Just Look Up

I came across a realization I had a while ago again today - people never look up. I think it's the one thing that skews our perception the most. We keep looking down, watching our feet like they may walk off without us if we don't keep an eye on them. Sometimes we look straight ahead, but then we can only see our circumstances. 

I have a love affair with rooftops. Unfortunately, I only just discovered the one above the organization. I was up there today, seeing the tops of things instead of the bottoms, and I walked over to look down on the roof patio of the organization's across the alley neighbors. They raise rabbits: cute, fluffy, hoppy things that are occasionally joined by a young goat that has gotten loose from the paddock inside. 

Today, the mother and father from the family and one of their young sons were feeding them green corn husks, gathering dead rabbits from a bin, and tidying up the outlying dirt as best they could. I watched all of this from two floors above, and not one of them even began to look skyward. This went on for about 15 minutes before they finally disappeared inside. They never knew I was above them. 

I try to look up as much as I can. I don't want to miss the bigness that's above me. But every now and then, there's something new to see above our heads and we may miss it if we don't stop paying attention to just the things right in front of us. These things are important and vital, but the sky, and the view above our line of sight, is too spectacular to be missed. 

The Zlams

Rahaf and Maher were at the guesthouse for over a month. When they first arrived with their children, Ahmed and Boshra, 7 and 6 respectively, I was a little annoyed. Ahmed and Boshra were always around, occasionally loud and insistent and the patio-style windows in my room were anything but sound proof. I couldn't help but wonder how soon they would be leaving. 

After the first week, I discovered that they were from Syria, and in my first conversation with Rahaf, she told me that her children had already seen a myriad of things that children should never see: bodies and death and bombs and blood in the streets. You'd never know it to hear them running around every floor of the guesthouse, laughing and giggling and generally making the entire premises their personal playground. But Rahaf told me that Ahmed would always watch the news. And he was old enough to understand and ask questions about why the things on television were happening. A seven year old should never need to discuss politics and war, but in countries like Syria, it's part of the landscape. If that's what the world outside your door looks like, your children are bound to ask questions.

They were here while waiting on their visa applications to Malta. They were married there, both children were born there, and Maher had a guarantee of a welding job as soon as they arrived. They needed my help as a native English speaker to write an email to the embassy during their time of waiting. Rahaf wanted me to tell them their story, and she knew I would be able to write it in English much better than she could. Her plea was simply that they understand how much she and her husband wanted a safe place for their kids to grow up. Her memories of Malta were as soft and phosphorescent as a morning sunrise over a hazy ocean. But their first visa attempt was denied. They would be trying again, but my heart ached for her. After a few days with her kids, they all felt like family, and I was wondering how different and unbearably silent this place would feel without them. 

For the following two weeks, when I wasn't working, I was constantly with Rahaf: sending emails, being forced to have my emotional breakdowns in Arabic, contacting embassies, and eating copious amounts of fluffy bread with cream cheese and jam. I'm not sure when or how that combination started happening, but soon we could rarely hang out at night without those things appearing on the coffee table. Other nights, we would sit out on the patio by the entrance in two wooden, old-fashioned school desks and talk and drink tea and eat junk food on Fridays. She and Maher both smoked like chimneys and between the two of them and the three guys who work at the guesthouse, Adeeb, Peter, and Nasr, I'm sure I've inhaled enough second hand smoke to make my lungs look like I've been smoking for a year. And incidentally, after all these late night hang out sessions, I also have a random mix of Syrian and Egyptian Arabic in my head. There is now a whole host of people who can sort of understand me. 

Early last week, Rahaf told me that Maher had found work in a factory in Saddat City and that they would be renting a long-term flat there. Saddat City is out in the desert and two hours away by bus. All of the sudden, what had become my status quo at "home" was about to change. 

Yesterday, Adeeb, Peter, and I helped Rahaf, Ahmed, and Boshra move to their new flat out in Saddat. It's in the middle of nowhere. Nothing for miles, and then a few streets lined with concrete apartment buildings and a new mall across the adjacent field. Their apartment is sparsely furnished but has three bedrooms, a kitchen and bath, and a living room with a TV. Ahmed and Boshra even have their own private balcony. But people to be with? There are none. I am thankful at least that Rahaf could make friends with a brick wall and her daughter, even at 6, has inherited the same ability. 

After taking the tour and drinking the obligatory welcome glass of tea, we exited the building onto the dark, deserted street and began the long walk away from our friends. Ahmed and Boshra were hanging over the balcony, waving and yelling good-bye. I blew them both kisses, turned around and thought, I can do this. No problem. Then Adeeb sniffled a little in front of me. I stared at the back of his head. Then he moved his hands over his eyes and sniffed again, and my eyes grew wide and started to water. Peter glanced at me quickly, I looked away, and Adeeb wouldn't look at either of us. The bus ride home was heavy and silent with sadness. We were all missing something vital and important and loud. 

