Between Egypt and Jordan is My Childhood Bedroom

exciting things coming in 2024!

Hi friends, and a belated happy new year! I hope January has given you a burst of energy. I, on the other hand, am crawling into 2024.

Because I am between two international moves, I am crashing at my mom’s house—in my childhood bedroom, no less—and no one goes in there when I’m not home, so absolutely nothing is in working order. My closet door has gone completely cattywampus, and is so far off its track I can’t even close it to hide the heap of dirty clothes that has resulted from living out of suitcases for six weeks. My shower head leaks and sprays in about 157 directions. My bathroom sink won’t drain. The sheets on my bed are literally disintegrating! They have a gaping hole in them and I keep getting my arm stuck in it in the middle of the night and having to fight my way out of it while half asleep, which only makes the rip bigger. So that’s how I’ve been so far this year: groggy and flailing around. (Mom, I know you are reading this—for the love of God, please order new sheets.)

However, there are two things I’m excited about in January that will, I hope, kick 2024 off right.

First, Nick and I are moving to Amman, Jordan later this month. That means lots more travel and expat adventures that I can’t wait to share with you. (What piques your curiosity about life in Jordan? Tell me in the comments—I’d love to write about it!)

Second, as I hinted at in last month’s Norway salon, a new name and fresh look are coming to this newsletter very soon. 2023 was a year of growth for The Cairo Dispatch, as subscribers tripled and there are now nearly 1000 of you (thank you so much for being here!). It’s time for this space to evolve accordingly.

To prepare for that evolution, I took a poll last month asking what you value most about this newsletter. Personal stories won handily. Which is great for both of us, because personal stories are what I most like to write! I’m looking forward to another year of exploring the inner journeys that run parallel to our outward travels and stoking wanderlust for you, my fellow dreamers and adventurers.

As I wrestle myself from my bedsheet each night and count the days until I’m settled in Jordan, I also want to take stock of the writing I did in Cairo this past year.

I brought Greece, Guatemala, Egypt, and Norway to your homes through my salon dinner series, giving you templates to interact with the culture of each place through food, books, movies, and ideas.

I learned to experience the joy of slow travel through a hike in Portugal’s Algarve in the low tourist season and a cruise down the Nile—where, unexpectedly and miraculously, Nick and I ended up being the only guests on our dahabiya:

I watched the crew shuffle about, clearing our breakfast dishes and rolling our suitcases to the gangway. I realized I envied them. Long after I’d returned to Cairo—whose dirty beige buildings I could no longer believe existed in the same country as this place—the crew would still be here, directing the rudder at the stern and praying at the bow. They would be surrounded by blue skies and green thickets, wisp-like clouds and water smooth as glass.

I wrote about how a “Jesus, Take the Wheel” moment on a plane to Luxor taught me to live with—and love—the uncertainty embedded in the phrase insha’allah (if God wills it):

I had believed, before then, that I knew what the phrase insha’allah meant. It was what Muslims (and sometimes non-Muslims who were worldly and pretentious) said about things that they hoped would happen, but were hardly certainties. “Insha’allah, I will be elected president of France.” “Insha’allah, we will colonize Mars one day.” It wasn’t the sort of thing someone should be saying about a situation of which they were in charge—especially not a pilot in mid-flight with his hands on the steering yoke. I had trusted this man with my life, and I wanted him to be pretty darn certain of when and how he was going to land the plane. Because if he wasn’t in control, who was?

I talked a lot about finding respite after loss—like finding my late grandmother in a plate of stinky fish in Norway and a failed attempt to outrun grief while road tripping through Cyprus on the anniversary of my father’s death:

I had brought us to Cyprus to avoid facing a lifetime devoid of someone I loved, but my quest was a delusion. I was not a hero and this was not an epic tale, and we would eventually go home and my dad would still be exactly as dead as he was now. It was a freeing thought. If there was no real quest, there were no real rules, and we could drift however we pleased.

That last phrase feels like an appropriate mantra for 2024. There are no real rules; drift how you please. Thank you so much, friends, for drifting with me, and I’ll see you back here for more stories next week.