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They informed me: “When you’ll arrive it will be midnight and the day after you will visit the archaeology museum.” I wasn’t expecting anything when I took the plane from Venice. I was alone and I wasn’t aware that one of the best adventures of my life just started. We flew during the night. During the journey, I saw some lights following an invisible trace, which Salvatore told me that was the Nile. That river has been the reason for all my choices my entire life. Even if I wasn't' able to see it I knew it was there - in the dark - looking at me. We landed in Khartoum. It was midnight and the humid hot night wind welcomed us. A man came and took us and our luggage, we filled some papers and we finally got out in the African city. It was night, but the streets were full of people talking loudly and driving wildly. I remember the faces, the smiles and the “hellos”, which made me feel so uncomfortable: in Europe, we barely greet people we know, and that behaviour was so unusual to me. I loved it. I remember the sand - yellowish-grey grit everywhere - all over my shoes. I raised my head and I saw the stars: a full painted Milky Way in the dark sky. I was there, thousands of miles away from home and I breathed. I felt like a new chicken in the flock. You know that the best way to introduce a new chicken in the flock is at night when your hens are sleeping. In the morning chickens will ask themselves who is the new one and they will just pretend it was always been there. Arriving in Khartoum during that hot November night made me feel the same way. In the morning they took me to the National Museum of Sudan, an orange building with huge glasses and ancient lions and aries of another era protecting the entrance. Each statue, stele or ceramic was so familiar to me, I studied them on books at university. But now they were all there in front of me, telling me, almost yelling at me: “You did it, Geo. You are where you have always dreamed to be.” I wandered in the big hall recognizing each piece of what was left of the Nubian Empire, being captured by the Chalice of Sedeinga - a third-century blue and gold flute with a Greek inscription: “drink to live”! I thought that it was quite paradoxical thinking that alcohol is now forbidden in the country. Khartoum was just a temporary stay; Karima was the last destination. There is just one road that crosses the Bayuda Desert and connects the capital with the north of the country. We took that road, a black path which was a dark snake sliding through the dunes. It took four hours to cross the desert where sand and greyish rocks dominated the landscape. We encountered a few cars and camels and during all the trip I didn’t talk at all, my mind was wondering. That empty spaces were filling my soul with joy and peace, something I never felt before. That feeling got bigger when we saw far away from a small mountain: THE Jebel Barkal. It went bigger and bigger as far as we were getting closer. When we finally arrived at the archaeological mission home, I raised my head and saw the holly mountain behind the house. My adventure had just begun.