I'm well versed in saying good-bye. My bounce back time is becoming shorter, not because I miss the new friends any less or because they are any less special, but I've learned to put them in a safe, warm and fuzzy place. The worst is that initial shock of 'missing,' when you've only just left the people who  have crawled into your heart and finger-painted on it, and it feels like someone has torn off a limb. You know you'll survive, but it's hard to imagine how ok you were 'before.' Eventually the dust settles and the paint fades. Experience has taught me this. But sometimes I want to tell experience to shove it.

Tired and Thinking

If possible, I feel as if I've gone through every human emotion in the last week. It's amazing to me how much can happen in a day, when most of the time elsewhere, things are pretty predictable. Don't get me wrong, I like the excitement, but there's a reason we don't experience all of our emotions in a short period of time. It's exhausting. Our minds would splinter under the pressure. Some people's do. 

At the risk of stating the obvious, this culture is so different. I'm allowed liberties here other women aren't because I'm foreign. I wonder if strength of will is inherent or if it develops as a result of being allowed to flourish. Not to say these women aren't strong. I'd say more so than us, but its a quiet strength born of reserves deep within that they learn from their mothers and grandmothers and aunts and older sisters. They raise families in conditions most people cannot imagine with anywhere from six to ten kids. Father is usually working, and Mother is at home cooking food in a dented pot over a small gas stove in an often windowless kitchen. Metal bowls are stacked on the floor beside the stove and an oversized squeegee leans against the wall. All in all, its no bigger than a closet. 

The few homes I've been in also don't have showers, just a toilet and a sink. I've been told they wash from the faucet alone and for many, there are several days between rinsings. But they make do. For most of the people here, this is all they've ever known. There are disparities of wealth even among the poor, and I've seen both ends of the spectrum, but even if one were "wealthy," I believe this is something most of us could never do. The smell of garbage and livestock; the constant dust; the gray vapor of exhaust fumes; the loud, incessant beeping of truck horns; the mud and goo of food and animal remains on the street. No matter how nice and shiny your interior may be, the exterior doesn't seem to have much hope for change. So as one who was born here, who grew up among all of this refuse, do you hope for better? Do you simply live in acceptance? Or do you find the strength and courage to join in the change? 

Hamams and Hamaams

The difference between the Arabic word for pigeons and the bathroom is one sound. So I have to make sure when telling anyone about my day, that I say I was with the pigeons for the afternoon and not in the bathroom. Quite a different experience, those two. 

But this is the real deal, folks. The bathroom in the Recycling School is literally a hole in the ground. It's surrounded by porcelain, but is still only about the circumference of a soda can. Which for males, is probably quite a fun game but for females is more of a squat and go variety. It's odd how quickly I adjusted in the beginning, and now it's just common place. Although last week, the pen I had in my back pocket fell out and into the urine-scented darkness. The boys and teachers at the school just laughed when I told them and suggested that I go in after it.

"No big deal," they said. Ummmm..... It took several full seconds to realize they were all joking. But around here, you never know.

The school is one of my favorite places to be. I'm not an official teacher, or even an official tutor, but those students are good for my soul. Even if the boys say my name so often I've started abhorring the sound of it. Must be how my Mom felt when I was younger and said "Mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom" until she just about went batty. Bygones. It's the fundamental right of children to drive their superiors crazy.

At the school, I spend my time teaching Bola (my star student) what English he can retain. He's one of seven kids and his family works in cardboard. He found a newish pair of hiking boots in the trash and amazingly, they fit him perfectly. Outside of these, he wears the same clothes often, some times three days in a row. Many of the boys do. Even the ones who own more of a variety wear faded and moth eaten shirts and pants, and I don't know if the dust is ground into their skin or if it's simply the dirt that little boys get into on a daily basis. They settle most things by hitting or grabbing shirt collars, but usually the anger is as loud and passing as a flash thunderstorm. The adults are much the same. I've been told it's because the Egyptians speak what's on their heart and then it is gone. Not like us, where we tend to stew for weeks and go crazy from the lack of confrontation. 

