east meets west

The most peculiar thing I saw in Cairo occurred on a women's car on Line 1 of Africa's only metro system. There was a lady, that I assume was commuting to work, completely covered in black from head to toe with only her eyes exposed through a narrow, horizontal slit. As if it wasn't strange enough to see her in such a modern setting, she pulled out her cell phone and started texting. It took a minute for my brain to process that information. Talk about east meets west.

My desire to write seriously about my first trip to Egypt is only outweighed by my inability to put such an experience into words. But I will try to explain.

I guess it would be nice to help in your escape From patterns your parents designed.
-Gronlandic Edit, by Of Montreal

You see, for a plethora of reasons big and small, the Lee family has been separated by strained relationships and physical distance for the entirety of my life. Because of this, I never got to know the members of my father's immediate family as well as I did those of my mother's. Now, as an adult, I've been presented with a choice: do I blame others and accept the lack of relationship, or do something about it?

I decided to do something about it, and that is a large part of why I chose to go to Cairo to visit my Aunt Chrissy, Uncle Bill, and sweet sweet Cousin Abbie on spring break. I must confess that I was a little bit nervous in the weeks preceding my travel, not that there would be drama, but that we would never get past that polite stage, or worse, that they wouldn't "get" me. Boy was I wrong about that.

Abbie is absolutely brilliant, and I found myself forgetting our age difference as we sat at a coffee shop called Beano (yes) on Road 9, sipping our drinks and talking about how we both have trouble relating to our peers, thanks to our old souls. It's amazing to see how much we have in common. She is adventurous and quite brave. Her heart is enormous.

Aunt Chrissy has this youthful quality about her that is hard to describe. As the week progressed, I began to see more and more similarities between her and my dad, as well as their sister, my Aunt Stephanie. Her sense of humor helped me to understand where mine comes from, and reassured me that I am not alone when I crack a HILARIOUS joke that nobody gets, because I can assure you that she would have laughed.

Big Bill, as my other cousin Charlie calls him, lives up to the meaning of his name: protector. He is an excellent husband and father, and very knowledgeable about the region and culture in which his family resides.

We basically spent the whole week laughing at ourselves and the incredibly awkward/comical things that we encountered in our sauntering (including, but not limited to, enduring a straight-up sand storm, riding a gargling camel, walking through dozens of metal detectors that went off without any further investigation, sneaking our way into mummy rooms and the great pyramid at Giza, playing I-Spy on the Nile, sort of being abandoned by our driver in a place called garbage city [and in the process being sort of attacked by droves of uncontrolled school-children], realizing that the Millers have Amelia Bedilia herself working for them, being offered an aphrodisiacal perfume called "Arabian Nights" by the salesman at the Golden Eagle Perfume Palace, being stared at by a creepy Egyptian man at Beano [among many others], and, apparently, meeting our future husbands at the recently bombed Khan el-Khalili market). I found some dear friends and kindred spirits.

As I sat on the plane to fly back to the states, my heart began to ache when I finally accepted the fact that I was leaving them. It's still aching.