WORLD WITHIN WORLDS

I am unaware of walking on this immense sandy plateau. I am literally becoming a part of it. The sand feels warm, enticingly sensual. My legs move backward and forward, digging deep into its silky softness. I have no idea where I am going. The horizon seems so close; I feel like walking right up to the edge of the world. The sky is a blue I have never seen before, a brilliant turquoise blue with the texture of smooth silk. It looks deceptively close; maybe I could reach out and caress its face through the cotton wool clouds.



It is early morning and Badri is still sleeping peacefully in the open air. We spent our first night near Acrobat Mountain; a surreal landscape of sand stone mountains with crooked shapes and arches, smooth chalk-white rocks and sloping ridges of powdery dunes. It was hard to believe that we were less than two hundred kilometers away from Cairo. This place was a like another planet.

We headed towards the Libyan border; the eastern gateway of the Sahara. A terrifying magnificence of wilderness unfolded and held me captive. We discovered a plain with no visible limits - composed of sand and stone, speckled with spindly bushes. The plain was flooded with light, burning with the sun rays and our camp became a pygmy village dwarfed by the immense wilderness.

After dinner, Badri and I took a long walk, barefoot in the cold sand. I asked him how he managed never to get lost in that vast space. The stars appeared permanent and ageless. Despite their inconceivable distance, they did not seem so far away. I kept walking in the sand, cloaked in the darkness, with Badri's familiar shape like a roving shadow next to mine. That night, I almost had the illusion of truly being united with universal time and space. The desert assigns its own slow rhythms; a rhythm from beyond silence, from beyond life; to the smallest gesture, the most insignificant word.

It was like vanishing into some vast realm beyond the mind, way beyond thoughts, beyond feelings and sensations and all the convoluted tangles of consciousness. Even beyond awareness itself. A space so colorless, so silent and so infinite that it seemed to be its own universe. And I just simply disappeared into it. The heat shimmers were so violent that it was easy to loose your way. 200 hundred yards away from a landmark appears the same as a 100 miles; suddenly, you don't know where you are, utterly lost in a miasma of brilliant shimmering white light.

The desert is still with me now. In moments of reflection, I can return to its space and silence and in a strange way, I find it comforting and reassuring. Maybe we all have a desert in our minds. A place of refuge and utter peace, where, despite all evidence to the contrary, we are completely safe. A place in the mind, yet far, far beyond the mind. This is where I begin dreaming of Egypt.


Alitalia's Cairo bound flight was the equivalent of bungee jumping into a spider web of unknowns. I wrestled with the broken straps of my backpack and shuffled to my seat next to a smooth looking businessman with his nose buried inside an Arabic newspaper. From 20,000 feet above sea level, there was no demarcation line of where Europe ended and Africa began, but within the space of three short airborne hours, I was whisked from the cafes of Piazza Navonna to a third world megalopolis boasting a population of sixteen million and an intricate language of glottal stops. My seatmate poked me in the ribs to point out the pyramids below the wing span. Egypt was my introduction to the Arab world.

There was no fuss with immigration at Cairo International airport where two postage size stamps provided an entry visa. The official at the desk glanced at me inquiringly.

'You Muslim girl? From Amrika?' he pondered the incongruent equation.

'Why you alone? Where you stay?'

I shrugged my shoulders helplessly as he frowned and laboriously pasted the stamps in my passport. In the next instant, he was following me breathlessly down the hallway insisting on arranging some accommodation. I politely refused his help, knowing full well that I would be absolutely stranded if my tiny glimmer of hope didn’t show up.

She was a scratchy old voice over the fiber optics between Rome and Cairo just a week ago.

'Yes, yes, you come. No worry. I have place for you to stay!' she had bellowed into the static choked receiver.

I sent her my flight details in email and hoped for the best. The reception area was a sea of people scanning for friends and relatives with eyes capable of drilling holes. There was no one waiting for me. My heart sank and I walked back to look for Mr. visa cum concierge.

He was still standing in the hallway and shook his head knowingly.

'No good. No good. I find you hotel. You wait here'.

