Nevertheless, my reception was far from courteous, the Minister constantly interrupting the proceedings and insisting that such demands [by a foreigner to travel in the Sudan for the purpose of exploration] were never made nor granted. Thereupon my friend interjected, “But your Excellency, the Doctor is not going to Zagazig!”
-Wilhelm Junker, Travels in Africa in the Years 1875 to 1886
I’d never been to the flyspeck Egyptian town of Zagazig and don’t want to go now. Nor do I want to go back to the even smaller flyspeck of Hameed, the last Sudanese border post, and have to talk again to the policeman Ahmad Diyāb. My travel permit didn’t help, nor my letter of introduction from Hajj Bashir, nor my bowing and scraping and calling him Ya Dābit!, O Officer! Maybe I should have told him I wasn’t going to Zagazig.