36. Cairo, 1996 — Rolling gallops

In which Eleanor rides. Some intended. Some not.

Back to rights, Eleanor's savors the desert. And a little something extra.

Eleanor

“Let’s gallop,” Wendy grins at me as we head back to the stables. Our friendship has deepened since I adopted Themba and Tlali and she invited me to her bridge group. And she’s a walking encyclopedia of Cairo. She knows this city even better than many Cairenes. 

We fly across the soft sand, pyramids up ahead on our left, Giza stretched out below us on the right. There’s a sharp line where the city ends and the desert begins. On the one side, barren yellow, orange, brown; rock and sand and pebbles. On the other, buildings, gray, brown, flashes of green from the palm trees and red from the flame trees in blossom. On the one side emptiness and silence; on the other side a cacophony of sound, a jumble of buildings and people and traffic, the press of humanity in a teaming city that is bursting at the seams. 

Racing across the desert feels glorious. Wendy and I try to come every week. Escaping for an hour into the desert is one of life's great pleasures. The stables let us go out on our own now, without a guide along with us. It’s impossible to get lost. There are always the pyramids, rising above the desert and city, to mark our way back. Or, if we’ve gone further, all we need to do is turn the horses to the north, give a gentle squeeze and they take us back at a quick trot—or the occasional gallop when we let them. 

We pause at the crest of a hill, laughing, exhilarated, while we give the horses a breather. The view never gets tiring: the cacophonic jumble of the city below; the silent emptiness of the desert around us. 

I’m standing on the deck of the ship, feeling it's heave below me, rising and falling over the waves, rolling, rolling, rolling. The thunder of the waves. 

My eyes open. I’m in bed. It’s heaving below me, rising and falling over the waves, rolling, rolling, rolling. Thunder is roaring. 

Confused, I get up. I nearly fall back into bed as the floor heaves below me. The ceiling light is swaying above me. The roar is in my ears. I stumble across to the balcony doors, the floor undulating under my feet. I’m not drunk. I’m not dreaming. I have no idea what’s going on. As I lurch out onto the balcony I expect to see an apocalyptic scene of destruction outside. 

All is as it always is. 

The rolling and heaving subsides. The roar diminishes. I hear bird calls, the regular early morning sounds of the city in the dawn light. 

Realization dawns on me. 

So that’s what an earthquake feels like. 

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Bonus Material

• Eleanor goes riding

• Deleted scene: Eleanor’s first Annual Newsletter from Abroad. Even before the days of social media we were putting a gloss on things. Most noteable observation, even 30 years later?

So when over Eid Al Adha they were slaughtering sheep on the roof, the drains got blocked. Being the next flat down, it all came up through my drains and it was very quickly two inches deep in the one corner of the bathroom.

Yes, not all stories made it into the book. This, and more “Cairo Chaos”, in this “deleted scene”.