Goodbye Cairo Dispatch, Hello Caravanserai

a new name and look for this newsletter

Dearest reader—

Imagine yourself a traveler. A trader, perhaps, or an emissary journeying to a far-off land, on a road that has taken you through the hottest deserts and the highest, most jagged mountains. It’s been a long day of walking, and the pads of your feet are rough and sore. Your stomach growls like a threatened dog. The soft glow of twilight has begun to fade. Just as you start to worry about the cold of night and the highway robbers that darkness will bring, you see it: the domed roof of a caravanserai. Sanctuary.

You approach, and gripping the heavy iron knocker, you rap it against the door. It opens—just a crack at first, while a guard with an oil lamp looks you up and down. Once he sees you are no bandit, he opens it wider, stepping aside with a gracious bow. You cross the threshold, and the guard clicks the door shut behind you. You are safe.

The doorway lets into an open courtyard, its ground covered in plush carpets and overstuffed poofs where you can rest your achey legs. Fellow pilgrims, all dusty from the road, lounge about sharing shisha and black tea, glasses clinking as they stir in heaping spoonfuls of sugar. They come in every size, color, and costume; they have arrived here from all the corners of the earth. A smell, unfamiliar and delicious, wafts from a cook fire in a quiet corner, and you catch the eye of the woman tending it. She beckons you over.

“Welcome, traveler,” she says with a smile. “I’ll gladly share my meal with you, if you tell me a story of where you’ve been. Won’t you sit and stay while?”

She needn’t ask you twice. You take a seat and start your tale.

When I started this newsletter a year and a half ago, I was a wannabe writer looking for a home. I had been living in Cairo for about six months, was bursting with things to say about it, and needed a place for all those thoughts—but I had no audience, no platform. Not wanting to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, I took a scattershot approach. I started this newsletter intending to fire off whatever musings felt right each week, and I chose the first name that popped into my head: The Cairo Dispatch. In spite of my haphazardness, my little readership began to grow. I started to find my voice through essays like this one on roadtripping through grief and this one on leaving a home I’d come to love.

The Cairo Dispatch was an experiment that helped me figure myself out as a writer and creative. Over time, what I cared about most became clearer and clearer. I knew it was time for The Cairo Dispatch to be reborn as a more deliberate, purposeful publication.

The content of this renamed newsletter will remain largely the same as it transitions from The Cairo Dispatch to Caravanserai, but it will be more focused on personal stories and intimate explorations of world cultures than ever before. I want to keep writing for thinkers, daydreamers, and adventurers. This is a space for human stories that are tender, funny, uncomfortable, and true, and for the inner journeys that happen in parallel with our real-world excursions.

At this point, you are probably wondering why “Caravanserai.” A caravanserai (pronounced “care-uh-VAN-sur-eye”) is a type of roadside inn, historically found along the Silk Road in its heyday. Caravanserais served as respites where trade caravans and other travelers could stop to rest overnight, away from the dangers of the road. While the outer walls of a caravanserai would resemble a fortress, the inside would be much cozier, with small guest rooms, stables, and sometimes even prayer rooms and bath houses. As travelers from all over Eurasia flocked to caravanserais, they became hubs for the exchange of culture, goods, food, religion, art, and, of course, stories. When you read this newsletter, I want you to feel as though you are stepping into a caravanserai—a haven where you can listen to fellow travelers’ stories from the road and sample bits of far away places.

If you’re curious about our big, beautiful world and want to understand what makes it tick; if you believe in the transformative power of new experiences; if you’ve ever lived as a stranger in a strange land, feeling the highest highs and the lowest lows; then Caravanserai is for you. Caravanserai is not only about the places we go, but where those places take us as people. It will be a place for me to tell tales from my own travels and my life as I move from Egypt to Jordan,¹ as well as a place for the stories of other ramblers who come to us as guests to talk about places they love.

So, reader, what do you need to do to keep up with Caravanserai? Not a thing. Your presence here is so valued, and I appreciate your support in any form: subscribe, “heart” this post, share it with a friend, or simply open the next email. I can’t wait to see you soon.

1. I am probably on a plane to Amman as you are reading this!!