Danger on the rails

From dusk to dawn, Hajj Omar Abdallah works the 12-hour night shift at Tal al-Yahodiya level crossing. It’s on the way to Qalyubiya in the Delta. As a 60-year old man, he has learned how not to get bored. He is used to the company of a small transistor radio, of dogs barking in the darkness, and to the whistle of distant trains as he controls their passage with his simple equipment. Six times a week, Hajj Omar sees 11-year-old Mostafa cross the tracks between his house and school. At least twice a week, Hajj Omar must shout at Mostafa to not to walk on the tracks. But Mostafa is not afraid of trains coming from afar, and hanging out by the railway is better than returning to a house he does not like, or going to a school he hates. Mansour, the train driver, is the one who is afraid of trains. This is the only profession he has known for 30 years. But over the past few years, he has started to become weary. He is frightened by his failing eyesight, by the tracks that have turned soft, by the uncontrolled level crossings, by the reckless bus drivers, and by the nap that Hajj Omar — or any other level-crossing worker — may take. Above all, he is frightened by the collisions he hears about. Seven times each journey, he recites prayers, and asks God to keep him safe until he retires. After that, he will not leave his house until the day he dies. Ihab does not think a lot about train collisions, but he no longer likes the railways. For him, the train means standing for long hours, crushed together with other passengers. He takes the train to visit his family at the end of each week, after he has been made weary by the loneliness of the big city. He remembers the time when he was forced to ride on the roof of the train, and the time he found only the bathroom floor as a place to rest his feet after standing in the total darkness of the road. The trains he takes have no interior lights. The daily lives of Hajj Omar, Mansour, Mostafa, Ehab and thousands more are linked to the railway. Theirs are tales of travel, migration and oppression, and of hundreds of crashes over more than two decades. Three hundred and seventy passengers were killed in Upper Egypt when their train caught fire in 2002. Forty-eight children died in 2012 when their school bus was hit by a train in Assiut. Collisions and other accidents on the railways have taken the lives of thousands. But the stories we tell here are not about the railway. They are not about the trains, and they are not even about death. These are the stories of people trying to cope with life until they, each of them, reach their desired destinations.