word nerd vs. big blue watery thing

waddle, waddle, waddle ... kick.

"Ow!"

difficult.

waddle, waddle, stop.
hesitate ... leap ...

(1/2 a second of suspended time)

SPLASH!

ohmigod: shock of water ... cold!
salty taste ... awful.

open eyes. blue everywhere.
Yuliya nowhere.

surface. breathe.
awareness of the tide,
pushing me towards ... wait, I see legs!
found her.

ok ... swim, swim, stop. swim a bit more.
look around: girlfriend location check.

but what's ...
and the amazing swirly patterns on the rocks ...
are they really ...
and how close is it to ...

"Aaaarrgghhh!!!"

rock ... very, very sharp!

can't be more than 20cm below the surface;
can't swim over it,
can't go round it,
and now I'm on top of it.

brain dredges up long-forgotten coral references:

"knife-edged and deadly",
"slicing through human skin like razor blades" 

hands try to push away into the blue;
tide pushes back.

breathe ... push ...
ignore cuts and scratches on legs;
ignore salt in wounds;
ignore impulse to inspect the bleeding.

A quasi-haiku of reassuring self-talk:

clarity
calm, rational thoughts
push into the open sea
breathing normally
relax

off the coral now, and swimming

look down.
freak out ... abyss!
empty, blue, shadowy and vertiginous.

no way of telling
how deep ...
what lives there ...
what might suddenly appear

no escape route,
except back to the razor blade mountain.

don't panic

look for Yuliya.
ok, still there,
and seems to be enjoying
(weird)

look for boat. where's ...

whatthe   

ok: now you can panic.

"Where's the f!@#%ing boat?
The f!@#%ing boat has f!@#%ing gone! F!@#%CK!!!"

stomach turns like a pancake ...
and again, for more frying on the bottom side.

no more hai and no more ku;
just lots of pissed off noises,
and against-the-current exertions,

constricted in my ill-fitting life-jacket 
this is probably the least fun
I could have
with my pants off*.

Anthony's introduction to the Red Sea (and to snorkelling) is definitely not going well.

Twenty minutes later, back on the boat, I try to explain to The Belle why I'd had such a relentlessly awful experience in the water. The problem is, I'm not even sure myself. I mean, being dropped so close to the wall of coral certainly had something to do with it ... as did the fact that our boat pulled away from us, following people who had jumped out earlier and swum to another location.

But it was more than that. For me, the whole thing was a heart-pounding terror – the equivalent of a claustrophobe spending 20 minutes in a broken-down elevator, or a pogonophobe** being forced to wear a suit lined with stubble for a week.

I guess part of it was about the sea itself. I don't get in it very often, and every time I do, it has an effect similar to that "staring up at the night sky and feeling very tiny and insignificant" feeling. I'm aware – sometimes consciously, sometimes not – that what I'm immersed in is the biggest and most powerful thing on our planet, and it makes me realise just how small and ineffectual I am by comparison. This knowledge tends to overwhelm me a little.

Btw, this 20-minute stress-a-thon was part of a day-long excursion which included both snorkelling and diving – and the diving part (which had seemed far scarier than snorkelling when we booked the trip) was up next.

After the horridness of snorkelling, it seemed clear that there was no way I'd enjoy diving. I therefore told Yuliya that I didn't want to do it, and when we got the call to go below deck and suit up, I stayed above in the sunshine.

Here's the thing, though: with no-one else around, I was free to begin the process of talking myself into something that scared the shit out of me. I had no idea if it would work this time, but it has in the past ... especially when I've been able to add a "This may be the only time I get such an opportunity" clause to the mix.

About 10 minutes later, I joined My Belle in the lower cabin. 

Our first task was to read the waiver form. Of course the confidentiality clause prevents me from telling you exactly what was in it (and I don't remember the wording anyway), but here's the general gist:

You may die of fright. You may drown. Your arms and legs and torso and reproductive organs may end up in the digestive system of a shark. Your equipment may fail, fall off, strangle you or explode in an underwater ball of flame. You may break your back, lose your mind, throw up your spleen or bleed the entire contents of your arteries out your ears due to pressure changes. Or you may simply be sliced into julienne by the boat propellor. In all of these cases, or in the event of any other disaster our lawyers haven't dreamed up yet, our company reserves the right to say "I'm sorry, we don't know this person – they must've snuck onto our boat and stolen our equipment while we weren't looking." So it's your problem, basically.

