The wild ride

Back in my room for a few hours of rest before dinner, I recline on the bed, as Cleopatra would most likely do, and cogitate on my next move. The doomed ankle is not deflating. It’s the size of a grapefruit and my leg is now joining in the fun by starting to swell as well. I could run, screaming, out into the streets, or I could call a doctor. Since I can’t run, let alone walk, I opt for the doctor. 

Yasmin arranges the call with the hotel’s front desk, and before long, there’s a knock at my door. Gee, that’s good service. Sitting in the wheelchair, I open the door and am confronted by an incredibly good-looking doctor. Now that’s really good service! Looking into those gorgeous eyes, I get lost. As I back away in the wheelchair to allow him to enter the room, I forget the ankle and blither on about how I saw the pyramids and the Sphinx and what a great country Egypt is.

 Assuming I’m delirious with pain, he takes a look at the monstrous foot and gently advises me that I need to go to the hospital for X-rays and a strong painkiller. I regain my senses and crash back to Earth. Did he say hospital?

 

Okay. Fine. I’ll take the X-rays but pass on the painkiller since the foot continues to bask in a state of blissful numbness. Nice Hotel Doctor leaves to make arrangements with the front desk, and minutes later, a hotel employee wheels me down to the lobby. 

I arrive just as my tour group is gathering, ready to leave for dinner. I’m briefly tempted to make a run (or is it make a wheel) for the bus and join my companions for the meal. Thoughts of escape vanish however, when Daniel, one of our Egyptian tour guides, takes a firm hold of the wheelchair while Nice Hotel Doctor explains the situation to him. A taxi has been ordered. Daniel will come along to help translate, keep me company, and make sure that, with the curse still looming over my head, I don’t somehow become a catalyst for the next plague of Egypt. 

With Cairo being a modern city, I should logically assume that we’re going to a modern hospital, and not to a tent in the desert to consult a medicine man wearing a feathered headdress. But since logic doesn’t always prevail in moments of stress, my overactive imagination uses this excuse to take little side trips away from common sense with visions of sand, camels, and Bedouins.

The taxi arrives and I revert back to coherent thinking. The taxi is a car, not a camel. That’s good news because, for the desert tent destination, we’d need the camel. Besides, Nice Hotel Doctor isn’t sporting any feathers and he did indeed mention X-rays. I’m almost certain that tents don’t regularly come equipped with radiological gadgetry. I hop into the taxi and we depart.

A wild ride ensues. For those who have never been to Egypt, traffic in Cairo is insane. Everyone drives according to the Crochet Principle. That is, everyone weaves in and out of everyone else’s lane without warning. The right of way goes to whoever wedges the nose of their vehicle in front of the other’s first. From a bird’s eye view, it looks as if the cars are knitting a doily. U-turns in the middle of four lane highways are not uncommon. Pedestrians add to the chaos by crossing higgledy-piggledy everywhere, including the four lane highways. Traffic lights exist but are obviously there merely to provide colourful illumination, as they are totally ignored. 

Then there’s the honking. It resounds, non-stop, in all different tones and rhythms. “It’s how they communicate”, I’m told. That must be true since the constant staccato of beeps and toots reminds me of messages transmitted in Morse code. I’m tempted to commandeer the taxi’s horn and blast the traffic jam with a rendition of Darth Vader’s theme from Star Wars in an effort to clear the way to the hospital before my swelling leg explodes.

Indeed, the camel and desert tent would have been way easier and less nerve-wracking, even with attempts by the camel to dissolve members of our little party.