I swallowed my disappointment and sunk down at on the cold marble floor. People sailed along with purpose, happily chattering in Arabic, welcoming friends and relatives, smiling, hugging and kissing loved ones. I stared at them enviously. They were happy people with places to go and a bed for the night. If only there was a long lost cousin to welcome me, some estranged family member who would turn up miraculously and pick up my luggage. My eyes lowered in despair and fell upon a pair of black patent shoes with side buckles positioned squarely before me.

I followed my gaze up the long black skirt, past a plum colored cardigan towards a small wrinkled face with thick oversized glasses peering down at me intently. She was a mature woman in her mid fifties who instantly reminded me of a twitching sparrow when she arced her head from left to right, searching for that perfect angle for her visual inspection.

A hand made sign neatly printed with my name dangled at her wrist. 'Maliha Masood?' she emphasized the h almost to the point of spitting out the letter in my face. It was the first time I had heard my name pronounced in its proper Arabic style. Back in the States I muted the h and told people to call me Maria with an l.

A wave of relief washed over me as the scratchy voice over the phone introduced herself as 'Dr. Nadia', my new land lady in Cairo.

The cherry red Mazda was weaving like a lost bullet through a thick tangle of traffic. I was impressed at the deft maneuvers of my skillful driver who may have looked like a frail old lady but drove like a Grand Prix racer. We snaked through a maze littered with yellow meterless taxis, rickety bicycles, donkey carts, camel carts, and tricycles filled to the brim with fresh slabs of sesame bread, all vying for space with polished Mercedes with tinted windows and vintage Eastern European cars that were probably in use since World War 11. Huge swarms of pedestrians waded next to this moving sea of traffic with a nonchalant air that belied their danger of being crushed to death by a hunk of metal at any given moment. The net effect reminded me of a three-ring circus without a tent.

Dr. Nadia strained to converse amid the cacophony of horns that appeared to be wired to the brakes and gas pedals of every single vehicle.

'So you come to Cairo to study Arabic?' her eyes narrowed in oval slits of suspicion as if it was my cover for something far sinister.

'Your friend who stayed before knew very good Arabic. She learned with mullah from the neighborhood mosque. She was very nice girl'. She glanced disapprovingly at my disheveled clothes and my uncovered hair. They did not seem to measure up to her standards.

We entered a relatively calmer area lined with small shops with all the signs in Arabic that I could read but not comprehend. Growing up in Pakistan, I had learned to parrot Quranic verses after my teacher but it wasn't considered important to actually speak the language that would have come in handy twenty five years later in my new neighborhood of Al-Demerdash. A sprawling apartment complex of beige and brown lego units jutted across the street from a busy subway station.

A dark bony man draped in a striped galabiya and an elegant white turban approached our car. Aunty Nadia introduced him as Ghuma, the doorman/custodian/gatekeeper of the building and barked some orders in rapid fire Arabic. I noticed his kind eyes and gentle face.

'Ahlan, Ahlan', he softly murmured and effortlessly balanced my twenty pound cobalt blue backpack on his head, along with two heavy duffle bags that dangled like noodles on one of his slender arms. The combined weight of the luggage probably exceeded that of his own frail body, yet he handled it with confounding grace. We took the elevator to the sixth floor while Ghuma straggled behind on the stairs.

The apartment was positively immense with an industrial style kitchen a well furnished living room and formal dining area, a modern bathroom and two large bedrooms. For all this, Dr. Nadia wanted 800 Egyptian pounds a month, or $US 200 - a great bargain, compared to Western standards. I glanced at the frosted glass windows muffling the sprawling, unknown metropolis beyond.

Al Qahira. The Arabic name means the city victorious. For a moment, I was overwhelmed with an acute anxiety pang as if some terrible lapse of consciousness had mistakenly pushed me onto that plane. Despite having touched ground, I was still in free fall mode.

My landlady was surprisingly formal for an Egyptian. She had left a bowl of fruit on the dining table as a welcome token and gave me a brief tour of the apartment, making sure to note down the meter reading. Something about nearby shops for food necessities droned in my ears but the directions were too complicated for my flight hangover from Europe and the galactic leap from West to East within the last twenty four hours. From guzzling espressos and admiring sculptures of mythic goddesses at the Villa Borghese museum, I was learning how to tweak an ancient gas stove in my Cairo kitchen. The mechanics of my journey yielding once more a blank reel without a prescribed script.