Have a great time!

When we'd both finished reading we held our pens poised above the document, ready to add our sginatures but hesitating at the grimness of it all. I asked Yuliya "How did you feel about all of that?"

"Terrified", was her reply.

And so we signed.

I distinctly remember the song that was in my head while I was adding my scrawl to the document: it was Neuroticfish's They're Coming to Take Me Away. How appropriate.

Almost immediately after we'd signed our lives away, a nervous Yuliya was loaded up with an oxygen tank that weighed almost as much as she does, helped to her feet, and lowered into the sea. On her way in she bruised her elbow rather badly. Then she disappeared beneath the surface. I tried to relax.

(Ha ... like that was going to happen!)

Half an hour later she was back, telling me how incredible the experience had been. And then it was my turn.

Tank on, wetsuit on, mask on.
Off the boat, into the water next to the instructor.

Instructor says "go under the water and breathe".
I try. The panic returns. I surface.

"Try again. Hold the oxygen tightly in your mouth."

I do as he says. Same panic.

"You're not doing as I say!"

He was wrong; there was some other problem. I couldn't quite work it out, but something was making me see red every time I went beneath the surface. I could breathe from the tank, but my heart started racing each time I took a breath, and I had this feeling that I couldn't get the whole action to work ... like the first time you get behind the wheel of a car, and there seem to be far too many things to think about at once.

"You have to listen to me!",

he says.

"I am listening, but something else is wrong. Just a second ... I'll try one more time."

Down into the blue again, and ... wait, got it!

I came up and adjusted my mask, which I'd suddenly realised had been jammed against my nostrils the whole time, making it impossible to breathe out through my nose.

The adjustment couldn't have been more than a few millimetres, but when I went under the fourth time, everything was absolutely fine ... oxygen ok, heart ok, panic levels pretty close to absolute zero.

So that had been the problem all along ... so simple! And the same for snorkelling: the panic had been my unconscious reaction to something that hadn't even registered in my conscious mind – i.e. that my nasal passage was being forced closed. And that's all.

With that sorted, we did the other pre-flight tests, and then the instructor deflated my buoyancy vest and I began to sink. And then to swim very gently.

I looked down. There was the void again, as deep and almost-limitless as before, but this time I couldn't take my eyes off it (whereas before I couldn't look for more than half a second without the fear taking hold).

As we descended, the instructor kept checking that I was ok with pressure and so on, and gently guiding me down towards the seabed. I was transfixed. Not the most original metaphor, I know, but at times I really felt as though I was flying in slow motion over the surface of an alien world. I could see valleys, country roads, little mountain ranges, and other geographical features which we don't have on our planet.

The beauty of it all was just absolutely mind-bending.

A few minutes later we were almost at the bottom, and I was still staring straight down in complete wonder. Suddenly the instructor pointed ahead. I looked up, realising I'd been so intent on the seabed that it hadn't occurred to me that this was a 3-D environment ... I could look in any direction I wanted. Stupid first-timer!

Then it became apparent why the instructor had chosen that particular moment to make his pointing motions: we were approaching, and in fact almost touching, a vertical underwater cliff. It was a coral city! Lots of fish winding between rocky outcrops, plants waving about softly, and so on and so forth. This was just magical.

We swam around the base of the cliff for a minute or two, then headed out onto the sea floor, ascending and descending slightly to get over ridges of coral growing on the bottom. I was truly stunned at this point ... everywhere I looked was life, and lots of it.

The whole dive lasted for about 25 minutes, and after heaving myself back onto the boat I had one thing to say to Yuliya: "How soon can we go again?"