Today, Bola took me to his house to meet his mom and dad and seven brothers and sisters. I gave an impromptu English lesson to him on their couch while four of his siblings and a cousin looked on. No pressure. Luckily, only his cousin spoke decent English, so the rest simply stared, fascinated by the anomaly of having a very different looking foreigner in their home. Afterwards, I realized one of my Egypt dreams as I climbed up into one of the sky high pigeon coops on their roof. I wasn't there at the time of day that they all leave the nest and paint circles in the sky, but I've been invited back anytime to watch that phenomenon. I think perhaps on Sunday. And maybe the day after that. And the day after that.

Photo Credit - Liz Oxhorn

Fixing the Clock

Time is a strange concept here. For one, it moves very slowly. Or even if the day goes by quickly, it feels as if I've lived a month since the morning. And even days when nothing in particular happens, it's somewhat of a mini-lifetime. I forget how old I am here, I forget what month it is, I forget what the year is on the calendar. Because not much here is new. Everything looks a bit like the inside of a house that's been left abandoned for decades. Most of the cars hail from the eighties and share the roads with carts pulled by donkeys and the occasional horse-drawn carriage. Men are still pushing handcarts down the street selling bread or fruit or sugar cane, and I think I've only seen a decent pair of shoes trudging through the grey dust once or twice. 

I dodge frolicking baby goats on they way into the office and women and men alike wear ankle length galabias which make me feel like I'm walking around in Bible times until I catch a glimpse of my reflection and realize I failed to get the memo. Many of the women can't understand why I'm thin. They keep assuring me that a few more weeks on Egyptian food and my mom won't recognize me when I get off the plane and that I may not even match my own passport anymore. I laugh because I doubt it. I don't eat beans on the reg like they do and my metabolism seems to mostly still be kickin' it in high gear. Al-hamdulilah. 

At any rate, the plane will be years from now or no time at all. I'm still searching for my niche here, so I hope a little that it's the former. 

Who moved my apple peel?

I've begun to realize that this place is a bit like people who are organized messes. My step-dad is like that. His desk looks like an absolute disaster, but if my mom moves one piece of paper, he notices almost immediately. Despite the chaos, he knows the location of every object. 

There are piles of trash spilling out of every nook and cranny, falling out of doorways, flooding the corners and mixing seamlessly with the dirt. But everything has its place. What is being sorted one day has disappeared the next, to be replaced with a new batch of mixed garbage. Every day it is messy, but each day the mess is slightly different. At first I thought if there were just bins in the street, people could throw things away instead of leaving pieces of trash just lying around in the roads, but there isn't much distinction between what is waste and what is being recycled, and since the statistic is that 80-90% of what is brought back here is recycled, I can imagine the distinction is rather small if at all existent. 

Like the unbelievably tiny kitten whose mewl echoing through the parking garage below the guesthouse belied its minute stature, its dirt is a part of its identity. As much as Rosie and I wanted to take it into the kitchen, shove it under the faucet, and scrub it until it was Downy fresh and fluffy, its mother might not recognize it again. As much as some would like to dunk Manshiyet Nasr in a proverbial flea bath by moving its activities to designated land in the desert, doing so would strip it of its identity. Sorting trash is by far not the most glamorous profession, but it's the Zabbaleen's profession. Their ownership, their pride, their ingenuity are all tied in with the stuff at which everyone else covers their noses. There's a strength and resiliency in every face, be it tired or smiling, that is rare. So don't wash the kitten. And don't try to clean up all the messes, because sometimes things aren't nearly as messy as they first appear. 

Halloween!

Explaining this holiday here makes me feel like we have some unique traditions of our own. I realized, as I was talking about it, how strange it sounds that children dress up in costumes and go to strangers' homes, knock on the doors and ask for candy. It's the one night of the year that it's acceptable to beg. I don't like the overarching theme of the day, but it was one of my favorite holidays as a kid. Of course. What kid wouldn't love a night where they receive a year's worth of free candy. My brother and I used to have contests as to who got the most. And then Mom would confiscate it all like a jerk and only hand it out once a day, like some cruel candy dictator.

Those are my memories of this holiday. Candy and dressing up like a blond starship warrior. My favorite was the plastic mask of her face with holes cut out for the eyes and mouth. I liked to stick my tongue through the slit even though the plastic sometimes cut. I feel like it got stuck once, and then Mom told me to stop. Constantly ruining my fun, that one. (love ya mean it!)

Needless to say, the Egyptians know nothing of Halloween. But Samia at the guesthouse told me that I could come and knock on the doorframe tonight and if I say trick or treat, she'll give me some candy. Which makes me smile. If there's a pumpkin to carve when I get back this afternoon, my holiday will be complete. Just thinking of how this past time will be received makes my smile even bigger. 

