A Week Behind…..

March 13, 2010
Cairo, Egypt

Outside our windows, Cairo inhales and exhales urban chaos….human noise exploding through the call to prayer….It has been more than 36 hours since I slept….the lush, verdant hills and mountains of the Golan Heights and the comforting familiarity of the street scene of Tel Aviv a distant memory. I am feeling both the need to curl up in silence and rush out into the streets to absorb the energy around me…..It is the kind of place that requires a deep breath before stepping out the door…. a crumbling city of cultural contradiction unified by religiosity….

I am spending this first night in Cairo psychologically hiding inside of my fatigue, too tired to process the unfamiliar world around…too lost in all of the questions about religion, history, and identity that Israel forced me to contemplate (which I promise to write about eventually)….

I find it frustrating that I have had a difficult time writing about our week in Israel….It is an overwhelmingly complicated place for me to understand and I don’t think I have ever felt like such an outsider….(strange to say considering that I arrived in Israel from Africa)….It was a place in which I just didn’t fit in—a country of profound cultural and religious expression (and tension), where I could not access a sense of belonging…not at all. It made me sad, but it challenged me to think about who I am, where I come from, and who I want to be….

Happy 30th birthday to me!