Before we headed back to Sharm, we snorkelled again – this time in calm waters that were absolutely teeming with fish. You'd literally stick your head under the surface and find them swimming beside your cheek ... or you'd look down and see a whole school of colourful, sucker-mouthed aquatic folk passing beneath you, with some sword-shaped companions in tow. No fear this time ... just a sense of "Wow, this is frikkin' unbelievable!"

And then, as I was preparing boarding the boat for the final time, someone shouted "Jelly!" The implication was that we couldn't get back to the boat without risking a jellyfish sting, 'cause there was one hanging around near the ladder. I stayed at a safe distance, treading water; stuck my head under water for a second, and saw another jelly about six inches away from my face. Went "Aaaaaah!", tried to paddle away from it, and actually touched the damn thing with my hand.

Uh-oh ... poison time!

But nothing happened. No pain, no paralysis, no poisoned hands of death closing around my heart. No change at all.

I was then joined by an Egyptian guy who I'd met earlier in the day. He asked why I was here doing essentially nothing, and I said "There's a jellyfish over there, and we're waiting for it to move away from the boat. There's one around here somewhere too".

"Like this one?", he said.

"Er ... yeah."

By "this one", he meant the jelly that he was now holding in his hand (probably the same one I'd touched a minute eaerlier). He'd picked it up in his palm, turning it upside down so that the creature's outer 'umbrella' flopped over the sides of his hand, and its insides were visible.

"Don't worry", he said cheerfully. "They're not dangerous."

Apparently not. Hmmm ... that's certainly one difference between Australia and Egypt that I hadn't anticipated!

Heading back to Sharm el-Sheikh, I felt contented and reflective: this had been an amazing day. It's not often that you get to discover a whole new kind of physical environment that you've never seen before, whilst overcoming a blinding fear at the same time. All in all, I'd say it was worth the airfare by itself. And it definitely won't be the last time I venture under the sea. Stay tuned for more fishy adventures ...

:-)



* Many years ago I had a colleague called Odette who was very fond of the expression "It's the most fun you can have with your pants on!". I always found it quite amusing ... hence the desire to 'flip the phrase over' when describing a horrible experience which entailed me wearing only bathers.

(A ridiculous footnote, if ever there was one!)   

** pogonophobia = fear of beards. (Margaret Thatcher was apparently a pogonophobe, and wouldn't let any of the ministers in her cabinet grow facial hair.)

camels by candlelight

PHASE ONE: MISSION-BOUND

Here' a question I plan to ask my students next time we study the present perfect tense*: "Have you ever tried to buy candles in the desert at night?"

My own answer to this question?
"Yes, I have."

Let me explain ...

It was a little after 1am, and we were way, way out of town. As our bus pulled off the road, I noticed three things: first, the imposing silhouettes of tall, bare hills, towering just metres away in the darkness. Second, the intense brightness of the stars. And third, some black goats on the dirt road in front of us, two of them huddled together for warmth and looking rather cute'n'snuggly.

I had absolutely no idea of our whereabouts, but the place looked like a roadside diner/tea house of some kind. A cheery neon "Welcome" sign hung over the roof, but the owners hadn't bothered to light it for our small group. There was also a little shop, which was the reason I decided to risk waking Yuliya (who was asleep on my shoulder) by standing up. I had to get off the bus, 'cause I had a mission. Probably a fruitless one, mind you … and yet one which had to be attempted.

"But why?", you might ask (and my thanks to you if you did :-)

The answer: it was all to do with The Belle.

See, Yuliya's birthday had fallen about ten days earlier, and we'd had a little celebration at my flat in Lviv. I'd promised her, though, that the real party would be in Egypt. It seemed to me that there would be no more appropriate moment to hold said party than sunrise on the summit of Mt. Sinai ... which was exactly where we were headed along this (almost) deserted highway. But of course, this meant preparations.

The gifts-and-cake part already had been taken care of – though cake-wise, I was only able to manage a twinkie bought from an all-night service station. However, I'd stupidly forgotten the other crucial ingredient – the things you’re supposed to put IN the cake and then set on fire. As a result, the following thought had been burning a hole in my brain throughout the first part of our journey:

"You idiot ... you've got no freaking candles!!!"

