On the shininess of other places

A few thoughts on travel in 2023

Photo by Michele Bigley

It’s after 11pm in a Cairo airport hotel. The cafeteria’s packed. Women in a rainbow of hijabs and niqabs carry roasted chicken and kefta, rice, tahina and fruit from the buffet to husbands and children studying smartphones. A gaggle of drunken Russians in tank tops showing off hairy midsections spit laughter across a pile of cakes.

Two African girls in purple hijabs shepherd younger cousins and siblings to tables laden with what Egyptians call Oriental cuisine, but westerners commonly know as Mediterranean. Mothers in black niqab and gloves carefully insert hunks of chicken into their hidden mouths. One covered woman must yell requests to be heard in the loud room. Next to her, a matriarch in a deep blue hijab and matching dress takes slow small bites of an apple. She savors eat bite as if she’s never meditated on the particular sweetness of this fruit.

Nearby a man scoops rice into his mouth with his fingers; a thick gold watch on his wrist. Another man untangles is large frame from his small seat, lifts his T-shirt to show an abundant belly, pokes a needle into his fleshy middle, then sits back down to his platter of desserts.

Me and the penises I travel with are struck silent by the elaborate chaos of…