I am sure 11th of September is never a good date to take any public transport anywhere, but anyway here I am. I had missed the same once-daily bus scheduled for yesterday because of a communication mix-up with Day Light Saving during Ramadan, and I am not about to change any more plans. My bus journey will take somewhere between 17 and 22 hours, through desert terrain, across the Suez Canal, and along the Nile till I reach the Ancient Egyptian capital which is now named Luxor.
The staunch, weathered and bemoustached driver has hawk like eyes so piercing and sharp they can slice off a thousand heads. A dainty little love heart cushion hangs above his head next to a prayer poster embroidered with a frilly ‘I love you’. I am the only foreigner and the only woman on this bus surrounded by grumpy fasting men. The large man next to me is encroaching on my ‘air-space’ and kept rubbing his thigh against mine, and every time this happens I twitch and change position within my confined ‘cage’ of a chair. But the man behind me makes things worse by poking his naked toes between the seat and ‘scratches’ my back ‘for me’ whenever he feels like it. Every second passenger that walks past me as they enter the isle makes a glance and a sucking noise as they see me, and all I can do is cringe. I am alert and anxious, but wearily high on Sea-Legs, an NZ made motion sickness tablets that has seen me through many-a bumpy and long 20+ hour trips such as Canberra to Uluru, Sydney to Melbourn on boat, London to Amsterdam, coastal Croatia, Istanbul to Ankara… will I survive this one?
In the depth of the night the large man next to me falls so much asleep that his head collapses on mine, so quickly and so violently that it made a huge banging cracking sound as our skulls smash against each other – I let out the biggest scream in my whole life and the bus driver almost drove us off the road. Nothing he can’t handle, of course.
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