I wander into the shop, knowing my chances are slim. There I'm greeted by a friendly, slightly stoned-looking Egyptian guy who wants to show me every single thing he has. His collection is rather extensive, and over the next two minutes I see tiny camels, commemorative Sinai plates, pyramid keyrings, ashtrays, postcards, tiny tutenkhamuns, the cartouches of various pharaohs ... I think I could've been shown the entire contents of the Cairo Museum in miniature paperweight form if I hadn't been in such a hurry! So after the first half-a-dozen items, I blurt out the question in Russian**:

"Do you have candles?"

No comprehension.

Repeat the question in English.

A vague glimmer of familiarity spreads across his face … but we still have some distance to go toward full understanding.

Feeling sleepy and not really up to this, I do my best to mime the action of lighting a candle. Somehow, this does the trick – he understands what I'm after. And amazingly, in the small hours of the morning in the absolute middle of nowhere, I then find myself staring at two perfect little yellow wax cylinders with wicks at one end.

They're quite thick, and it's clear that only one of them will fit comfortably on top of a twinkie. But I’m so grateful to this guy for having what I wanted, that – explaining that it’s my wife's*** birthday – I buy them both.

Then a question from the shop attendant: "You are going to give your wife party?"

"Mm-hmm. On Moses Mountain."

"Aaaaaah", he says, and reaches underneath his counter to pull out a little ornamental bowl full of loose greenish-brown leaves.

"Your wife ... she smoke?"

"Er, no."

He shakes his head. "No, no cigarettes ... she smoke this?"

I can be a little slow to understand when someone is making a drug reference, but now I've got the message.
 
"No, thanks, she doesn't use hashish."

"Oh, come now my friend. Maybe she try first time. Perfect present for you, uh?"

"Thank you, but I won't".

I shift my attention to the collection of foreign currency stuck on the wall behind him, noticing a Kazakh 200 Tenge note and feeling the pull of nostalgia drawing me towards it. I inspect the note closely (though I'd seen hundreds of them before), and mention that I used to live in Kazakhstan, thinking it might help to change the subject.

It doesn't.

"Ok, well I have to go now. But thank you very much for the candles."

"No, thank you, my friend. I see you again some time."

As I walk out the door, he resumes combing the little hashish leaves around his bowl with a packet of tobacco papers.

Shuffling out into the darkness under the non-functioning neon sign, I feel extremely fortunate and happily disposed towards everything ... especially the goats, who are still huddling together, looking even cuter than before. I figure there can't have been too many occasions in history when a chance meeting between two people at completely cross-purposes (a souvenir shop attendant / amateur hash dealer and a foreigner seeking party supplies) has gone so well.


PHASE 2: ASCENDING

For the next hour-and-a-half we tried to sleep on the bus, knowing that it would be our only opportunity for rest tonight. It was difficult, though ... we passed through some amazing desert terrain which drew the eye, and (it seemed to me) a couple of minor military outposts. These were fascinating, in that I could make no sense of their locations at all. They seemed to just rise out of the sand without warning, and I had weird "This must be what it's like to suddenly come upon an Iraqi resistance camp" thoughts.

Anyway, just before 3am our bus pulled up at the foot of Mt Sinai, and we were guided to the departure point with our torches. Yuliya switched on our torch and we started moving, staying a little way behind the others in our group so as to enjoy the silence.

A few minutes later the torch was switched off, never to be used again. "It's more beautiful without it", Yuliya explained. How true.

For the next three hours we climbed the 1800 metres towards Sinai's peak. The first two of those were done in darkness ... though it wasn't completely dark, thanks to an elegant half-moon which illuminated our path beautifully.

It's difficult to explain the allure of climbing a mountain in the dark. I mean, mountain climbing is generally such a visual pastime ... you want to stop frequently, turn your gaze away from the path and take in the landscape as each increase in altitude further expands and enhances the panorama. So why do it at night, when this part of the experience is denied you?

