Spring Break Part 2: Lambchops

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I’ve been sluggish in finishing this blog up. I was recently asked by a friend to hurry up and write one final post so he can take the darn thing off his bookmarks list. I don’t particularly want to end my short writing career, and I also don’t feel as if I’ve really settled into place in DC yet (this might be related to the fact that I’m still unemployed…). Some sort of resolution to this story is in order, but I don’t feel it, so I’m not going to attempt to provide it. Besides, there’s still more to tell. I have a feeling that there will always be more to tell.

For some of my friends, the adventure isn’t over at all. I know a few who are doing international summer programs hot on the heels of our Egyptian experience, including one who flew straight to Buenos Aires from Cairo, no down time whatsoever. The idea of beginning something new so soon, of launching into another voyage right from the first, is almost mindblowing to me. To take the plunge into another culture – one radically different from both the Middle East and the United States, with no time even to absorb and process the Egyptian experience, to let everything sink in… what a challenge that must be, and yet, what a unique perspective that must provide.

For me, it is an active struggle not to leave pieces of myself in Cairo. I don’t mean that in the usual “there’ll always be a little piece of my heart in X” way. I mean that I face the very real danger of losing, of forgetting what I learned and who I became. In my old environment, with my old friends, surrounded by the familiar, it is indescribably easy to slip gradually back into my former self. I must fight daily to make real in my life all of the personal changes I worked so hard for abroad.

So to embark on another adventure so soon, without fully internalizing the first… it’s hard to know what would happen to me. Would the second experience overwrite the first? Would each throw the other into sharper relief? Would the two mesh into some sort of inextricable web? I can’t say.

And then there are some of my peers who have been traveling for a long, long time (by my standards anyway). How they do it is far beyond me. When one journey bleeds into the next, and then the next, it is an understatement to describe the task of sorting out the layers of experience as a challenge. But then again, not everyone feels the need to do quite so much sorting as I do.

Reflections

I returned to Cairo last night from a fortnight’s journey across the Middle East. It was strange to be back. I walked the streets this evening with a sense of intimate familiarity that I’d never felt before. After two weeks of adjusting to constant change and newness, Cairo felt not quite like home, but was still well-trodden ground. I had to remind myself that, to everyone else, I still look like I did when I stepped off the plane three months ago. The Egyptian locals I pass in the street still see an agnabee, a foreigner, a white twenty-something male with dark brown hair parted down the middle, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt. My level of comfort with my environment, my knowledge of the culture, the ease with which I now wield my Arabic to accomplish routine tasks, are not visible to the naked eye. And they never will be. Only when I speak a greeting, shove my way tenaciously to the front of a line, or cross a busy street do my knowledge and experience reveal themselves.

When I first arrived in Egypt, I marveled at the Westerners I saw living in Cairo. Zamalek, the island where I live, is an affluent area, home to many embassies and a significant foreign population. While I recognized that we students hardly blended in with the locals, the expatriates were shockingly visible. I saw women wearing skirts, men walking dogs, unorthodox clothing that was borderline taboo. Members of the Western community looked so obviously out of place. “How can they live like that,” I thought, “so un-integrated?” At the time, I chalked it up to lack of cultural sensitivity.

But I see now that I was wrong. The expats living here don’t perceive themselves as disconnected at all. Rather, they have attained a sense of familiarity with their environment. They have the knowledge and skills necessary to complete the tasks that confront them on a daily basis. They know the city, or at least the parts of it that they frequent. They speak enough Arabic to get by. And they are fluent enough in the culture, the way things work in this country, to live with relative ease. Like me, they are comfortable with their environment. And it seems that being comfortable with a milieu breeds the sense that one’s surroundings are equally comfortable with you. How much longer living here would it take, I wonder, for me to lose my own self-awareness?