Adli

The cook. The only Muslim on staff here at the guesthouse, he keeps his turquoise and white and black prayer rug folded and draped over one of the chair backs in the cafeteria. His English is sporadic but comprehensible, and occasionally he sits down across from me while I eat and teaches me the names of things in Arabic. Salt. Pepper. Knife. Spoon. Do I remember these things? Debatable. Because usually people are using these words in such a rush of other unknown vocabulary that all I can remember to say is "Too fast, too fast!" Just this morning, I ordered a "coffee car" and then an "Arabic cat" and then, third time's a charm, my wished for "Arabic coffee." I find caffeine helps in language fluency.

Before, Adli worked as a chef for TWA Airlines for 27 years until they closed down in Cairo after 9/11. He was hired on at the guesthouse shortly after.

"The money," he says, "no good. But money in Egypt, no good anywhere." 

He loves the people though. I sit and watch them over my fresh cooked meals as they sit around the metal work table in the middle of the kitchen and shell beans for the evening fair. They talk and laugh and insult one another, all with good natured smiles. Every so often, a bean sails through the air at some sarcastic comment. I want to ask if I can help, but I'm a guest here, and the rules of hospitality are tacit yet firm even if they are growing blurrier by the day. Now, they say that this is my home. I am welcome to roam the kitchen as I please. The roaches and I have the run of the place. I'm slowly but surely wiping out their contingent, although if they don't stop breeding, I can hardly compete. 

Adli once sat down and showed me his photo album of every meal he'd ever made for TWA. They were required to catalogue them all for a presentation to the officer of the company. I don't remember much of the plates for Services 2 and 3, but I do remember a photo of crêpes and discovering that I had enough Arabic in my repertoire to ask if he would make them for me. The Muslim holiday Eid El-Adha starts tomorrow and since Adli will be off from work for quite some time, there are now 10 days worth of crêpes in the refrigerator, which incidentally is more French breakfast food than I've eaten in my lifetime. They tell me here that I'm thin and then they hold up an index finger and turn it in the air. I wonder if this is why they keep giving me copious amounts of food. What with Adli and all the women in my daily interaction, it'll be a wonder if I fly home for Christmas somewhat smaller than a cow.

Bovine

I'm never quite sure how it happens, but I often find myself on the business end of a cow. In Manshiyet Nasr, livestock and automobiles live an integrated life. I now know how to walk down the street and not flinch at the countless number of trucks that lumber passed me leaving only inches of space. It's just part of the territory, and I refuse to let four year old children be more adept at dodging traffic than me. Occasionally though, the traffic is more bovine in nature, and I fear those large rear ends at eye level much more than automatic engines carrying tons of trash. Because if I were bovine, I'd be quite wary of a rather slight human being hovering around my hindquarters. Even though they are being rather unceremoniously hauled forward by a rope tied around their snouts, I see their large round eyes roll towards me, and I wonder how long it will take before they shoot out a back hoof and knock me flat on my own tail. So I jump up on curbs and rough hewn store fronts and try to scoot passed them before my presence is overly catalogued. 

I saw a crazy one the other day. It was enormous and standing so still that at first I thought it was a statue. Although its coat was a rich, glossy brown, its tail bones and spines were sticking out in a grotesque display of malnourishment, and one of its eyes was a glassy blue cataract. It wasn't until a slight movement of it's head that I realized I was looking at a cow. I pointed to it, and Raymon said "Cow, yes." I almost responded that I thought it wasn't real, but quickly realized how silly that would have sounded. Why on earth would someone have a cow statue standing in front of their house in Garbage City? I'm more thankful than I can say that my common sense filter seems to be in working order when it comes to verbal outbursts. It's been of great use to me more times than I can count. 

The Least of These

This place is pretty incredible. I just visited the new center for the handicapped, where children who are diagnosed with any kind of learning disability can come and be taught the basics of self-sufficiency. I'm floored. Because other than a few specialist centers, I'm not so sure our communities in the States even cater this well to their own mentally handicapped. The teachers and workers (all from this area save a Canadian woman who's worked here for 30 years and helped acquire the funds for building the center), go out into the neighborhood to talk to the residents and families to see if they know of any children or adults that may be handicapped. They then speak to their families and tell them about the center where they teach them at their own pace such basics as carpentry, cooking, motor skills if they need, and there's even a class in the basement where the students are taught how to sort recyclables so they can work with their families. Way impressive. Any kid would be lucky to learn this way, and these are the ones that need it the most. This community knows how to care for its own.

So am I needed here? No. But they're generously allowing me to contribute what skills I can, and in return, are gracing me with their unfailing hospitality. And free immersion Arabic to boot. There's hardly a day that passes that I'm not humbled or awe-inspired. And all from the least of these. 

