Tired, Wired, but not Expired

I am lying in my bed composing this.  I am  tired, but can not close my eyes.  I am suppose to be resting before dinner, but might thoughts are ranging all over the place. It is the gift of Jetlag.  Having spent 16 of the last 24 hours in a space so confining, that it would be outlawed by the Geneva conventions if it were a cell, I am awed by the bright light and sound. I have been removed from the sensory deprivation chamber know as jet liner and thrust into a world of flashing lights, loud sounds and a upside down set of logic.  I appear to have followed Alice down the rabbit hole and we definitely didn’t come out in Kansas.  It is hard to described my entry into Egypt.  We had just spent the last ten hours with the blinds down on the aircraft windows.  The airline pretended it was night and the passengers pretended to sleep.  The light was so bright on opening the windows that I couldn’t look directly out the window.  Below me, the blue Mediterranean turned to bright green as we crossed over the Nile delta.  I have flown over Iowa and looked out on green corn fields for as far as you can see.  All  it ever evoked was a yawn, but as we crossed the delta and I could see the  sun on the Rosetta branch of the Nile and below were the sites of the library of Alexandria whose light house which was one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. In twenty minutes I would be flying over the pyramids.  You can’t do that in Iowa.

While driving into Cairo on the elevated roadway, we could see that many of the houses had what looked liked construction rubble on the roof.  In a country where money is scare, nobody wants to pay for anything twice.   In Egypt if you have something you no longer need, but think it could be useful in the future, it goes up on the roof for storage. It was our guide said,” a bad habit of the Egyptians.”  Many of the houses were four story apartments.  Here you just keeping adding floors to the house, so that your children and their families can live with you. In Egypt, life revolves around the family.  So all of that construction rubble will eventually be used.
Our guide asked if any of us were returning to Egypt and probably a third of our group were returnees.  There is an old Egyptian saying “If you drink from the Nile, you will return to Egypt.”  There is an old guide book saying that states, “if you drink from the Nile, you will probably go home in a coffin“, which as I think about it, is probably more comfortable than the ride over. You can stretch out your full length in it and take a nap. Perhaps it is a good metaphor for a place where in ancient times, they spent a lot of time and effort ensuring that your ride into the after life would be better than your life on earth.  Below is a picture of the Nile from the restaurant where we went to dinner