The Seed of New Life: Desert's life

By Elise Tykkyläinen

This is a fascinating autobiographical story about a Finnish woman’s life in Egypt where she got pregnant and gave birth to a new life with a Bedouin man. The author says Finland and Egypt are like night and day. There is nothing similar with them.

“The village was called Arab Abou Tamma. If I understood it right, all the people in the village were in some way related to each other. I often wondered what made them live so close together. Was it fear? What would they have been afraid of, in a small village, surrounded by flowering gardens and where farmers tilled their land along the Nile? Women washed their laundry at the fork of the Nile, which also served as a dump. Strange crustaceans and whatever living things from the river would move around at that little fork of the river. Everything was dirty and full of sand.
I was a freak for them. No one understood why I was staying in that village, and I did not understand it myself either. I could not go anywhere by myself, even though I was longing for loneliness or to just go out for a walk. I lived in the same house with my husband's family, symbolically saying, chained, and no one understood me. I was deeply depressed and withered inside, but I did not know where else to go.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Release date: Feb 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9789523181212

Elise Tykkyläinen

Elise Tykkyläinen on kirjailija, kolumnisti ja vapaa mediatoimittaja. Hän on aiemmin julkaissut seuraavat kirjat: Uuden elämän siemen, Paluu aavikolle, Vapauden siivet, sekä näiden edellä mainittujen kirjojen käännökset englanniksi.

Book preview

Waltari

1. CHAPTER: LIFE BESIDE THE LIVING SEA

TIME BY THE BLUE LAGOON: THE SEED OF NEW LIFE ORIGINATES

Dahab was most beautiful by the sunset. Its numerous mountains turned blue, the sky above turned red and the sea became deep black. The waves calmed down in the blue lagoon, but everywhere else the ocean was wild. The sea was waving and rushing in scary way. In some countries, people are willing to do night time swimming, but on the windy nights in Dahab that would not occur to anyone’s mind, except for the tourists. Only they would night dive; which is something the usual local Egyptian would never do.

The ocean drove people wild. It roared against the beach where all the night clubs of Dahab located. The lights of Saudi Arabia were reflecting from the opposite shore in the darkness of the night. There was something about those lights that attracted me and I often thought that one day I would go to Saudi Arabia.

The sea reminded of itself with a rush and I think that a person, who has ever visited Dahab, can never forget the sea. But the desert was beautiful and quiet. It was exuding peace. The desert seemed to have its own soul. Its breeze was calming.

We sat down on the floor of the Canyon Camp Hotel beside the blue lagoon. Canyon Camp was a deserted hotel whose owner and builder had abandoned it.

You had taken the place over, to take care of it and worked there as a janitor. You rented the rooms to the strangest people that you always seemed to attract.

There was the homeless Asraf and Farouk who was sick of his life. There were many tourists, different kinds of people, even the Colombian witch. And then there was Gamila: that strange girl, of whom I will tell later in this book. This is a story of my life, internal death and rebirth.

You sat on the floor and looked at me in the eyes. You smoked cigarettes and had a hard outer shell. Many people said to sense in it sheer wickedness, violence and some others would see madness. Perhaps all of those things were showing the same thing: it was all about the hard energy, which sometimes almost exploded around you.

But I saw you at that moment. I saw your internal crying child and weakness. Unlimited will to help and childlike curiosity towards everything new. You had a lot of wholesome goodness.

Always by the sunset, the lagoon would turn bluish, which could have inspired us to a deeper conversation, but on that day we discussed in the middle of the sun's brightness.

You told me about your French ex-wife Alice. You had conceived a new life, which had already begun to grow inside her. Pregnancy had already seen externally, and made you happy. On your wall was a poster with a crawling baby's picture.

I watched you when you were sitting on the floor with your sadness, laid your head between your knees and cried. Alice was not ready to give birth to new life or share her life with you that time. She had gone back to France and abandoned you.

Abortion probably was not particularly rough thing to Alice. It was according to Western view, something we would call a sensible solution, if working and studies are still in progress and one would become pregnant to an Egyptian Bedouin.

But for you it meant a loss of life. You saw it as an injustice and a cruel murder. The new life that had started inside her was taken away from you and put down as a worthless thing. You had already loved the baby from the time you conceived it, as the longing to create new life was enormous. The woman you loved took away the new life with her. That created bitterness inside you and part of that repressed sorrow turned into a lump inside you.

