Tonight’s full moon is the first of the year. We’re right in the middle of winter, with additional minutes of daylight inching in little by little. Seattle is a swirl of rain-fed mud and spongy moss. After a recent cold snap, a large cedar tree fell in a nearby park and was then chipped into mulch and spread at the park’s entrance. Every time I walk by, I’ve been breathing in deeply for a hit of that fresh, resiny scent to boost these dreary, drippy days. These are the days for mulching — for resting below a blanket of nourishment that will encourage growth in the more energetic seasons to come.
For this new-year newsletter, instead of focusing on the fresh, I’m considering the questions I was submerged in last year that still feel significant in this one.
◯ For starters, how can I refresh my relationship to this sporadic newsletter and its subscribers? If you’re a paid subscriber to eClips — which will never be required to read these posts — I’ve updated your subscriber benefits to include annual snail mail. I’ll mail you a letter and a piece of art to show my appreciation and engage in a physical exchange in addition to the digital.
◯ In my own writing, I’ve been exploring: How can we steward and study changing ecosystems? How can we continue to build interdependent connections with plants?
◯ In conversations with the Story Circle community, we’ve wondered: In this age of technomobility and rapid change, how and where can we seek rootedness and abundance?
◯ In practice, I’ve been learning: What is mutual aid? What are the connections between local struggles for freedom and struggles that are far away, yet increasingly violent and visible?
In her Spotlight interview below, Rebecca Martin describes “grasping the question mark.” And that advice feels aligned with a year, and an era, that feels unsettlingly unknowable — as they all are, really. I’m resolving to release the mollifying mirage of certainty and embrace the unknown. To embody my questions by letting curiosity guide me into action instead of anxiously awaiting clear-cut answers. And to live gratefully in the present moment with the people, pets, and plants around me.
Happy new year! I wish you many months of brain-bending, boundary-pushing questions, and a strong grip for grasping the question marks.
Spotlight: Rebecca Martin
Rebecca Martin was born in Kansas and raised on a farm. She studied history and had a long museum career. She has been working as a magazine editor for the past decade. She currently lives in Singapore and travels Southeast Asia with her husband, Brian. Rebecca and I started working for Mother Earth News magazine on the same day in 2012, and we’ve been co-workers and friends ever since. We spoke in fall, so some of our references to the season precede the onset of winter.
I guess I’ve never really looked at Singapore on a map before.
I didn’t either until we moved here.
Where in Singapore are you?
We are at Bartley. Singapore is one of the few city-states around the world, like the Vatican. So the technical mailing address is Singapore, Singapore. We’re in this neighborhood called Bartley, based on the subway stop name. And I don’t know where it came from originally. Singapore has a lot of British connections going back two centuries. So there are a lot of English words. And funnily enough, this is not an expat neighborhood where we live, but it has an expat-sounding name.
Wow. It’s fascinating to look at this on the map.
Do you ever play the game Worldle, the map game?
No, my limited knowledge of geography makes that game far too frustrating.
It is a very frustrating game. When I started playing it, I printed out some world maps and was testing my knowledge. I get it right about a quarter of the time, but it’s teaching me geography. Anyway, Singapore was one of the guesses not too long ago, and I was so happy to get it. I never would’ve before.
How does it feel to talk to me from the future?
Yeah, that is an excellent point. The whole time change thing is super confusing. And then when you throw in daylight saving time, it gets even worse. I talk to my friends all the time, and my family, we text, I FaceTime my dad every day. So you get used to the idea of being almost literally halfway around the world from your family and friends. But that said, it is bizarre to be across the international dateline west from the U.S. and have that whole weird “Which day is it?” kind of thing. There have been times I’ve missed work meetings because I thought it was a different day.
And then you’re working when no one else is, so I’m sure that’s also a little disorienting.
