We weren’t convinced that any destination could make up for the twelve-hour overnight bus ride from Cairo and back.

In the end, what was most marvelous about the tour of Lake Nasser was not the temples themselves (although of course they were stunning), but rather the fact that they had been built not once but twice.

Each time that I push through the entry turnstile and round the corner of the ticket office and see them still standing there, they take my breath away.

If my pre-nostalgia is any indication, we are always already living with what we have lost.

C. said that he wondered what people in the ancient world would have seen in these shapes, and I thought about the human urge to search for the familiar in the strange.

If you’d asked my six-year-old self how she felt about camping, I think she’d tell you that there are some things in life that you only do once.

As I walked among the ruins, I found myself thinking about how I, too, have been shaped—if not named—by the places through which I’ve traveled.

Do you think that landscapes are ever aware of us as we’re moving through them, resting the soles of our shoes on their rocks, dragging our fingers along their time-weathered walls?

But we have come here neither to pray nor to fight. Is a photo shoot really, I am beginning to wonder, so terrible after all?

I could imagine all kinds of people, generations upon generations of people, coming to Lamartine to request her advice.

I never expected that a pickleball paddle would be one of the new things that we would carry home with us.

I lounged on the pillows and gazed at the murals and studied my Arabic flashcards and wondered what age I’d been when I’d stopped feeling invincible.

The friend that we’re subletting from told us that he chose this place for the beautiful floors.

On the other hand, the Nile’s capricious force could also destroy the very livelihood it made possible.

Yes, it was true that most of the crocodiles had moved south. But wasn’t there a chance that at least a few of them had remained behind?

At every turn, we were reminded that we were walking through a house of the gods. Perhaps this is why we spent so much time looking skyward.

At the time, it felt like we would never understand the system—and yet somehow, this profoundly foreign experience has become a familiar routine.

As I prepared to leave the city for the second time, I found myself thinking about the distance between the Alexandria I imagined and the Alexandria I got.

But I also gazed out the window at donkeys hauling brush through irrigated fields, and I watched the clear sky unfurl over sand-colored villages, and I admired the strings of brightly-colored laundry trembling like symbols of something I couldn’t quite grasp.

Largely indifferent to the rich cultural and political history that surrounds them, the dogs seem more interested in finding shady places to nap, nosing through trash heaps, and barking at their sheltered, privileged cousins who strut by on leashes with obedient owners in tow.