Still, I sometimes wonder if the anger and hatred inside you was partly a result of that lost life. If it was, you never told me. I never understood your reactions or your deeds. You often talked to me about things I didn’t understand.

Back in those days, I experienced a great need to create new life. I had a longing for a partner in my life and I had a funny image of myself with a backpack and a child on my shoulders. Just as the future child would be my partner and my friend.

I comforted you in all your troubles and a strangely powerful thought crossed my mind. It was an idea of creating a new life. It was a strong inner need, which I could not resist. I said, Let's make new life together.

You kissed me and we lay down on your bed. We fondled each other and made love passionately.

I did not care about external things that were wrong according to the Western countries’ thinking; just as Alice had. According to all Western logic I should have been living in Finland: finish my studies, find a job and a career. Only then it would have been, reasonably thinking, possible to give birth to children, and to think of sensible things, such as a child's future heritage and those sorts of things.

What is the importance of being reasonable in soul’s life? What is the importance of the Western logic in the world that emotions could still save? What is the importance of rationality in finding a true humanity?

My soul knew that it was time to love life, and give birth to a new life.

I loved you then and you were inside me when the tears dried on your cheeks.

Our energies met and we made love beside the blue lagoon, on your modest bed. And the sun had not yet set. You came inside me with strength.

Then, you were confused and you took a shower. Like any other Muslim, also you had the need to wash after intercourse; after all you had made yourself dirty with a woman.

And on that moment when you were in the shower, it happened. I talked to God and the whole universe in my thoughts. My soul was sure of its purpose. I said that I want to create a new life.

And that something that I prayed to, responded with strength. I felt warm air flowing inside me all the way to my belly. From that moment I was sure that I was pregnant.

Was it fate that led me to Egypt? How I finally ended up in Egypt? Had my soul found a deeper purpose on that I could get the baby’s seed from there and create a new life?

I often wonder what purpose Egypt had in my life. And if I had not become pregnant there, would I have been given Mona's spirit in another form (in another body), at another time, in another country?

It is said that the soul knows more. To the conscious mind crosses just a part of our thoughts, and sometimes we can choose something that superficially seems to be a mistake, but on a deeper purpose, it is precisely the thing that is supposed to happen to us.

METHAD AND THE CANYON CAMP

I remember when I met Methad for the first time. It was a time when I had returned to Egypt after my travelling in Europe and a short visit in Finland. I considered myself already in the spring time as a new habitant of Egypt (about that I shall tell more in the end chapter of this book). That way of thinking even went so far that I said to the tourists I met that I was a native Egyptian.

I had spent the night with all my stuff in the middle of the Seven Heaven* Hotel’s field.

I could no longer afford to pay for a hotel for myself, so I slept outside. I did not want to leave Dahab yet.

As it happens, in a warm country it is always easier to be poor, than in cold countries. In the warmth of the sun even hunger doesn’t seem so bad, because one would feel dizzy anyway when the sun roasts. While warm wind is touching the skin, a person doesn’t even feel so lonely then.

The owner of the hotel (one of those four brothers that later on caused a lot of troubles to Methad) came to tell me that I would have to go to another place. They would no longer let me live at Seven Heaven and on the other hand I understood that myself too. There were a lot of young people, whose lives were, so to speak, in order. They were spending their holidays among their studies and assignments. They could afford to rent expensive diving equipment, and they did not want to see a poor girl who could not explain the reason why she had come to Egypt.

Thus the Seven Heaven hotel arranged so that Methad came to pick me up to his own hotel. He came to get me with a white Toyota. It was one of those Dahab’s pallet cars, which the authorities later forbade, on using with tourist transportation. But when I lived in Dahab, tourists were transported on such cars, on pallets, and nothing was more fun than to climb on the pallet, let the wind blow to your face and let the driver go through the desert to the best dive sites.

Methad smiled and he looked like so old man in my eyes. Later, when we got to know each other, it turned out that he was not more than three years older than me. In many things, his thoughts were very child-like. On that moment, however, he looked so much like an old uncle. I asked, if he spoke English, and the answer was, in the Egyptian way, very proud-like:

Yes, of course I speak, Methad said in very light way. And I lived many days with the belief that he would actually understand my talking. Later on it turned out that he didn’t understand English even nearly as much as he said he would.

Actually many Egyptian men just nod their heads and pretend to understand what they hear, because they don’t want to admit that they don’t understand English.