It is, and I miss out on the work chats, because they happen when I’m sleeping. So it just reinforces that weird disconnect from your work and your family and friends, because you’re on a totally different schedule. But we find ways to connect. Usually, first thing in the morning is when I connect with my friends and a lot of my family. And at night, just before I go to bed, is my dad’s morning at 7 a.m. We talk almost every day by FaceTime. He’s 92, so it’s really important to me to stay in touch with him, and he’s still living on the family farm. I told him the deal was if he wasn’t going to be off the farm, he was going to have to put up with me bugging him every day.
How long are you in Singapore? And how long did you spend in Egypt?
This is Brian’s second year of teaching at an international school in Singapore, and before that, he taught three years in Egypt. I was with him two years in Egypt, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. I guess I shouldn’t say “the height,” I think we’re still in it, technically, but people act like it was in the past. Then, he moved to Singapore, and then I had some family issues. Last year, my mom died in the fall. One of my sisters-in-law died. And I just felt it was important to be close to family. So last year, I was back and forth between the United States and Singapore. And this year, I’m staying in Singapore. So one of the things I didn’t realize about international travel — I guess I realized it, but I didn’t think it was going to happen — is that we were going to have some tragedies in the family, and how being physically with the people you love is so important. And so I sacrificed that with Brian, my husband, to be with my family. And I’m glad I did it. But I really missed him. So I feel like I didn’t have an anchor, in a lot of ways, last year, because I kind of came back and forth. And living internationally has made me appreciate the anchor idea more. I do miss it. But I always said I wanted to be a citizen of the world. And I’m learning a lot more about what that means.
How many years were you in Topeka before that?
Twenty-seven years, probably. Before that, I grew up in the Wichita area. So yeah, total Midwesterner. One of the cool things about living overseas and having that teaching connection is that there are a lot of Midwesterners who are living in different places around the world. We also have friends from other places around the world, including the places where we’ve lived, like in Egypt and now in Singapore, some native Singaporeans. And that’s really cool too. That was a side effect of this whole experience that I hadn’t really thought about. I thought, “Oh, we’ll just go see a bunch of places, travel.” And I never thought about the people connection, which was really stupid, because you’re strangers in a strange land. So you just come together like cement, sometimes, and you make really strong connections with people, and you may never see them physically again, you might never smell them again when you hug them. It’s just a weird thing to think about. But you still have a real connection with them.
How did you go about building those connections?
I’m not an international teacher, my husband is, but when you start, you come in with a group of teachers, and they really encourage you to come together, because you’re all in this thing together, where you don’t even know simple things. Where am I going to go get groceries? How do I get to work? How do I pay my electric bill? How do I get electricity? All of those things you’re learning. And a lot of times, the schools will encourage you to travel together at the beginning, see some of the local sites. They’ll put you up in a hotel, kind of a communal arrangement. So you’re seeing each other every day, and you just gel really quickly as a group.
And then there’s other ways to meet people too. I’ve been joining expat groups who have tea. And I made a really good group of friends from all over the world in Cairo that way. Here in Singapore, I joined the Friends of the Museums, which is a consortium of the local museums. They’re really encouraging me to volunteer. And I may do that, even though I’m not going to be here after next spring. I would really like to meet more local people that way.
In Cairo, there was an Egyptian teacher, Mohamed, who taught in Brian’s department, and he is just a great guy. And he had created what he called a “food lovers group.” And every month he would take anybody who was interested to a little local food place, and the food was always great. It was usually in a place where your driver would get lost at least once on the way there, because you couldn’t find it. Nobody could find it.
Real holes in the wall.
Absolute holes in the wall, where even if the driver had dropped you off in the right location, you still wouldn’t be able to find it. Because it’s down an alleyway through somebody else’s shopfront and then tucked into another area. And Egypt was an adventure every time we went out. It was so great to get to know Mohamed and learn about his favorite places around Cairo. It was really great to get to know him and other people like him, who were so proud of their country. And I think that’s one of the real benefits of staying and living in a place, because you don’t tend to get to know people and their desires and their concerns, and what their lifestyles are like, if you’re a tourist.
It’s very transient.
It is, and it’s interesting to be a traveler, but living in a place has been so different and so eye-opening.
You mentioned that you’re near the equator. What is fall like there?
