North to Qena, to Sohag, to Asyut, to Minya. I try to dart between the red and black police fences that block the road, but I am seen, and a large man in a white uniform stands in front and points for me to pull over. I wait for an hour and am told a car is here to escort me. A blue van with six officers inside pulls up and I am told to go. I ride on and the blue van crawls a few metres behind.
The view from the road is much as before. Pink flowers sprout from overgrown Nile Roses on the banks of the canal that flanks the road. Thick jets of foaming water gush from generator-powered pumps, down narrow channels, to turn the desert green. In the fields men in jalibiyas and turbans sift through the soil on hands and knees, planting seeds. The blue van hums behind me. Boys swimming in the canal yell out as I pass and splash the water with their hands. Men sit awkwardly on reluctant donkeys, trotting between the fields, and further off, a train hoots and groans along the old tracks. The blue van draws level as I take the flyover into Qena and hums slowly behind until I find a hotel.
The sun is strong when I walk into the temple grounds just outside town. Amidst the date palms there are fallen statues and collapsed sandstone colonnades, and ahead, six tall stone pillars, each with a pharaoh's head at its centre, support the broad temple entrance. In the shadows within, an old man, with grey stuble and a white turban, sweeps the stone slabs between the rows of glossed columns. There are long tunnels of grey stone, bathed in harsh fluorescent light, engraved with funerary boats, sun gods, jackal heads. I climb onto the roof and look down at the ruins, and clamber down into dark chambers beneath the temple floor.
I leave Qena and at the checkpoint a blue van is waiting. I ride north, 150 km, to Sohag, along the canal, past lines of adobe houses, many decorated with paintings of mosques and boats and stars, strewn amongst the fields and up the desert ridge behind. Beneath the palms, men dangle fishing lines into the water, and fat, smooth-haired water buffalo chomp on huge piles of maize stalks. It is beautiful when the road rejoins the Nile; there are slender canoes floating near the bank, and palms reflected in the still water, and sand mountains to the east, full of caves and dark doorways carved high into the rock. I want to stop and take a photograph and sit by the river for a moment, but the blue van is just behind me and I don't stop. The sun is scorching and my mouth is dry and my legs feel heavy. I stand on the pedals and speed off, trying to outrun the escort, absurdly.
The blue van stops for petrol and I think about turning into a field and hiding and riding on alone. I imagine the conversation between Mahmoud, the general at the last post, and the officers in the van: 'You lost him! Six of you, in a van. One white man, on a bicycle! How? You imbeciles!' Mahmoud is fat and smokes Rothmans and probably would have slapped one of them and huffed and puffed into his walkie-talkie. It makes me smile, but I stay on the road and soon the blue van is humming behind, just as before, and I pedal on.
It is mid-afternoon when I join the flyover into the city. I stare out at crowded tar roads criss-crossing through rows of scruffy concrete towers, ten stories high, with steel stumps protruding towards the sky; foundations of another floor that was never built. I am stopped at a checkpoint and told to follow another van to a hotel. It is hot and I am tired as I dodge scooters and honking taxis, and kids running up and asking my name, while I try to tail the police. When I go out for food later, a man in a shirt and jeans, with a revolver tucked into his belt, follows me and sits on the table behind, smoking shisha. He leaves as I leave and watches me climb the stairs to the little hotel.
I take two days to ride the 250 km to Minya, sleeping in Asyut between. I am chaperoned all the way and the constant police presence engulfs my mind, the riding, the land around me. A busy stream of dwellings boards the road and sometimes I hear a train crashing past. For long stretches I stare at the tar just above the handlebars and try to blank out the humming van behind. In towns, tuc-tucs swarm along the road, blasting their horns, and tall camels, so overloaded with maize they are only identifiable by their soft padded-feet, plod calmly through the traffic.
On the outskirts of Minya I take a little bridge over the canal and turn off into a dusty street full of carts and bicycles and rusty old Egyptian cars. The blue van blasts its horn and I rattle over the bumpy stones, out of sight. I ride on through the little stone streets, up narrow alleys, past fruit stands and a thousand flies, and blacksmiths hammering sheets of metal, and dark butchers shops, filled with thick legs of raw meat, hanging, wrapped in cloth that is turning pink from the flesh within. A man on an old bicycle asks where I go and leads me to the centre. He is old and has a huge bag of grapes dangling heavily from the handlebars. Each time he hits a bump or a hole or swerves to avoid a scooter or a football, I think he will topple over, but he stays upright, and soon we are on a wide tarmac boulevard, overshadowed by a line of tall buildings, in the city centre.
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