Onward to Egypt

If I can summarize this first leg of my Egypt trip into one phrase, it would be that I’m making a great time out of a situation gone wrong.

The whole trip started with me showing up to the Jerusalem Central Bus Station at 10:30am, way earlier than should have been required to make my destination in one day, only to find out that the next bus to leave to Eilat was at 2pm.  I went and found a café in the souq (market) and had a bagel and some soup and organized my computer and phone to make it the most convenient to cross to border (ie. removing the Palestinian contacts, pictures, email accounts, shutting down my FB, etc.)

I got on the bus to Eilat without problem, and spent some of the ride searching on the internet for my transportation from Taba (the Egyptian border town) to Dahab, where I had booked accommodation. It turned out that the 3pm bus that I was intending to take is the only bus that leaves Taba these days. So, unless I took a private taxi ($50 instead of $5), I had no means of reaching my destination. So I decided to stay in Eilat for the night (Eilat is the border town still within Israel). I was at least proud of myself for allowing three extra days leeway time before my Israeli VISA expired, otherwise this whole sequence of events would have really been concerning.

I found a hostel near the bus station in Eilat that I knew because Akina stayed there when she was visiting. It cost $20, which only sucked because I was still being charged for the accommodation in Egypt that I wasn’t able to make. Such is life.

I went down to the beach and sat for a few minutes, listening to some nice music coming from one of the bars. This is where my night shifted and became one beautiful experience after another. I decided to walk along the beach with my feet in the water. The way the sand massaged the bottom of my feet was therapeutic, like the perfect pediatric massage. I walked for a long time, allowing this sensation to carry through its whole life cycle, until it simply felt like normal sand under my feet. At that moment I heard beautiful guitar music (a la 1920s jazz) coming from the lane, so I walked up to listen.

The music was being played on a Gibson SG by an old man with a beard, a cowboy hat, and a sharp red jacket. He played with a nonchalance that I found charming, hardly acknowledging my applause after each song. During his music, a homeless man with no shoes and a large, unwieldy beard came and sat near me, also appreciating the music. I offered him a piece of the food I was eating, he accepted and offered me a cigarette, I accepted.* We sat together eating rice wrapped in grape-leaves and smoking a cigarette, listening to “I just called to say I love you” plucked out of the red SG across the way. The homeless man and I never shared any words other than offering one another what we had, but it felt we were enjoying the moment together, connected through shared music and proximity.

The guitar player stopped, put his guitar down, and lit a pipe. The dignity and grace with which he did were especially noteworthy. He sat there, on his throne, as a king surrounded by his subjects, smoking a pipe without a care or regard for those around him. You can see what I am describing in the photo I took with him.

I moved on, to the next street performer, playing classical latin guitar. A woman came up and asked me to take a photo of her with her two daughters by a fountain. I agreed, and while I was taking it another man walked by, assumed that this was my family and insisted that I join the photo with my wife and kids. He only spoke Hebrew, so rather than try and explain it all, I just gave him this woman’s phone and joined the photo. The woman was embarrassed but also seemed to realize it was easier to allow it than to explain it. Now she has a few photos on her phone of her fictional family, and the photographer walked away feeling he had done a good service. My “wife” and I laughed about the whole thing, and I retook my seat on the bench listening to the guitar player.

I was in such a good mood at that point, feeling quirky as well, that I took out a few pieces of paper and made paper airplanes for the two girls. One pink and one yellow, as those were the colours of paper I had. I gave the airplanes to them and left. I’m not even sure they could actually fly, but the girls were quite pleased at the unexpected gift.

My night by the beach ended with a nice moment on the rocks, slightly removed from the bustling resort crowds and lights, with a beer in hand. There was someone fishing just across the inlet, and behind him were the lights of first Jordan then Saudi Arabia. On the other side Israel, then Egypt. This is the water source where all these countries meet. It shows how powerfully formative and yet arbitrary political boundaries are.

I went back to the hostel – it was bedtime. There was an old man sitting in the hostel, though, and he invited me to sit and have some tea. His name was Jeff and he was originally from South Africa. He came here in 1967 as a volunteer to fight against the Arab Nations in the 1967 war. He came back in ’76 to fight again during that conflict. He still hates Arabs, so much in fact that he only ever referred to them as “them”, with a nasty intonation in his voice, not enough respect even for the term Arab. He also had prejudiced views about Russians and South Africans, but still deemed them worthy of a title beyond “them.” He told me he wanted to help me get across the border, because he supports anyone that supports the State of Israel. I’m sure a small smirk crept across my face when he said that.

