It was from the northern steppe that their fortune would come, their adventure, the miraculous hour which once in a life falls to each man’s lot. Because of this remote possibility which became more and more uncertain as time went on, grown men lived out their lives pointlessly here…
-The Tartar Steppe, Dino Buzzati
Three hundred Sudanese guineas for forty days work, plus whatever Muhammad the Miskeen could clear for selling his hashi in Binban, assuming it would live to the end. Call that a fortune? He did, and so did Masood and Adam Hamid. It was also for the adventure of it all, of arriving in Africa’s largest city, its population almost equal to their entire country’s, straight from the desert, of trading the camel trail for the Nile corniche, their bed rolls for the sheets of the Semiramis (if only just the thought of them), their aseeda bowl for a platter of lamb chops- and yes, these were within reach, for I invited them all out to my favorite kebab joint in Bab al-Luk.
And no, it was not pointless if fortune did not strike on that northern steppe. At the dawning of every day out there, they were witness to the miraculous hour, when black turned to pink, then red, then orange, then white under the sun’s glare- “And by the dawn when it breathes”, says the Quran- and the long ride to Cairo began again.