“As soon as you arrive in Khartoum airport and they see you’re Syrian, the people standing outside the doors ask you if you’d like to go to Egypt: I’ll take you, I have the best price, I’ll sort you out, we have air-conditioned cars! We were happy that he was going to take us on an easy journey, but that kind of talk was only in the beginning. After that we discovered that all this was lies.”
The air-conditioned car turned out to be a pickup truck which drove on difficult roads through the mountains. Somewhere in the wilderness they stopped, and the passengers were ordered to get down from the car. The driver told them they had to pay him extra money, otherwise he would leave them there.
“We didn’t know what to do. We asked him, How? We paid the smuggler and he paid you! He said, I don’t have anything to do with that smuggler. You either pay, or I leave you here and go!”
When they could not collect the amount he demanded, he accused them of hiding their money. One young man protested and got a beating. They spent the night at that place, not knowing whether they would continue or be abandoned there. However, in the morning, the driver ordered them to board again and they departed. They were driving at a crazy speed and one elderly man fell off the truck. He was picked up and they continued to the Egyptian border. A police car spotted them, and they turned into the desert, driving at a reckless speed into the mountains, where they were hiding until the coast was clear. When they finally arrived in Aswan, Taher and his fellow travellers were relieved that this nightmare was over.