I didn't have an answer to that question when we booked our night-time hike – it just seemed like the thing to do. But I have one now, and it's this: those mountain peaks and boulders and valleys are perhaps even more beautiful, and certainly a lot more mysterious, when glimpsed in outline under the moonlight. Sometimes a rock lying on the path ahead seems to take on the form of a reclining bedouin, almost visibly breathing the night air. Then you see one that’s an animal, or a house, or some other semi-familiar object. And then, at other times, the shapes looming up before and around you are entirely exotic and alien. There were moments when we could easily have imagined that we were space tourists, dropped on the surface of another planet.

On the other hand, sometimes the looming things really were bedouin, dragging their camels down the mountain.

In fact, I've never seen so many goddam camels in my life. If I were to add up all the camels I'd seen before tonight, and multiply the resulting number by 20, I still wouldn't be close to the number of times I heard the words "You want camel? Good camel!" last night.

This was sort of cool at first, but after the 100th sales pitch, I began to lose patience:

"You want camel? Good camel!"
"No! Bad, baaaad camel!"

I really shouldn't be so rude. This is their livelihood, after all.


PHASE 3: UNCLUTTERED/UNBUSHED

The last 150m or so of the ascent was quite challenging to say the least, especially after a sleepless night. But a few doubtful rest stops later, I finally reached the summit ... where Yuliya had been waiting for me for some time. (Damn these naturally fit people!)

I can't say that the sunrise itself was especially spectacular – I've seen more dramatic horizons, to be honest – but the views around us were definitely worth writing home about (so I am!). Even though we were sharing the occasion with a sizeable crowd, who lined up along the narrow summit like a string of brightly-coloured teeth, there was still a sense of peacefulness at the top.

I remember reading once that Nietzsche used to go walking in the mountains of  'Upper' Bavaria****, because the sensation of vast openness helped to focus his thoughts, stripping away all that was unnecessary and bringing simplicity and clarity. On Sinai there was a similar sense that the world had suddenly become 'uncluttered'. As we stood level with the wispy clouds, daylight resolved the grainy blue silhouettes around us into well-defined rock massifs, and a kind of 'natural lens flare' effect gave the whole scene a filmic quality as the sun crept over each peak. But in the spaces between them ... only sky. And we were in it.

And so we watched the day's arrival, stabbed a twinkie with a candle, did the little birthday rituals (a quick rendition of "Happy Birthday", unwrapping of presents) and posed for a few pics.

And that, in short form, was our Sinai experience. The rest of the excursion mostly involved a tired descent (thankfully via a different path – Yuliya and I both hate back-tracking!), and standing around for ages waiting to go into the monastery which supposedly contains the ‘burning bush’.

For those of you unfamiliar with the burning bush myth, it’s worth spending a minute or two trying to come to grips with the sheer monumental absurdity of it. Here’s the abridged version:

Basically, this regular guy called Moses was out wandering in the hills one day when a bush suddenly burst into flames next to him. Naturally he was surprised – and if he’d been a more level-headed fellow, he probably would’ve concluded that his family’s bread supply had gone mouldy, and that the mould contained hallucinogens. Or else wondered if his wife had started slipping hardcore hashish into the dough mixture. But Moses really wasn’t what you’d call an ‘anaytical personality type’.

Even when the bush began speaking to him, and claiming it was the voice of God, Moses still didn’t see the drug connection. He didn't even take a moment to wonder if it was his neighbour Matthias – an annoying man with a practical joke fetish – who'd doused the bush in rubbing alcohol, set it alight, and hid behind it going  "Moooooseeeees ... MOOOOseeeees ... listen to me, Moses, for I am your Lord and Father" etc. etc.

Instead, Mr Gullible (Moses' surname, known to relatively few) listened attentively to the instructions the bush gave him. These mostly involved heading into Egypt and behaving in an incredibly petty and irritating way towards the Pharaoh and his subjects, throwing around sadistic threats about weeping sores and locusts and beating the local magicians at a game of "wave the magic staff around and watch nasty things pop out of thin air". Then, having taken it all in, Moses went and did exactly what the bush commanded … which is logical, of course. I mean, if your house plants started talking to you, claiming to be divine and advising you to go and confront your head of government, you’d probably be ok with it, right?

*shakes head*

Stupid story!
 
