B-Sort Relationship Advice Blog

On the drive to Alexandria where SS grew up, I noticed some large white cone structures with holes all over them. Amongst ourselves we discussed what they might be for. The holes might be for air-conditioning was one idea. We asked our guide who told us that they were for farming pigeons – considered a delicacy. My friend SS commented that pigeon was similar to quail.

In Alexandria, SS’s mother, along with her brother, invited us all out to dinner at an amazing restaurant that once was a palace that belonged to King Farouk’s wife. It was an opulent palace, in some ways a museum, with furniture, art and artifacts from the time of his reign. It had photos of King Farouk as a child on the walls. The menus were amazing with photos throughout of King Farouk in various uniforms. I would have like to have kept one of those. The elegance and grandness of the room in which we dined was impressive.

At the beginning of the dinner SS gave us each a gift – a gold cartouche with our name in Hieroglyphics on it. Her Egyptian friend, NR, who had joined our group, gave each of us a souvenir of Egypt. The generosity of our hosts was overwhelming. We were all quieter than usual. We were tired and I was sick with a bad cough and cold. I can’t speak for the others, but I know I was quiet because I felt somewhat overwhelmed by their generosity.

When it came time to order I saw that they had pigeon on the menu. SS had said it was like quail. I had had pheasant before and it was succulent and delicious. I grew up on a farm in southern Manitoba. As a child one of the things I liked to do was climb up the ladder to the roof of the barn and look at the pigeons nesting there. First to see the eggs. Then to see the newly hatch fledglings. Then to see the ugly awkward babies with their feathers growing in. We never ate them.

Even so, I ordered a ‘pair of pigeons’ from the menu. When my meal came and the waiter put it down before me I was shocked. My friend sitting beside me, who shall remain nameless, leaned over and whispered, “It looks like road kill.” My thought (which I kept to myself) “Exactly!” There were two flat leathery blackish brown or brownish black inkblots on the plate. They looked like they had just been scraped of the road on a hot summer day. I felt very awkward. I did not want to offend my generous and gracious hosts. So I started to eat it. I tried to cut it with a knife and fork. No way, it was too tough. Then I picked it up and tried to separate a limb from the body. With effort I was able to do it. Tender it was not! When I went to take a bite of it all I got was some greasy skin. There was little meat that I could detect. It was not like any quail or pheasant I had tasted. I still did not want to offend my hosts so I pushed the pigeons around my plate for a while. I did not go hungry. The portions were generous and my friends shared their meals with me. After the plates were cleared the waiter brought me a fingerbowl of lemon-scent water to wash my fingers. I was relieved because it meant to me that I was expected to use my hands to eat it. The meal ended with some delicious fresh fruit for dessert.

After some more photos in this luxurious palace we said our good-byes to our wonderful hosts and sauntered back to our hotel.

Well, at least I tried it.

Enjoy,

Dr. Bea Mackay

B-Sort.com

P.S. How often in relationships do we try to avoid offending or hurting others?

We were walking back to the old Christian monastery on for a tour inside. It was about 1 Km from the station where our minivan had dropped us off. We’d just hiked down Mount Sinai to the station and had eaten our boxed breakfasts provided by our hotel. We were going back for the tour. As I walked along in the heat of the day I was in a tired fog. Suddenly I was aware that something was going on and I became alert. I noticed a Bedouin man casually slouched on a low kind of stone fence talking to a 4-5 year old child. I assumed it was his son. The boy was running alongside a tourist. He had no goods to sell. He would look at his father. His father would say something to him in Arabic. The son would say something to the tourist and look back at the father who would say something to him. Then he would say something more to the tourist. Then I notice on the other side of the road there was a woman completely covered in her hijab except for her hands and eyes, talking to a different 4-5 year old child. I think it was a girl but it might have been a boy. The same thing was happening. The child was running alongside a tourist. The mother was saying something to her in Arabic. The girl would then say something to the tourist then look back at her mother who would say something to her. I did not have a sense that the father and his son were related to the mother and her child.

I realized that the parents were using this stretch of road to teach their children to beg. I know it is naïve of me but I did not think that begging was something that was taught. I had not really thought about it before; to me it was just something that was done. But the way these parents were teaching their children reminded me of the way I taught my sons how to develop skills in life – such as how to behave with guests, how to conduct themselves in public, etc.

My initial reaction was to feel sad for the children that they had to beg and sad for the parents that they needed to teach their children to beg. My next reaction was to feel relieved that my life circumstances meant I did not have to teach my children to beg. Finally, I thought of the poverty in Egypt and then I began to think that the parents were teaching their children survival skills. Because there are so few jobs and what jobs there are do not pay much, they would need these skills to survive themselves and to help their families survive. These children that I saw looked like normal healthy children. They had not been maimed by their parents to elicit charity as sometimes happens.