Fall really isn’t fall. There’s a rainy season here. Last year, it rained almost every day, and people were complaining about it. This year, when Brian arrived in August, it was hot, sunny, and dry most days. And now we’re in the rainy season. So as I’m looking out our window right now, I can see clouds starting to puff up, big thunder clouds. We have a really great view of the sky. It’s raining somewhere on Singapore Island every day. This morning, when I went to get groceries, it was about 9 a.m. The temperature was 87 degrees and felt like 98. It’s just hot and humid all the time. So you have to take water with you wherever you go, or plan your day very carefully so you’re never very far from a water source or a place to cool off.
Does that change the way you think about traditions you’d typically have during the season, or things you’d typically be baking or cooking at this time?
Yeah, it does. You forget sometimes that there are holidays you would traditionally celebrate. I’m not decorating for Christmas. On Thanksgiving, we’re having a family over, he’s a native Singaporean, and she’s an American, and their kids have never lived in the U.S. So Thanksgiving weekend, they’re coming over here and we’re going to have a nontraditional Thanksgiving meal, and we’ve got a grill — and everybody cooks outside in Singapore, because you can year-round — so we’re just going to cook grilled chicken satay and some veg and have pumpkin pie. I’m going to make my own from-scratch pumpkin pie. For Christmas, we’ve done all sorts of different things. Sometimes, we just took off and went somewhere else, or we’ll have people over who celebrate Christmas, and they might be from anywhere in the world.
Do you miss the traditions? Or have you accepted that they’re just on pause?
Yeah, it’s just on pause. Because I don’t know how you can feel too upset about living in the situation we’re in. This month is the Indian holiday of Deepavali, also called Diwali, the Festival of Lights, and we’re going to do something for that, because there are a lot more Indian people than there are Western Christians on this island.
It’s beautiful to be able to witness traditions that aren’t your own.
Yeah. It’s been an adventure. It really has been. And we wanted it. So we knew it was going to be uncomfortable sometimes. But it’s also really beautiful a lot of times.
Singapore is an easy place to live, especially compared with Cairo, where you just get to the point where you think you can’t take it anymore, and then something truly special will happen. We started describing it as “grit and glimmer.” But I miss it. I really miss Egypt so much. I think I’ll probably always miss it more than Singapore, because Singapore is one of the most Westernized places in Southeast Asia. Every time I left the apartment in Cairo, it was something unusual or a little challenging. And that’s what we wanted. So that was good.
Not knowing the language made a huge difference in Cairo, and I tried to learn Egyptian Arabic, but I only studied it for a little over a year. In Singapore, everybody speaks English. It’s one of the semi-official languages. People speak it in their homes, even. The official language is Malay, because we’re right off the tip of the Malay Peninsula. But a lot of people speak different Chinese dialects, because the predominant ethnic group is Chinese. And then there’s a little Tamil from India, because there are a fair number of Indian people living here. And sometimes you’ll see signs with all four languages, but a lot of it is just in English. And then there’s this whole other dialect called Singlish, which is Singapore English. And it’s made up of all these different languages with English thrown in. I just read a book called Sarong Party Girls that was written in Singlish. So I was sitting there with my phone, and I would constantly look up words, because I didn’t know what they were. They were maybe in Mandarin, or some other Chinese dialect. And then there would be repetition of English words, like instead of, “I’m really happy,” it would be “happy happy,” which I think is great. I think we should do that in English, just repeat the word.
Yeah, emphasis!
Apparently, the government hates Singlish, because they’re like, “No, it has to be official proper English.” And the citizens are like, “We’re going to talk like we want to talk. And it’s going to be colloquial Singlish.” And I think it’s great that they’re going to keep it regardless of what the officials want them to do.
When you’re not in your “anchored” space, when you move to one of these new places, how do you make it feel like home or temporarily put down roots?
