| Cairo, Egypt - Sudanese City Overview Photo Gallery Director Bio Journals: · Jun 23 2009 · Jul 05 2009 · Jul 16 2009 · Jul 18 2009 · Jul 23 2009 · Jul 27 2009 Trek 2009 Home |
Sweetened Departure
7/27/09
We’ve left Cairo.
We’ve left that place of community where it is not uncommon to ask a stranger for a sip, a gulp or perhaps half a bottle of water. We left our friends loitering on the corners, the ones we spoke to every night on our way home. Nights when they would speak Arabic, we would speak English, and somehow we would find a way to understand one another.
We left the juice shops, mangoes and oranges hung in bundles from the ceiling, where the Egyptians would stop in, down a glass of sweet, chilled aseer manga (mango juice) and head back into the hot Cairo sun.
We left the uneven sidewalks no one walks on anyway. Left the Frogger-like game of crossing Cairo streets filled with Cairo drivers. As our Egyptian friend informed us on our first day, “Rules in Cairo are made to be broken.”
We left the late nights of drinking sweet tea – “Would you like four spoons of sugar, or five?” Left the bed we shared, all five of us, Dibora and Natu kicking me in the middle of the night, waking up in the morning to the children curled around my arm.
We left Mama at Found. Still in the kitchen working for her 800 pounds a month so that she can pay her 700 pound rent, walking her tired gait on her tired feet, carrying the scars on her shoulders and back where they tore into her flesh the day they took her husband in Sudan. She still doesn’t know where he is.
We left teacher Garang, still sitting in the school calmly joking, always smiling, with thoughts of his wife and child back in Sudan hidden in his heart.
We left Lomini Mathias, the educated gentleman, chairman of Students of Southern Sudan Association (SOSSA). Lomini who has to walk the streets of Cairo knowing that sometimes he will get called names, get rocks thrown at him, get a bucket of water dumped on his head because he is Sudanese.
We left fiery Aisha, still working night and day, six days a week, waiting for the day she can be relocated to Europe. Left Salam and the kids, waiting for their turn to move to Canada. Left Kenyi, waiting for his interview to be allowed into Australia.
We left the eye of the sun where our friends wait for the day they too can pack up and fly far away.
I’m sitting on this plane, wrapped in a blanket because the air conditioning is too cold. I’m staring at the cup of tea the flight attendant placed in front of me, one tiny packet of sugar sits adjacent. I’m thinking about life in Cairo, how it was hotter, harder, more raw. But staring at my cup of airline tea, I can’t help but think that life in Cairo with the Sudanese was also sweeter, at least four or five spoonfuls of sugar worth.
Print
Email
