Korban Bairam

The Alexandria-Cairo express that most tourists know is one of the most luxurious trains in Africa. A huge locomotive, a line of snow white Pullmans, each window equipped with sunshields, Venetian blinds, it lies by the Alexandria dockside and makes the 150 miles over the flat delta to Cairo in three hours. But there are other humbler Cairo expresses.

One of them was hitched together last week in the Alexandria yards. It was the second day of Korban Bairam, four-day Mohammedan feast commemorating Abraham's sacrifice to God of a ram instead of his firstborn son Ismael,-- reputed ancestor of all Moslems. At this time every good Egyptian who cannot afford to go to Mecca (Bairam is as important a feast as Ramadan is a fast) tries to go to Cairo to slaughter a ram or goat, worship in the great Mosque of Mohammed Ali, eat sweetmeats, drink coffee in the bazaars. At noon a powerful locomotive chuffed into Alexandria's station; behind it was a string of ancient wooden coaches. Laughing, joking fellahin, in white cotton nightshirts and discolored fezzes, piled aboard with their wives, their children, their bundles. The train moved out, with much cracking of axles.

Two hours from Alexandria a hot box sent flames up through the floor of one of the flimsy wooden cars at the rear of the train. Passengers screamed, scrambled for the emergency cord. There was no cord, there was no corridor. They were locked in a burning box.

The engineer leaned from his cab, the hot wind whistling in his ears, his eyes on the track ahead. Sixty miles an hour, he kept the throttle open for the road had to be cleared for later scheduled trains. Fellahin plowing in the flat muddy fields waved their arms, screamed excitedly. The engineer waved back (laborers always wave at the trains in Egypt) and kept his throttle open. The end of the train was a roaring torch as one car after another burst into flames. Wind and the sound of the engine smothered agonized cries. A few leaped from the blazing cars, fell limp on the track. Others fell helpless in their compartments, cremated at a mile a minute.

At Benha el-Asal a station master with horror in his eyes frantically flagged the train. When it stopped the three rear coaches were burned almost to the trucks, reduced to smouldering, stinking heaps of charred beams and human bodies. In the pyre were the remains of 45 passengers, ten children. The engineer was arrested. Cairo crowds paid little attention. For two days more the blood of sacrificial goats and rams poured out on mosque courtyards, reed flutes shrilled in the bazaars.

--Not to be confused with Isaac, second son, believed by Moslems to have been born after Abraham made sacrifice.

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