So yeah … we know that none of that ever happened – it was just an idiotic bit of Jewish literary bravado, which would’ve been rejected if the Bible’s editors had been able to find something more plausible and inspiring to add to their story than talking foliage. Therefore I wasn’t overly disappointed when I didn’t get to see the famous bush. Besides, by that time of the morning, we were beginning to to look a little dried up and charred ourselves!


PHASE 4: SHARMED, UNCHARMED

About four hours later – after a gruelling bus ride during which Yuliya suffered the violent effects of motion sickness – we approached a gilded, arched gateway in the middle of a small intersection. As the inevitable guys with machine guns waved us through, our guide said "So, guys, welcome back to Sharm el Sheikh."

"Fantastic!", I thought. I can finally get out of this awful bus and get Yuliya into the hotel room for some rest and recuperation.

Wrong!

The bus ride, it turned out, wasn't even close to being over. For the next hour-and-a-quarter, we wound through an endless maze of resort hotels, dropping off the various people with whom we'd been on excursion. Hionestly, I hadn't realised there were this many hideous resort hotels on the whole frikkin' planet, let alone that there could be so many in one place.

"Welcome to Sharm el-Sheikh" indeed; we were back in the city which one Englishwoman I'd spoken to earlier that day had called "the false Egypt". And how right she was.

The biggest challenge we faced in "Sharm" (as the locals call it) was finding an Egyptian restaurant. The hotels
have completely pushed out any semblance of local culture, and what's left is completely catered to people who want to be surrounded by palms and faux sphinxes, but without ever stepping outside their culinary or linguistic comfort zones. The second biggest challenge: working out whereabouts in the city people actually live. In one week, I saw exactly one crappy apartment building – and when I did, it was like "Look ... washing on clotheslines! It's a real block of flats!"

The rest of the time: wall-to-wall resorts. Seriously, there's rarely more than 3 metres separating them, and some even have adjoining walls. And the scariest part: they're building even more of the bastards. Appalling.

However, with all that said, I quickly worked out that the appeal of Sharm is not what's in it, but rather what's around it. We'd already climbed a mountain by moonlight, ridden horses through the desert and swum off pristine shores where the crystal waters were packed with exotic fish and corals (or at least Yuliya had – I was yet to acquire a pair of bathers at that point in the holiday). And the biggest thrill was yet to come: we'd signed up for diving in The Red Sea, and we were both terrified and painfully excited about it.

And that, my friends, is where I'll pick up in the next entry.

Till then ... take care )))




* Present perfect tense: er ... the short explanation is that it's a kind of grammatical tense which appears in a few of the Earth's languages (including English), but not in the majority. You therefore have to explain it a LOT to people learning English.

The detailed explanation is ... well, already known to a lot of people who read this blog, and probably extremely dull to 99% of everyone else. It's about 'aspect', and connections between past actions and present results, and so on blah-de-blah. If you've spoken English or another Germanic or Latin language from birth, you're damn lucky you never had to learn about this tense consciously – it's a real killer!


** Odd thing about Sharm el-Sheikh (from an English-speaking point of view): 90% of the tourists there are Russian, and it's surprisingly famous in the Russian-speaking world. Tell an Australian that you've been to Sharm, and they'll probably say "Where's that?" But tell a Russian that you've been to Egypt, and they'll immediately ask "Did you go to Cairo or Sharm el-Sheikh?" Hence speaking to the Egyptian shop assistant in Russian before trying English.

*** In Egypt I was continually asked about Yuliya "Is she your wife?" Easier just to answer "yes" sometimes than to explain the situation.

**** Rather charmingly, "Upper Bavaria" is called that not because it's more northerly than the rest of Bavaria (which it isn't), but because it's higher. There are simply more mountains there :-) 

wednesday evening in the hands of allah

Ummmm ... does anyone remember the late 80s? I do! It was a time when I felt intensely engaged in the world, growing up and discovering an awful lot of reality in the space of a few short years ... and yet, hen I think back now, it's difficult to know what to say about it. Those years were weird and schizophrenic, and  I'm not sure there's any adequate way to sum them up.

