Friday April 14, 2006

Saqqara day.

I called and woke Mohab up at 9:00 as requested. He was at the door by 10:30. We hung out for a bit, had coffee, and breakfast, and then headed out.

When we got there the police stopped us at the gate, asking where I was from. Then asked for his I.D. and we went through the usual questioning. He got taken out of the taxi and into the office for even more questioning. They are brutal about this touring thing. He came back to the cab, all was well, and off we went to the ticket booth, Saqqara is more spread out than Giza. We got back in the cab to go back up and it wouldn't start, it was out of gas. There was a man there waiting for family from Germany, he offered to drive us up, turns out he is from Toronto. He gave Mohab his number so that we could call him when finished and he would drive us back down.

We spent a lovely day strolling around the ruins, chatting and laughing. He is like me, he likes to do and see things. It was his first time at Saqqara too, so it was something for us both. You can see Giza from there, which is sooo cool. We didn't get a chance to see everything, they closed early, forgot.... Friday.

When we called our 'friend' for the ride back down he was gone, he apologized because his family couldn't make it so he left early. We bummed a ride down to the road and took a taxi back to Cairo. We passed Giza, I gave a last look and said my farewell to the thing that I came to see.

We went out for dinner on the way back home. After dinner we walked home, he bought me a rose on the way. He dropped me off and he went to his place to shower. Ditto for me - hot day in the desert. We had no hot water, so instead of a cool shower, it was an ice cold one.

Mo came back at around 10:00 for our farewell party. Rashwan showed up a bit later. I gave him a pair of my white socks to remember me by (was an ongoing joke from the first party). We didn't do much, had a few beers, chatted. Not many movie titles this night, we were all pretty tired. Rashwan left rather early, and as soon as he left Yasser told Mohab that he had to leave too. He didn't want to, but I said that he might as well, I was really tired. When he was leaving, I did the one thing I tried to hold back on for so long, I kissed him. It was really quite something, because we had held it back for so long. He left, and I went to bed.