Stop Being Mean to Yourself: A Story About Finding the True Meaning of Self-Love (10 page)

I looked at the man holding open the door. He wore a long, dark skirt over his pants. He was of medium height, slightly rotund, with hair that had begun to thin. He had kind eyes, a sweet round face, and a gentle spirit. I stepped out of the taxi and offered him my hand.

We talked for a minute. I told him where I was from, and that I had just arrived in Cairo an hour ago.

"Would you like to see the pyramids?" Essam asked.

I said I would.

"Would you like to ride a camel over there?" he asked.

I swallowed hard, then said yes. "But it's so late," I said. "How much will it cost?"

"Don't worry," Essam said. "This is Ramadan, a time of giving, a time to remember Allah. You go to the pyramids, touch their powers, your first night here. When you return, you pay me what you think it was worth."

He smiled. "Have fun!"

I swung my right leg over the humped back of the biggest creature I had come across in my life. I held on to the saddle. The camel jerked upright from its knees, gently throwing me backwards. Then I started grinning and couldn't stop, as the camel clopped along the narrow Page 85

passage next to the sandlot, down past a block of shops, then up the side of a mountain, and down onto the desert. A boy of about seventeen, Essam's nephew, rode next to me on a horse.

We rode to within a few hundred feet of the pyramids, then stopped. The Sahara surrounded me. In the distance, the glistening lights of Cairo touched the edge of the night sky. I sat on the camel, gazing out at the pyramids, the Sphinx, and the desert. The frenzy and fear I had felt earlier disappeared. I was safe.

After about twenty minutes, we clopped back to the perfume shop. Essam was waiting for me with a cup of hot Egyptian tea. He assured me it had been brewed with bottled water. He said he didn't want me to get sick.

I tipped the boy on the horse, the one who had accompanied me. I put a handful of pounds in Essam's hand and thanked him. He said I had given him too much money, and he returned half of it. We talked for a while. I told him I didn't know how long I would be in Cairo, maybe a few weeks. He said he would help in any way he could. I made plans to return in a day or two, then asked the cab driver to take me back to the hotel.

From the moment I met him, I knew Essam would be a teacher and a friend.

Back in the cab, it took about fifteen minutes to reenter the chaotic downtown Cairo district. Before long, I spotted Page 86

my hotel rising in the distance. We got closer and closer, then I saw the hotel disappear behind us.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"You will come for coffee with me now," the driver said firmly.

"No thank you," I said. "I'm tired. Take me back to the hotel."

"You will come with me," he said.

He drove under a bridge, then parked the car in a small lot, way too small for the ten cars that were crammed in there. He walked to my door, opened it, took my hand, and guided me out.

"Where are we going?" I asked again.

"Coffee," he said brusquely.

"I don't want coffee," I said. "It's too late . . ."

He ignored me and kept walking, pulling me along by my hand.

We walked up a flight of stairs, over a walking bridge, down the stairs, and across a street. I was dusty from the desert, confused, scared, and curious. By now, my thigh high stockings were bunched around my ankles, but we were walking too fast for me to pull them up. We rounded a corner and entered a section of the city that had no car traffic. Instead, people—hundreds, thousands of them—crowded the streets. They jammed so close together that there was no space between bodies.

People touched those in

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front of and behind them as they moved along the street. Yet I saw and felt the same erratic rhythm here with this mass of people that I had observed with the cars.

The driver and I were swept up by the throngs of people and moved along by the pulsating tempo of this gigantic conga line.

The sidewalks were crammed with old shops, piled one atop another. I saw silversmiths. Fruit stands flooded with dates and oranges. Clothing. Rugs. Every kind of Egyptian ware, product, and foodstuff imaginable. It had to be after midnight, yet all the shops were open. For the first time in all my travels through the Arab world, I saw women talking, walking, shopping. I was torn between gazing at the stores and their colorful displays, and vigorously trying to keep my place in line. Someone pinched my butt. I couldn't stop moving. I would have been trampled. I looked over my shoulder. A shrunken, grayhaired man about four feet tall and eighty years old grinned at me. He had no teeth. I glared, then turned around.

Suddenly I got it. Oh, I thought. This is the
souk
.

I remembered what the travel agent had said about the
souks
,
the mysterious marketplaces of the Arab world. "They run for miles. People live in there. They're born, live, and die in there. Be careful. People can go in, and never come out."

"Is this the
souk
?"
I screamed at my driver, talking slowly enough so he could understand me and loudly Page 88

enough to be heard above the noise of the crowd.

He nodded. "The
souk
,"
he said.

We walked block after block, going deeper and deeper into the
souk
,
pulled along by the massive moving crowd. Finally, my driver steered me out of the main stream of traffic and led me up a flight of stairs into a small store. He guided me through the store onto a secondfloor balcony. He pulled out a chair in front of a small table and said, "Sit."

I wanted to pull up my stockings, but I didn't know how I could possibly do that. They were completely around my ankles.

So I sat down. The driver sat down next to me. Minutes later, a waiter came to the table. He seemed to know my driver. They talked in Arabic for a few minutes.

Moments later, the waiter returned lugging the largest, most ornate, floorstanding water pipe, or hookah, I had ever seen in my life.

The driver lit the coals like an expert, took a big, deep puff, then passed the hookah tube to me.

