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Shares
Sitting on the bank of the Nile after sailing down the river in a Felucca I found myself sitting next to the smouldering remains of a fire we had danced around only a few short hours ago. My friend, a local sitting to my left, a shisha between us and looking up at the starry sky. There is a certain calm about this place that is difficult to describe. The cool river breeze and adjacent desert brought with it a peaceful silence, a stillness that made it feel as if time had stopped. As we sat in silence, gazing up at the stars and me trying my hardest to act like I knew what I was looking for, my friend asked 'what is your creation story?' I paused, thinking of the right words to use and how this story was told to me. I knew our cultures had more in common than what I had learnt over the previous days and seeing the look on his face as I was telling him our creation story had confirmed for me that he was thinking the same. I told him of the stories of how the Earth and Sky were together raising their children in the darkness and how their children, the other elements we know in this world grew too big for the home their parents provided and were divided by what they should do about it, how the sun was slowed to give us decent daylight, how we are connected to nature and how nature nurtures us. He (my friend) had a familiar look on his face, as if he knew this story already but with different names. He looked at me as he was drawing in a deep breath of shisha and said 'tomorrow, I will tell you our creation story when we get to the next destination, I think you will find it very interesting' before letting out a cloud of cantaloupe scented smoke big enough it covered both our faces. We continued to share stories of our cultures, smoke and gaze up into the sky until the embers had gone cold, the shisha no longer tasted of cantaloupe and our necks had cramped up. We had both learned so much in one conversation that we knew this was no coincidence but that we are connected culturally. As I crept and crawled back onto the Felucca as quietly as I could to not wake anyone, slowly covering myself with my blanket I couldn't help but feel as if I had connected to not only my new friend but to his culture and his home, so much so that it felt as if I was sitting on my grandparents living room floor talking to my family. It felt as if I was home.