He also told me his life story: his childhood in South Africa; his immigration to Israel; his divorce with his wife; his involvement in his children’s lives; his daughters marriage in the UK; and some accident that severely battered him in South Africa. He was a survivor; you could see it on his face. One eye was limp, his hair unkempt, and a certain craze yet fearlessness behind his eyes that both unsettled and impressed me.

During our conversation, it started to hail, which is very unusual in the desert. Jeff said it was the first hail in five years, and the hotel employee made a joke that the last hail before that was in biblical times. Either way, it transformed the whole place into a light-hearted, laughing group of people, all connecting over our shared wonder.

Then the power went out.

I love it when that happens. No matter where one is, when the power goes out it feels as if the whole world exhales and relaxes. A clarity and simplicity sets in, and people begin to talk and share space in a much more personal way. I wonder if that’s how it always used to be, before technological distractions. After some time of telling jokes together, I decided it was really time for bed, and I went to sleep.

The next day I went back to the beach to soak in some sun before crossing the border, as the bus I was aiming to take was not leaving until 3pm. The sun was hot, the water was warm, and I lived the beach life for a few hours. I was gazing out to the water when all of a sudden there was a tap on my leg, and a small boy was standing there. He was completely naked, had bright red hair and strikingly blue eyes, and he was holding a small rock out as a gift for me. I took it, we smiled at each other, and then he knocked it out of my hand onto the beach. I said “What are you doing?!?” in a playful voice and picked another up. He knocked it out of my hand again, and I repeated the phrase and he laughed even harder. It was adorable, and we played this same sequence on repeat about 30 times. I love that about kids. If something is funny, they can watch it over and over again. I’m like that with John Stewart, but not with rocks!!

He and I waved goodbye (which was also adorable) and I went to catch my bus, which I then realized I had just missed. I had an hour to burn so I sat and watched a public Zumba class that was on the street, and then went to the bus stop. By the time I got to the border, it was 1:30pm. I thought this would more than enough time to reach the bus on the Egyptian side. Israel wouldn’t detain me for trying to leave, would they? I assumed they would just be pleased I was going.

I was wrong. They began asking me questions, “where are you going? Why? Why have you been here so long? Where did you stay? Are you coming back? When is your flight?” Then she said something that threw my confidence, “I just have to call my manager because there is something on your file.”

Boom.

It’s part of the game, to upset my confidence.

The manager showed up and she did not look empathetic or cooperative. She wasted no time, launching into accusatory questions about my time in Israel and my intentions to come back in. She asked to speak to my room mates, she asked how much money I have in my bank account, she asked to look at my Facebook profile, she asked why I had been to Ramallah, she asked where I work and live in Canada, why I came here, why I would change my flight until March, if I worked or volunteered while in Israel. She told me straight, “we’re not going to be able to let you back in the country. It’s illegal to cross the border to renew your visitors VISA.” That really shook my confidence, and I felt that the next three months of my plan to be in Jerusalem were slipping through the cracks.

They led me to a questioning room, and put me on the phone with an employee at the Ministry of Tourism. At this point, I had had a moment to collective myself, organize my responses, and realize that acting nervous would only hinder my position. I walked into the questioning room with no more shaky hands, not biting my lip, ready to answer their stupid questions. I am going back to Canada in March, so they have nothing to worry about. I was very assertive with the woman on the phone, answering all of her questions, including “put yourself in my shoes, how do I know you won’t extend your ticket again and try to re-enter again?”

After our conversation, the manager who had grilled me earlier stamped my passport, walked me to the gate, and said thank you, have a nice day as if nothing unpleasant had occurred.

The irony of the whole situation is that it took just long enough for me to miss the bus. I ended up having to spend $50 to get to Dahab anyway. The second layer of irony is that I think I saw the bus pass us on the highway, which, if my suspicion is correct, means that it left late and I maybe could have caught it. Hah. Such is life.

Finally, I arrived at the hostel only to find two people I had met briefly a few weeks earlier. They are David and Priscilla, David from Argentina and Priscilla from Brazil, and I had only just spoken with them for 15 minutes after offering them a ride on the highway near Ein Gedi late at night. The whole circumstances for meeting them were strange in the first place, but to see them at this hostel weeks later makes me really feel the smallness of the world.

All that in two days! I can’t wait to see what lies ahead.

*I don’t smoke regularly, but the simplicity and  beauty of the moment necessitated that I accept his cigarette.