Methad told me to sit on the car’s front seat and I was very surprised by it. By all means, I would have been sitting in the car’s pallet, as I had done several times before, when I was still just visiting Egypt as a normal tourist.

But with Methad I sat on the front seat, just as the Egyptian women do. It was perhaps a symbol of what our life was later to be: as he treated me like I was an Egyptian woman.

I asked if he would mind the fact that I had a dog, Musti, with me. I had got that dog for free from the Seven Heaven Hotel, for they said they would shoot it if I would not take it. My sympathy grew as the dog was so sweet. Musti was no more than a few months old and I decided to give her a traditional Finnish dog's name.

It's okay, Methad quipped cheerfully and said that the dog could be on the car’s pallet.

My father has a dog too, he continued with a smile.

For some Muslims dog means an unclean animal, and especially in Cairo, dogs can only be seen with the police officers, and even with them very rarely.

In Dahab there were a lot of dogs, and their increasing was uncontrolled. Some of them were believed to be wolf-dog mixes. My dog was a mix of several dog races.

We drove to Methad’s hotel that was next to the Blue lagoon. It seemed like a wonderful place, where I could rest.

I explained that I had no money and that I didn’t know when I could pay for my living in his hotel. He said it did not matter at all, and that I could spend there as much time as I wanted to.

The hotel became first my home and then my job. We got Egyptian workers to live there. They were mostly Dahab’s merchants. There also arrived some Russian tourists and Methad would drive them around the desert and organized activities for them.

I cleaned up the rooms and offered tea for the customers. We had a small coffee shop and I felt as cozy as I could ever be. Methad had lived in the place for five years. He said he was from a tiny village, a little south from Cairo. Methad’s parents still lived in the village; as well as all five of his brothers. Methad also had a sister who was already married and had moved to another village with her own family.

He said that he would spend a little time in Cairo sometimes, but mostly stayed in Dahab because Dahab was always sunny.

No one in Dahab would believe that I was pregnant. All tourists, who I got to know at that time, claimed that I could not be pregnant because I was so skinny. It was true that my body was like a withered leaf that time. It got withered on my trip through Europe – from Finland back to Egypt. Back then I did not have any money to eat anything decent and even the money, which trip tickets left over, I would smoke as a packet of cigarettes every day.

Before my travelling to Israel and Egypt, I had been deeply depressed in Finland. Perhaps that was due to my brutal childhood, the pressures and expectations of the society, or all of those things. It was so strong that even my menstrual cycle stopped. In half a year there was not a single drop of blood leaking from my body. Everything was stagnant. My mind and my body function.

In Egypt my periods started again. My feminine cycle had a new beginning in Egypt, where I also gave birth to the first and so far the only child I have. The fertility returned to me in Egypt. And Methad crowned the fertility under the sun of Dahab.

GAMILA

Those times, when I lived in Dahab, Gamila was Dahab’s legend. It was said that Gamila would be followed by some evil spirit. According to the legend, where ever Gamila would settle to live, the people who had invited her would experience inconvenience and trouble sooner or later.

I did not show any greater understanding back then when I saw her for the first time dusting rugs at my home’s front yard.

I was very exhausted that day. I had an absolutely terrible week behind me. I had spent the whole week in Cairo, arranging all kinds of things, and returned to Dahab symbolically saying stoned.

There were problems with my visa and my passport was literally in pieces. Apparently it had not been a good idea to follow the advice of an American friend of mine: to remove pages of my passport, which showed for example Israeli stamps. There I was trying to achieve a bit of approval in the eyes of the authorities, because in general, it was said that the Arab countries did not like Israel’s policy. Also I had taken away the page that contained the arrival stamp, as I thought that the soldiers, who would every now and then check the people that were travelling on the roads, would not care about it because they did not understand English. Often they just looked through the passport quickly and pretended to understand it.

Later, I got to experience, in a costly and nasty way that I shouldn’t have messed up with my passport. Fortunately, a friendly police officer spotted that and explained to me the case and advised me to inform the Embassy that the passport had been lost. From there, I would get a new passport and by paying the fines I could get a new visa. It was so close but luckily, I did not get expelled.

But that time I still could not afford a new visa, which would have given me a residence permit for the next six months. I came back from Cairo empty-handed, of what it comes to the visa.

Although some other things I had got in order, such as picking up a huge pile of my stuff from my ex-boyfriend’s house. We had a violent fight with him and I was utterly exhausted after returning from Cairo.

Gamila stood in the middle of our hotel’s front yard, looking