I’m back! It seems a few days with rude, condescending Parisians was enough to make me snap out of my Egypt-weariness and realise the joys of this smiling country. I was super happy to be served in my local coffee shop yesterday by smiling waiters who asked how I was, where I’d been and added that they hoped to see me back every day. Great sales technique, and all the better because they pull it off genuinely.

So, as promised, from the Reds of Egypt post, clockwise from top right:
1. hibiscus
2. red siphon coral from a night dive in the Red Sea
3. giant teddy bears on cars for Valentine’s Day
4. juicy watermelon
5. bloody handprints from slaughtered sheep offering protection from the Evil Eye
6. delightful fluffy slippers
7. details from a belly dancer’s costume
8. Katkut (a movie)
9. a sheltering 7 cm crab captured on a night dive in the Red Sea
10. Camilia dancing with the shamadan (candelabra).

Back from the (almost) pristine Blue to sweaty, sweltering, smoggy Cairo. It was a full moon while I was there (no night dives) so all the Two Bar Anemone fish (Nemo fish) were laying their eggs. An interesting, if fairly useless fact I just learned was that these fish are gender transient. All are born male and if the dominant female dies, the dominant male morphs into the new dominant female and the eldest other male matures into the new dominant male, and all that takes place within a week. Pretty cool.

More updates from this dusty mega metropolis on the way.

My circle of light hits a feather star
Recoiling from the beam.
Above the world sleeps
Thick blackness flows around us.
My breath
The only sound
Six lights
But I’m alone
Thoughts run unchecked
Self-doubt wriggles through my brain.
The sliver of reason pierces the darkness
Words of training stand between me and the abyss.

I held my breath. Eyes hiding. Lips taught. I could not breathe: then it would be over. I knew that. Images floated through my head. I packed the gear up, put the box in the truck. Said nothing. They came, but nobody could see. No, still hidden. I couldn’t believe it. What could be said? The images. More than just images: moments before they had been my reality. I had been part of the image. My heart constricts as I write this. My eyes get soft.

The tears continued. Noha saw. Sam saw. I couldn’t talk. There was no explanation. The truck bumped away from the Islands. Away from the glimpse I’d had into another life.

Still there are not words to describe what is there. Still there are tears, internal now, when I remember the beauty. How can it be that an entire world exists under the surface parallel to and interdependent with ours and yet we know so little of it?

There are not words to describe the serenity of the blue, the freedom of neutral buoyancy, the tranquility of breathing through the regulator or the fascinating beauty of the creatures. It was the coral that grabbed my heart over those days. It had meant so little to me before and today it brought me to my knees.

I held my breath. Eyes hiding. Lips taught. I could not breathe: then it would be over. I knew that. Images floated through my head. I packed the gear up, put the box in the truck. Said nothing. They came, but nobody could see. No, still hidden. I couldn’t believe it. What could be said? The images. More than just images: moments before they had been my reality. I had been part of the image. My heart constricts as I write this. My eyes get soft.

The tears continued. Noha saw. Sam saw. I couldn’t talk. There was no explanation. The truck bumped away from the Islands. Away from the glimpse I’d had into another life.

Still there are not words to describe what is there. Still there are tears, internal now, when I remember the beauty. How can it be that an entire world exists under the surface parallel to and interdependent with ours and yet we know so little of it?

There are not words to describe the serenity of the blue, the freedom of neutral buoyancy, the tranquility of breathing through the regulator or the fascinating beauty of the creatures. It was the coral that grabbed my heart over those days. It had meant so little to me before and today it brought me to my knees.