Yesterday
evening, I took a bus to the fruit and vegetable market in Dahar. The journey
lasted an eternity and a bit more:
While
wonderful romantic Arabic pop music was playing from the loud speakers, the bus
driver determinedly drove through Hurghada’s nocturnal streets. Brightly lit
shops, scantily dressed tourists and their half-naked partners stroll in front
of shops and cafés, enjoying the mild temperatures and getting dazzled and
bewitched by the busy oriental atmosphere or by the dismantling smile of the
shop assistants and their language knowledge.
The
microbus hurries on, stops here and there because a passengers calls „ala gamb“,
because another one on the roadside gives a sign with his arm to get on the
bus. The brightly lit row of shops is scurrying past by as in an assembly line,
melting together to flashy photos. Some distance further on, there is another
view in the cold neon light: old and young, fat and slim, simple men in
traditional kaftans and white caps are sitting at shaky wooden tables, sipping
tea, playing backgammon and exchanging news. Children are jumping up and down barefoot
on the dirty sidewalk, playing, shouting, arguing. Elaborately piled mangoes,
grapes, pomegranates, potatoes, tomatoes and onions are waiting for customers
in small red and brightly lit stalls.
Three tall,
heavy men in traditional clothes climb into the bus. They hardly manage to
squeeze through the seats, jolting the other passengers while chatting loudly. The
fattest of them is narrating all kind of tales of which I can catch some words
only… until a young passenger exclaims: you’re a liar! The passengers are
grinning and I can hardly withhold laughing out loudly while the other one
continues shouting: you’re a liar! You’re a liar! Somewhere, the tall fat man
and his friends get off the bus, banging his head on the door, babbling and gabbling
on while walking away from the bus.
The movie
goes on: outside of the window pane, old, skinny men are sitting cross-legged
outside a mosque, smoking shisha, sternly glancing onto the street, into the
bus, out into the nowhere. They are always sitting here: in the day, at night,
in the morning, in the evening… waiting for work or something else that will
never come.
More shops,
furniture, cars, tools, fire extinguishers, brightly lit, the honking noise and
the still romantic Arabic music are mingling with each other into a dream, a
movie.
Outside, a
bar stops beside the microbus, it’s somehow familiar to me…. No, the other way
round: the bus stops beside the bar: terminal stop.
I would
miss it. Really, if I ever leave this place, I would miss all that…
