Cairo

I lived in Cairo once.  For a year.  It was our newlywed year, for that Spouse o' Mine and me.  I look back at it as a good newlywed year.  Granted, it was fraught with Egyptian trials and tribulations.  But what a growth year.  Neither of us could, on any regular basis, fall back on our parents or siblings for marital assistance: we were truly on our own.  This was, you know, before email and cell phones.  I got to call my Mom & Dad once each month.  Sometimes I wonder if this was the foundation for our 28+ years of wedded strength.  We immediately learned to cling to each other for strength and happiness.

But now, fast-forward to this month's civil unrest in Cairo.  We listen to the news, to the reports of hundreds of deaths.  The unrest is staged in the places where we lived and visited and enjoyed.  The squares, the suburbs, the outskirts - we are familiar with it all.  We know people who live there.  I listen to BBC and hear about neighborhoods where I once shopped for fabric, for produce...the library that I adopted as my own personal "place of sanity".  And the place where I went each morning to ride horses.  I think of our Coptic Christian exchanges...they are in danger.  So sad.

It's all in incomprehensible unrest.  I am so sad that Egypt is so volatile.  I think that maybe we discerned this volatility way back when.

But we still look at the reports and shudder.