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(03/15/99) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		A centuries-old business thrives at the end of the 40 Days Road BY KRISTAN SCHILLER | The temperature outside is 80 degrees and rising. The sweat on my palm leaves a smudge as I press the window for balance. My companions and I speak little, but gaze intently at the valley frontier streaming by: Loose clusters of goats and children scamper alongside the occasional dried-mud house skirting fields of eggplant, onion and alfalfa, feed for the beasts we are on our way to inspect. To my right, a wild dog snacks voraciously on the fresh carcass of another; to my left, the fellahin move slowly about their tasks, unfazed by the traffic that straddles their crop. One of the last surviving desert trading routes in the Middle East, the 40 Days Road (or Darb el-Arba'een), along which we drive, is the fabled trail taken by camel traders originating in Darfur and Kordofan in the Sudan, continuing on through the Libyan desert and from there along the Nile into Upper Egypt to the camel market of Daraw. The road fittingly takes its name from the memory of herdsmen recalling the old slave trail from Kobbe to Assyut, which was even longer and more arduous to cross. The road takes more than a month to navigate on foot, and the Bishari and Rizayqat nomads from the Sudan have been doing so for centuries. My companions and I are far less adventurous: We travel by minibus, a creature clumsier than a camel in heat. As we approach the crossroads at Daraw and veer up a slender, serpentine alley, it appears, at first, that this village is no different from any other agricultural hamlet that lines the Nile. Peasant women balance baskets on their veiled heads and beaming children -- mostly girls -- frolic freely about the town. The men and boys, I soon discover, are at market tending to serious business. After 10 minutes skirting sundry snags through spiraling threads of earthen streets, we park at the western edge of the village. Straightaway I sense commotion; from the height of the vehicle I can see only the tops of heads and everywhere dust, rising like mists from a swamp on a summer's day. As I push my way to the front of the bus, the scene before me stings every spot on my imagination. Stands of textiles, poultry, fruit and vegetables canvass a dung-covered lot the size of the Great Lawn in Central Park. Men and boys in sky-blue, ankle-length gowns frantically move about hawking and hauling bolts of fabric, crates of produce, goat, sheep, cows and donkeys -- by tether, by truck and by backside. The grunt and squeal of animals intermingles with earnest intonations as traders hustle for a sell. People collide with each other, and with the livestock, and everywhere there is movement. "It is like being hauled while still asleep into the midst of a Beethoven symphony, with the brasses at their most ear-splitting, the basses rumbling, and the flutes sighing away," wrote Flaubert in 1850 of his travels in Egypt. As I float about the souk -- and feel, for the first time in five days, unnoticed by the Egyptian people -- I am convinced that Flaubert was writing about this place. This particular souk is the livestock market, held every Tuesday morning in tandem with the more famous camel market, the largest such assembly between the Sudan and Cairo. In the summertime, the two markets are often held side by side. In winter, as now, the markets are on opposite ends of town. They've attracted an increasing number of tourists in recent years and yet they manage to elude the sort of posturing common in places frequented by Westerners. Even the children here have a different air about them: They are less aggressive in asking for baksheesh (which literally means "presents" but translates as "tips"), and when they are caught doing so by their fathers, they are scolded. This is day-to-day business between Egyptians; we are but voyeurs, gaping cogs in the ancient machine of commerce. Weaving through the chaos, I find myself back in the Egypt of seven centuries ago. I lock eyes with a shoe vendor surrounded by a huddle of men sucking tobacco through makeshift shishas made of tin cans and bamboo. His peaceful demeanor invites me over; I slip my clammy foot inside his smallest men's shoe, similar in appearance to women's wooden clogs. The shoe is too big by at least an inch. I place my right hand over my heart, an Arabic symbol of thanks, and the merchant nods in understanding. N E X T+P A G E | To the camel market