One of my childhood friends lived overseas for a number of years. And she always told me, “You’ve got to get your routines established right away, because you will feel anchorless and homesick if you don’t.” Who’s going to be your doctor? Where’s your grocery store? Get your subway card, you know, any number of things. And she also encouraged me to hook up with expat groups right away. They’re very helpful, because you learn from fellow English speakers. But the expat groups would bother me sometimes, because a lot of these people had lived in Cairo for 20 years. And they knew minimal Egyptian words. Are you kidding me? You’ve lived here two decades, and you only know how to say “good morning” and “thank you”?
So the expat groups are good up to a point. But after that, you’ve just got to get out and make your own anchors. I signed up for the Friends of the Museums here in Singapore, and I started going to workshops. They’re so much fun. One of them was learning how to play the gamelan, a set of Indonesian and Malay instruments. And so we were all sitting there in a group banging away on these instruments, and, oh, it was so much fun. You meet new people that way, and it takes you away from the anchorless feeling, because you learn. You know, you’re walking in a neighborhood and you hear that music and you’re like, “I know what that is, that’s gamelan!” That knowledge gives you an anchor. So habits and knowledge are two ways I build anchors. And people, friends.
Tell me about the plants you’re seeing around you.
There are lots of palm trees here in Singapore. But they’re different palms from the date palms I saw in Cairo, they’re fan palms. And both places have what we would think of as a really warm climate. In Egypt, they have a winter where it gets up into the 60s during the daytime in December, January, February. Here in Singapore, it’s just stable, hot and humid year-round. So there are lots of tropical plants here.
There’s a little bakery I like to walk to, and there’s a mow strip between the street and the shops. And somebody has planted all sorts of trees and shrubs there that produce fruit. Pomegranates, star fruit, mango, and bananas were four that I recognize. Can you imagine having a mango tree in your backyard? What an awesome thing that would be. And it’s really cool that some shop owner just tucked it into this otherwise wasteland and is clearly harvesting it, because the next time I went past, the fruit had been harvested.
In Egypt, there was tons of citrus. And things had a bloom cycle in Egypt because of the cool weather. So in Egypt, in spring, you would see this huge flush of bloom on certain trees, and they were just gorgeous and wild. And year-round, the jasmine bloomed in Egypt, and the people below our apartment had lots of jasmine shrubs. So we would go out on our balcony at night and it would smell like jasmine. That was like a dream come true. I always wanted to grow jasmine. I tried in little pots on the balcony, but it really did much better when it was in the soil. So we got to enjoy the scent from our neighbors.
I’ve really enjoyed that greenness year-round in both places we’ve lived, because I have seasonal affective disorder some years, and in the American Midwest, it’s just gray and cloudy for days on end, and everything’s brown or dead-looking.
It’s funny, Seattle is so much worse for seasonal affective disorder that I often think of Kansas as being sunny in winter. But as you said, it’s not quite such a clear-cut story.
You have a lot more fog and cloud there than in the American Midwest. But yeah, it’s rarely cloudy all day here. It’s bright sun right now. And eventually, because it’s the rainy season, it will cloud up and something will happen somewhere. And I love seeing those big thunder clouds build up on the horizon.
Do you get the thunder and the lightning too?
Oh, yeah, totally. And when it rains here, it pours, it doesn’t sprinkle or drizzle. It’s just a downpour. In Egypt, because we were on the far western edge of Cairo in the desert, we would get the thunderclouds building up a couple of months of the year and terrific thunder and lightning, and then it would just go sprinkle and stop.
We don’t get much thunder or lightning here. But yesterday, we had one, one, rolling thunder. So all the car alarms were going off, and the cats were freaking out. And it’s very outside the norm. But it gave me a little pang of missing Kansas.
Yeah, I would totally miss it if I lived in a place where I didn’t have any of that. But you get used to things, and then eventually, if you can’t take them anymore, you have a decision to make. Do I go back to what’s familiar? Or do I go into another adventure and go through it all over again? And that’s something we’re trying to decide now. Where do we go next? Because we probably have one more foreign appointment in us. And I told Brian I wanted to be closer to home because of my 92-year-old dad. Singapore is so far away from home. It’s over 9,000 miles. So we’ll see what happens. I’ve been saying for five years that our lives are just a gigantic question mark. And you have to roll with it. You have to be ready for it.
