The Worst 24 Hours of My Life

True story

Last year I went on a diving trip to Egypt with my brother. After a brief stop in Cairo, we boarded the boat we were going to be living on for the next seven days and sailed into the Red Sea. When we reserved the trip they asked what gear we needed to hire, to which we responded everything that is necessary.

The first thing we were made aware of was that a wetsuit was apparently not necessary, because they didn’t have one for us. About an hour later we had the first dive briefing, the slide directly after welcome listed a wetsuit as a requirement.

Now I know what you’re thinking, you guys booked a week-long boat trip in a notoriously rough sea, it must be nice to not suffer from sea sickness. But you’d be wrong. We were choofing down nausea tablets like a suburban mum chews Valium the entire time. But at least we didn’t get ill? Of course we did!

We had treated ourselves to some extremely suspicious street food in Cairo and resigned to the inevitable toilet time. So we became fish for a few days. When we weren’t under the water, we were asleep or on the toilet. We did also try to make time to fuel our toilet sessions, usually referred to as ‘eating’. It was like this for most of the boat trip, but the diving was great. When we were amongst our true kin.

one of the many beautiful sunrises i didn’t want to wake up for

There was one time I expressed concern to my brother because I was still hearing bubbles and feeling like I was underwater during one of our eight daily naps. We were diving with Nitrox, which if used incorrectly can cause poisoning that makes you hallucinate. Fortunately, my brother reassured me by letting me know that he was also seeing bubbles and floating.

There was nothing to be worried about, we were fish. Two Australians out in the deep sea with a bunch of strangers, we would normally be the centre of attention and extremely sociable. But we had risen above such trivial social pursuits, or perhaps better put, we had sunk beneath. Fish have no use for such nonsense.

One evening they were celebrating the birthday of a crew mate and everyone got cake. Fish don’t celebrate birthdays, we had no need for cake. Laying in our single beds, barely able to move, we listened to the soft tones of people singing—we must have looked like the aftermath of Heaven’s Gate but without the cool shoes.

After a long week of nautical symphony and being unable to participate in almost any conversation outside of you good? and suppressed murmurs, we returned to land. Sweet, sweet land. Our flights were the next morning, we all said goodbye and off we went to the very small local airport.

Arriving at the airport at 6am, I could never have predicted just how horrendous my next 24 hours would be. After being a fish for so long, I had forgotten the troubles of man. For the past week my principal issue was counting the 3 hour window between nausea tablets, now I was to discover a new type of pain that no aquatic creature could comprehend.

For completely uninteresting reasons, I wasn’t able to get on my flight. But first, the manager at the airline gaslit me for about two hours, telling me that I should just chill and relax and that everything would be fine. He then disappeared for about an hour with my passport and came back after the flight had left to tell me I wasn’t going to be on it.

The underlying issue was not my fault, but the result was the same. The man I had spent the previous few hours pandering to and trying to charm had affirmed my downward spiral.

As he handed me back my passport, I thought he might apologise or wish me good luck given the circumstances. Instead he told me that I couldn’t stay inside the airport because I no longer had a valid flight. In Egypt, you’re not allowed to be inside an airport without one, I imagine the same is true in hell.

As he escorted me out of the airport, I was welcomed into my new reality by a cool 900° breeze. With a smile on his face, he asked me where I was going to go. Once again I had presumed this was out of kindness, but his eyes lit up when I replied that I needed to go to a bigger airport a few hours away. He had a friend who could help.

I needed to go to the bathroom, but I was so angry at this man that I walked straight past the toilets inside the airport, determined to get away from him. It would have also been nice to get a bottle of water after such chronic dehydration. But acts prevented by the Geneva Convention continued to play out in my mind and I needed to bid fare-the-well to my accused turnkey.

It was a strange feeling to know I had nowhere to be but I was rushing towards it, anything was better than this.

So there I was, outside of a tiny shit airport on the coast of the Red Sea, without a flight and seemingly no way to smoothly get home or leave this country. Due to some nonsensical Visa restrictions, it appeared I had to fly anywhere else out of Egypt, then I could fly back into the EU seamlessly.

But before I could deal with any of that, I still needed to go to the bathroom. With all the time in the world and not a care, I found myself in a horrendous toilet stall in the airport carpark, still getting rid of the remnants of Cairo street food. I had needed this for hours but was holding out for when I was through security, waiting peacefully at the boarding gate.

But alas the moment had finally arrived, the first pleasant seconds of my morning. My stomach was relieved, I was more at ease. Until I noticed, almost immediately after my modicum of pleasure, there was no toilet paper. A slight chuckle slipped out as I realised just how fucking horrendous my morning had become.

I should be on a plane home, but instead I’m on a toilet in 40 degrees with no escape and no cleanly way to even attempt. I stopped for a moment to listen, only to soon after realise that I no longer cared. A man this dehydrated and lost does not concern himself with such frivolous things.

So, with my shorts proudly around my ankles, I crab walked to the sink. I was ready to begin picking up the pieces of my life and getting back on the winning side. Alas, lady luck had more pain to dish out. There were no paper towels and the sinks had no running water.

In a rush of blood I continued to crab all the way into the ladies toilets next door. There was no toilet paper in the stalls, the sinks didn’t work. I really missed being a fish. What a life I took for granted. At this point in time I think I would have happily accepted Nitrox poisoning, let me hallucinate, put me out of my misery.

But regrettably life continued, there was no other person who could substitute for my pain. I decided my best option was to use a pair of underwear in the way every mother fears. My poor lulus were turned into the world’s most expensive single-use baby wipe.

