Egypt's desert whales
Driving through the desert in search of whales sounds counterproductive, but I had been assured that if I hired a jeep and drove seventy kilometres from Egypt’s Faiyum Oasis out into the Sahara this is indeed what I would find. If this was a ruse it was a clever one, and UNESCO were in on it.
The cream coloured 4x4 arrived at nine AM. Perfectly on time – a good sign. The driver, Mohammed, was a youngish man, perhaps in his early thirties, sporting a thick goatee beard and wearing a red and white chequered headscarf. He smiled and shook my hand. He had a confident air about him; this was reassuring as effectively, out in the desert, my life would be in his hands.
The vehicle was less reassuring.
The Independent & Heritage Key
June 14, 2012
© Garry J Shaw
Of unknown origin, it looked as if it had been driven from Russia the long way around the planet. On one side it was painted with the words, ‘Land Croser’, and on the other, ‘Land Roser’; a leaping leopard was emblazoned upon the front doors on both sides, but the image to the right had faded until only the leopard’s spots remained to form its feline shape.
The vehicle was clearly the closest a machine could get to being un-dead, having been resurrected again and again by Egyptian shamans of engineering. A young boy of thirteen or fourteen sat in the front passenger seat; apparently he was coming along for the ride as Mohammed’s apprentice. This was again reassuring; it meant that Mohammed had done this sort of thing before, at least enough times to act as a teacher.
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