I NOTE with some alarm that Daniel Robinson, editor of The Lonely Planet Guide to Cambodia, has announced he will not be returning to that unfortunate country to update the guide because of the danger of ending up in a shallow grave or becoming a captive of the Khmer Rouge.
My sympathies are entirely with him for I, too, have been imprisoned against my will in a strange country, without food or drink and with only mosquitoes and other prisoners for company, and know it's not the sort of thing a traveller wants to bring on himself. You see, I once tried to transit in Cairo airport.
I had arrived at the airport after midnight from Tel Aviv to be greeted by the customs welcoming committee, led by a large grizzled chap who looked alike he hadn't missed a meal since the Arab Israeli War. I told him I was planning to stay at the airport to catch my early morning flight, although I did have a visa, thank you.
"Pass pot, pliss," he said, compulsory fag hanging from the corner of his mouth. I gave him my passport, ostentatiously pointing to the multiple entry visa which entitled me to enter his lovely country if I so chose and to enjoy the delights of a Cairo hotel for all of, oh, five hours. The passport disappeared. I waited for him to pull it from behind his ear or out of his companion's hat but it didn't materialise. It was gone and I wasn't getting it back.
Attitude of Superiority
There are a number of options for the foreign visitor in situations like this. One is to rant and rail at the ways of Arabs, confirming their impression of Europeans as weak willed, emotional and only good for buying postcards and antique scarabs of dubious authenticity.
The second option is to assume an attitude of superiority, which usually involves tapping hard on the counter with a rattan cane while demanding to speak to "Number One fellah" in pidgin English. This sort of thing has led, in the past, to cultural misunderstandings, such as the Indian Mutiny and the Boxer Rebellion. The third option is to keep quiet and wait to see what happens.
I kept quiet and waited to see what happened.
What happened was that managed to lose my ticket as well as my passport. "Ticket, pliss," said our man, hand waving in a general "give it here" gesture. Remembering old adages about not throwing good money after bad I held a tight grip on my ticket and pointed out that I hadn't got my passport back yet. The customs official's eyes glittered and his bored looking companions perked up a bit.
"GIF ME YOUR TICKET. PLISS!" he bellowed. I gave him the ticket. It went the way of my passport, unsurprisingly, and, I was told to stay in the arrivals lounge, "lounge" being a gratuitously unjustified term for the collection of plastic seats, and ashtrays of which I was to be the sole occupant.
At this point my luggage was trundling along the baggage carousel beyond the lounge getting a lonely, repetitive tour of the arrivals hall. Since I didn't want this to become an accompanied tour of Cairo I slipped a handler some baksheesh (a bribe to you and me) and, bags duly recovered, prepared to spend an uncomfortable night with Egyptian customs.
An hour or so later my uneasy rest was broken by a new arrival. A dapper looking Arab wearing a spotless white shirt and Ray Ban sunglasses entered the lounge. Everyone perked up a bit. My passport and tickets were handed over to him and, after a cursory glance, were stuffed into his pocket. "Come with me, pliss," he said. Bags in hand, I duly followed him.
An unmarked white van, with what looked like one of the three bears in the driver's seat, stood outside. My escort opened a side door and motioned me inside, the interior being conspicuously empty of any fittings, including seats. I squatted uncomfortably on the floor and we set off, our noticeably hirsute driver speeding merrily across the deserted runways.
I was, to put it mildly, not entirely happy about this latest development. Speeding across foreign airports in the dead of knight in an unmarked van does not a happy traveller make. I had seen Midnight Express, in which some very nasty things happened to a chap who failed to see eye to eye with some Turkish customs officials, and I was not particularly anxious to collaborate with Oliver Stone on a similar screenplay.
We eventually arrived at an unmarked door where I was escorted to a sparsely furnished room guarded by one of the ubiquitous grizzled customs officials and a bored looking Egyptian soldier, who whiled away the time twirling his machinegun by its strap, scratching himself with the barrel and generally treating the weapon with a health endangeringly casual disregard.
Also in the room were a bunch of Palestinians who were trying to get a taxi to Gaza, no less, shared Arab taxis being the most popular option for the no budget traveller in the Middle East. They had been there for 16 hours and were no nearer to Gaza, or even the taxi rank; than they had been when they arrived.
State of the Art
During my tame in Egypt and Israel I had encountered only the odd, lost looking mosquito upon which to test my state of the art repellent. I couldn't figure out where the rest of the bugs had gone until now: they were all in this room in Cairo airport waiting to feed on me. I tried the repellent. They loved it, buzzing animatedly to each other as if to say: "Try this one, everybody, it's got sauce on it."
After an hour or two of conversation with the Palestinians about how nasty the Israelis were, about now nasty the Egyptians were, and about how nice the Irish and the Palestinians were, a bundle of clothes, which had been lying in a corner making the place look untidy, suddenly sprouted legs and transformed itself into two Indians.
The Indians were trying to get to Libya, again by taxi. They had been in the room for three days and had run out of food, money and cigarettes on the second day. All we needed now were a couple of skeletons hanging from the wall and our little dungeon would have been complete.
I had more or less resigned myself to missing my flight when a worried looking Air France official appeared at the door, inquiring of my whereabouts. Soon after, the biggest Arab I had ever seen wandered in and picked up my bags, looked at me as if wondering briefly whether to pick me up as well, and then proceeded on his way with me lagging behind.
My passport and ticket were returned, via the Air France official, and, 30 minutes later, I was drinking a glass of Air France wine while Cairo faded into the distance. If the windows had opened, I'd have dropped the empty bottle on its customs officials.