The Odyssey

The Nile river is an oddity of geologic formation. It runs through the Sahara - through the most barren landscape I have ever known. Expanses of dust, sand, dirt, brown, bland sweep across Egypt with only this blip of green, sometimes only meters across, at the banks of the world's longest river. A miracle, perhaps you could say, in a land of otherwise sheer desolation. A godsend. Admiring the anomalous water as it shimmers in defiance at the blazing heat of the sun attempting to puff it away into atmosphere, I could not help but realize the reason that this area was the birth of ideas of Eden and salvation. This river, the Nile, embodies them both; and from an ancient stance on these banks, the imagination is the only implement to discover a land where green overtakes the heat threatening to cause the end of all. To live here, one must create a far away land promised in the next life. A vision of salvation to come is, perhaps, the only way they endured existences in this forbidding region.

I crawled around locked gates through empty tombs of the ancients in Aswan, and drank tea on a streetside with lawyers lamenting the pathetic situation of injustice in the face of corrupt judges and extensions of Emergency Law (the government abused the Dahab tragedy to extend a 20 year old "Emergency" for three more). Finally, the time to leave for more southerly destinations had come; and as I crawled on board the 10:00 train I could say only that I was ready to move on.

But I arrived at the port at high dam somewhere around 11:00 am, where the boat was already full of people hoarding their claimed space for the journey ahead. I shamelessly implemented my "I'm white, western, unknowing, ignorant, please help" plea and secured a seat for myself. I then proceeded to sit and watch workers loading everything from toy cell phones to electronics to fishing poles from the perhaps 100 degree heat through the overcrowded aisles of the air conditioned second class compartment only to toss them into the bottomless pit at the far end. When they were through, it was overflowing in no orderly manner. And I thought we might be ready to go.

A few hours later I emerge once again to the heinous heat to ascertain the fate of the other two ships to which we are apparently randomly tied. The far ship has had bestowed upon it two cars, two motorcycles, and perhaps a 20 foot high pile of random cargo - again in no order, and with all of it looking as though ready to tumble into the waters of this artificially damned lake Aswan at any moment. I scour my mind for appropriate diction to describe the scene, but it was simply so idiotic that language escapes me. This, I thought, is a fitting exit - a signal that from one land that seems so wholly backwards, I will be turning ever closer to that 180 degrees of directional disability.

The boat pulls out at 6 pm, and I scurry to the roof and sit with a group of relatively wealthy men coming back from a trading mission in Egypt. Most of the passengers on this ship, it turns out, are merchandisers. The modern equivalent of the camel caravaners. Traders, with goods from Egypt to distribute for profit amonst the Sudanese. With the advent of mechanized transport, one might think, such individual responsibility in procurement right through to sale might seem obsolete. After all, can you imagine Jeff Bezos riding a boat to France to pick up a few copies of Mollier? But in Sudan, the obsolete dominates.

As the night progresses, I find myself alternative at the mercy of Islamic proselytizers (it was clearly a mistake to show them the "Basics of Islam" book I'm reading, and unquestionably a bigger mistake to leave my Stella Beer label bookmark therein as I hand it to them), and random acquaintances aching to feed me whatever they can get their hands on. A few hours in, I can't walk two feet without someone I'd apparently met yelling "Michael!!" Finally, the proselytizers catch up to me for a third time, and I pawn them off on a dark black southern christian named Benjamin as I cram my way onto the only remaining human-sized speck of cigarrette butt-strewn roof, under the glistening stars. I sleep well, more or less, but when the feedback of the call to prayer bursts into my eardrum at 4 am, I can't help but remininisce of my Grandmother's comments a few days prior. "Not many people have even seen that river, much less cruised up it." There's a reason.

I awake in a foggy haze, covered in filth, and sit upright - just in time to notice the proselytizers sitting immediately to my right enjoying their breakfast. I decline, adamantly, their invitation to join them just in time for a new stream of passers by to take turns kneeling down and "What's your name?"ing me. I laid back down - sleeping seemed the best option.

As the sun crawled higher, I emerged finally to seek refuge amongst the 7 other foreigners who had apparently been holed away in their first class cabins. We admire Ramses II's great temple of Abu Simbel as we roll by, though it has lost much of its greatness as lake nasser flooded its cliffside locale and the UN moved it to higher ground. We were glad to view the hundreds of tourist ants below the towering statues from our lake-bound vessel.

The other whities turn out to be 4 south africans driving home to Cape Town, 2 Germans riding motorcycles the same way, 1 Swiss who had spent 7 years on a previous trip bicycling around the globe and was back at it, and one Czech who had absolutely no idea what kind of ridiculousness he was about to get into by riding his uninitiated bicycling self into the Sudan - reputed to be the hardest stretch of "road" biking on the planet. That is, being that there are no roads. Only sand. Hot, terrible, sand with no water, food, or shelter. No trees, plants, and barely any rocks from which to find refuge. We were all hoping, amidst under our unquestioning confidence that he would not succeed in his journey, that at least he wouldn't die.

17 hours after pulling out of port, we arrive in Wadi Halfa. Yes, a town named for the grass Halfa, where no green exists. Again, somewhat predictably, only a dusty town of sand and sweat in the middle of nowhere. Indeed, in Wadi Halfa I may have felt more stranded than ever before in my life - even 7 days into the pure wild in Alaska. This is, of course, because in Halfa I was at the mercy of others. I could not walk, ride, drive my way out. I could not take my situation to my own hands. I had to wait, and ride what came. In the meantime, the Czech returned to town, somewhat exasperated as he claimed "I don't think it's possible to ride this on a bicycle" after only 30 kilometers of trudging through sand.

