Canal of Dreams

Waterloo, Ontario

14 October, 2016

Mr. Fraser, my grade 9 geography teacher, was a short man with short brown hair. Most days, he wore one of a seemingly unlimited number of garish, flowery shirts. He spoke with a soft nasal voice, and had a ship’s bell on his desk that he tapped with a small wooden rod when he wanted to get the class’ attention.

Most of our class time was spent colouring maps. Some of my class mates were especially good at it. They would start with a dark outline around a particular region, and then fill it evenly using a subtly lighter shade, all without leaving any visible marks from their pencil crayons. I was a more haphazard with my colouring. I never mastered the gentle art of using a rubbing the paper with a rounded tip, using oval strokes to get a smooth field of colour. I did my best to colour inside the lines, which means there were times when I did not. My indifference was rewarded at the end of term with a middling mark. Fortunately, I have never been questioned about my map colouring skills in any subsequent job interview.

I wonder if kids are still subjected to this exercise in school, or whether it has passed into history like cursive writing and mental arithmetic? If you were to ask my young nephew for a map of the world, I think he would hand me his cell phone with some image the size of a large postage stamp (another relic of auld lang syne). Computer maps may excel in accuracy, and you can scroll in any direction for as long as you like, but they do not encourage the reader to stare at a certain spot and imagine what it must be like in whatever faraway land your gaze settles on. Open a good paper atlas of the word, and find Egypt. Follow the Nile south from Cairo, past Asyut, past Sohag. Look to where the river abruptly meanders to the east before curling back and resuming its north-south course at Luxor. That’s the Qena bend. On the east side of the river, find the agricultural road that follows the course of the Nile. It runs beside an irrigation canal, which some maps show, while others do not.

Now, a canal is not a line on a map. It is a blue-green watercourse in a vast sandy beige landscape. Its shores are green where date trees and shrubs have enough water to survive the heat of summer. The line where canal meets shore is smudged with dark green reeds that reach twice as high as a person stands in order to cast their seeds in the wind. The reeds are topped by fine light brown tassels. When you drive past them, they are easy enough to see, but there is something about them that makes them look blurry and indistinct. Rubbing your eyes does no good. The plant fibres are simply too thin to make them out individually. And so, when passing them at speed, they can only appear as a frustrating blur.

Frustrating, that is, until you decide that it’s OK for them to be blurry. A reed by a canal owes you, the viewer, nothing. It is under no obligation to reveal itself to you. Just go with it. It won’t be the only thing in your life that you can see, but not fully comprehend.

The road beside the canal is paved, but the car will still throw you back and forth because of the speed bumps embedded in it every couple of kilometres. There are more of them where the road skirts a village or at police checkpoints that mark regional boundaries. There are no traffic lights or “stop” signs to impede your progress, just the speed bumps, and sometimes people crossing the road, alone or in in pairs, on foot or donkey. Every type of vehicle uses the road: motorcycles, cars, minivans (the local system of shared transit), pickup trucks laden with large bunches of unripe bananas or red bricks or corroding tanks of welding gas. Enormous transport trucks roar through as well, filled with who-knows-what, their contents hidden by cheerful advertising graphics.

Occasionally, a car with foreign tourists rolls through. I wonder what the locals make of that. Children will wave if they notice us. Teenagers will too, but adults seldom bother. I like to wave back. For one, it makes me feel important (why deny it?), but also I don’t want to anyone to think that the outside world isn’t friendly and human, just like they are. Once, I waved to a young man by the side of the road, but received only a sullen stare in return. Did he see me? Was it wrong of me to wave first?

Maybe he was simply not in the mood for waving to simpering tourists. Who would be?

I sank a little deeper in my seat.

* * *

Scenery passes, and keeps on passing.

Weeks ago, we were in the north, driving between Giza and Dashur. The agricultural road there also runs beside a canal, but it couldn’t be more different from this one that runs from Luxor to Esna. In the north, the canal is sluggish, and often its banks are covered in garbage. In places, the canal is covered with broad green weeds that give the impression of health, but if you look more closely, you can see they obscure a floating layer of trash below. Somewhere near Saqqara, I saw a dead horse floating on its side with snow white egrets perched upon it.

