Siwa

Siwa was full of sand and salt. So much salt going swimming was more like a glazing. So much sand they called it a sea. And seaworthy is Siwa. "Come to the palm-lined oasis of Siwa & escape to a paradise of sun, sand and sea. But don't bother bringing a date, they're everywhere!"

Siwa seared. The hot breeze only ceding way around midnight. The glare of the full moon casting a cinematic sheen over the still vast sturdy canyon bluffs set into the carpet of soft desert dust. On an elevated carpet, I sat for a while. It was difficult to focus away from the distraction of the setting.

Against this setting was the backdrop of the crew I found myself with. A quad of raucous wry and wacky Greeks, a trio of unpredictable and entertaining Americans, and a host of other able participants in general desert folly. Folly which included the recurring misplaced Rayban, the Siwan trying to steal bikini bottom pinches, the Serbian calisthenic routine, dune downhilling and rousing debates on evolution and gay pride. At the very core, it comforted me to intuit that beneath the divergent conceptions could always be found the substrata of common understanding.

Came back to unexpected emails inquiring into my health as unbeknownst to us, Sharm suffered Egypt's worst terror hit yet.