One early morning in 1999.......Cairo, Egypt

It was an early morning pickup for our return flights home from Cairo, Egypt back to the US. I think there were 10 of us packed into this minivan with our luggage tied to the top of the vehicle.

It was sometime between 5:00am to 5:30am so it was still dark outside. The enthusiastic Egyptian driver showed up on time and off we went. Our hotel, the Pyramid Park Hotel was just a mile down from the incredibly amazing and super gigantic Pyramids of Giza.

Seemed like everybody in Egypt drove in the dark, to preserve battery life, nobody turned on their headlights at night while driving. I remembered our convoy of 4 tour buses drove through the Sinai Peninsula in the dark. We were escorted by 3 Egyptian police cars. One in the front, one followed at the back and another police car drove by our side. We all drove in the dark. I was told this was done not only to preserve car battery life but also to avoid being robbed by bandits. Some people were afraid of such implications. I thought it was an adventure and eventually overcame by fatigue. I slept through most of the journey across the Sinai Peninsula.  The only thing I remembered driving across the Sinai Peninsula was a stop we made in the middle of the desert, it was a sandwich shop for tourists to get a bite, to use the washroom, buy snacks, etc. There were men outside the store smoking water pipes. What got my attention was this gigantic color TV at the entrance to the sandwich shop playing MTV in the middle of the Egyptian desert?  What have we done to these people? We broadcasted to these desert folks MTV programming from America, hilarious!!!

Here we were again, driving in the dark through the streets of Cairo with no headlights. To make matters worse, I realized our driver was driving on the wrong side of the traffic. The road was divided by concrete blocks in the center. Our driver would have to drive up to an opening in the concrete median to make a U-turn in order to get into the correct traffic direction. I supposed that was asking too much. Since it was so early in the morning, the street remained abandoned, so he drove in the wrong traffic direction with no headlights.

Nobody said anything to the driver. I guessed we all assumed he would turn into the right traffic direction in the next “opening” in the concrete median but that didn’t happen. As we murmured among ourselves, I could see a jeep parked across the road with 2 Egyptian policemen in their checkered headdress looking over at our “high speed minivan” hurtling down the opposite traffic lane. The police gave chase immediately. At one point, they were paralleled our minivan, separated by the concrete median. The police were yelling at our van, waving for us to stop. Now that they were much closer, I could see the machine gun mounted in the front of their green jeep.

We decided to speak out or some decided to yell at the driver to “stop this car immediately” but to no avail. The driver kept driving or was he evading the police, depended on how you looked at the situation. The police caught up with us at the next concrete opening, they cut in front of us and forced our van to a halt. The angry police confronted our driver. Our driver got out of the van, an argument broke, we thought our driver would be arrested and we would miss our flights home. To our surprise, the driver strike the police with his elbow and knocked 1 of the policemen to the ground. Our driver jumped back into the van and took off with us “IN SHOCK”. I was sitting at the very back of the van. I turned around and saw the policeman got up from the ground, and the chase was intensified and one of the policemen was holding the machine gun, the other one pursuing us.

Some of us got upset and decided to scream at our driver while he was busy concentrating on running through stop signs and red traffic lights. Pearl (another tourist sitting directly in front of me) told me she wanted to throw up. I suggested her to wait til later; it wasn’t a good thing for the present moment. I turned to Dennis (another tourist sitting next to me. Dennis was US Army), who was looking awful calm, and asked if he would kick the back window open in the event if our minivan rolled over or hit the concrete median. If he could get himself out from the back window and then to pull me out. I would pull Pearl out. Once we free ourselves through the back window, we could help the others to get out from the side windows. I thought I should plan ahead since people sitting in front of us were either screaming or getting sick. Quite frankly, it did not look good. Our driver just assaulted the police. A jeep with a mounted machine gun driven by 2 angry policemen was chasing us. We were driving on the wrong side of the road. The minivan could be/may be top heavy with our entire luggage on the top. Slow speed may be do-able. High speed highly NOT recommended under the circumstance. Thank goodness it was still early in the morning and the streets remain deserted even though we were still speeding down the wrong side of the road, it could not get any worse. Until this oil tanker kept honking at us, bearing down the road directly towards our minivan. Suddenly, it seemed like everything came to a slow motion……..I could see the tanker braking hard because its hull started to jackknife. Our minivan also braked hard. Everybody lurched forward screaming, trying to hold onto our seats (Oh I forgot, there were no seat belts!!!) Both vehicles skidded to a complete stop with the oil tanker’s hull diagonally blocking our van.

Some of us became very angry, we passed the screaming phase, and words were shouted at our driver. Instead, our driver backed up and sneaked past the small opening between the back of the tanker and the concrete median. He finally took the next opening in the median and joined the CORRECT traffic flow. I turned around and saw the Egyptian police car stopped by the oil tanker. The police did not pursue us any further. Though I cannot see how they would miss the business name and phone number imprinted on the driver side door of the minivan. It would be more prudent to contact the driver later than to risk innocent lives and unthinkable accident. We were just tourists visiting the Great Pyramids of Giza and all the historical treasures of Egypt. We did not come to get traffic tickets. We could do that back home easily without help.

We arrived at the Cairo International Airport with more policemen patrolling on the airport’s flat roof, their machine guns pointing down. They did not know what had just happened. I was glad nobody radioed in “look for a minivan with screaming American tourists heading towards the airport….” Though we were intact physically, could not say we were mentally or psychologically intact for a brief moment after such intense experience.

Glad it was over and the experience became a story to tell, an adventure to remember but it was not funny at all during the chase. It was truly terrifying.

Oh, 1 more thing......I was the only one from our van to tip the driver when we got off at the airport :)