I mean, I s'pose I could go all flashbacky and talk about people like Gorbachev, hammering out the history-changing policies that made him a hero internationally and a spineless traitor in the eyes of his own people; I could evoke the memory of Red Noses sweeping the planet (a very weird image, I know!); of Eurovision letting new monsters loose on it (Celine Dion in '89, for example); I could mention Steven Hawking, topping the bestseller list and acquainting millions with the mysteries of cosmology; drop in a word about the Beta vs. VHS saga; comment caustically about Benazir Bhutto's ascension to power in Pakistan, long before smug folk in 'modern' Western countries like the USA and Australia had ever dreamed of electing a woman to office; and I could definitely wax nostalgic about the goths, swampies and an other gentle folk with whom the streets of inner Sydney were awash at the time. In fact, I could mention all of those things, and much besides. But quite frankly, you can find that stuff elsewhere on the web, and I'd rather discuss something else.


So ... let's talk about me )))

Oh, come on. You know you want to!

See, at some point late in 1988, while all the other late-80s shenanigans were going on, a youthful Word Nerd was boarding a 747 with his family, bound for Europe and beyond. Some time earlier, my father had decided that we could afford to do the Traditional Australian H.O.H. (huge overseas holiday). And to help him plan this odyssey, he'd asked each of us to nominate one place anywhere in the world which we really, really wanted to visit.
 
Dad himself chose, Ireland ('cause he wanted to trace a few family roots), which was cool. Mum chose a slightly bleak and depressing town in England where Royal Dalton* figurines are made. I chose Köln in Germany, partly because I wanted to see the world's blackest and most imposing gothic cathedral, the Kölner Dom (tortured little Teeny Goth that I was). And my sister Elizabeth – to my great and everlasting gratitiude – chose Egypt. 

It was Elizabeth's wise decision that brought me, in the opening days of Feb 1989, to Cairo International Airport. A couple of hours after stepping off our British Airways flight (hideously uncomfortable, as I recall), we entered a vast city of a kind I'd never dreamed existed. I was terrified, bewildered and fascinated all at once; going to Cairo at such a young age probably turned out to be one of my 'formative experiences', in the sense that it opened my eyes how utterly, fundamentally different life was and is in many parts of the world.

Unfortunately not all of my time in Egypt was great – spending two days flat on my back in Luxor with food poisoning was a fairly low ebb! But there were loads of 'Cairo moments' which were instantly and permanently etched into my memory. Like watching the sun set over the pyramids through beaded curtains in an atmospheric hotel cafe. And drawing stares in a covered market that we found by accident – a real 'locals' market away from the tourist trails, where people leaned out from their clothes-strewn balconies and shouted at vendors in the street below. And watching people run at moving buses and fling themselves at the outside railings, assisted by other passengers who put their arms out of the windows for the new arrivals to cling onto. And walking around the Cairo museum simply stunned by the masses of priceless ancient stuff, seemingly scattered at random across several floors. And our bus driver yelling at a passing pedestrian, who reached through the window of a parked car and let the hand-brake off, so that the car rolled down the road and hit another one ... thus making space for our bus to park. And last but not least, riding a camel – that was lots of fun!

To sum up my impressions of Cairo in one sentence: it seemed to me that the whole city was completely mad. Clearly, this was a place to which I had to return to one day. The only real question was when.

So that was my first taste of Egypt. But how to segue from that point to the present day? Hmmm ...

Maybe you could help me by imagining the scene slowly dissolving (so a disintegrating camel with a disintegrating teenaged me on it is what you're aiming for – have fun!). Then replace that picture in your mind's eye with a temporary blackness, and let the light fade up again slowly. I'll supply the new scene details in a sec.

Could you do that for me?

Thanks )))

Ok, scene details. It's a Wednesday evening, and the Word Nerd is looking a lot meaner and less youthful, sporting a goatee and a brand new shaven-headed 'American History X' look (courtesy of his Russian/Ukrainian partner Yuliya, who decided it would be fun to remove all of Anthony's hair on day one of our Big Adventure). Sitting on the back seat of a minibus, he's teaching a young guy called Achmed the numbers from one to ten in Russian.