I also feel like I’m looking at a question mark. And I keep trying to process that that’s always the case. But when you’re considering where to live, I think it’s just more pronounced. I can look into the future and not know whether to imagine this room, this house, this neighborhood.
You know what helps us, Amanda, with that question mark thing, and making the big move, was dealing with our aging parents. Because we looked at each other and said, “What if we get to the point where our health is failing, and one of us is in a care facility, and we regret not having moved somewhere, not having experienced what it was like to live overseas, not wanting to give up this huge old barn of a house packed with the accumulation of 25 years of stuff?” And then we had to deal with all of our parents’ accumulation. It was stunning to get rid of that accumulation of a lifetime, two lifetimes, and see that so many other people didn’t value it. And yet those parents were clinging so hard to their stuff. I love things too, and Brian does as well. We like to collect certain things. But there was something super freeing, after having cleaned out his parents’ entire household, to get rid of ours too. And to do it while we were young. We don’t have kids to do that, so we gave it all up knowingly and willingly for something new. To us, that became really important. And that pushed us into the final yes. We’re going to grasp the question mark and hold off the dot at the bottom of it for a few years, because we could blink and be 90 and not be able to do any of this anymore. What we wanted to accumulate was experiences. And the side effect of that was new people too, we can accumulate friends. So that’s been a really great benefit of it, even though I do get homesick sometimes. Not for places so much as people. I’m really glad we did this.
I’m happy to hear that.
I want to hear about what you’re struggling with too, or what you’re deciding. But that would be a different conversation.
I’d love to tell you, in another conversation.
You’re really good about staying in touch that way. I’m not so good.
It sounds to me, based on what you’re saying, that you are. You’ve got your friends you stay in touch with, and your dad.
Yeah, I do. I guess it’s a core group. And some of them, you just don’t talk to for months. And then suddenly, when you’re back together, it’s like no time has passed. I have a friend I went to first grade with, and it’s funny how we meet all over the world. Her daughter got married to an Indian man last fall. And so I joined them in India for the wedding. It was a quick trip from Singapore. I spent three weeks with them in India. And she and I, we’ve known each other so long that it’s an instant connection. And we end up in the kitchen making supper together. I don’t know how that even happens. We just do it. Because we were kids together.
I feel that with certain people. And you have these apps and ways of staying in touch with people. But at the same time, I think it can add this pressure that we must be keeping in that much contact with every single person that we’ve ever met. Whereas, you know, we can talk like this every so often, but there’s a lot of distance and time between us, and I think that’s OK. It’s not a failure. It’s just how it is.
Thank you. That’s a good way of looking at it.
What are your ways of engaging with nature where you are, other than noticing those plants around you?
We’re really lucky where we live in that we have a huge swimming pool that’s surrounded by plantings, and there are birds in it and insects and everything. So every day, I go out to that swimming pool and do some laps, but I keep my head above the water so I can hear the birds and see the insects.
In Singapore, the government exercises control over the development on the island. They own, I think, maybe all of the land, or most of it. And so they factor in these parks. So even though I’m living on the equivalent of Manhattan Island in Southeast Asia, there are tons of parks. And one of my favorites is the Botanic Garden. It’s just this massive garden. So you go out there to the garden, and you see people, but you’re not on top of people. And you can actually disappear in the trees and not see anybody around, you can be quiet and alone. And then 30 yards down the path, you’ll meet one other person. That’s pretty exceptional on an island with 5.5 million people. And they have an orchid section of the garden that’s one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. And it costs me the equivalent of 75 cents to get into this big area of orchids. I mean, wow, orchids in nature, and they don’t have to water them, they’re just everywhere! So it’s an amazing place. And I go there once every few weeks or so and just wander around. There’s a woman who walks in that park too, who takes her birds for a walk. She’s got parrots, and they’re perched on her head and her shoulders, and one is in a little pouch on her hip. She’s been doing this for most of her life, and she trained her birds, and they love it, clearly. They go out for a walk every day in the Botanic Garden. So there’s lots of opportunities to be in nature here.