I looked around the balcony. There were four or five other small tables, occupied mostly by men. All of them were smoking water pipes. Oh, my God, I thought. I am being drugged and kidnapped. It's all coming down, right now. I am watching it happen. I have just been spirited to the Egyptian equivalent of an opium den.

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I wanted to be invisible on this trip but I didn't want to disappear.

For the second time that evening, I became paralyzed with fear. Again, I felt an ancient stirring within, this time a recollection of being powerless, unable to speak, helpless to defend myself.

Just a minute, I thought. I'm a fortysevenyearold woman. What would they possibly want or do with me, even if they did get me?

I relaxed for just a moment, then flashed to the sign at the airport: DRUG USERS WILL EITHER BE EXECUTED OR IMPRISONED FOR LIFE. No matter what's coming down, this is not looking good, I thought. I have to get out of here. This is not a good thing.

I looked at my driver. He was looking at me, holding out the drawing tube to the hookah, offering it to me, waiting. My voice was paralyzed. My hands were sweating. I could neither speak nor move.

One night back home
,
I dreamt I was alone in a house that was about to be attacked by thieves
.
One of the doors was unsecured and could easily be
accessed by anyone desiring entry
.
Three robbers stood outside planning and discussing the evil they intended to do
.
I saw the thieves
.
I heard them
.
But I
couldn
'
t speak and I couldn
'
t get away
.
I felt helpless
.
I panicked
.
In my dream
,
I picked up the phone and dialed 911
,
the emergency number
.
No response
.

The phone rang into a void
.
I

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set the receiver in the cradle and just watched as the robbers discussed how they were going to enter through the unsecured door
.
They were laughing
about the harm they intended to inflict once they entered
.
In my dream
—
just as at the pyramids and now in the souk
—
I watched
,
fully aware it was
happening yet unable to speak up or protect myself
"
Help
,
"
I screamed in my dream
.
At first my cry sounded weak
:
then my voice became louder
.
Finally
,
I
screamed
"
Help
!"
so loudly I woke myself up and startled my bird
.
Minutes later
,
while I sat in my living room trying to make sense of the dream
,
I could
still feel the resounding vibrations from my shriek
.

Still back home
,
days later
,
I had a similar dream
.
In that dream
,
a woman entered my home uninvited
.
I knew she was not of good will
:
she meant harm
.
I
didn
'
t want her there
,
but she just walked into my house anyway
,
as though she had a right to be there
.
Again
,
I just watched
,
speechless and paralyzed
.

Finally
,
I mustered up the courage
,
the energy
,
and the power to push through the block and speak the words stuck in my throat
.
"
Get out
,
"
I finally
screamed
,
again waking myself up
.
"
Get out
!"

At home
,
my dreams then took me back to my childhood
,
and to one of several incidents that I wished were only dreams
.
When I was twelve years old
,
I
often baby
sat for the children of people who lived in my neighborhood
.
One family I frequently worked for was a well
respected
,
friendly couple with three
young children
.
I liked their house
.
It wasn
'
t fancy
,

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but it was clean and pretty
.
I liked their children
.
And they paid me fifty cents an hour
—
good money at the time
.
One New Year
'
s Eve when I was baby

sitting
,
they returned home late
.
I was asleep on the couch when they arrived
.
The woman disappeared into the bedroom
.
I was too tired
,
it was too late
,
I
was too young to notice how drunk the man was
—
too drunk to drive me home
.
On the way home
,
instead of turning at the corner where I lived
,
he
continued to drive
.
After a few blocks
,
he parked the car
.
In the next instant
,
he was on top of me
,
all over me
,
pulling off my clothes
.
''
Stop
,
''
I wanted to
scream
.
"
Get off
.
Get away
!"
I couldn
'
t
.
Those words had stuck in my throat
,
too
.
I lay there frozen
,
until he finished
,
zipped up his pants
,
and drove me
home
.

Now, in the secondfloor balcony in the small Arab shop in the heart of the
souk
in Cairo, Egypt, I forced myself to push words through that same block in my throat.

The words gurgled out weakly at first, like water just coming out of a rusty spigot. But they came out.

"Hashish?" I asked, pointing at the water pipe. "Is that hashish?"

The driver looked at me, leaned back in his chair, and started laughing. "Hashish? No!" he said. "Not hashish.
Shisha
."

"
Shisha
?"
I said.

"
Shisha
,"
he said.

"What's
shisha
?"
I asked.

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"Egyptian tobacco. Soaked in honey. Smoke it in
shisha
,"
he said, pointing to the pipe. "It's good."

"Tobacco?" I said, pointing to the pipe. "That's what that is?"

"
Shisha
,"
he said. "Try some."

I looked at the other people on the balcony. This time I studied them more closely. They were all drinking fruit drinks and teas. I scanned the menu on the wall, trying to read the words. I was in a juice bar, the Egyptian equivalent of a health food store. The only difference was that here, health food stores apparently served juice with a water pipe and tobacco. I sniffed the
shisha
.
It smelled good, like pure pipe tobacco. I thought about trying a puff, then, remembering my experience with the milk in Morocco, decided against it. My stomach still hurt. I ordered a glass of mango juice and sat back.

Ten years ago
,
a psychic
—
a gypsy I knew back then wanted to give me a reading
.
Her jewelry clanking
,
she dug out her crystal ball
.
Her eyes glazed over
as she began gazing into the glass sphere
.
After a few moments
,
she looked into my eyes and made her solemn extrasensory pronouncement
.