waking up on the felucca on the west bank of the Nile i can hear the call to prayer. spinning while we drift in the current, the two boats lashed to each other while the captains eat and i can hear the to call to prayer. faith is such a big part of these people's lives and it intrudes itself into the core of the experience. everywhere you go there's a mosque. you can set your watch by the time that you hear the song over the wind. from what Soobie's been saying, religion has been a major part of the Egyptian mindset for over 4000 years. they had 3 seasons: the sowing, the harvest and the flood. without anything better to do in the flooding season they'd build temples - it was the national passtime. in ancient times they were worried more about their life after death than the one they were living. everything they did was about ensuring a good afterlife in the paradise-eternal which is why they put so much effort into their temples and burial, going to rest surrounded by representations of their belongings and servants. unlike to other regions, servants weren't killed and buried with their masters when they were buried. statues and paintings were gifts for the dead, like burning paper-money for the Chinese so that when Osiris took their souls they'd be set up and happy in the world beyond. it seems that the living-to-die mentality hasn't changed much - people still live in wretched misery with the belief that they'll be ok once their heart stops beating. me, my faith isn't that strong so i choose to live in the now... next week at the latest.
getting a bit of the morning sun, slinging my poi around on the bow of the boat with my shirt off i'm not sure what i'm doing or where i'm going, but i have motion and light and i'm going to go with it. the river is a road to ride and the felucca captains keep us drifting. today is idle-time. rest, relax, swim, don't think too hard, watch the palm trees slide by and work on our tans. i'm determined to go back to London with some colour and looking at the golden brown my Macedonian heritage has given me i think i'm going to be OK on that front.
the black dog's been chasing me since Aswan and when we're parked on the side of the river for lunch and a swim it catches up, rips a chunk out of my hamstring then tears my throat out. we've been horsing around, swimming in the Nile, the americans have their shisha pipe out and are going at it like troopers. the shisha pipe is never far away with these boys. every time we stop it gets pulled out and they've been playing with different mixtures in the bottle. it started with purified water, then sometime last night Jr got the bright idea of putting coke and bacardi in it (which worked astonishingly well). after drying off i was about to put my hat back on and realised that i'd been sitting there for 10 minutes with it in my hands, staring at it. 20 minutes later i was lying in the fetal position staring off into space with Parkway Drive screaming in my ears, shaking. keeping my eyes open seemed like too much of a chore so i closed them and lay there as alone as i could be on a small boat full of people while the captains pushed off and got back to sailing. in at shore, up the bank and down the little goat trail towards some trees convenient for toilet use it's dry and hot. in the middle of the river, tacking northwards the wind is stong and cold so i managed to reach over and pull a blanket over me and lay there, aware of my surroundings only peripherally. at one point i know that it blew off me and someone pulled it over me again while i stared at my hand. i'd have thanked them, but if i was in any state to speak i could have done it myself. some time later i slept. i must have done, because time had passed. the game of eye-spy was still going strong, but i'm pretty sure i'd lost time in there somewhere. somehow i was able to function through the rest of the afternoon, PSD in my ears while i read Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross, but after eating i was down again... i don't know how long for. In Flames was in my ears - one of my favourite things to listen to when i want to scream and pull my hair out and rip off my own skin but can't.
after a while i noticed that the bonfire was going and our Nubian hosts were singing and drumming and i pulled myself up and went over to join in... or at least, be there, but standing in the circle looking into the fire with the tourists singing and dancing along i couldn't find any joy in it. the Kiwi boys took their shirts off and did the Haka and it didn't grab me, although they did it convincingly and well. when Soobie tried to get some belly dancing going i cleared a space, pulled my poi out and flung them around to the shocked looks of the Nubians who seemed to have finally seen a tourist do something new, but once the adrenaline wore off i was back where i started so i wandered back to the felucca to write it all down.
this is not how you want to be on holidays. spending hours at a time semi-catatonic is about as much fun as it sounds. Louise is no help - i need someone who can sit with me and hold me through it and that isn't going to be her. she leaves me alone at least, which is the next best thing. now i'm lying here with a view of the dying embers of the fire wondering what the fuck i'm going to do. i've had a couple of these attacks in the last few months and i'm out of ideas. it's not my blood-sugar (i've been checking)... my mind's just shutting down and my brain runs rampage trying to fill in the gaps. Mike checked in on me a couple of times but i don't have it in me to explain it to him. his answer was to force yourself to have a good time and i couldn't find the words to tell him that if anything that's the sort of behavior that'll finish me off. i'm lost and adrift and the only solutions i can come up with don't bear thinking about... at least, not yet.
walking back to the felucca when i could hear the call to prayer drifting across the river, and it gave no solace. there are no answers to be had. i'm exhausted from the exertion of keeping my eyes open and my head up and i know as much as i know anything that i'll be one of the first to sleep tonight. will i feel any better tomorrow? who knows. it's going to be another early start and the end's far from sight. between now and then i'm going to go, stare at the stars and try to be sociable for a little bit but i don't think the drunken tourists will be of much help. i'm in no state to be drinking anything stronger than water and i haven't been. the thought of alcohol holds no attraction right now. i know precisely where i want to be right now and that's further away from here than Oz is from Kansas... and just as mythical. i'm surrounded by interesting people who are opening their homes and their lands to me so that i can see their way of life in a fairytale land on a boat traveling down one of the most whispered about rivers in the world and all i want is to be somewhere that no longer exists... and right now i can't think of anything more tragic.
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