no perseid meteor shower tonight

 

Tonight was supposed to be the night of the Perseid meteor showers. So I got out and started driving in the opposite direction of where I would normally drive to at night. Not towards Cairo, but into the desert. Trying to get away from the light pollution and hoping to take some nice shots. After half an hour of driving, the road turning into a narrow path, I came onto a checkpoint. The microbus driver in front of me presented his ID to the policemen and drove through after some discussion. I had no idea what I was going to say. How was I supposed to explain in Arabic that I wanted to take photos of the Perseid meteor shower in the middle of the desert. Yeah, right where even driving to the most touristic resort draws many questions if you're a foreigner. So I resorted to the only strategy I knew could possibly work if I was lucky and if I looked confident enough. I drove by slowly, stopped, turned around to the policemen, greeted them with a serious selamin aleykum and drove on without stopping. No one shouted behind me. I had made it! Of course, this wasn't much compared to an Egyptian friend who ran away from the police on his motorcycle because he was too lazy to get a legal license for his vehicle, but still I felt lucky...