Khaled

I had a guardian angel yesterday.
He looks in his mid forties. Small, dark and very thin, he also looks like a very responsible man and maybe a bit too worn out by the hardships of life. And he is shy. He smiles shyly and excuses himself for the obstacles we encounter. As if it were his fault. His name is Khaled.

I met Khaled in one of the Customs building offices.

I had started the day as a participant to the "Tour de Freaks", freaking out, that is. After a trip to the Canadian embassy to request a recommendation letter for the Sudan embassy, I continued with a trip to the Ethiopian embassy. Afterwards I started a hopeless trip to the airport. I had the papers to get my bike box from Lufthansa Cargo but little hope to get it solved. For one thing it was quite late. The office was closing at 2pm and it was already 12:15pm when I got there. The day before I had been there only to find out that the whole Cargo Village was closed. Coptic Christmas holiday.

By the time I met Khaled I had successfully paid the required fee and got the paperwork solved in the Lufthansa Cargo office. That went very smooth and fast. A bit too smooth. Next I was supposed to go downstairs to the Customs Permit Office before heading to the Customs building. The Customs Permit office was closed and there was nobody around to ask for information.

A young man offered his help. The kind of person waiting for targets to get some bakhshish from. I ignored him. As I was leaving the building to look around he kept following me. I still ignored him. But he followed me to and up the Customs building stairs making all sorts of noises to catch my attention. This is one thing I hate: when people whistle or meaow or make whatever sounds to make me turn around. I become aggressive. After a while of this going on I got so mad that I yelled at him: "Look I am neither a cat nor a dog. F... off!" Not the best thing to burst out like this in an Arab country, but I had reached the limits of my patience. He finally gave up and went away. I was hissing. Maybe he was nice and helpful but I was so stressed out that I just could not stand his approach.

Having no idea whom to ask and which office to go to, I picked the first one. There were 3 people in the room: a man and a woman sitting at their desks and a man standing in front of the woman's desk. I went to the woman because she was closer to the door. She was talking on the phone. When I pulled out my papers and asked my question the man who was standing there eventually took them for a look. That's how I met Khaled.

Over the next 2 hours and a half the man ran around with and for me from counter to counter and from clerk to clerk, up and down stairs and in and out the building. I would follow him sheepishly, sit and wait when he told me to wait, pull out the money when he would turn to me and say "2 pounds, please", "80 pounds, please",etc. or hand him the passport when it was required.
I could see him getting tired and exasperated at times with the bureaucratic system. From time to time he would shyly apologize for the inconveniences.

Here is the list of fees/payments we went through (at a rate of 5.5 Egyptian pounds for 1 CAD):
10 pounds - some forms
1 pound - xerox copy of passport and visa pages
0.5 pound - xerox copy of correct visa page
6 pounds - some sort of a permit to enter the cargo area
2 pounds - ?
220 pounds - ?
2 pounds - ?
80 pounds - ?
5 pounds - tip for the man who brought the bike box on a trolley
10 pounds - tip for the guards for letting me in
5 pounds - tip for the men who carried the bike box outside of the area and to the sidewalk

While we were going from office to office the stack of papers and the number of signatures increased. I lost track of how many times we went up and down. At some point, to get the entrance permit we had to walk to another building a few hundred meters away and back.

It was 2:02pm and the place officially closed when I was sending a begging look to the man who had to sign my papers in order for us to get the bike box from the storage area.

Eventually he succeeded and I felt suddenly as if a great load had been taken off my head.

It was 2:58pm when two young men finally dropped the box on the sidewalk in front of the Cargo area. My taxi had disappeared. Well, I wasn't surprised at all to not find it there anymore, after almost 3 hours.

Khaled did not ask for money after the hours he spent running around and solving my issues. And when I insisted he said "It's a lot of money. Too much money." "Yes, I know it's a lot, but I've met so many Ali Babas who asked for money without doing anything. You've done so much for me today. You ran around for hours. You saved my life." He just nodded humbly and thanked me.
"Do you have children?" I continued. "Yes, three. 2 boys and a girl" and his face lit up with a huge happy smile. "Well, good luck to them and to you. And thank you very very much again." We only shook hands for goodbye but I really felt like hugging this man.

It took another 1 hour and 45 minutes to get from the airport to the Cataract hotel where I "delivered" the bike box to my dear friends' room. I felt exhausted in spite of not really doing anything today.

Boy, I long for the physical exhaustion! The healthy one, when your mind is free though your body hurts. When sleep takes over in no time and food tastes so much better. When water is the greatest luxury on earth.
Oh yeah, I know I don't have to wait for too long anymore.