In Cairo, we lived in a compound, because that’s the way the school wanted us to live, in a compound where thousands of people live. But they had gardens all through the compound, and I could walk out through all the gardens and back to our apartment, and it was a 2-mile loop. And I did that almost every day. So even in a huge city in the desert, I was still surrounded by nature. That, for me, is a really important thing to establish in your routine, is getting into nature. I can’t imagine living without it.
I’m sure it’s different not gardening for the first time in a while.
Yeah, that’s been the hardest thing. I did garden a little bit in containers in Cairo, I grew tomatoes and jasmine, feeble jasmine, and a few other trees on the patio. But I was out in nature every day. And the the bougainvillea there just cascades over the walls. We walked around our neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. It was so beautiful.
Given that you’ve lived near the pyramids, what are some things you’ve seen that gave you that time-stopping, awe-inspiring feeling?
Well, the world is full of so many places like that. In Cairo, everybody wants to go to the Pyramids of Giza, the three very recognizable ones. But the longer you’re there, the more you learn about the other pyramids. So we went to those other pyramids; they’re all over the southwestern part of Cairo, outside the city. And we went there several times. There’s one place called Saqqara with all of these extremely early tombs, partially underground. And we were walking along with this guide one time, on our third trip to Saqqara. And for the first time, he pointed at the ground, and he said, “Look, you can see all these little bits of alabaster on the ground, that’s from when they chiseled out the walkways here.” And I was like, “What? Mind blown!” Little shards of alabaster! And then he starts pointing out all of the little bits of pottery that are probably 3,000 years old or more, lying on the ground, broken. And I’d never noticed those before. That was awe-inspiring. There was nobody around but Brian and me and this guide, who’s pointing out things we’ve never seen before.
And then he took us farther out into the desert to another set of pyramids. The Red Pyramid is one, because it’s made of reddish stone. And you’re the only people out there, and you climb up to the tomb entrance, and there’s a guard standing there, and he lets you in. And then the guide, who’s climbed in and out of these pyramids many times before, says to us, “Just go down there and come back out when you’re ready.” So we crawled into this pyramid alone. And, wow, it’s amazing. Usually guards are inside the more special rooms deep in these pyramids, even the ones out in the desert. So they are somewhat protected. But it’s just an amazing experience to be face to face, within inches, of a carving or a painting — that if you were in one of the world’s great museums would be 6 feet behind glass, in an environment-protected area. And here you are, and you just can’t believe you’re that close to something. For people who love history, that’s truly awe-inspiring. But, you know, there have been a lot of other places in the world. We went last year to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and that was a truly special place too.
I love natural places in the U.S., like the Rocky Mountains. Being on top of the Rockies is a really special thing. And being at home in the middle of a wheat field right before harvest is super special too.
I agree. Do you spend a lot of time looking at the moon? Do you think about it differently on the other side of the world?
The moon in Cairo was something super special. I don’t know why — I just imagined it was because the light, the atmosphere, was different. And the light was reflecting off all the sand. But the full moon in Cairo was massive. You could see, with the naked eye, all sorts of different features on the surface of it. So, especially when it was full, we spent a lot of time out on our patio, because we were up on the top of the building, and it just happened to be in the direction of the moonrise. And I loved watching. I’ve never seen a moon like that anywhere in the world. What also made it special was hearing the call to prayer when there was a full moon coming up, and smelling the jasmine.
We couldn’t see much of the rest of the cosmos; the stars were really hard to see because of the lights from the city. The moon superseded everything in the sky. Just incredible. The first Christmas we were there, we ended up signing on with this other teacher to go out into the western desert, the Great Sand Sea, over New Year’s. So we spent New Year’s Eve in an area called the White Desert, southwest of Cairo. And it was a full moon. And it made the whole landscape so surreal, because the White Desert has these white chalk formations rising from the sand, and they looked like they were lit from within in the full moon. So we just walked all around in the full moon, and it was such a special experience to spend New Year’s Eve out there with the full moon.
