Something magical happened when I traveled in Egypt. I rode a camel named Moses around the ancient pyramids of Giza. The sky was stormy. Thunder rumbled, rain fell and landed softly on my arms like velvet. My back straightened as I imagined I was an ancient queen, sitting on a golden undulating throne.
The night before, I had dinner with an Egyptian family. As the intoxicating scents of cinnamon, cloves, mint, and ginger filled the air, the eight-year-old girl sitting next to me taught me how to say various phrases in Arabic. I had been a professional Middle Eastern dancer for many years, so I could speak Arabic in song lyrics. For example, I could say things like, “The night is melting” or “I’m am burning with the fire of jealousy…” Not particularly useful in everyday life, unless you are in a magical land where the air smells like turmeric and saffron, and the language sounds like poetry. The house where I stayed was filled with laughing women, and when the men left to smoke their hookahs, the women turned on Arabic music and danced with raucous joy, their bare feet stomping on the marble floors and thick oriental rugs. I sunk my teeth into a fresh fig drizzled with honey, and watched their jubilant dancing. That’s when I felt the shift.
Something about being in the house with the grandmothers, mothers, and children, made me think of my own mother. My Mom was very different than me. She grew up with her Mexican family in San Diego, and her dream was to be a schoolteacher in a one-room schoolhouse. She ended up having six children, and went back to school to fulfill her dream when I was ten.
I was raised Mormon, and girls were taught to sew and be quiet, with the singular goal of finding a husband. I hated sewing, I wasn’t quiet, and I had no desire to get married, which made me feel like a bit of an outcast. But my Mom had another side, a magic side as her sisters and mother and my grandmother were witches. At our unusual family nights, a staple of Mormon family life, one aunt would read our tarot cards, while another aunt would read palms. And my grandmother would tell us family stories of treasure maps and hidden gold in the hills of Mexico. I liked this side, the wild stories ignited my imagination. That was the part of our family I liked best, and I would never fit into the mold of a pioneer in a long gingham dress sewing in a bonnet. I was too adventurous.
My Mom could never understand why I felt compelled to jump into adventures in faraway lands, and she would say, “Oh Marci, how do you do that? How do you dare to go to these places by yourself? Aren’t you scared?” This perplexed me, because when I travel, I feel the opposite of scared. When I embark on an adventure into the unknown, I feel more at home than I do at home.
I don’t know why, and it’s difficult to explain. When I have no words to express how I feel, I dance.
The Egyptian women pulled me up from my chair where I was happily eating my figs, and motioned to me to dance. White chiffon drapes floated out from the open air walls and I moved my hips to the lush Arabic songs peppered with the sound of the sea nearby. I felt my bare feet sink into a thick oriental carpet, woven with blue, turquoise, and silver silk and wool.
That’s when I felt something shift.
The women shouted, whistled and clapped for me, and as I shimmied and swayed my hips, I suddenly thought of my mom. All the bad memories were suddenly gone, like a puff of apricot smoke from a hookah. My mind was flooded with all the good memories: how she caressed my arm when I had a fever, turned me upside down when I was choking, and held me when I came home crying from school.
It felt like an awakening, there in the velvet air.
It was overpowering, and it changed me.
Maybe it was being in Alexandria, this ancient city on the sea, where Cleopatra ruled on her golden barge with purple silk sails scented with rose oil.
Maybe it was dancing with these women across the world where we didn’t speak the same language, but we actually did, a language beyond words. Maybe I was hypnotized by visiting the museums and seeing the thousands of diamonds encrusted into golden crowns.
Maybe it was watching a gorgeous belly dancer at a palace with peacocks and flamingos walking outside.
Maybe it was the images of goddesses, mummies, crocodiles, golden thrones and crowns made of the sun.
The next day, we left Alexandria, back to Cairo.
When driving in Egypt, I like to keep my eyes closed so I don’t have a heart attack. Cars speed and swerve, narrowly missing other cars, people, horses, and everything else. Our car finally paused, and I opened my eyes to see men on every corner, sitting outside wearing their galibeas and smoking the sheesha. Across the street, the winding market stood, Khan a halili. Belly dance costumes, delicately shaped perfume bottles, spices, and tiny pyramids beckoned me. The car jerked forward again and I closed my eyes until we finally arrived at the pyramids.
I climbed up on top of Moses, the camel, and the way he moved was very similar to the way I move when I dance. I channeled my inner queen, and Moses and I undulated around the ancient pyramids, and I suddenly realized what caused the shift. It had to be the shimmering silk carpet I danced on. Of course! I was in Egypt, land of peacocks, golden hookahs and magic carpets. If one is going to have an epiphany and reconnect to one’s mother, what better place than a Magic Carpet in an ancient city on the sea.
