First Night
A ten hour flight, delayed for takeoff allowed me to connect with Alex and Maria; we were the only “Americans” on the trip. I have a feeling we may travel with Anayra again 😉
The colorful re-construction was jarring on the ride in from the airport. Quoting from Gilles Khoury, whose Financial Times article coincided with my trip, “The condition of Egypt into a few words – its perennial hardships and rises and falls since the 2011 revolution that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak…. summarised the way people feel and behave here, with more or less similarities: their emotional exhilarations, their cautious hope and, of course, the lightness, the comic relief, the forever joie de vivre, which they express with the term maalesh (“It’s fine”).”
We were all exceptionally exhausted, but the meal, location and instant connections made at the table on the first night, clearly set the stage for the rest of the trip.
Interestingly enough, I captured shots of two wedding preps while lounging at the pools…in two different hotels….at both the start and the end of the trip. And as it turns out, the bearded guy (shooting the image out the window in seat 30A) was again my seat mate, on the way back to NY. 😉
Travel with Princesses In Mind
I committed to this amazing trip to Egypt in June 2022. I set it up with the intention of marking another year on the earth. Grateful, beyond words, that this excursion helped to facilitate a re-connection with three little Egyptian Princesses on the eve of my departure. While all my friends and family may appreciate the details; this is expressly dedicated to my great-neices, Radiyah, Hannah and Aliyah.
As-Salaam Alaikum
Three little girls and a connection to family, the ancestors, the sounds, rhythms, smells and sights of Africa. I knew the trip was meant to be and what and who it was meant to include as the warmth of that morning shower washed over me and I literally felt all my parents touch me, as if they were the water, washing my shoulders.
I just let go and cried.
I was a little nervous up to this point, in all honesty about how it would unfold, whether traveling alone – although with a group – was the right thing.
Through the shower, however, I felt all the anxiety dissipate and I instantly knew I was to reconnect to those little girls, (and eventually their father and grandmother) as one outcome of this trip. My diligence in capturing the grandness, pride and beauty of this country is as much for my memory as it is for their experience; for these pre-teenagers have not walked this part of the earth yet.
This was my way of taking them with me.
So it begins.