That question will never be answered. I can no longer avoid the fact that my journey is near its end. I returned last night from my spring break travels with a strong sense of the finitude of time. I had but little of it everywhere we went, and I will probably never see the places I visited again. With one month left, I have much to do and much to see before I leave Egypt, and the full weight of school comes to bear at a most inopportune time. I am sorry to say that new posts to this blog will be infrequent, if they come at all.

This post would be quite a change of tone if it was all contemplation and no entertainment, however, so I leave the reader with this:

Spring Break Part One: Ahoy!

Two weeks ago, I set out with seven faithful companions on a journey across the Middle East. Our goal was to visit Jordan, Syria, and Israel, before making our way back to Egypt. Our travels began with a long bus ride across the Sinai desert to Taba, a low-key resort area on the Red Sea. Our plan was to take a ferry across the Gulf of Aqaba straight to Jordan in order to bypass Israel (an Israeli stamp on our passports would make us ineligible to enter Syria). After a thorough search of our luggage and a long wait on the beach, we finally boarded the ferry and set off. It was a pleasant cruise. Relaxing (although slightly odd) music played in the background. The passengers lounged about, sipping juice boxes provided by the boat company. My traveling companions settled in to read Time or the Economist. I enjoyed the scenery as we drifted along, and marveled at the deep blue of the water and the mountains visible in the hazy distance.

As we cruised across the Gulf of Aqaba toward Jordan, the wind picked up slightly and a gentle breeze drifted in from the south. It brought with it cool, fresh air. I breathed in deeply. I caught a whiff of something odd, something unnatural. It was a strong, musky odor, with a hint of… no, it couldn’t be. I got to my feet and scanned the southern horizon. Nothing. Odd… But then I saw something in the distance, a black shape, slowly growing larger. Concerned now, I started climbing up a ladder on the main mast toward the vacant crow’s nest to get a better look. As I neared the top the smell grew stronger, and it became unmistakable – rum. Three day old sweat, rum, and a hint of gunpowder. That could mean only one thing.

“Pirates!” I yelled. “Pirates ho!”

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than our vessel shook violently as it was rocked by a cannon blast. We needed to move. Now.

“They got the engine! We’re done for!” our captain wailed.

Immobilized, we could do nothing but watch as a massive, three-masted pirate ship flying the skull and crossbones pulled up alongside our vessel. Thirty swarthy pirates swung from the riggings onto our deck, brandishing knives, cutlasses, and pistols.

“Avast!” cried their one-eyed, peg-legged leader, “Hand over yer booty, ye scurvy rapscallions, or walk the plank!”

The passengers around me cowered in fear. Our captain tried to tell everyone to be calm and hand over anything of value so we could all walk away alive.

Over my dead body.

I cast about for a weapon. My eyes fell upon Ainsley, our group’s petite Texan belle with a backpack of prodigious size. “Ainsley,” I yelled, “Bring that backpack over here!” She scurried across the deck as quickly as she could under the weight of the massive bag on her back. I seized her by the ankle and swung her through the air, backpack and all. I heard the sound of bone shattering against expensive cosmetics as the bag crashed squarely into the pirate leader’s jaw, knocking him overboard.

Their leader fallen, the other pirates hesitated, unsure of what to do. Several of them glanced at each other, nodded, and took a step toward Andy. Andy crossed his arms, furrowed his brow, and let loose a low, guttural grunt. Two pirates fainted, a third soiled himself, and nine more jumped screaming into the sea. Brandishing a nail file and a blow dryer (and shrieking like banshees), Ariel and Alison drove the rest of the crusty scalawags overboard as well. Leah sat calmly through the incident with a tranquil, bemused expression on her face, while Tim enjoyed a hearty brunch of salted pork and rum.

The pirates defeated, we now faced the challenge of reaching the shore with an engineless boat. Dan, being a Florida resident, was intimately acquainted with the workings of three-masted pirate ships, and after procuring a captain’s hat, he commandeered the vessel and set about making it ready. We reached Aqaba without further incident, and continued unfazed on our daunting journey.