Dusty Beginnings

Dust is everywhere. It's in my hair, it's in my nostrils, it's underneath my fingernails. In Manshiyet Nasr, it hangs in the air like a curtain. I was chastised today for leaving my water bottle open. They shouldn't have worried. This place is already in my bloodstream.

But trash is everywhere. It doesn't just litter the streets in this community. It owns them. The smell is constant and the only reprieve is indoors, and then only occasionally. I stepped on something today that I'm pretty sure was the remnants of a rat. My foot slid. I swallowed the quickly rising bile in my throat and kept moving. Yesterday, I encountered my first live one on the stairs at the organization. Inside mind you. It was cowering on the third landing and was the size of a kitten. I wish I could say I was brave and passed by it, but no, I went running back down the stairs like a 12-year old girl and couldn't go back up until Adham, the computer guy, went up and blocked it with his computer case. He said, "It stays here, you walk there." And then all the women in the office laughed at me when I walked through the door.

"This is normal here," said Mary, juggling a beautifully perfect baby boy on her knee. His name is Oliver. When Mary found out I wasn't married, she said I could marry Oliver. This makes two mothers in less than a week that wish I would marry their sons. I suppose I could do worse than people telling me everyday that I'm beautiful like the moon.

But it's more than that, and I cannot explain it exactly. The overwhelming brownness takes on a certain beauty after a while, and the people hardly cease reflecting the inescapable sun. They are effortless and comfortable, soft Arabic words flowing from their mouths. Arabic isn't always so soft though. Not when it's being yelled into a phone or at a police officer. But despite these outbursts of anger, everyone seems to be one extended family. That of Egyptians. They may have never seen each other before, but there's a tacit understanding to help if you can. We could learn from this.

I exist in warmth here, and not only because there are few times when I'm not sweating. Their eyes, their faces, their smiles, their easy laughter: it's in the air here, as effusive as the dust. It's working its magic as it flows through my veins. The guesthouse owner Maged says it's because I'm becoming Egyptian. 

Enigma

The amount of mild cardiac arrests I've had in the last two days has risen to somewhere in the vicinity of ten, which I feel is about ten more than is normal for a 48-hour period. People think this place is dangerous for reasons they see on TV. They're wrong. The most dangerous thing about this place are the two ton automobiles that they sling around the roads like there never was such a thing as traffic violations or driving rules. I like to think I'm pretty laid back. Granted, driving in DC makes me wonder at the fact that stupid people are breeding, but still. I don't stress too awful much. 

Here? Oh my word. At one point, I pulled my scarf over my face, and Romany, my driver, laughed and said "Ley?" (why?). I said, "Because everyone here drives crazy!!" He laughed again and turned up the radio. Of course. No worries. There isn't a truck two times our size mere millimeters from my window. We didn't just almost cream that guy on the Vespa (wearing sandals and no helmet, might I add). There isn't some guy being lifted into an ambulance on the side of the road, conscious but blood running down his temple as his friends look on.

"Kull yoom," says Romany. Every day. Oh sure. Because that makes me feel so much better. 

But for all their craziness, these people are probably the best defensive drivers on the planet. They have to know everything that's happening on eight sides of them in addition to predicting what all 105 cars within five feet of their bumpers are going to do. I'm a smart girl, but I don't think my brain could fragment into that many pieces at once.  

The heart stopping trip today was to Saleh-el-Din citadel. I've been before, but as I still have one more day until I start working, it gave me something to do. When we got to the entrance, the cashier said to my Egyptian friend that it would cost what equates in the US to 50 cents. Then he pointed at me and said that for me, it would be what equates to almost $10. What the??? Because I'm pretty sure that's about a 90% mark-up just because I'm a white girl. I understand locals getting discounts, it happens in the States too, but this was ridiculous. So I shook my head and fumed as best I could in Arabic to my friend. Unbelievable, this guy. But then, this is the enigma that is Cairo. 

Eau d'Egypte

Holy muffins, Batman! I'm here! (I may have stolen the first two words from a certain Priscilla Ro, so I must give props where props are due.)

So guess what? Egypt has a smell! I didn't realize it until I walked out of the airport, and it hit me like a forgotten memory. And no, I'm not talking about the Garbage City cacophony of odors. I'm talking about the Egypt smell: scented dust and haze with the occasional whiff of exhaust. My heart leapt at the first scent. How it is that one can board a metal tube, pull down the shades, and like the longest magic trick ever, be in another continent when the doors open 15 hours later, still amazes me. We were driving down the chaotic streets (only mildly so at this time, according to Mariam's dad) and I felt it. That 'holy muffins' moment.

