The Call of the Soul

by Chelsea Fiteni (Australia)

A leap into the unknown Egypt

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I remember as a child I always felt called to the mystical lands of Egypt. Every inch of my being sprung into attention whenever the dreamy desert was mentioned. I sat through classes in school, doodling pyramids all over my books, wondering ‘how did they do it?’ I was always a curious child. My youth was filled with games and questions, trying to solve life’s puzzles. Yet I could never quite uncover the mysteries of Egypt, especially not from the other side of the world. Each day it was like a magnet drawing me in, closer and closer. As though, every choice I made, big or small, was somehow leading me to this grandeur adventure. Then there I was. On the floor of my bedroom, imagining being there, when suddenly a brochure caught my eye. It was stuffed into a box of things I had collected at an Expo a few months back. Yet funnily enough, I could not recall ever seeing this one before. The sandy yellow text sprawled over the sky blue background: “Egypt is Calling”. My eyes widened and my heart race quickened, as every cell in my body knew exactly what this meant. Soon, I would be standing with the sand of the Sahara desert beneath my shoes. I no longer could resist the call. Fast forward three months and there I was, sitting in a plane, my destination: Cairo. After a very long, tiresome journey, I had arrived. During the final moments of the plane ride, I caught myself looking out of the window, at all angles, trying to catch a glimpse of one of life’s colossal mysteries- the Great Pyramids of Giza. To my unexperienced traveller’s surprise, Egypt was much bigger than I had expected. I saw plains of sand, but no pyramids, yet. On the bus ride over to the hotel, I stared out in awe, taking in as much of my surroundings I could. There were busy streets filled with an equal ratio of people and pollution. There were towering unfinished buildings, with children climbing to the tops. It was thrilling to watch how the life of Egyptians was lived. I soon found my eye lids getting heavy and tried to fight off the tiredness, but soon lost and drifted to sleep for the remainder of the journey. I was startled awake by two Arabic men talking to each other, using language unfamiliar to my ears. “You!” one man shouted towards me, whilst pointing his incredibly long, hairy finger in my direction. My body twisted in fear, mixed with excitement filled adrenaline. Well this was it, time to truly start off on my adventure. I got up and stopped my legs from running off the bus due to my heart pulsating at twice the speed. “Here we go,” I whispered to myself, smiling uncontrollably. I was escorted to a nice, yet basic hotel room, with the curtains drawn closed. After I shut the door behind me I started to unpack in an attempt to make everything feel more homely. When something suddenly succumbed me. Almost in a daze I travelled toward the long blue and white checkered curtains. I reached out and opened them up swiftly, my eyes catching on to the view beyond the window. No more than ten kilometres in front of me was the very thing that had been calling me in since I was a child. I could just see it through all the smog of the busy city surroundings, but once I caught a glimpse, my eyes couldn’t tear away. I felt the pull much more strongly now, now that I was closer than I had ever been in my life. Looming over the sand dunes was the biggest structure I had seen in person, a structure that had lasted through the ages of time. A structure filled with mysteries for me to solve. The structure being: The Great Pyramid of Giza. I was ready to explore, so off I went, inching closer and closer by the second, until I was inside.