Unwinding & Unraveling

After our two weeks in Egypt we
are back in Paris and soon
will be home and sleeping in
our own beds. Having this
buffer between Egypt and
home was smart. A place to
decompress. Paris has so much to
offer, a city to get lost in
and be able to mull over
our adventure.

On arrival back to our
hotel near  the Cluney,
Maxine and I threw our suitcases
up into our room and headed
straight for the
Louvre and the wing of
Egyptian antiquities,
like we did't get enough
IN Egypt. It didn't take us
long to realize we preferred
seeing the Temple at Luxor
with it's missing
avenue of Sphinx's then
seeing the avenue
of Sphinx's with out the temple. We opted
to spend the rest of the afternoon in the
Italian paining and sculpture rooms.
Familiar and yet removed from our
latest sojourn.

My thoughts are all staccato, a mix of awe, sadness,
unanswered questions and a wish to delve deeper in that
Patriarchal Muslim world. Here are some of them:

I now have had a glimpse of what it feels like to be the
minority and shunned. My love for travel has led me to
believe I posses something like super human powers. I can
jump in and learn a language, the basics anyway, master the
transportation system, meet and make friends with the baker
and butcher, know the layout of the city and it's major
points of interest with in two days of arriving somewhere.
However, in Cairo, I kept myself barricaded in the confines of our
hotel complex. Like a dog with it's tail between it's legs
this city unnerved me. Our room over looked the Nile and
also a major round about. Maxine and I would sit on the
balcony and try to count the number of women we would see
walking this busy area of the city. Men would come and go
in groups or alone, wearing their long cotton galabeas. We
could count two women in a half an hour period walk through
the square, dressed in long black robes and wearing the
veil. I just couldn't get around the idea that the most
populated city in Africa doesn't share it's public space
with the female population.

I didn't know how to over come it. I knew I wasn't going to
be stoned in the streets for wearing my long skirt and
white blouse but I knew I didn't fit. The language eluded
me, my vocabulary consists of good morning, no, yes and
thank you. It wasn't street talk. There was no room for us
unless we were with a tour group.

Our last night there we decided to take the Camel by the
hump and Maxine and I walked out of the hotel and along the
rivers promenade. (We had planned to meet up with Sahar but
that fell through)Not a woman in sight. Men sat on the park
benches or yelled there lively conversations across the
street to their friends. They noticed us, everyone took us
in. Our outing was brief and in contrast to our past two
days in Paris, we might as well have been walking on the
moon.

Paris, ALL can be seen on the streets. Park benches are
used by the elderly to sit and watch the new world, young
couples wishing they had a more private place to rendezvous
sit with there arms and legs intertwined, students smoking
their cigarettes are deep in to discussion. The whole world
is on parade in Paris.

With all that said, I'm in love with the Nile and the shear
beauty of the place. I also met some wonderful people.
Hossom and Sahar could easily lure me into renting an
apartment in the suburbs of Cairo and buying a nice silk
veil to cover my hair.

Hossom met Maxine and I on our arrival into Cairo. His job
is to make sure Westerner's who are meeting up for a group
tour arrive intact. He has a smile and laugh that would
melt the ice off a polar bears chin. On our ride to the
hotel he pointed out landmarks and talked about the good
and bad things in Cairo. Make a deal with the taxi driver
before you get in it, don't go out at night alone. We would
see him through out our stay, checking in on us and making
sure our Smithsonian group was enjoying themselves and were
comfortable. He was at the hotel at 4 in the morning to
help get us out to the airport. While we were waiting to go
through security I asked him if he ever visited the US; I
knew he had been to Europe, Germany for training in the
tourist trade. Still smiling but with sad eyes he said,
"Oh, I think now is very hard to come to your country."
Right, young Egyptian man flying into New York or San
Francisco, no problem. He gave us his business card and
jotted down his e-mail address. "Please, you must come back
again."

Sahar was our Egyptologist while we were with the
Smithsonian group. She is a single mother of two. Her
husband died when they were young. One day on the boat she
gave a short informal talk about the history of Islam, if
that doesn't sound like an impossibility, both the informal
and the short. Sahar was gentle with us and tried to point
out all the similarities of the Muslim faith to Judaism and
Christianity. At one point she said she was Sunni Muslim,
that she did not wear the veil until she was 45 because she
wasn't ready. She opened herself up on such a personal
level it brought me to tears. She has gone to Mecca and
believes that all gods are one in the same. Her face is
radiant and she is stunningly beautiful. I would go back to
Egypt just to have a meal with this woman.

As I try to gain some perspective of what we have seen and
experienced I realize that visiting the Pyramids was
meeting a great historical figure. Right up there with
Julius Cesar, Gandhi, Napoleon and Joan of Arc the Pyramids
are famous and have been given a prominent place in our
history. I met the pyramids and they are well worth all the
hype.

In  Gabriel Garcia Marquez's book "Love in the Time of
Cholera" the two main characters are on a river in South
America and they wish they could just keep sailing, never
wanting to disembark, feeling safe and self contained in
their love and untouched by the earthly world. There were
periods of that want while we sailed from Luxor to Aswan. I
made myself get up before sunrise and climb up to the top
open deck and watch this deep red sun rise up out of the
Nile. Knowing that for thousands of years people have lived
on this river and have watched the sun rise and set on it.
It was a feeling of being part of a continuous flow. We
come from water.......

On the shuttle bus that took us out to the plane in Cairo
there was a young European woman who was quietly falling
apart. She was letting the tears flow in a silent cascade
down her cheeks. There was a tremor, the big bang was
taking place in her solar plexus and leaving in it's wake a
black hole. Her heart was breaking and it sucked me in; I
was back in Florence, 20 years old, at the Santa Maria
Novella train station leaving for Milan to fly home. For me
it was the loss of a place that I didn't think I would ever
see again. I'm guessing hers was about the loss of a lover.
The fear and sarrow was so pure. It then struck me, that I
may not ever come back to the Nile. I handed the young
woman a kleenex and I slipped my sunglasses on.