After my botched ascent of Mount Sinai, I decided to head to a city that had actual roads I could navigate. I chose the traffic-clogged streets of Cairo. I spent the next couple of hours at the local police station near Saint Catherine’s Monastery, getting the “right” tourist stamp for my passport. Then I hopped on a bus that promised to take me to the Land of the Pharaohs.
I was one of three white people on the bus (the other two were the French tourists I had seen at Mount Sinai)—and the only woman. I found an empty seat and plopped myself down. Nearly every single Arab was smoking hashish cigarettes (a kind of cannabis that is mixed with tobacco) and the air was so heavy with smoke it felt like I was walking through cobwebs. I smiled weakly at my two fellow tourists, and settled in for the long, hot, smoky ride. After about twenty minutes, I was dizzy from the smoke, and drenched with sweat; and my legs were stuck to the plastic seats. “Why the hell won’t someone open a window?” I couldn’t take it anymore, so I sat up and reached for the window. The man in the seat behind me clucked rather loudly. I squeezed its levers, yanking the window down; and was smacked in the face with a literal blast furnace—120° F air temperature, and sixty-mile-per-hour sand.
“OW!” I quickly realized my mistake and shoved the window up as fast as I could. The man behind me narrowed his eyes and glared. I stole a glance back to where the French guys were—they were happily ensconced in their own cloud of European smoke, sharing cigarettes with their neighbors.
I took a sip from my water bottle, covered my nose and mouth with my bandana, and resigned myself to being hot and sweaty for the rest of the ride. I dozed, dazed—I probably hallucinated!—and the hours passed. At one point, the man in the seat in front of me reached behind him, grabbed my water bottle, and turned back in his seat. I was so shocked by his move (and a little afraid of what might happen if I reacted), that I just stared at him without saying a word. Eventually, he gave it back to me—empty, of course.
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