I still found it sad.

Dr. Bea Mackay

B-Sort.com

I had not thought much about this activity on our itinerary - hiking Mount Sinai. I had no expectations either positive or negative about it. The only thing that I’d thought about was that it was an all night event and I was concerned about getting over-tired from the loss of a night’s sleep. I was already feeling the effects of losing a night’s sleep traveling from Cairo to Abu Simbel and Aswan. When we got to the Old Cataract Hotel I should have napped in the afternoon instead of going out in the felucca (boat) with everyone. But it was a beautiful day, a neat thing to do and I did not want to miss anything. I got chilled on the boat and that’s how I came down with the bad cold – fatigue and chill. I was concerned that losing another night’s sleep would make me sicker.

Our driver and guide picked us up around 10 pm. We had about two and a half to three hours drive ahead and we all hoped to catch some shut-eye on the drive. We had to go thru many checkpoints at which we all had to show our passports. So much for getting much more than 40 winks on the drive. We arrived around 1:00 am at a small station, which had the usual facilities and met the young Bedouin man who was to be our guide for the hike. It was cold. It was dark. There were millions of stars. As usual, there were lots of hawkers pressing their wares on us – gloves, scarves etc – telling us how cold it was going to be at the top. Lots of other mini buses arrived with many more tourists.

We were given our flashlights and we started up the mountain. As we passed the Christian monastery (the first one ever built) we saw activity – movement, campfires. As we got closer we saw a large herd of camels and their Bedouin owners/drivers. They were looking to get hired to take tourists up the mountain. We trudged by them, away from the light and into the darkness. Only surprisingly, it wasn’t that dark. It was a beautiful moonlit night. With my flashlight on, my eyes could not adjust to the darkness, so I turned it off. It did not take long for my eyes to adjust. I could see so much. I could see the path so I had no trouble with my footing. I could see the whole valley, as well as, up and down the mountain. It was wonderful! Others in my group though wanted and needed the flashlights on. This bugged me because it meant I couldn’t see anything but the immediate path. I wanted to see the whole mountain and valley. I wanted to experience the ambiance of hiking in the moonlight – I’d never done it before. Usually I don’t say anything, but this was important to me. Because I thought we had to stay together I told them to ‘turn off their frigging flashlights’. That did not go over well. I was told to go on ahead. To me, that was a fabulous idea, so I took off. I don’t know what happened to me. I usually ‘collapse’ around 10:00 – 11:00 pm. Instead of being tired, I had energy to burn. I was excited. I did not feel sick at all and forgot all about being sick or getting sicker. I loved hiking up the mountain in the moonlight! I did not even think about my safety. I just soaked up all the sensations of occasion. SJ came along with me. Several times we came across what seemed to be large rocks in the distance but as we got closer they turned out to be a lying down camel with his squatting driver beside him. “Camel, camel”. No takers from me. We went at a good pace. I’m what I call a ‘high-class’ hiker. I have a group of women I hike with and most summers we drive to and/or helicopter into a mountain lodge (ski lodge in winter) and hike 2000-4000 vertical feet a day, ending up in our extremely comfortable accommodations at night. So I had no trouble with the vertical we were doing. At one of the several rests stations on the way up SJ said she was feeling sick. I knew it was from the exertion of the climb. She hired a camel to ride the rest of the way up. I did not want her to be on her own so I kept pace with the camel and driver. It wasn’t easy. Camels take big steps and I did not have the proper footwear. Usually I’m wearing my hiking boots but I did not want to pack them all around Egypt for one occasion. I had brought old tennis runners that were worn smooth. I was finding it very slippery. At some point, the camel driver just took my hand. My immediate reaction was to pull away, but I didn’t. Holding his hand I found it so much easier to keep pace with the camel. Now that I didn’t have to worry about slipping I could relax and enjoy the scenery even more and chat with the driver. He did not speak much English but I learned that it was his brother’s camel and that it was 6 years old.

It was wonderfully strange to be hiking up a mountain in the moonlight holding hands with a Bedouin man in traditional dress, trekking behind a camel. Once we got as high as the camels could go, SJ got off the camel. She was feeling much better. She had enjoyed the ride. We each tipped the driver and told him to go and find other tourists to help. Then we waited for the rest of our group to arrive.

When we reached this station there still was lots of time before the sunrise. It was warm and comfortable here and I knew it was going to be cold on top. I thought we should wait here until closer to sunrise. Our guide told us that there were so many tourists that if we did not get to the top early we would have trouble finding a spot to watch the sunrise.

