"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain."
The saddest part about returning home from traveling abroad, isn't just the return to routine and familiarity (though that is certainly mildly depressing)....its the slow fading of your intense travel memories.
waking up on a rock in the Wadi Rum desert, next to a rather cuddly Bedouin man
Staring out over the Nile at sunset, feeling like you have walked into a postcard and pinching yourself that you are actually in the Valley of the Kings.
the blinding glare of the Pyramids at Giza in the morning, as you balanced yourself on a Camels back and thought with such certainty, in shock and awe, that theres no WAY humans could have made such a thing
the rusty, crowded Damascene minibus, sputtering away as you sat in the backseat with a squished bag of falafels, en route to the Train Station to depart for Aleppo.
the desperate looks on the faces of the Somalian prostitutes in Iraq, squinting in the unbearable heat of the noon-day mesopotamian sun
Taksim Square in the evening, waiting outside the burger king for a friend, smells of Sheesha and dry kebabs perfuming the air as you watched Istanbul girls in hijabs and high heels teeter away into the night...
All these memories start to grow a little more dim as the days pass by. I sit in the downtown Calgary library and read travel memoirs and guidebooks and giant picture books about the Middle East, just to try to keep the flame in my brain alive.
It helps a little bit.
