I can’t remember exactly when I decided to start writing again, this time with the aim of taking it seriously. I do remember how it happened – it was thanks to an on-line critique group that my friend Gloria told me about. The KooKoos encouraged and supported me, and although we no longer actively critique each others’ work, we are still friends and they remain an inspiration.

My first attempt at a novel was something that I had thought about writing many years before – a time travel story, set in ancient Egypt. While I was writing the first draft in 1999, I wistfully thought that wouldn’t it be nice if I could actually go to Egypt, just to see and hear and smell and feel what the place was really like. Out of the blue, an old friend sent me an e-mail: she was organizing a belly dancers’ tour of Egypt, and would I like to go? I hadn’t belly danced in years, but she still remembered me. I sat, blinking, at the email for some time. Shaking my head, I regretfully realized I couldn’t afford it. But when I casually mentioned it to my husband, Wayne, he replied that he’d just gotten a bonus and it was enough to cover the whole trip– at which point, I gave up on the excuses, and e-mailed back an enthusiastic, "Sure!" Be careful what you ask for. . . you might get it!

Thirteen women from Calgary and Victoria, B.C., flew to Cairo, via Germany. It was a long flight, and all we wanted to do was sleep when we finally got to our hotel. Jane got a head start on the shopping by buying a small bottle of kohl (eyeliner) from the gift shop when we arrived, though. The next day, our first excursion was to Madam Abla’s costume studio, where several of us tried on costumes and ordered custom-made outfits. Then we took a class in Cairo from a respected teacher there. After that, we boarded the overnight train to Aswan. I woke up several times and looked out at the desert night. The constellations were oddly skewed from their familiar positions.

In Aswan, we visited the beautiful, modern Nubian museum, where many of the artifacts from the drowned land are housed. Nubia is mostly under the water of Lake Nasser now, thanks to the Aswan Dam. Later, we were entertained at dinner by the Reda dance group. The next day, we went to the Temple of Isis at Philae. The temple was raised, block by block, and reassembled on nearby Agilka Island, mostly as it was – one block was unfortunately put back upside-down!

From Aswan, we boarded the cruise ship Mona Lisa, and sailed for Luxor, Karnak, and the Valley of the Kings. Unfortunately, I got "Tutankhamen’s Revenge" on the ship and had to spend the day in our hotel room, and missed the trip to the Valley. I did manage a quick trip to Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple, however. Hatshepsut is famous for being a female pharaoh (pharaoh means King, not Queen), and even more famous because her temple, hieroglyphs and statues were all destroyed, so no one knew about her until the 1920's, when archaeologists discovered the fragments and put them back together. Reconstruction of her temple at Deir el Bahri is ongoing.
 

We took a tour bus in convoy to Hurghada on the Red Sea from Luxor, where we were taken to a Bedouin camp. We had a short camel ride, a fast jeep ride into the desert to take pictures of the sunset, and a delicious dinner after. When the official entertainment was over, some of us belly danced with a bedouin woman and her teenage daughter. It was very moving.

From there, our bus took us back to Cairo, where we toured the Museum and the Alabaster mosque, went to the Khan el Khalili bazaar, and had dinner on a floating barge on the Nile. On our last day, we picked up our finished costumes. Dressed in our finery, we travelled to some stables near the pyramids at Giza and had our photos taken with them in the background.

Tired but having thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, we returned to Calgary 17 days after we’d left. It was a trip I’ll never forget.