The next part of the journey was the 750 irregular rocky steps up to the top of the mountain. I certainly did not count them. Now the group was together again, flashlights and all. It was crowded with tourists and we were going so slowly. SS was ahead with our guide holding his hand. I continued to have so much energy and no patience, so I told the guide I wanted to go ahead. I passed SS and the guide and headed to the top. GH, one of the fellows in the group, was keeping up with me. When we got to the top we did not know where the best spot was so we found a spot to wait for our group. Our guide came looking for us and took us to the group. We hunkered together in the cold to wait for the sunrise. Gradually it started to happen. There was something wonderful about being huddled together watching the night turn into day. Once the sun came over the horizon it did not take long to be fully day. Sun’s up! Time to go down again.

I don’t know what happened to me on the hike up Mount Sinai, but it was wonderful!

Enjoy,

Dr. Bea Mackay

B-Sort.com

Ever since I was a child the pyramids and sphinx have fascinated me. I’ve wanted to see them. Never did I think that I would make friends with a fabulous Egyptian woman like SS who would show me, not all, but much of what her country has to offer and would take such good care of me while personally guiding me through it.

When you see photos and postcards of the pyramids and sphinx (and all the other monuments and temples) usually that’s all you see. Maybe there is the odd camel in the photos but mostly, you just see just the monuments.

When the big day came and I finally arrived at the pyramids I felt discombobulated. There were many metal-detecting checkpoints and lots of armed guards. There were thousands of tourists milling around. There were hundreds of hucksters hawking their made-in-China products. There were lines of Egyptian children and their adult supervisors trekking through the sites. And, there was garbage – cigarette butts, squashed pop cans and water bottles, bits of plastic, paper and more.

I was distracted by all of this activity and found it confusing. I felt irritated. I wanted it all gone. What do I focus on? I wanted to just experience the pyramids and sphinx. I wanted to step back in time and feel like what it must have been like to live thousands of years ago. No possibility of doing that with all these modern day people around doing modern day activities.

Gradually, I came to realize that we North Americans live in a two-dimensional world of time and space. We live in a young world – even 500 years is young. In Egypt it was like I was experiencing another dimension – history – thousands of years old. People who grow up in countries like this take for granted this dimension. For them, it’s like breathing – it just is there. But it has an impact on people. I’m not sure exactly what the impact is but there is one. I realized that this impact of history was something that I was missing. I had not grown up with it. I felt, not deprived, but less rich somehow. It’s hard to put into words. Perhaps, ignorant on some level – simple, uncomplicated, child-like, in that I was lacking in experience, knowledge and even sensation.

Once I ‘got’ this added dimension, something shifted in my perception. I started to look at the country and all it had to offer in a new way - as a juxtaposing of the ancient and the current. I started looking at the current buildings with the pyramids in the background. Looking at the pyramids with the many skyscrapers in the background. I saw a donkey cart with its driver carrying the vegetables to market going down the road alongside the trucks carrying their loads. I saw trucks filled to the brim with sheep and their shepherds. I saw modern day buildings with their crumbling walls near buildings with their ancient restored turrets rising above. I saw the oldest library in the world in its ultra modern current day architecture from an ancient fort. I saw farmers riding their donkeys to work in the fields along side highways with cars and trucks carrying people to their work (or their sightseeing). I saw young women wearing their hijabs and their jeans. Hiking up Mount Sinai I saw Bedouin guides, dressed in traditional style, with their camels, taking sightseers up and down the mountain. The modern pilgrimage. Our young Bedouin guide wore jeans and a jean jacket with LONDON printed across it.

Even on top of Mount Sinai as the sun rose and the skyline turned many glorious colors there was a jet flying through it, passing over our heads, leaving its widening vapor trailing in a not-straight line. And as I watched the sunrise slowing taking place I see my dear friend SS, frustrated, shivering in her shawl with her back to the sunrise, trying to send a message on her Blackberry – unable to get a signal.

I saw it everywhere I went– juxtaposition of the ancient and the current. I loved my ‘new eyes’.

Enjoy,

Dr. Bea Mackay

B-Sort.com

P.S. If we can get ‘new eyes’ on our relationships, amazing things can happen.

My Egyptian Holiday:

In November I went on a holiday to Egypt with 7 friends. We had been planning it for some time. We were supposed to go in 2006 but had to postpone it because not everyone could go.

We had a wonderful time. We had a packed itinerary that enabled us to see many important monuments and places.

It is amazing what the Egyptians created in those times with the tools that they had. It’s one thing to look at photos of monuments and it’s another to stand beside them, to touch them and in many ways, experience them. When I stood beside the massive columns of granite in their perfection I was even more astonished that they could do what they did.

Did you know that Luxor has 25% of all the monuments in the world? That’s what our guide told us.

In the Valley of the Kings we toured four tombs, one of which was King Tutankhamun tomb. We saw his mummy, which had only been on display for about two months.

I wrote some vignettes about my experiences. I’ll add them here.

Enjoy,

Dr. Bea Mackay

B-Sort.com