|
A Sentimental Journey Across Egypt, Libya,
Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Italy X
Day Eight
(continued from ish 215 in which we sneakily snuck into day eight under cover of darkness.)
The wind, just coming up in the previous episode of the travelogue, now whipped and whistled across the bow and every other nautical bit of the felucca, turning the Nile into a maelstrom of churning water and the occasional article of rubbish from passing steamers. The wind probably whipped dozens and dozens of scorpions around in the air unbeknownst to those people on the feluccas just staring and heading up river, where dust in great heaps blew off the shores and across the river and the feluccas that were further along in their journey.
This was all happening as a very cute, albeit it non-Egyptian sailor type person was at the helm. Stunningly cute. Like a baby bear cub or a tender flower or something, only more attractive in a sexy sort of way.
Thoughtfully, the Egyptian sailor type person was sitting nearby, smiling every now and then, looking frightfully bored and looking far too often for my taste at the cushions, as if he suspected there might be something lurking in there, something deadly, small, and crunchy when you stepped on it, only to go *crunch,* "Arrrrrrrrrrrgh," *thump thump,* *thud,* as the poison of the little bugger seeped it's way into your bloodstream and the satisfying crunching noise gave way to your thudding on the deck of the boat. Maybe with a little splash, should you fall overboard in your near-death throes. Or maybe he was just watching the sails and the rudder (or the one that's not a rudder but it's the thing you steer with that drops down from the middle of the boat, as opposed to the real rudder, which is at the stern, I believe), and things.
At any rate, as the wind rose and rose, the two Egyptian sailor-like guys on the boat seemed to spend less time looking for scorpions and more time looking at the sail, and occasionally, worriedly at the cute non-Egyptian sailor at the rudder. Dutifully, I took up the watch for scorpions. I did this by latching myself firmly to the deck with my hands on a rail and some other handhold I could gain in the flooring. I figured that if scorpions were on the boat they must have been lying in wait for ages, waiting for the moment to strike, so by pretending to be fearing for my life as the cute sailor-type was relieved of her duties, and assuming a rather vulnerable position I would coax the scorpions out of their hiding places, from which they'd be promptly swept away by the now gale force winds whooshing about the boat. I took care, once in a while, to see if the cute sailor-type hadn't blown overboard and checking to make sure she wasn't being besieged by any scorpions, desperately striking out as they blew away into the great void (though somewhat less great than, say, space, should they find themselves aboard a space ship, from which they've just been ejected and thrown into the more popularly known Great Void). I saw that she was putting a brave face on it, sitting worriedly on the deck with her back against a pillow, pulling her cap low over her face and leaning her head back against a pillow she'd placed against the rail.
The two sailors stood and grappled with things at either end of the felucca, tacked and did all sorts of fancy nautical maneuvering that resulted in loads of water sloshing in and about the boat in places where normally, in boats, you expect water not to be, unless you're, say, sinking, in which case I suppose you'd expect water in a good deal more places. The collection of us on the boat, and the other boat accompanying us, as well, probably, rolled and rocked and got a little wet, which was better than swimming our way up the river, where we wouldn't have had the benefit of cushions. And it would have been very difficult to cook dinner had we had to swim. Not that it was any easier, in the remarkably wet boat, as the cauliflower or something tipped overboard and into the briny deep. After a few trips back and forth, dodging steamers and more rubbish that was blowing overboard of from all the feluccas that found themselves under siege by the fierce winds, the two sailors got the boat exactly over to the same spot where the cute sailor-like non-bear cub had us originally, only against the shore, which, to my mind, didn't require a whole lot of skill, and if I hadn't been protecting the innocent from projectile poisonous scaly creatures, I would have liked a crack at it, myself.
You may get the impression, as in films or books that we never eat nor go to the toilet. Especially after an episode like the preceding, in which many people may have lost their nerves, worrying about being in a strange country on a river that had a considerable amount more wind than they'd been expecting, and thinking thoughts like, "that sailor-like girl is incredibly cute," and "oh dear." Well, like in the movies, where they take advantage of narrative wormholes, into which the screenwriter goes to avoid pressing questions like "Where's the plot?" "What the hell does she see in that little w****--?" and "Hey, why don't they ever seem to go to the toilet, even though they've supposedly been on a road trip for three days with no stops?" travelogue writers can do exactly the same thing.
disclaimer:
And so ends the travelogue, as our intrepid adventurers.... oh, all right, probably come back next week. Seeing as how they seem to be so well-received and, well, non-scary, as say, last week's episode was.
So see you again next week... until then, keep on jammin'. Or whatever it is you do when you're not reading Sane.
|
Yer Weekly Horoscopes.