Egypt is easy to misunderstand. Even the geography is inverted. The Nile runs south to north, so down is up and up is down. The events of these photographs will take place in the low lands of the north.
Seeing a country from the ground is completely different from anything you’ll ever read. The news is selling drama, the advertisers are selling hotels, the government is selling peace or “safety” or war.
To measure a person or a tree or a building, you measure it from the ground. To measure a place… you must start on the ground.
Walk the streets, drive the highways, exist where local people exist.
Then – even briefly – you can see “life” for what it really is.
My good friend Khalid Osman helps me exist in Egypt.
Never hiding anything, whitewashing it or otherwise. (After all, we had sat and had coffee from a street vendor in the tumultuous Tahrir Square.)
The fighting in Egypt is happening. On January 25 – the anniversary of the revolution – there will likely be conflicts. But that is a fraction of Egypt, in a prescribed place and time, with specific people with specific agendas.
Tourists are an enormous part of the country’s economy. To threaten tourism is to threaten the country’s economy. So… to threaten a visitor to Egypt, you are threatening the country’s economy.
This is no secret.
But it might be a surprise to know that I felt safer in Egypt than in parts of Chicago, Dallas, Little Rock, and Atlanta.
Okay… enough of that…
Egypt is an amazing place.
I recommend it for no other reason than because of how truly amazing it is.
Simple things become most important. Simple stones make up the most lasting structures on the planet. And the nature of friendship makes money no object.
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This is El Alamein. The area is far out in the desert only a couple of hours drive from the Libya border. Americans might have to do a little Google search to realize what this is – sadly it isn’t taught in schools in the States – but it is well worth the effort to know the significance of this patch of the northern Sahara.
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” ~Winston Churchill
I’m eager to know when the world will have its “El Alamein” from the current international imbalance. Egypt or USA, Greece or Japan, we’re all feeling the tilt. The smoldering world is losing its light and the militant pursuit of ignorance has become not only mainstream, but… normal. The era may not be far away when individual people will be the sole carriers of that light.
Do whatever you can to find the light. Without it, your soul will be flabby and your life will be without form.
So, every day I’m on the ground in a foreign country or at home, I am making every effort to fill myself and tamp it down to take on more. (I do this to a fault.) This way, my life will take form of the entire world – all its people, all places, and all the “sham, drudgery, and broken dreams” – and I will fit as a piece of a puzzle far greater than any money or fame I could attain.
Never fear growth. There is always light in dark places.
“Before Alamein we never knew a victory. After Alamein, we never knew a defeat.” ~Winston Churchill
Stay tuned…
-Noah D.
