Travel Reference
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'Well done!' he said with a dry smile. 'You dragged my brother home. He's usually too
busy to come and visit . . .'
'We didn't get it, Lev. The authorities shut down on us.'
We had spent the night in Moez's family home, in the centre of the dusty town, with
Awad and Ahmad camping outside with the camels. Now, we stood on the roadside, watch-
ing them disappear into the south - two old pirates who I'd miss enormously.
I turned to Mazar, who looked chagrined. 'What do you mean?'
'You don't have permission to walk over the border. They wouldn't agree to it. No for-
eigner's ever walked from Sudan into Egypt. It just isn't done. Not even the Sudanese do
it. We're forbidden from doing anything more than taking the ferry from here, all the way
up to Aswan.'
Aswan lay 375km across the border, at the very head of the lake, deep inside Egypt.
The Wadi Halfa ferry famously carried passengers all the way, but that had never been my
intent. I cursed, inwardly. There is nothing more problematic in Africa than a border cross-
ing.
'Normally,' I said, 'I'd try and sneak across at night, or . . . pay somebody off. Only, I
risked a sneaky crossing three years ago - when I was driving the ambulances to Malawi.
I ended up in an Egyptian jail. They deported me after that.'
'Things are different in Egypt now, Lev. You do things by the topic, or not at all.'
Mazar was right. Since the last time I had been to Egypt, the country had been trans-
formed by the revolutions of 2011 and 2013, both of which had removed presidents from
power. The nation I was about to enter was not one I knew, nor one I understood - not yet.
The consequences of appearing to be a risk to national security by making an illegal border
crossing didn't bear thinking about.
'What are the options?'
Moez said, 'It's Ramadan in two days . . . but there's a boat that leaves tomorrow after-
noon. After that, nobody knows when the next one will go. There may not be another one
until after Eid, and that's more than a month.'
'So it's take the ferry, or sit it out, and hope something changes . . .'
'You're welcome to stay, Lev.'
I knew I was; I had been welcome to stay in almost every village we had passed on the
way north. But Egypt was right there, so close I could almost touch it - the final country
on my way back home.
I wandered out into the dusty street, turning in the direction of the lake. The border was
tantalisingly near. I wanted to put my feet on Egyptian soil, wanted to know I was walk-
ing the final furlong, wanted to leave the contradictions of Sudan for something altogether
different.
