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A Sentimental Journey Across Egypt, Libya,
Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Italy XI
Day Eight
(continued from ish 217 in which a cute non-Egyptian sailor woman distracted us for a large portion of the day.)
The wind continued unabated from previous accounts of day eight, which provided an excellent thread of continuity, a theme, if you will, for day eight [1].
Perched, as we were, on the shore, the sails which were quickly being hoisted down by the two Egyptian sailors, down from the buffeting winds. The non-Egyptian cute sailor woman (damn, distracted again!) looked up from her nervous position with her head resting against the rail of the boat with her hat pulled low. I reached out my hand —
But then that's another story.
From upstream (or North, anyway, as we all know again about the oddities of the Nile and direction), out from underneath a giant bridge under construction, a motor boat came puttering towards us.
"Sea pirates!" someone screamed.
"No, no, that's [name completely and utterly forgotten, or simply not heard, as the clarification of the erstwhile sea pirate's identity was provided by someone on the other boat, which had pulled up a little further down the bank from our own boat], he's going to tow us."
And he did, he hitched up our boat, containing myself, the lovely non-Egyptian sailor-girl, the two Egyptian sailors (who were now transformed into dragees, along with the rest of us) and probably a few other people.
We chugged with belching little clouds of exhaust up reasonably close to the banks, which was done not so much for fear of the wind taking us away and whipping us to and fro on the river, but for fear of us getting run over by one of the many luxury-ish steam liners that plod up and down the Nile day and night at an alarming rate and with an alarming amount of metal, passengers, and other heavy materials for something described as 'plodding.' Our very own plodding, by comparison, probably wasn't quite so intimidating to any of the creatures that might get home and write stories about fearful feluccas almost running them over, piloted by Egyptian and sometimes non-Egyptian sailors who could be quite reckless occasionally. We plodded in the true spirit of the word, which is to say slowly and boringly underneath a bridge as the construction workers on the top of the bridge, presumably completing it, gave the taste of some degree of universality about the trip into this occasionally strange country by appearing to be sitting around, not doing anything. Unless, that is, a steam liner passed underneath the bridge, in which case they would all run to the side to try and see the people lying out on the top deck of the liner. Comforting in some small way.
Being carried up the river, I was reminded of Charon, ferrying souls across the rivers Styx and Acheron.
Not personally, of course, as I've never had course to be ferried across the rivers Styx or Acheron, and none of our passengers were dead, nor visiting the dead, and none of us had lodged a Greek coin of some kind in our mouths prior to our man in the motor boat towing us hitched on to us. And we weren't crossing the river, we were simply being ferried north of the bridge so we could make some sort of time and get out of the worst of the wind. So all in all, it wasn't much like Charon and his little boat trip across Acheron into Hades, but, for some reason, it reminded me of that. It might have been the smell of roasted chicken, which, for some reason, I always associated with ferries, which I always, in my mind, anyway, associated with the River Styx. Anyway.
We made the other side of the bridge, and pulled in next to some large concrete and metal thing they'd apparently forgotten to tack on to the side of the bridge (or perhaps they'd just not gotten around to it just yet) while we waited for Charon... err, the guy in the motorboat, to blip back on the other side, pick up the other boat, and ferry it and it's[2] occupants over here.
After our tow-ride and the other crew were safely on this side of the bridge, we were able to get going again, for about an hour, which saw us a few yards further upstream on and on the other side of the river at a relatively isolated spot with a pleasant beach. Isolated in the sense that, as we pulled up, we noticed the farmer and his kids working in the field. And isolated apart from the stealth flies that lay in wait once you ventured off the boat to collect firewood. And the cow. And, sometime very very late at night, the other boat that pulled up.
[1] Or, again, day seven, depending on the counting accuracy of the narrator. It could have also been day nine, as they now found themselves in the eleventh chapter of the travelogue, yet still only on day eight, so either there're some willfully long days or the narrator is justa bit long-winded. Or, again, unable to count/remember properly.
[2] This is, as most of you know, an intentional grammatical error. Call it grammar in protest, if you're desperate to call it something.
disclaimer:
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Be good out there.
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