Now I'm sitting in my window sill, having just finished off my welcome glass of tea, looking down into the courtyard, watching adorable Egyptian girls run around in princess dresses, and I can't even bring myself to unpack for all the processing going on in my brain. A few things are different about this go round: one, the guesthouse is a different one and apparently this time, the La Cucarachas are quite literally coming out of the closet. The pioneer was a thumb-sized one too. It's a testament to my previous cockroach killing training in Hawaii that I felt kinda bad about killing this one. He was almost cute and just chose the wrong time to come out and explore. But alas, now he is upside down and no longer with us in my trashcan. C'est la vie. I hope his friends don't get similar ideas, or they are going to become overly familiar with the bottom of my flip-flop...

Atta Turk!

Lemme tell you a little somethin' about Turkish airlines: even if they didn't have bright, cheery turquoise seats, they would still be a-MAH-zing. There were about 85 movies to choose from, my salmon dish, not to be downplayed by the plastic plateware it was served on, was flaky, hot and delicious. I received a nifty little zip pouch at hour two that contained a mini-toothbrush and the world's smallest dose of toothpaste, ear plugs (which I tossed), and even a pair of gray fuzzy socks complete with white slipper grips on the bottom. What an airline! I'm also attributing the aforementioned factors to my ability to sleep and the shocking realization, when I was startled awake by the "we're beginning our descent " announcement, that this was the fastest long flight I've ever taken. I didn't even start a crossword. 

(sidenote: there are currently several children speaking Arab-lish to me as I type this - makes for an interesting blog typing experience. And a styrofoam plate of sandwiches and cake just magically appeared at my elbow, courtesy of my new nine year old friend Philopater)

Now let me tell you a little somethin' about the world: there's a lot of people in it. And I'm convinced that at least a third of them were at Istanbul's Ata-turk airport today. I've been to airport after airport after airport in my life and I have never seen so many people milling around. All the black airport seats were occupied, all the cafés were spilling over with every cross-section of humanity, and at a completely arbitrary hour, there was still a line to use the women's restroom. So I, along with another woman who spoke to me like I could understand her (I couldn't), may have used the separate handicap bathroom. Woops. There was more room in there anyway. 

And PS - organization doesn't seem to extend much past the western half of the European continent. Of course, what am I saying? There are airports across the US as well that can't seem to get their act together sometimes. Maybe it's a widespread phenomenon. All I know, is had it not been for the steady trail of people moving towards the plane door, I would have had no idea we were boarding our last leg to Cairo. Good thing I pay attention. 

Just Me

It's the smells of home that get me. Gramma's house has had an aroma of laundry sheets with a hint of coffee and heat for as long as I can remember. My brother has smelled like mountain spring laundry detergent since he married his wife six years ago. The bathroom in my grandparent's bedroom smells of Gramma's lotion, just like it did when I was too young to take a bath in her gray-tiled, stand-up shower. Through decades of my life, these smells have defined my familiar. 

I just said good-bye to those smells and traded them for the carpet and glue, air-conditioned atmosphere of the airport. I didn't want to cry. But then my mom hugged me on the concrete curb beneath the US Airways departure sign, and I heard her voice catch as she said, "I love you babe." I blinked a lot, and her eyes were watery as she pulled away and walked back to the driver's side of the truck. I looked in through the passenger window and signed 'I love you' to my Grampa in the front seat. And then they were pulling away, and I avoided everyone's eyes until I met those of the female security agent.

"Are you traveling by yourself?" she asked. 

"Yes," I answered. "It's just me."

Pre-Departure

Dreams are such strange things. Indeterminate times and places, strangers, people you haven't seen for eons showing up in the oddest of places, people who are thousands of miles away walking through the halls of your high school as your sixth grade teacher appears in a doorway. "Mrs. Baylor?" I was just as confused in the midst of the dream as I am on this waking side of it. These uncanny nocturnal trips of the mind have the ability to leave you in an odd feeling haze for the first few hours of the morning. Feeling like something happened, yet knowing it didn't. Feeling like you just had very important conversations with people and yet in reality, those words have yet to be said. 

Most things these days are occurring in the context that I'm boarding a plane in a few days for a far away, rather volatile place. I've maintained a grounded sort of peace, until one or more persons say words that effectively rip that peace from my spirit and leave mild panic in its wake. Sometimes it isn't easy to tell who can be trusted - who has knowledge I should listen to and who is speaking out of their own fear. These mental gymnastics are exhausting. After a night of dream-addled sleep, I awake and the peace is back, the reason and the sense of being grounded having returned, only partnered now on the periphery with the lingering, uncomfortable remnants of the dream.

