Tutencalmin'

I awoke with an odd feeling in my stomach this morning. It's hard to put my finger on it. It feels like a cross between fear that I'm not going to enjoy my trip and disappointment/feeling ashamed that I'm not in an ecstatic wave of euphoria. I guess the latter could be the driver for the former.

Either way, with this ubiquitous feeling in the top of my stomach, I set off on foot by myself to Tahrir square (yes, the place where even the Egyptians tell you not to go) to take a peak at the museum. I was accompanied for 30 minutes by a shop owner, Atif, who left his store wide open to guide me to the museum. (Atifs seemingly good-hearted story doesn't end there, but it does for now.) After being sidetracked by manipulative Egyptians out the front of the museum (later I read in a lonely planet book my exact scenario. Fooled again! Gah!) I paid my 60 pounds and entered one of the main attractions in Egypt!

Bored. 

I found myself moving really slowly through the lower level of the museum, not because I was fascinated by the works, but because I didn't know what else I was going to do once I finished looking at everything. 

Then I saw some westerners.  

You would think that maybe because I was in a different culture I would want to really immerse myself in it and perhaps shun westerners for just three weeks. 

Why would I travel to the other side of the world to talk to people that were just like me? 

I don't know. 

But what I do know is that I found myself migrating closer towards them and striking up a conversation. They were American. Four super nice girls, and the more I hung around them, the more I found myself enjoying everything else around me. I laughed more, saw more, experienced more than, I think, I would have if I had had an Arabic guide take me through even the most inner city, city. When I think about it analytically, cerebrally, I feel shallow. Surely if I was a true traveller, really interested in seeing what another way of life was really like, I wouldn't have my best moments with people just like me. 

But I can't deny the visceral. Experience beats thought. Every time. 

Perhaps it's the bonds made of like minds experiencing something completely different and alien. There is definitely something unique and cool about being alone in a weird foreign world, but there is something more wholesome, or fulfilling, experiencing an unknown with someone. Even if that someone is someone you only met an hour ago and the only connection you have is that you're in the same place at the same time and it happens to be foreign to both of you. 

I thought I was coming to be shocked and impacted by the differences over here, but so far it's the people I've met that have stuck in my mind. And weirdly enough not people that are completely foreign to me (other than the hair on their heads and the skin on their ...muscle?) but with people who I get. People I can connect with and experience something new with. Even the Arabs that I remember the most are the ones where we both see something similar in each other.  Maybe a laugh, or an "Assalamo Alaycom" (peace be upon you) with a high five. 

(My personal favourite is giving a girl wrapped in a headscarf a big cheeky smile and seeing her return it. I don't know if it's evil and I've just made her impure but I get a real satisfactory, guilty pleasure out of it). 

Whatever it is, it seems to me it's not difference that brings a memorable experience, but the reciprocal. 

The next day this idea seems to be confirmed.

I visited the pyramids of Giza! I was with a guide and three people on my tour who I don't have much excitement to be with. Unfortunately the weight of history which I so hoped to feel at these sites eluded me. 

The rattling heater and the fluorescent lights in the middle of the inside of the pyramid didn't really help. 

What I wanted was someone who I could laugh with and say "I'm a little... underwhelmed," instead of trying to pretend to like it, because after all I've paid a lot, and come a long way to see these things. 

I sound cynical I know... but I think it's just that I've been interested to see what has moved my soul and what hasn't.

One thing I'm not cynical about is the pharaonic hair. Tutankhamen nailed it as far as I'm concerned. Given me something to work towards.