Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [45]
We flew through the sleeping city, tears streaming down our cheeks, past stark concrete buildings, going the wrong way down ancient one-way cobblestoned streets and through a city that was unlit except for the stoplights, which, to our driver, were mere decorations. At one police checkpoint, he sped through without hesitation even as the policemen blew their whistles and waved angrily at him to stop. A few minutes later, we arrived at an apartment complex.
Nassief Attallah, a tall, broad-shouldered man in his sixties, trotted downstairs wearing long striped pajamas and a red nightcap over his thick silver hair. Phillippe, his younger brother, followed, walking with a limp. Phillippe looked very much like Fahmy He said, “Welcome, welcome, welcome.” It was Fahmy’s voice. One phrase connected the families a world away, and everything suddenly seemed so much better.
Lena, Nassief’s wife, led us to our room, where Dave and I slept deeply on mattresses filled with sweet straw. In the midafternoon, I awoke to the exotic sounds of donkeys braying, car horns blaring, and a muezzin in a minaret calling Muslims to prayer over a loudspeaker. Still exhausted, I tried to turn over and fall back to sleep, but searing white desert light was streaming through sheer curtains beside my bed, so I got up and looked outside.
The world below was swirling with humanity. The men were dressed in Western-style clothes and long cotton shirts that looked like pajamas; some of the women were dressed in Western clothes too, but many wore long, heavy black chadors. Immediately below the window, women and children were selling pita bread stacked in open wagons, the children shooing off the flies with a straw brush. Cars were everywhere, completely disregarding traffic signals and people attempting to cross the street.
While we ate a delicious breakfast of warm, chewy pita bread, salty feta cheese, and homemade sweet date jam, Phillippe arrived and told us he had phoned the Egyptian Swimming Federation. There had been a mistake in our telex, and we had arrived a day earlier than expected. We were instructed to take a cab to the Continental Hotel, where we would be staying with the other foreign swimmers for twelve days. This would give us time to get over the jet lag and prepare for the race.
At the hotel, a throng of journalists and television crews greeted Dave and me as if we were rock stars. The press thought we had been avoiding them, and one journalist in particular was annoyed at me. He was a short man with a thick black mustache and greasy black hair plastered to his head. He said his name was William Amen and he was a journalist for the largest newspaper in Egypt. He started following me around, asking me a number of questions over and over again. At first I thought he didn’t understand English very well, and since I was the only American who had been invited to the race, I wanted to represent my country to the best of my ability. I wanted to make sure that he understood me, so I politely answered his questions over and over again. Finally, I broke away to deposit my luggage in the room Dave and I would be sharing.
A few minutes later, Fahmy’s cousin Morad Luca, a very wide, bald, and friendly man, arrived. He was one of the top defense attorneys in Egypt and he spoke a little English. Phillippe had called him and told him that we needed his help, so he’d arrived to take us to the Egyptian Swimming Federation’s old steamboat, anchored on the Nile River. It doubled as the federation’s offices and sports club. While I went back to the room to change into my swimsuit and sweats, Morad phoned