“SMOKE?”

I gladly accept the cigarette offered in my direction by the man that had greeted me five minutes ago, as I walked out of the airport onto Egyptian soil for the first time. Dumping my bags in the back of the van and scrambling over the patterned rugs into the passenger seat, I turn to see his round face crinkle into a warming smile. He points to himself.

“EMAD. WELCOME TO EGYPT.”

I can’t help but grin back at him. It feels unbelievably good to hear those words: Welcome to Egypt.

He swings the van out of the airport car park, steering the vehicle through a seemingly impossible maze of traffic, and then we are suddenly free and bouncing along the road. A warbling Arabic melody drifts out of the speakers as hot dusty air flies through the open window and grazes my face. I can smell traces of Morocco mixed with a flavour that is altogether new. Flashbacks of India fill my head as we dodge in between the cars and trucks, treating the three lanes as if they were deserted and designated solely for our flight. But the beautifully indecipherable Arabic filling the billboards, road signs and shop windows, left behind us in a cloud of sand, reminds me that this is no India. This is a completely new land, and my senses flood with an overwhelming and wonderful feeling of urgency to drink in as much as I can.

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