163.
Back to Cairo: We return by train.
Before she goes back to the states, Doc wants to go souvenir shopping at the old market, the “Khan Al Khalili”, now decorated for the most important religious season of the Moslem year, “Ramadan”.
One of the young merchants we meet in the market invites us to join him in his home in Old Cairo for an after-sunset feast, since he must fast from sunrise to sunset.
When we visit, he serves us grapes, dates and holiday delicacies.
Our last few days together are pleasant but Doc must be returning to her studies in America and I want to continue my earthprobing to the east, so it is “farewell, Doc and bon voyage”!
After Doc’s departure I find that walking alone in Cairo is not so easy.
When I am looking for the Lebanese Embassy on foot, for example, I am stopped before crossing one of the Nile’s bridges by a group of soldiers who think I might be carrying explosives to wreck the bridge in my bag.
As an obvious foreigner and as a single man it seems I am suspected by everyone of being an enemy agent.
I can't blame the bridge guards for their caution. They fought a war just a year ago and they are justifiably paranoid.
There is a lot of pressure under the surface here and everyone expects more fighting to break out--since it always has. They just don’t know when.
Governments rise and fall; wars are fought and forgotten, people and nations come and go. My generation seems to be no different from the numberless generations that have gone before--though there seem to be unique opportunities for change here and now
Fate deals the hand and we play it out as well as we can.
...
2 comments:
Hi Thomas,
I've been meaning to stop by sooner but I've been in Korea doing much of the same--some sketching and writing. Thank you for all the encouragement along the way--you seem to have such an aura of knowing (wisdom) and being relaxed with what you know.
Really hoping that these posts don't stop! I've never been to Cairo for instance, and you seem to capture moments for those of us who haven't. It's a lovely image you paint for us in words and with drawings.
I'm not sure how you determine to make a new paragraph, but it reminds me a lot of the stanza break in poetry. One break I especially like is after "They just don't know when." Another one I noticed is after "walking alone in Cairo is not so easy." These pauses allow your audience to input our own imagination and emotions to interpret yours in the white space between your paragraphs.
Hope more people can read your stuff :)
Nice you are back, Angela. Your comments are always kind, helpful and very much to the point.
My wife has a two week vacation starting tomorrow so my posts may be not so regular for two weeks, but I do hope to continue this blog quite a while (maybe for the rest of my life--it will be MY "Leaves of Grass") since I planned to write a book with the title "Imhotep Construction Company" way back in 1972. (The Internet did not exist then so I switched my imagined "book" into the current mass communication technology when it became available.)
This blog fulfills that dream/plan.
When I am blogging with words, I imagine how my reader will react to my writing and I try not to make the writing LOOK too dense on the page or too visually intimidating.
Nobody has much time so I put my writing into easy to read, short paragraphs. And as you mention, I try to give some sentences a "punch" or build suspense for what follows by making them entire paragraphs.
So my paragraphs ARE more like stanza breaks in poetry.
You may have noticed that I will sometimes go back and edit existing older blogs. This new Internet medium is so very nicely flexible that way--we have a LOT more freedom and personnel control than the earlier book-writers!
So happy you are still enjoying the trip! TW
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