A Reason to Believe_ Lessons From an Improbable Life - Deval Patrick [24]
I felt a new pride in America, too. I had always known the lump-in-the-throat patriotism when the national anthem was played at official occasions or when we said the Pledge of Allegiance at Cub Scout meetings. And certainly the tangible appreciation that people on the street expressed for America’s role in the Camp David Accords helped me see that our real power is moral authority. I was proud of that. Still am. But also in Cairo, for the first time in my life, I experienced what it was like to be seen as simply an American, not a category of American. Just as every traveler learns to think anew about home, it was the first time I was ever able to look back at my own home without the filter of race, to reflect on my country as a fully invested citizen, because that was how I was treated by Egyptians.
After several days, I took a train south, traveling along the Nile to Luxor, to see the Valley of the Kings, where some five hundred years ago tombs were built for royalty and nobles. I then headed farther south to Aswan, where I booked space on the open deck of a ferry to float south on Lake Nasser to the Sudanese border. The ferry consisted of several flatbed barges lashed together, groaning and listing under the weight of too many people and too much of their livestock and cargo. Even a small wave could have swamped us—which in fact has happened on occasion.
I was a curiosity, but not a scary one. Travelers, I was learning, bond quickly. We shared food, water, and tea, as well as conversation, and the calm of the other passengers surprised me. Still, the boat’s safety was clearly precarious. If we sank and drowned, no one would have known. My last message home was a newsy letter sent from the Aswan post office just before we boarded. But the other passengers did not seem afraid, so taking my cue from them, neither was I. The evening indeed brought peace, a relief from the day’s glaring sun and searing heat. The engine purred smoothly and the vessel rocked gently under shimmering stars. I slept soundly on deck.
The voyage took three days. We finally beached; and the crew, pointing south across the dunes toward absolutely nothing, announced we had arrived in Sudan. I strapped on my backpack and followed the others about a mile or two over the dunes to a small nineteenth-century building surrounded by desert, where a single train track marched bravely into the infinite sand and nameless heat. A narrow-gauge train sat idle and waiting. After a day or two of loading the train with everyone and everything from the barges, we set off south, through the Nubian Desert to Khartoum. The sand on the tracks, combined with the weight of the bodies and cargo, forced the train to a crawl. Dust billowed through the windows on gusts of hot air, mixing with the nutty brine of human odors and the shit smell of live chickens and guinea hens. We stopped five times each day so that the men could alight and pray.
We arrived in Khartoum many days later. Having gone more than a week without a bath, I looked like a piece of the dusty desert we had just crossed. Khartoum was a sprawling version of the tiny towns we had passed through—red mud-brick buildings with corrugated tin roofs, just more of them, punctuated by larger colonial edifices with red tile roofs that signaled officialdom. The occasional electric wire hung from a building’s edge, delivering power occasionally. Small white pickup trucks and market lorries (cargo trucks) shared the streets with donkeys, camels, bikes, and men in their gallabiyas and skullcaps. The chaotic din, especially in the marketplace (souk), and the pungent