The minibus contains himself, The Fabulous Yuliya, his new temporary student Achmed, a woman from Moscow who we'd met about two hours earlier while horse-riding in the desert, and approximately a dozen strangers. Together we're screaming along well-sealed, palm-lined roads with hibiscus blooming on the median strips, passing an endless succession of ugly resort hotels that sprawl gracelessly in all directions. Arabic music augmented by a doof ** is playing at a ridiculous volume inside the bus, and the driver is flicking the cabin lights on and off about three times a second, to simulate the effect of a strobe light on a nightclub dancefloor.

As we lurch over yet another speed hump, Anthony briefly wonders to himself how it is that his life has become so full of these mad deathrides in the last few years ... but he doesn't have much time to ponder, 'cause Achmed has nearly mastered 1-5 but needs some pronunciation help on the nasty little word "четыре" (four). Also, in between saying numbers he's started clapping above his head to the beat and going "Ay! Ay!", and the urge to join him is irresistible.

(Might as well die in high spirits, right?)

We're joined in celebration by a handsome Cuban/German boy sitting opposite, wearing an Arabic head-dress. Achmed feels the mood spreading, and tries to persuade others to join us, but most of the passengers seem pre-occupied with something else. We've got the driver's attention, though; our clapping seems to have inspired him to even greater feats of recklessness, and now we're madly overtaking vehicles less than half our size and weight. I'm reminded of what a Turkish guy once told me about people's attitude to driving in his country: "If Allah wills it, we shall reach our destination".

And the strangest thing about this? Right now I'm feeling completely in my element. These manic moments are something I've missed since I left Kazakhstan, and they seem to typify one aspect of how I want my life to be from here on in. Weirdness.

Then we discover what it is that the other passengers are so concerned about: our driver seems to have no clue where we're actually going. Over the general din, I hear him ask Moscow Woman "Which Hotel?"

"Cleopatra", she answers.

"Kilipatra?"

"Cleopatra."

"Ah, Kilipatra!", he yells to his colleague, who says something in Arabic that seems to mean "Ok, I think I know where that is".

Then the same question to Yuliya.

"Country Club", she says. Her answer seems to be understood.

Then about two minutes and 3kms later: "Which hotel?"

All of these hotel details, btw, were checked and seemingly well-established before we boarded the bus. But this sometimes appears to be the way of things here: people ask for your information, roll it around in their minds, decide that it presents no problem ... and then forget it! So the first hotel ID check didn't worry me too much.

After hotel ID check #3, though, something seems to click in our driver's head. He yells something back at my friend Achmed, who relays the message to me: basically, we're in completely the wrong part of town. The bus pulls up abruptly, and Achmed says "Get out!". So Yuliya, Moscow Woman and I are immediately dumped on a roadside in an unfamiliar city, and told that we'll need to get a taxi back in the other direction.

Luckily, Achmed tags along to make sure we find our hotels, and spends part of the journey struggling with Russian pronunciation. (Oh gods, how I sympathise!) I ask "Why do you want to learn Russian numbers?", and he answers something like "Шестнадцат фунтов, пожалуйста" ("Sixteen pounds, please"). Clearly, my new friend is yet another self-made entrepeneur in this country where nearly everyone has something to sell you, along with a detailed story distinguishing their wares from everyone else's. 

Several twists and u-turns later, Yuliya and I arrive at our hotel, where Achmed gets out of the cab and gives us both a warm farewell. Then he disappears with his video camera, and we're left to face the friendly but forgetful reception staff and the starving mosquitos in our room.

And yes, you guessed it: I've finally made it back to Egypt.

About frikkin' time, too!




* Royal Dalton: expensive porcelain figures of women in flowing ballroom gowns and the like. Really, REALLY not my taste, but for some reason my mum – who would no sooner put on a flowing ballroom gown than saw off her feet with a bread knife – loves them.

** "doof": not sure if it's used elsewhere, but in Australia this is the slang word for the beat in rave music – "doof tsi doof tsi doof tsi doof tsi" is how it sounds when you hear it coming from inside a car with speakers that are almost as large and heavy as the passengers.