I wonder why our mind creates these stories - if they have anything at all to do with reality or are just the mind's way of coping with too much information and emotion being thrown at it in a 24-hour period. Daylight and strong coffee seem to be an effective cure. So I go back to re-packing my suitcase for the eightieth time and continue facing this thing head on. At this point, it's all there is left to do. 

Sunshine

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I could eat sunshine for breakfast. So long as it isn't accompanied by that wet, wool blanket kind of humidity and is at an appropriate angle in the sky: as in not directly overhead and blazing down on me so hard that I think someone up on a cloud somewhere is playing with a giant magnifying glass and giggling. But, if it's up there in the clear blue sky and you throw in a cool breeze, rustling leaves, and a thermostat that never crests 75º, I have found my bliss.

Right now, I'm sucking up as much clean air as I can, because that state of being is about to change. I love this weather, I love the shiny green of the tree leaves, the dappled patterns on the brick sidewalks. I'm taking it all in, because my every day is about to look entirely different. 

Love & Hate

Love makes the world go round. And hate brings it to a screeching halt. I am losing my faith in humanity and the ability of one person to do good. It seems that someone can try to start a movement of benefit and peace and it takes so painfully long to get off the ground. Yet one person can provoke hate and within a few short days, it's reverberating in every corner of the world. People stop thinking, they stop seeing other as humans and see nothing but their own rage, and the world, this planet that we all have to live on together regardless of belief or cultural upbringing, begins to fall apart at the seams.

It's a silent, deadly undercurrent in the human condition. We're all afflicted with it, only it lies more dormant in some than in others. You never know what will strike and awaken the darkness within. What cure is there to this vast illness but Love? Genuine Love, authentic Love, more than just word service Love. Loving those we don't understand, loving those that do things to hurt us, loving those that everyone expects us to hate. Because that pushes back the darkness. It cannot stand against Love. Hate cannot win a war, or even so much as a battle when it finds itself face to face against Love.

How do we learn this? How do we overcome our thoughts and opinions and words and actions with the only defense we have against this rampant onslaught? We stop fighting each other. We start listening to what other people have to say. We start trying to understand each other instead of taking for granted that we already know things that we actually don't have any idea about. We start loving our neighbors as ourselves which means we don't run away when things get ugly. It's uncomfortable and it's messy, but we have to Love. It is the only thing that will heal these gaping wounds. 

العربية

This language is slowly telling me its secrets. I'm only frustrated that it isn't telling them to me faster, or that I read sentences or hear different dialects and the secrets are being withheld. There are moments of standing in front of insurmountable walls, and then, with the onset of another day, the walls aren't quite as high anymore and the next thing I know, I'm over them. The only problem is, even if I can't see it right away, sooner or later another one pops up in front of me. Normally it isn't visible from afar. If I could see it coming, I could avoid it. Usually I'm looking off to the side admiring a tree or gazing up at the cotton candy clouds when BAM! I find myself rubbing my forehead and growling at the thing in front of me on which I just smacked it. Painted all over this wall are unfamiliar combinations of squiggles and dots that hold fast to one another's hands and refuse to tell me what they're saying. They don't even look at me. Just go on about their business, traipsing like soldiers back and forth from wall edge to wall edge. I shake my fist at them. I sigh dramatically. I even grab tightly to my scalp, thinking maybe if I pull hard enough, some unforeseen comprehension will come seeping out. It doesn't though. And that curvy script just keeps sluicing across stone. I'll get you, my pretty. You just wait. One of these days, I'll get you.  

Other Than Courage

People keep telling me I'm brave. I speak of what it is that I am doing, simply because it inevitably comes up in conversation, and I get a lot of raised eyebrows. Then they tell me that I'm brave. And I want to contradict them and say something to indicate how it really feels to me, but usually these conversations are just in passing, and the words don't come right away. But sitting here, in the safety and comfort of my home, on the eve of this endeavor that is slightly unlike any I've undertaken in the past, I realized exactly what it is. 

You see, when the one I've given my life to reaches in and grabs hold of something inside of me, He tends to not let go until I've followed. Doing anything else, choosing anything else when this cord that He has tied around my heart is constantly tugging me, would be like playing a record backwards, running a palm against the grain of a piece of wood, or petting a cat from tail to perky ears. It would sound scratchy and off, the palm would come away with splinters, and the feline would endure no more than a millisecond of that abuse before giving the offender a very clear piece of his mind. 

