informed me before he slept that as long as my ears, feet and hands were warm, then I would be. Yet, my exposed face was ice and I was reluctant to cover it with the musty, mildewy blankets they provided. Nevertheless, I made myself close my eyes and bare it for a few hours as part of my de facto Bedouin initiation.
Mohammed and Hamid continued to lay fast asleep under a mere blanket when my eyes popped open as the sky began to lighten, sometime around 6:30 am. I was in store for another majestic light show, as it turned out. With every degree of rising sun, the white chalk played chameleon, changing colors at a gradual, yet quick pace. Beige, orange, burnt yellow; it was glorious! What was more glorious was the small wooden table we were eating at the night before, reappearing underneath a breakfast spread made for me by Hamid. I, Pasha, sat there eating halawa and bread under a more natural spotlight while Mohammed continued to sleep and while Hamid was busy taking down the campsite. Whatever that meant.
Boarding the crowded bus at the tiny Bahariya station the following afternoon, I felt relaxed and accomplished, especially since the White Desert was something I had wanted to see very badly. One of the few wonders of Egypt not made by man, the White Desert was refreshing because there was not a single likeness of a Pharaoh to be seen anywhere. It also didn't hurt that my cousin Irene found me a package deal costing me about half of what I would have paid had I gone through one of the larger travel agencies in Cairo. Not that I was looking forward to four hours of neck strain and a bus-wide lack of deodorant, rather, I was happy my expectations were exceeded and that I had gotten more than my money's worth.
One man who didn't get his money's worth at all was a tan, older gentleman who boarded the Cairo bound bus at one of the first few stops past Bahariya. While purchasing a bus ticket in Egypt can very easily be compared to watching hounds fight over a piece of bloody flesh, seat numbers are surprisingly strictly adhered to. That is, if you're lucky enough to get a guaranteed seat. The man I'm speaking of, perhaps we call him Gamal, had a guaranteed seat, purchased in advance. As did I. Hence, contrary to the passengers who had to stand in the aisles of the already narrow metal tube, Gamal could rest his 50-ish body on one of the somewhat upholstered seats for the 17 LE he paid.
Unfortunately for Gamal, there was a pasha in his seat. The pasha was one of the handful of tourists sprinkled in between working class folk from towns surrounding the oasis. Seated right in front of me, I had recognized his blue windbreaker when, earlier, he had wandered into the hotel I was waiting for the bus in, asking about a tour. Predictably, there was an incident when Gamal discovered him in his seat and they began to hopelessly argue with each other in different languages. The argument was only exacerbated when the ticket collector came by to verify the shortish, increasingly stubborn Asian tourist’s non-existent ticket.
It is Egyptian to insert yourself into everyone's business and I was surrounded on all sides by card-carrying Egyptian males, immediately commencing insertion once voices started to escalate and points were contested. Siding with Gamal, the men around me began to argue, and rightfully so, that Gamal was entitled to the seat he bought a ticket for in advance. The tourist, was balking at paying the 21 LE charged to foreigners if he was going to have to stand the whole way.
Since the increasingly loud bickering was disrupting my beauty snoozing, I decided to insert myself into the argument as well. Somehow, I was under the impression that I could wield the twenty or so Arabic words I knew into cross-cultural understanding and a Kumbaya moment. I tapped the shoulder of the tourist whose seat back was to me, and explained the situation to him in English, thinking reason would have to triumph. He said he understood, yet insisted on not paying full fare if he had to stand the entire way back to Cairo. Reason had apparently taken a day off.
Still, I tried to remedy the situation. I suggested to the tourist that he pay only 10 LE to stand the rest of the way and give up his seat to Gamal. I figured it a fair deal considering most Egyptian bus operators pack the vehicle with enough passengers to make even sardines uncomfortable. The tourist agreed and as I turned to tell the ticket collector, the eight Egyptian men in the vicinity, instantaneously turned to look to me for explanation. Piecing together all twenty Arabic words into semi-coherent phrases was like playing Scrabble without any vowels. Regardless, the meaning got through even though the empathy didn’t. The Egyptian males thought the tourist’s insistence was rude – which it was – and wanted justice – which wasn’t going to happen.
One of the agitated males behind me suggested to the tourist that we take the matter to the police. The tourist defiantly turned around and agreed loudly, that maybe we should. It was a smart move on the tourist’s part because, most likely, the tourist police would side with him. Later, I found out it was an off-duty police officer who had made the suggestion.
Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and everyone just dropped it, even Gamal who himself dropped down to a makeshift seat on the aisle floor for the entire ride. Nobody wanted to get the police involved; an even smarter move in Egypt. I was annoyed, not only at the pasha comfortably snoozing in his ill-gotten seat but at his attitude. For countries like Egypt, tourism is quite literally a lifeblood but to hold that fact over the head of the populace by flaunting societal rules, regardless if you disagree with them or not, irked me to no end.
To the credit of the men seated around me, they offered up their seat to Gamal periodically, despite his refusal. In a somewhat confirmation of his guilt, the tourist didn’t even leave his seat during the forty-five minute break at a rest stop in the middle of the trip; the pasha justifiably fearing for his throne.
Two hours later, the bus continued to push ahead on the lonely, concrete artery surrounded by endless sand and nothingness. Rubbing my already strained neck, I remembered a short conversation I had with the off-duty cop sitting behind me during the whole fiasco.
“This is not right,” he said with a grimace. “Where are you from?”
“Amreeka,” I said in an almost rehearsed voice.
“Does this happen in your country?”
“No. No, it doesn’t.”
“Someone can just break the law like this?” He started to shake his head, “it’s not right.”
I couldn’t think of an argument against that. I also couldn’t think of a direct, English translation for pasha, either.