Here in the south, the canal flows strong and clear. That much is plain even from the window of a speeding car. When you look out, away from shore, you can see the shape of the water’s surface – spreading and puddled – where it reflects the brightness of the sky. In places, ripples suggest unseen turbulence. Sand bars? Unseen rocks? The sun’s glare is too strong to make out anything more.

The sun shines in the sky, but sparkles on water. It’s mesmerizing. Always changing, and yet always the same dazzling brightness.

On the far bank, a man has brought a herd of sheep herd to the water for washing. He stands waist-deep in the canal, rubbing one animal’s back. The other sheep, a mass of black and white, watch from the shore.

* * *

There’s always some activity where the road crosses a local street. Often, you can see groups of men, each dressed in a grey or brown galabiya, each sitting idly on a painted wooden bench under the shade of palm trees. Teenagers play nearby if there isn’t any traffic, running on foot, or riding on bicycles, darting from one side of the road to the other, swooping like finches.

At one intersection, I saw a man standing in the road. He wore a dark galabiya which was spotted with patches of sandy dust. His hair was long, curly and uncared for. It was the colour of his hair that caught my eye. Light brown. Almost all Egyptian men have black hair. It’s a rule that can’t be escaped until the grey years of middle age. But this man had brown hair. Wild brown hair. I stared at him as our car passed, and for a moment, our eyes locked and he stared back. I expected an indifferent glance. but instead, found his focused and penetrating gaze. Its clarity was unnerving. The car lurched as it hit a speed bump, tossing my head forward, breaking the contact. Although we saw each other for less than a second, that brief moment has stayed with me. I wonder if he gave me any more than a passing thought?

* * *

Over on the far bank, a passenger train approaches at speed then passes swiftly. The carriages are silver and worn. The train leads with ones marked as second class, followed by shabbier third class ones. In second class, there is air conditioning. In third, the windows are open to the hot summer wind. There is no sign of first class.

The train passes with a hissing roar that is mostly lost in the distance across the canal. And then only the tracks remain. When the angle is right, the sun glints off the rails which must be highly polished under the passing wheels.

Many of the larger towns have rail yards and platforms. Many of the platforms look new. The yards do not. The first yard I saw had at least one siding which was home to the decaying shells of disused tankers and freight cars. Rusted, and with gaping holes in their sides, they looked as if they had been abandoned there decades before. I saw a small two-story brick building that looked to be the same vintage. It had been painted a number of times, to little effect. The ground floor windows had been covered by plywood; the upper windows were uncovered, but had no glass. I was ready to assume that it too had been left derelict until I noticed a young man in a window, leaning his elbow on the sill. His body was in shade, making it difficult to tell what he was doing, if anything. I imagined that he was staring into space, lost in thought. Perhaps he was listening to the radio.

Another city, another rail yard. And another identical two-story brick building. Only the first one was obviously occupied. The rest were empty, or were occupied only by ghosts in search of shelter from the noonday sun.

* * *

The canal ends at the Esna locks. I lost sight of the rail line on the outskirts of Aswan, the last Egyptian city before you reach Sudan. I like to tell people that Aswan is my favourite place in Egypt. It’s quiet, despite being a city. The air is clear. The Nile is clean. Almost everyone lives on the east bank where block after block of apartment buildings reach up from the corniche into the eastern hills. From there you can look back to the date palms and ficus trees at the water’s edge, and then to the golden cliffs on the west bank. That view has not changed much in hundreds of years. Thousands of years. I am just a visitor here, someone passing through. Come back in a week, and I’ll be gone, but the hills will remain. The sun will still cast shadows as it moves across the sky. Chirping birds will still greet the morning and sing the fall of night.

I love watching the Egyptian countryside as we drive though it. With nothing in particular to do, you’re free to take it in, without judgement. What do you see? What do you notice? Remember it if you can. Let it remind you of who you are. Let it change you if you need changing. And when you come out the other side, don’t worry about the next thing. Just be here for a moment, and be content with your own sense of wonder.

How can water taste so sweet?

How can a warm breeze ease all care?

How can something so peaceful be so exciting?