So is this bravery? Not to me. It's obedience, but more than that, it simply must be. I know of no other way to put it. I've spent my life searching for these moments of clarity, and they've been few and far between. I even told someone once that I was just waiting for things to make sense, and his response was that things would never make sense. He was right. Sometimes even the pockets of clarity are peppered with questions and doubts and nights when I feel like I'll never stop leaking tears. But that feeling in my gut, the instinct, the call: they never go away. And while they run around the room preparing to jump out into space, Logic sits in his wing-backed chair, silk robe tied neatly across his chest as he sips Cavartier and says "You guys have lost your minds." 

Because you can look at the ocean and appreciate its beauty if your toes are firmly grasping wet, sandy earth. But you'll never truly know the awe, the power, and the current; never feel the split-second heartbeat of fear from a gathering wave; never taste the salt on your lips or know the weightless peace of floating unless you dive in, head underwater and feet beyond the reach of the ocean floor. Logic can have his agreeable chair and solid ground. I'll take the ocean any day. 

Land Without Time

It was dust and unfinished brick tenements. Garbage City was everything I'd seen in pictures and videos only in 3D with a bit of an added stink and a million more flies. Yet underneath the piles of garbage and dirt was a burgeoning, efficient, joyful community of people crowned at it's head with the ethereal Cave Church - stone crosses and carvings emerging out of the massive, jagged edge of a sandstone mountain. A priest had begun this back in 1969, following his calling to minister and take care of the people of Manshiyet Nasr, a displaced group of Copts from Upper Egypt. 

A tour of this small city set apart from the hustle of Cairo showed a slice of daily life. Children ran everywhere, scruffy and laughing, and their elders sat on crates or bins, eyes a bit surprised, hands barely ceasing the motion of sorting trash. We were an anomaly, mostly pale skinned and streaming through their midst like water through oil. We were seen from every nook, cranny, and upper window, the children excited to try their five words of English: "Hallo, welcome, what's your name?" This place leaked joy. 

Amid the chaos, we saw the organization, the different families responsible for plastics or aluminum or tin, the small businesses lining the main drag - a street that blended in to all the others unless one took a closer look. There were shisha cafés and fruit stands selling yogurt parfaits and sugar cane juice. Small children dodged the endless succession of pick-up trucks loaded to three times their height with bales of trash; mangy dogs skulked around looking for scraps; older children drove through the melée on flat carts pulled by donkeys. And from the guest house roof, the skyline was dotted with countless pigeon coops - boxy tree forts only accessible by a series of ladders from rooftops that housed small herds of livestock, chicken and goats. When the sun crested the mountain in the mornings, the birds danced and dove in its light, a winged ballet against the blue. When night fell, roosters crowed oblivious to the absent daylight, and mules brayed in indignation. They kept us from sleep in tandem with biting insects and air conditioners that rattled through the night. I wouldn't have had it any other way. 

This place taught us the true meaning of the word flexibility.The only thing that happened regularly and on schedule in this land without clocks or agendas were our mornings in the largest of the Cave Church auditoriums - a daily exercise in feeling small, our diminutive bodies dwarfed in the rocky chasm, the sky endless overhead. It was the beginning of the extermination of our pre-conceived notions. 

At the orphanage, we were as verbal as we dared even though we were standing on opposite sides of a language gap. Fortunately, love crosses borders without even having to go through security and within half an hour, it was as if we'd always been there. They sought us out at every turn, eyes searching our faces, hands reaching for ours, every smile a reminder that we were family despite never having met. We had been asked to come play, and like every child waiting on a sleepover guest, their excitement was tangible as they showed us their domain. Paintings of cartoons danced on the walls and the classrooms boasted colored pictures and low tables scattered over Eastern carpets. The sun was hot and the flies persistent, but we were in a children's oasis, a place where they learned what it meant to be served and loved through kindness and attention. For a few moments, we were allowed to be a part of that and it left none of us unchanged. 

Of course, a trip to Egypt is hardly complete without a visit to the pyramids and a ride atop a humpy-backed camel. Our last day was chock full of sightseeing: the most intense souvenir hawkers I've ever seen in my life, huge triangular piles of thousand year old stones, a trip to a Bedouin fragrant oil tent, kisses with the Sphinx, more shisha smoke that I could handle, and a rather interesting dinner cruise down the Nile where we all starred in the Egyptian version of Wedding Crashers. I understand now, after a solo performance of one of the wedding guests in Egypt's version of So You Think You Can Dance, why they usually don't, and my head is still in knots over how such a conservative culture allows for belly dancers who wear what amounts to a negligé. Despite the idiosyncrasies, the land and the people in it crept into our hearts and stayed there. Egypt is not easily forgotten, and this world that creates its own pace taught all of us a little more of what it is to be human.