What came was a bus, on the night of the following day, which did not leave at five o'clock as promised but rather at 11 - after we all paid extra to cover vacant seats. We crammed into the vessel which can only be described as a tank, with just enough room in each seat (five across) to cram a person. The chairs were rigid, inflexible, with steel handlebars spanning their backs. The ground clearance of this primordial humvee was too large, perhaps, to measure. The tinted windows, on-board air compressors, ample fuel, tanks of water were all deemed wholly necessary as we set off on what can only be described as an Odyssey across the south of the barren Sahara towards Khartoum.

We bounced and crashed and bobbed and weaved through the roadless desert tracks, through sandy stretches of flat existence; over rocky hill outcrops; and through uninhabitable terrain. Rest stops took place at solitary shacks in, literally, the middle of nowhere - with not a road, house, car, truck, person, animal in sight save the shack and its caretaker. At one such stop, perhaps 3 or 4 in the morning, I stood under the clearest stars I have maybe ever seen. From flat horizon through cloudless sky to flat horizon with the nearest town a few hundred kilometers away, I saw 360 degrees of heavenly beauty sparkling, welcoming me to Sudan. For maybe a minute I felt bliss. Then, I crawled back in my allotted cubby hole of space, and endured more of the trek.

As the sun came out, it began to blister the sand in heat well over a hundred degrees, and stops were made to let air out of the tires to keep traction and avoid a meltdown. Frequent intermissions to cool the engine were mandatory, and sleep was near impossible with sun beating its way through futilely tinted glass onto resisting skin. Sweat engulfed us, as we consumed our rations of water. Though Benjamin thought my comments that I'd rather be on a camel were only in jest, I think the journey on a humped beast, albeit for several more days, would be far more comfortable and endurable.

Though throughout this 10 month odyssey I have rarely heard locals express discontent at long rides or uncomfortable quarters, here the mouths were firing. An Egyptian proclaims, "When I go home, I will fly. If I do this again, I die."

Somewhere between the forbidding oasis at Abu Hamed and the brown town of Atbara, a steamroller appeared as though a godsend. The mechanical equivalent of the Sirens, perhaps. Behind it, though solitary, it left a small trail of black, and we crawled up onto the new asphalt with haste. Our journey's bumps were dismissed, though the consolation was little as the heat and cramped quarters persisted. And still, even with this tarmac laid, there was no sign of life beyond this steamroller for hours more.

We passed Atbara and the police checked the passports of foreigners as a small continuation of the bureaucratic nightmare of the Sudan that began with that embassy in Cairo. They mercifully allowed us to pass, only to stop a few hundred yards away at the next check point. And then a few hundred more at the next. Then another. Finally, we were on our way on the home stretch to Khartoum, at this point with the sun well below the horizon.

As we reach the general locale of Meroe - a site of ancient pyramids - my motivation to wander the Sudani night in search of old tombs wanes, and I stick out the whole misery to Khartoum - where we pull in a shade after 2 am; some 27 or 28 hours after departing the Halfa. Benjamin is overly concerned for my welfare, and succeeds in confusing a few taxis, but the first one I take on on my own lands me directly at Thunduk El Haramein. I bolt for the shower, where I watch clear water turn black as it pours over my body towards the squat toilet below serving as its drain. I wander calmly back to my room, where I lay in my bed. In Khartoum, at last.

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I awoke without the energy to face the new look of the dusty town - the newly black faces of Sudan (although mixed strongly with Arabs) were forbidding, and none seemed to recognize the contrast I presented as I wandered the streets completely lost. A mixed blessing, that, as it afforded me a feeling of privacy, of ability to truly live my own life unharrassed that I haven't experienced in quite some time; but also it meant that no spontaneous friend, or guide, would emerge to explain what the mysterious blended mud concoction they were selling street side actually was. Turns out, though, it's pretty good.

I found my way eventually to Omdurman, nearby, and to a genuine expression of spirituality in the Sufi Dervishes that gather there on Friday afternoons. Though this is perhaps the most touristy event in the Sudan, there were only maybe 10 whities in the bunch. I bonded with the Shiekh of the mosque as he explained some of his faith, and we expressed a bit of mutual disgust at the groups who arrived to take pictures and gawk, without any intent to understand.

I ended the day at midnight, beating filth from my clothing on the rooftop of my hotel. Marveling at my location, and at the contrasts it presents. The lessons to be learned are endless, though I don't know what even one of them is as yet. I see contrasts in a country with civil war in its south, genocide in its west, relative calm in its center, obvious corruption at its top, and poverty throughout. A country which lists among its main income earners sunflower seed exports and yet manages so wholly ruthless a regime. The idea of one nation, indivisible, is destroyed by the Sudan as every individual, every tribe, every faction pushes against the whole for his own. And those who cling to power maintain the impression of hegemony in this vast land - the largest political state of Africa. Chaos of more superficial, less accepted level and on the Subcontinent dominates, and greed manifests in the streets as an aura of distaste engulfs me. This, more than any other region I've visited, feels backwards. Feels wrong. Feels like injustice is pouring from its soul.

And I can't go much further than Khartoum to find the stories that abound in this country that's larger than Western Europe. The government constrains me, as it constrains all who reside here even temporarily, with issues of permits and lack of infrastructure. Timelines, for the first time on this trip, impede my ability to survey as so many areas of the Sudan are simply inaccessible without weeks or months of effort.

Even so, I told the immigration officer who wanted 8500 of the Arabic-adopted currency "Dinar" in this posing wanna be middle eastern state that used to proudly flaunt its undefined, indiscriminate "Pound" as its trade guage, plus 1500 dinar for "some stamps and things" in the name of another "permit" to go screw himself. I bought a ticket to Kassala anyway, and tomorrow, we'll see how far I can go.