Mid-East Travels, then in Musr (Egypt)

My pal I traveled with was an example to me of a life of study, experential as well as literary, but in common with my attitude that I intellectually had a struggle to which I could attend. The irony was that I had thought advice should be sought-after from reading a book, and yet I just didn't get around to reading all that very often. I was highly vicarious in this regard--just gleaning the report of continuity of academia to then the present, as if time meant more than filling endless rows of bottles with its impermanence... I had a sense of measure for inducting memory which was inculcating adversity (my neurosis, no doubt) rather than anything concrete. All this tended to fill me up, and as long as I could reach the surface of my internal struggle, then that movement gave me currency. It is all that seemingly I would require. ****In Egypt, about 35 mls. outside of Cairo, Rob Loco aka Jamaal Roy Valentine (the pal mention above) and I were visiting a home of big fat Adel, the first Egyptian we befriended, a restaurant owner called al-Salaam Restuarant, there in Cairo. Adel, we had just come to find out was just then embracing Islam - ritually speaking, not just in name, (due to his poor health, perhaps?). He introduced us to his family there in what looked like a ubiquitous Egyptian kinda light industrial town. And he said says as we were moving towards the door, "Tonight I want to swim!" To this day we have no inkling as to what he actually meant. Rob patted him on the back and said, "We know you want to be with your lady, man!" But no commotion in the effort to give us quarters were proffered and we just continued on our travels (obviously we weren't staying there)--in some such order we took a row boat out onto the Nile, that day. We have a picture of Adel picking his nose, out on the water.