Pyramids

Anger is welling up inside of me. I still do not have a regular sleeping schedule. I could easily blame Ramadan that has the whole city captive, lagging the dinner hour late into the evening. Bashar and I went to Nile City, a Nile River-side barge with Chili's, Johnny Carino's and a seafood restaurant. There was no service until after sundown. Buffet lines waited patiently, hungry Muslim patrons picked at dates available on the tables during daily fast. We inquired at Chili's and they were serving. Two hungry Christian patrons, Bashar and I, ate Egypt's version of Spinach Queso with chips at America's "authentic Tex Mex" restaurant. I have reserved to eat American when offered as it seems to be what my pleasing Egyptian hosts want most for me.

Dinner conversation quickly shifted from my incessant, random questions, "how much does it cost to take out the twinkly-lighted boats I see on the water?" to "why doesn't the government do something about the trash?" to Bashar's broken heart. Bashar is a man deeply in love. Only, the woman he loves does not love him back. He has spent two years playing the role of best friend while she dated another man who left her six months ago. She is experiencing her own broken heart, but Bashar sees the opportunity despite the fact that she has assured him there is none. Though not a man of substance addiction, he is a man with a personal addiction. As any sympathetic ear would do, I suggested first to fight for her, but as he shared more deeply, I became convinced he needed to move on. Like anyone thick in obsession, he failed to see that God could have so much more for him if he just let go.

Bashar dropped me at the guest house and I resolved not to battle the heat, traffic, smog and darkness for my evening ice cream. I fell asleep only to wake up a few hours later, get ready for bed, and attempt sleep once more for an early morning rise to see the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities before meeting with Dr. Ehab. At 2am, I still could not sleep. A vision from the day of a lone dog by the side of the highway picking at trash with the pyramids in the background plagued me, and brought tears to my eyes. Bashar and I had just spent two hours talking with the manager of Pyramid Gardens Rehabilitation Center about men and addiction in Egypt, but yet, this image of a dog is what brought tears to my eyes. Bashar took me by the pyramids shortly after this sight, but in all true confession, though it was a momentous moment, I didn't care. They meant virtually nothing to me in this landscape of desperation and despair. They were a representative beacon of all that Egypt is and is not. A symbol for tourism, currently non-existent, and a world that comes and goes leaving thousands to the daily task of living in abject poverty.

I desperately reviewed my seminary schooling finding everything inadequate to answer my growing anger. Fuller did not prepare me for this and I want my money back. But then, I was envisioning stray dogs rather than people. Why did I not care more about people than stray dogs? The truth is I do, but the Egyptian scene is too much for me to bear at this time. I have sublimated my pain for humanity, within a stray dog. It was these "stray dogs" that Jesus sought out and served. I don't know if I have the energy to do what Jesus did. I don't know that I have the fortitude, the gumption or courage to be Christ-like. I want to go home to happy July 4th parties, and smiling children, and thriving adults, and warm fuzzy kitties that I love and can cradle. I want my Starbucks and scrumptious Italian food and Target and pristine home town with rolling hills and snow-capped mountains. I want the nightmare, the reason I lie awake at night, to end.

But, it can't, and it won't, and there is no turning back.

Like addiction, a symptom of a life at dis-ease, the pyramids are symbolic of the elephant in the room. Egypt, and places like it, are the elephant in the room of the world. I fear I cannot address this elephant. An elephant that has stood the test of time, is deeply rooted in the culture and markets a main attraction for a wealthy world. I have no answer today, I have only an evening in which I can sit with a broken-hearted Egyptian sharing personal experience and stories, reveling in our common humanity from culture to culture, human being to human being.