There were too many people. There were people, chaos and pushing. There were some blows and fights on a ramp where children tried to load wheelbarrows that the men could not hold.. Shouting, many screams. There were sacks and bags next to boxes of televisions, bicycles and microwave. There was a narrow fence and a door at the back.. There was hardly any light when crossing it and the noise led you to a staircase where meat was accumulated.. There were some cabins that did not belong to us because we had not paid for them and there was an air gap that was the way. There was a deck and a captain who for five euros reserved us a corner where we wouldn't get lost..
There was a wait that did not decide to begin or end
There was a group of foreigners lying with their bags in the middle of the tumult. There was a wait that did not decide to begin or end. There was a sunset and a siren. There was movement of the great ship and there were hundreds of people bending their heads and bodies to pray to a God who blessed our departure with some dry desert wind..
There was a canteen where the drinks were fresh and decent portions of powder mash were served.. There were dirty bathrooms. There was a dark night where the sky lit up in the waters. There was silence and our laughter and shouts at a dinner where we exchanged dreams, a group of friends so recent that there was barely time to ask their names.. There was some alcohol hidden, sin of sleepless nights, that we sipped in case the night did not fall asleep.
There was a sack and a cement mattress on which the bones complained. There was the Big Dipper, sharp, over our heads again. There was a captain who decided to play music at midnight in his cabin, the one we slept next to on the deck, and that climbed on my head to spit at the horizon. There were broken dreams, feeling of tiredness and a certain defeat for not being able to turn off your gaze. There was silence. That was, a lot of silence.
There was a sack and a cement mattress on which the bones complained
There was a dawn so slow that it seemed that the night began again and not the day. There was an immense sun floating over the waters. There was a wonderful temple, with a mythical name, in which to say goodbye to that Egypt that met my gaze at the wrong time. There was immense heat and a lot of people who approached us under the shelter of a shadow until we were almost hanging from the side.. There were green waters, without oxygen, as if we were sailing through a recent lawn.
At 12 At midday it was so hot that our skin was crying., already burned. There was finally a small port, somewhat more orderly than the one from before. 24 hours. There was a customs office full of people and a man who helped us jump through doors. There was a desert so dry and so hot that life transpired. There was a hotel, to give it a name that you understand to imagine what there was, where the rooms were not cleaned so as not to get them dirty.
There was a dirty mattress, a dirty cloth, some dirty holes that were the bathroom and a fan and a device that simulated an air conditioner. There was a place to sleep that seemed like a lot for a place where it didn't seem like the dead could sleep.. There was a balcony from which I could see dusty streets and lizards.. There was an honest canteen in our hotel, with honest people where we ate honestly.
There was a balcony from which I could see dusty streets and lizards.
The Nile was massacred again. There was a smell of sewage and drainage of misery. He had rotted remains of animals and huge crows flying over our heads with their throats screaming arid clouds. There was again a slow night and the air so thick that you used to block their ears. There were dozens of little guests in my room, darkness and silence and the unexpected cold of that strange machine. I had my best night of the trip, in which I forgot everything for almost 10 hours, for those things of not expecting anything.
There was a dawn again among the dead. Another walk in which to follow the course of the void and its things. A river that does not move for fear of vomiting in despair. There was finally a car again with us. some suitcases, some farewells to good perishable friends. There was a beautiful desert in front of us that we began to get lost in.. And there was a sign reminding us that we had survived Wadi Halfa, beginning of sudan. Before, we leave Aswan, from the waters of the Egyptian Nile. We enjoyed those lifeless days between so little of us and so much of them.
