Bad Ambassadors

Freight Fright

Ben and I only had one major argument during the year, and this is how it happened. Mahmoud and Haithem had intended to intercept us both on our way home from school one afternoon. However, Ben had woken up that morning with flu-like symptoms and had stayed at home, so I was walking back by myself when we crossed paths. After I had explained where Ben was, Mahmoud suggested going with them.

"I can't," I said.

"Come on!" Mahmoud demanded. "Have a good time with us."

"I should get back to Ben."

"Ben is a big man, ya know. He can look after himself. He's probably just sleeping anyway."

"He might need me for something."

"Come with us for one hour. What is one hour?"

I deliberated for about a minute before bowing to the pressure: "One hour!"

The whole tram ride downtown was tainted by an anxiety to get back to Ben that I just couldn't shake. In the city centre, I walked and talked with them, trying to be enthusiastic, but I kept glancing at my watch, and Mahmoud eventually picked up on the signs and suggested taking a minibus back. This just made matters worse for me as I explained to them that I couldn't justify the expense, realising that it meant taking the slow tram again all the way back to Seouf. We had wandered close to some train tracks, at which point, Mahmoud's eyes suddenly lit up, and he began to jabber in Arabic to Haithem.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Ya know," he replied, "we could take the train."

"A train?"

I followed them over to a rail yard where the steel tracks overlapped like spaghetti strands, the weeds grew up through disorderly piles of sleepers and various freight cars stood around idle. "You mean a free ride!" I said as they beckoned me over to a freight train that was preparing to leave and climbed up onto the back of it.

In the movies, freight trains are normally moving when people hop onto them, and they have to be fairly cautious about being spotted. However, we had to wait for about forty-five minutes before it finally left, and when I asked whether we should hide ourselves, Mahmoud replied, "No! Nobody cares. This is Egypt."

I was pretty excited, but as the train started to pick up speed, I asked Mahmoud, probably for about the third time, about getting off.

He laughed. "You worry too much, Stuart. Just relax. There'll be plenty of stops."

Half an hour later, however, after the freight had passed through several districts without stopping once, Mahmoud's smile dropped, and his brow began to knit. Not long afterwards, the freight began to veer away from the familiar city sights, heading for the outskirts. Every so often Mahmoud craned his head around the sides of the caboose as if he was trying to get his bearings. Haithem had been quiet for a while.

"Where d'you think it's going to?" I hollered over the chugging.

Mahmoud shrugged.

"Please don't tell me it's going to Cairo."

Mahmoud was chewing his finger nails.

"It's going to Cairo, isn't it? That's a three hour journey!"

"I'm going to jump," Mahmoud declared.

Haithem tutted, but moments later, he too was peering down at the tracks and assessing the risks.

The train must've been travelling at 40 miles per hour at least. I shook my head at them both. "No way! You'll break your bones if you jump."

Mahmoud stared back wide-eyed, twitching. "I'm going to jump!" His voice was brittle with emotion. And there it was: The paper-thin mask gone.

"It's simple," I told them. "We just have to stay on, even if it means we end up in Cairo."

Mahmoud gripped the handrail and began rocking as if psyching himself to leap.

"Stop!" I gripped his arm. "Listen to me. I'll pay for the trip back for all of us. OK? It's not worth hurting yourselves."

The stand-off ended moments later when the train finally started to slow down. It was at a crawl when we leapt off, and then Mahmoud was all smiles and laughter.

It was well into the evening before we managed to get back to our neighbourhood. Ben was up and about when I entered the flat alone. "Where've you been?" he demanded. I tried to explain, hoping that the story might downplay the fact that I'd got back so late, but my delivery was robbed by his cold stares, and at the end, he raised his voice at me. "I had NO idea where you were, and to think that you were off GALLIVANTING around with your friends!"

Instead of apologising unequivocally and leaving it like that, I felt injustice at the assumption that I'd gone without giving him a second thought given that I had, so I went on the defensive: "But you were too ill to come anyway."

"I could've needed your help for all you knew!"

We carried on this verbal volley for a little while longer before turning our backs on each other and storming off to our respective bedrooms.

It was entirely my fault, of course, and I would have felt the same had it been the other way around.

When Ben and I caught up more recently, we laughed about all this when he admitted that he was actually jealous that we had freight hopped without him.