Remember from the last few posts that our hotel was supposed to get us tickets for our return from Luxor to Cairo?
Well, they didn't. So we got our money back after a lot of hassle and went to the train station ourselves. Of course, this was 30 minutes before our train was supposed to leave, so all the seats were sold out. Rather than wait three hours for another train that could also potentially be sold out and exhausted from the day's sightseeing, we opted to take the earlier train and buy our tickets "bidoon kursi," without seats. They were half price, too. Since this had worked on the train from Aswan to Luxor, we figured it'd be ok. But the difference is that that was a three-hour train ride, and this would be about twelve.
We sat in some unoccupied seats for the first few stops. But our group of six was eventually kicked out by the real occupants, and we were forced to walk through the train in a vain and increasingly desperate attempt to find actual seats. Finally we settled in the only unoccupied section of the train, the space between cars near the doors and luggage compartments.
For the next eleven hours, we were unable to sleep, either standing for most of the ride or crouched in a pitiful position resembling a fetus. The space was engulfed by cigarette smoke as scores and scores of people, young and old, came into the compartment to fill their lungs with that wonderful and nausea-inducing substance and tell each other jokes in 3ameya that got progressively more and more annoying as the night wore on (we couldn't understand them). The female members of our group were hit on by several Egyptian men, one particularly brash one carrying around a computer CPU. He'd start up a conversation with us and ask to use our phones, because his phone didn't work. I am convinced he was using this solely as an excuse to find our female phone contacts, because later he took out his phone and tried to snap clandestine pictures of the girls in our group. We used this perfect opportunity to tell him "Haraamu Aleik" (Meaning "shame or forbidden upon you," the reverse of the greeting Salaamu Aleikum, "peace be upon you"). He went away eventually.
Of course, all Egyptian males don't do this. (Almost none go to these lengths.) But still. Come on.
The only brief respite from our complete and utter despair came when I found a 5-minute-long seat next to an old man from Ma'adi, who bought me a juice drink after his friend came back from the bathroom and displaced me.
I've done my best, but I don't think words can really sum up our plight. Fortunately Seth got a short video.
I never thought I'd be so happy to find myself back in smoggy, crowded, chaotic Cairo at 6:30 AM. After taking a cab back to Zamalek, we ate the most wonderful meal of our lives at McDonald's, thankful to be alive and free from the Train of Death.
It's an experience none of us will ever forget; frighteningly stupid, but enlightening at the same time, as we got to see a slice of Egyptian society that is completely against everything you could gather from the entitled AUC New Campus experience of Gucci Corner, inflated egos and cliques straight out of middle school.
Never again, though. When I explained what happened in Arabic to my Colloquial teacher, the best adjective he could come up with (after doubting me a few times) was a very naughty swear word.
I think you get the point.
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