Warm late-afternoon light in a narrow Cairo ministry records aisle as a clerk cropped at the chest, face turned to the shelves, slides one more brown folder.

Egypt opens twenty-sixth final inquiry into Sinai bus crash

Transport officials greet the south Sinai bus crash as a sequel they have already filed

Magnus Worldweary2 Sept 20262 min read

A Cairo clerk ran out of folders after Egypt's transport ministry opened another final inquiry into a south Sinai bus crash. Officials promised the twenty-sixth report would be the last. Drivers heard the same notice they have heard for decades.

A stationery clerk in Cairo spent Monday hunting for brown folders. The cupboard held a broken stapler and a pad of old depot timetables.

He needed twenty-six identical covers. The Ministry of Transport had opened yet another final inquiry into a bus crash on the tourist road through south Sinai.

The crash joined a shelf already bowed with previous last words. Sky News and others reported the wreck on a stretch coaches have used for decades.

Faten Naguib, director of recurrent incidents, called the work familiar and time-limited. She said the file would close before the next one opened.

We have finished with this road for the last time, again.

Her office has used that line since 1974, when a barrier was due before winter. Winter came and the barrier did not. Lighting was due in 1993, and the circular, a short official notice, arrived on time.

Depot supervisor Khaled Osman read the new notice aloud to drivers at dawn. It told them to drive carefully and wait for further guidance, two things they already knew.

Pale first light in a south Sinai coach depot yard as a driver cropped at the chest, head bent, pins a typed sheet to a wire fence beside idle coaches, a tin.

Osman said the wording matched the last twenty-six notices except for the date at the top. He kept the pile in a tin by the kettle.

The ministry will not rebuild the road, change the timetable, or buy different coaches. It will print a short official notice, stamp each copy, and send a clerk to the same cupboard. Officials said this was cheaper than a barrier and more in keeping with tradition. A spokesman for the Department of Lessons Already Learned, Samir Haddad, said the public wanted closure, and closure was a stamp. He compared the whole affair to a film franchise that keeps the desert, the bus and the twist. He did not name the earlier disaster. He did not need to.

Tour operators asked whether passengers should still book the route. The tourist board said the scenery remained excellent and the inquiry was in hand.

The BBC covered the same stretch as a place popular with visitors. Popularity has never been the missing piece.

Naguib promised the twenty-sixth report would be the one that stuck. Haddad promised the twenty-seventh would not be required. The clerk went back for more folders anyway.