I’d already sat sweating in them for hours, what quality of life remained? Sacrifices had to be made. The toughest battles are allocated to the toughest soldiers.

It is said that dysentery has killed most people who have ever lived. I refused to become another statistic. I arose out of that bathroom a hero in my own mind, albeit one I never wished to be. It was now time for me to leave.

After some research, I determined that I couldn’t fly out of this cursed airport. I needed to find a way to get to another airport about a 3 hour drive away. A taxi driver came up to me and I said that I’d pay him whatever he wants but I need to get to xyz airport and I need to stop immediately for hand sanitiser and water.

He was very obliging to my request, I think he felt a deep sincere connection to my cause. I’m sure it wasn’t about the money and my general air of vulnerability. I floated through most of this car trip, I almost became a fish again, but I was so far from water that it was no longer helpful.

After washing my hands and returning to only chronically dehydrated, the colour returned to the world a bit. With some clarity, I found out that I could book a flight leaving in 14 hours to Manchester, then I could book another flight back to where I actually wanted to go and I’d get home eventually. All it cost me was €1000 and the worst 24 hours of my life, HAH (ahahahhahaha).

The goal was very clear, I needed to leave Egypt before I became a threat to their national security. My plan was to find a fancy spa near the airport and treat myself, but the driver either sucked or sabotaged each phone call.

I didn’t have the energy to show up in a new venue and be rejected. All I wanted to do was sit in a fucking air-conditioned room for the next 10 hours and try to remember what it was like to feel human again. Or in an ideal world forget what it was to be human and return to being a semi-lucid fish.

In Egypt you can’t enter an airport too long before your flight because they think you’re there to murder people, which to be fair, I wasn’t far away from trying. So I did the one thing that I would never recommend someone to do while travelling, I asked the taxi driver if he perhaps knew anyone in town that could help.

awww look how optimistic i was

At this point I think I was basically begging to either die a (hopefully) peaceful death or add more humour to this already ludicrous story. Fortunately for you, it was the latter. We arrived in the airport town and I had no cash left. Naturally, the taxi driver had pseudo-robbed me for my last cent and I had not expected to somehow find more creative ways of bankrupting myself.

We went on the hunt for an ATM. I waited in line for about thirty minutes in the sun. I was an empty vessel but just coherent enough to understand that the guy in front of me had broken the last functioning machine. I thought to myself, why wouldn’t it break? A fish is not meant to be on land, I shouldn’t need paper from silly machines. My currency is gross slimy worms and that weird algae shit.

We went to another two ATMs that were broken and finally happened across one that worked. I have no idea how much money I got out of that machine but at this point it had been about 6 hours since I should have been on a plane and I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care about anything, I had complete indifference to the world around me.

All I wanted was a bed and a shower. If a miracle occurred I might have become a believer right then and there, but when it rains, it pours. Or in my case… how should I put this poetically… when it’s extremely fucking hot and dry and everything sucks, it continues to be extremely fucking hot and dry and everything sucks.

After getting abused for parking in the wrong spot, we finally arrived at my taxi-drivers-alleged-friend’s-address-thing. It looked really grim, the building wasn’t finished and the hallway was dark. It was just an apartment building in the middle of nowhere.

We waited some time and eventually two guys came out, after handing him cash that was the equivalent of 3 nights in a nice hotel—we all went in the elevator together. But, of course, just before we got in the elevator, they decided it was appropriate to light cigarettes.

So here I am, on the road again. I am in a cramped elevator with 3 sweaty men blowing cigarette smoke in my face. I am dehydrated, sunburnt and utterly defeated. But I am close, oh boy am I close. I have my flight booked and I am seconds away from entering the promised land, the room I’ve paid an extortionate price to be in.

We enter the room and I had an out-of-body experience. I was so pot committed that I saw no alternative but to say thanks and shut the door. I just wanted to be alone. I wanted to be alone in this absolute piece of shit room.

In this room with no air-conditioning. In this room with no sheet on the bed and plastic on the mattress, in this room with no WiFi. The shower didn’t work because why would it? I was not deserving of running water. It made sense.

I bird-bathed in the sink that was placed directly next to the bed then spread all my dirty clothes out on the bed, trusting that they were cleaner than whatever plastic was on it. And it was there that I truly accepted my fate. I had been through fire and I had survived.

Entering a deep state of mental-decline-fuelled meditation I lay there and contemplated all the alternative realities that might have existed. Where I didn’t have to try and spread my cheeks as I crab walked to contain the stain. An alternate timeline where I got on that plane, where I sat in a spa for the afternoon, where my underwear wasn’t defiled and sitting in a toilet bin.

It’s funny how often the worst times of your life can turn into the best stories to tell in the future, which then creates good times. I remember telling a friend this story who was going through a breakup and he had tears of laughter in his eyes.

I usually end my writings with something philosophical and optimistic. But this one I think I should just end by saying I have no regrets about my time spent in Egypt. I’ve heard enlightenment defined as the place between two thoughts, my brother and I were basically inanimate for an entire week. We were enlightened, we were fish.

It was such a stark contrast going from such a flow state to being snapped back onto land. I never liked fishing but I now understand how it feels to be on the other end of the hook. More than anything, I think everything that transpired is funny as fuck. And there’s a lot more that I couldn’t fit in (that’s what she said).

Life is about having good stories to tell, the more extreme the better. I personally think this one is better told over a few beers, but unfortunately I can’t have a beer with all of you, so this will have to do.