Population: You

We are 20km from Farafra, our intended lunch destination, when the minibus that has driven us from Luxor pulls up on the side of the road in a small dusty town and our driver unexpectedly jumps out, slamming the door behind him. As we look around at each other, confused, our tour leader explains that as it is Friday, the most important day for Muslims to attend the Mosque, our devout driver would like to attend midday prayers. Luckily, we have a backup driver (we're in for a long day) who diverts our attention from our growling stomachs by driving us down a gravelly back street to take a look at one of this country's numerous pigeon houses. They look much the same up close as they do whizzing past at 140km per hour, and our interest in avian abodes does not match our driver's enthusiasm for prayer, so we must kill some more time in this one horse (or, more appropriately, one pigeon house) town.

We take another back street and pull up out the front of an ahwah (coffee house). Shisha and chai are distributed, and we discuss the ins and outs of Muslim prayer, as dictated by the Holy Qoran to the background noise of a harsh sounding Egyptian Immam delivering his weekly sermon.

I feel a twinge of homesickness for Amman, and our mellow mouthed local muezzin, whose dulcet tones, echoing off the limestone apartment buildings of the Seventh Circle have come to symbolise my place in the Middle East. His voice keeps me company throughout the day,as I sit up on the ninth floor, and I've grown so accustomed to his chant that it no longer wakes me up as he calls out to the Muslims of our suburb well before dawn.

We're getting a little restless, waiting for our driver to satisfy his religious duty and we look around at the sleepy town, all shut up and silent, but for the sound emanating from the loudspeakers on the nearby minaret.

'Where exactly are we?' Someone asks, and our tour guide has to think for a second before replying.

He tells us the town's Arabic name with a cheek smile, then adds, 'Which in English means, Struggle'.

When we get the joke, we laugh.

'So this is what it's like to have tea in Struggle Town', I say, thinking of all those (mostly alcohol related) times where borrowed this little village's name to describe my state.

We do eventually get out of Struggle Town, leaving the long gallabiaed men streaming out of the mosque, and the solitary pigeon house behind us.

The desert sun blazes red hot above us in the bright blue sky, and I wonder what struggles the people of the village have endured, and what more might be to come.