Travelers Like Me

I shivered when I heard looters in Cairo had broken into the National Museum and ripped the heads off two mummies. When did the people’s revolution turn into a looting mob? Young people formed a band around the museum to keep out further looters until the army arrived. I love that!! Someone held the possibility that others would join them in what was right even if it meant getting bludgeoned ... or worse. Sometimes I’m disappointed in people, but these stories stir my blood to believe in the human spirit again-to refresh what was always there.

I feel a little guilty that I thought about Tut’s golden face up on the second floor of the museum, the riveting eyes and idealized features, before I worried about the 100 Egyptians dead in the riots. The only thing I can say is that the people are faceless to me, while I have a relationship with Tut. I saw him both in the US and in Egypt and have read book after book.

Same thing happened in Iraq with the sack of Sumerian artifacts during the war and when the Great Buddha in Afghanistan was blown up. I thought of the incredible impact on our world heritage before individuals who might have died.

And yet … I do remember faces, especially the kids on a school field trip in Alexandria. Please God, don’t let any of those young teens be among the dead there. Strangers, we all stood high atop a fort facing the Mediterranean. Waves crashed the shore below us. Junior High-aged boys grabbed each others’ hats, playing keep-away, just like my grandsons back home. Most of the girls in the group covered their hair with scarves. Otherwise, they could have been modest but very with-it girls in Phoenix. Tight jeans, designer tennis, glittered tops, and jingly earrings. They grouped their friends and asked me in English to take a picture on their camera. One girl with large dark eyes asked my name. I told her my name was Sandra, like her city, Alexandria. Lots of giggles. She asked if I liked her town. It’s in moments like these that we, as Paul Bowles once said, stop being tourists and become travelers. I think about those kids once in awhile.

I guess it’s hard for me to care about a number, such as 100 dead, but I care a lot about faces that giggle and practice their English on a traveler like me.