People who’ve lived in Egypt will say, “Oh, did you go camping in the desert and see all the stars?” And I’m like, “No, man, I saw the moon!” It was a character in the landscape that night, and every night that it was full.
Sounds incredible.
It’s hard to describe something like that. You almost just have to be there. And then you start howling at it. What is that, an American school kid tradition?
There’s got to be something instinctual there.
I think there must be.
And it sounds like a connection to the sun is also important for you.
Yes, I have to get out every day and be in the sun. And that was a bit of a challenge in Cairo, because the sun felt more intense. The humidity is intense here in Singapore. But the sun was intense in Cairo, no matter what the air temperature was. And then there was also the fact that I’m a woman and I needed to cover my skin to be respectful. So I always wore a hat and loose clothes, but I got out in the sun every day.
Is there anything else you’ve been thinking about?
In Cairo, we lived in this compound. We never had a single bad thing happen to us or any of our friends, but we were told to be careful. The compound we ended up living in had three gates, and the gates at every compound in Cairo had guards. The guards were there to make sure they knew who you were seeing. And if you were delivering something, they would take your paperwork and store it at the gate until you had finished delivering, and then you would have to pick up your paperwork on the way out. And, of course, you couldn’t continue your business if you didn’t have your official papers. So it was restrictive. At our compound, we also had young guys in military uniforms on military vehicles with machine guns. For a long time, we’d heard rumors that the prime minister lived in our compound. But it wasn’t confirmed to us until we met and talked to an Egyptian who said, “Oh, yeah, my brother went to school with him, the prime minister really does live in this compound.” So they put these 20-something-year-old guys with machine guns outside the three gates at the compound.
One of the interesting things about living there for so long was that I learned how people get accustomed to it, because we walked past those guys at the gate multiple times a day, and we stopped even noticing them, other than to wave at them. And they, of course, recognized us, because we stood out, we were Westerners. So they would wave back. And sometimes they would smile. Well, our gate that was closest to our apartment was less traveled in and out of, and we got to know some of the guards who were inside the gate. And one of them was my special buddy, Eyman. Eyman knew probably five or six words in English: good morning, how are you, goodbye, thank you. But, of course, I was practicing my Egyptian. So I started talking to Eyman, and stumbling through things. And we became close buddies. I still think about Eyman. I didn’t know how to tell him I was leaving, and that I would probably never see him again. But I think about him all the time, because he would shout whenever he’d see me coming. “Rebecca! How are you!” And I would say, “Sabah al fol,” good morning, morning of flowers. I love that greeting: May you have a morning of flowers. And then we would stumble through this really ridiculous conversation, because he would speak rapidly in Egyptian dialect, and I wouldn’t understand half of it.
Anyway, before I left Cairo, I ended up being in an Uber, and the Uber driver decided that I was going to marry him. He was like, “You will give me your number.” And I’d say “no way” in Egyptian. And I’d say, “My husband’s tall and crazy,” which is true, right? And he would say, “You will give me your number.” So if I would’ve been new in Egypt, I would’ve been probably pretty scared. But I knew my way back to that compound. And I knew, because there’s all these big speed bumps, that I could always get out at one of them. I knew where he was going to stop. And I was just like, “No way, I’m not marrying you, I’m not giving you my number.” So we pull up at the gate. And the guy looks, and he sees those young guys with machine guns, and he sees Eyman coming out saying, “Rebecca!” So he just shut up immediately and took off. He knew better than to mess with the guys with machine guns.
So it started out terrifying to have all these guys with machine guns. And in the end, it felt protective getting to know the guys at the gate. And I just really miss Eyman. I have pictures of him, and I look at them and I get this really big, warm feeling in my heart. I never had a real conversation heart-to-heart with Eyman, because we couldn’t converse in traditional language ways, but we really cared a lot about each other.
Wow. That’s definitely a type of connection that you would never have had if you hadn’t set aside that initial fear or lived on the other side of the world.
May you have a morning of flowers.
Morning of flowers to you too. Hugs!