Homeward Bound: Luxor, Part 4

We got up the next morning day to catch the 9:00 train. Diligent readers will remember that Mike and I had been unable to procure tickets for this train when we arrived three days prior. Phil, another AUC student, was in the same predicament. We all boarded the train anyway and found seats in a relatively empty car.

About half an hour into the trip, the ticket-checking guy came by. We paid him 52 pounds and he gave us pink slips of paper granting us the right to be on the train (but not the right to specific seats). “Well,” I thought, “that was pretty painless.” And for the first three hours or so, it was. The only eventful thing that happened during that time was Phil vomiting off the side of the train, probably as a result of some falafel we’d eaten that morning before we boarded. But at around the three hour mark, we got booted when a large family swarmed into our car with tickets for our seats. We lugged our junk to another car and found new seats. We got booted again at the next stop. We found new seats, this time separated from each other. We got booted again. Then we couldn’t find seats. Phil disappeared for long stretches of time, which I can only assume were spent making peace with his digestive system in the bathroom.

I wandered around the crowded train for a while in my t-shirt and jeans, feeling very foreign, with people staring at me the whole time. I would occasionally find an empty seat and sit for a few minutes, only to be kicked out at the next stop, or when someone returned from the bathroom. Eventually, Mike and I bumped into an Egyptian student from AUC. We stood talking to him for a while. He looked surprised when I said I spoke some Arabic.

“Really, you speak Arabic? When that guy was talking to you a minute ago, you just smiled and nodded and it was really obvious you didn’t understand anything that he was saying to you.”
Great.
“So what do you think of Cairo so far?” he asked.
“It’s good, I like it a lot.”
“Is it weird having people stare at you all the time everywhere you go?”
“Uhh…”

I decided I wasn’t much in the mood for this particular conversation. I went to talk to my six friends who had tickets. They offered various solutions to my seat situation. Dan volunteered a spot on his armrest, which was both uncomfortable and impractical considering how many people were passing by the aisle. I was offered a chance to sit in Max’s seat for a little bit while he stood, which I felt bad doing. Finally, I could sit on the floor where Tim and Ariel had their feet, provided I didn’t mind being a footrest. This was the option I chose. I wriggled my way back into the corner and leaned against the outer wall with my legs stretched toward the aisle. Although far from comfortable, it wasn’t a terrible position, and I was initially relieved to finally have a place to call my own. My feelings soon changed, as Ariel kept petting me like a dog, much to everyone’s amusement but my own. I was also decorated with tinsel and photographed repeatedly. I failed to see the humor in the situation. I whined repeatedly until I was given an issue of Time to read, which kept me occupied for a while. After about half an hour Tim got up to walk around, and I took his seat for ten minutes or so before being relegated to my former position, which was becoming progressively less comfortable. Eventually, Mike finished his conversation with the AUC kid and came by. He fed me cookies, improving my mood considerably. I’d had enough of the patronizing, though, and I got up to wander around with him.

We realized we hadn’t seen Phil in several hours. I found him passed out in a seat a few cars back. Either because the Egyptians are by nature a compassionate, warm-hearted people, or because Phil is big and bearded and scary looking, no one was trying to make him move. I was jealous. Mike and I went as far forward on the train as we were able and then worked our way back. Each car had doors to the outside at either end, and we had idyllic visions of sitting with our legs dangling out of the train as the landscape passed. We pried a door open when no one was looking. Wind rushed in. We were really moving. I stuck my head out momentarily and realized that the train was traveling far too fast and passing much to close to trees, fences, and buildings for our plan to be safe. We just stood and looked out for a few minutes until an indignant employee scolded us for our foolishness. He also tried to steal the newspaper we had been sitting on. This turned into a bit of a shouting match, which inexplicably morphed into an attempt by Mike to sell the man the newspaper for two pounds. That didn’t really work so we just shut the door and sat back down. I eventually fell asleep. Mike noticed that I kept falling sideways and finally procured me a seat where I slept for about an hour. It was dark when I woke up, and we were close to our destination. I was overjoyed when we finally pulled into the station. Cairo felt safe. I knew where I was and where I was going. I knew where I was sleeping and where my food was coming from. I was home.