Return to the desert

By Elise Tykkyläinen

Return to the desert is a sequel to the book “The seed of new life”. On this book a child faces her father and this child’s mother has to face her past. They have to go for a journey to Egypt in order to remain their connection with their Egyptian family.

"I have come to visit Cairo. Now I have come back. Over three years have passed since I moved away from Egypt with my little baby Mona. Over two years have passed since the last time I had visited in Egypt with my daughter.

I have come to face my fears. I have come to size up my strength. I have come to find out, what kind of attitude the relatives have towards me, and whether it is still possible for Mona to keep in touch with them. I have come to realize that I have been blind."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Release date: Nov 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9789523187719

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

SEED

PREFACE

This book is a sequel to my first book The seed of new life. In this book, the characters are mostly the same as in my first book. Thus, it is easier to understand the background, if you have read The seed of new life first.

I tell about my experiences on two levels: some chapters are about our lives in Finland, after we had moved back to Finland from Egypt. Some chapters tell about our trip to Egypt in 2007, when I decided to go with my daughter to meet my daughter's family in Egypt, even though we had already settled in Finland permanently.

I'm telling about my life in Hanko (my old hometown) where I lived with my little baby-Mona and also briefly about my life in Turku, where we moved later.

We had a life in Turku which could be described as a Finnish family idyll. This contained cohabitation with a peaceful and calm Finnish man. We had just bought a house and it was located in a beautiful and quiet area. I was enormously afraid of losing all that, but I had a great need to travel to Egypt. Simply, according to my moral point of view, a child should know her background and who her biological father was. A child should have a chance to contact with both of her parents’ relatives. I also wanted to offer Methad, Mona's father, a chance to be my friend and to keep in touch with his child.

The life in Turku was to me a pacifying and harmonious experience after the wild years of my youth. The time when I lived in Egypt was very wild time and living in Turku healed my wounds. That is why I did everything I could to return to Finland from a trip, which became a nightmare. On that trip I counted off the days, eventually hours, from the first day, to our flight back to Finland. Our destiny was about to change completely during those days.

(Some names of the characters on this book have been changed to protect privacy.)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank all those friends, family members, acquaintances, colleagues and relatives who helped me to cover the printing expenses of my first published book The seed of new life, by buying it. Thanks to you, my book was published. I deeply thank you for your support on self-published art.

For me, writing was and still is an important way to unleash my experiences about Egypt and thus I’m putting them into covers. In this way they will remain as only a legend, which I don’t have to go through again.

I would also like to encourage all those writers, whose texts the major publishers have refused to publish, and thus may have made them feel as they would be worthless as writers. I’m saying: Dear writers! Do not ‘bury’ your texts in your desks. Use small publishers; consider the possibility of self-publishing. There is always a way for a book to get published. Major publisher’s negative response does not necessarily mean that the text would be bad. Modern digital printing houses offer many new opportunities for new writers. Use them!

SPECULATION

ABOUT MARRIAGES

Was I married? What is marriage? Is it a real one if the magistrate’s judge has not confirmed it? Is it a real one if there is no priest's blessing on it? Was I married with Methad? What, after all, is considered to be a marriage?

My friend, who comes from North Africa, is familiar with the habits of Arabs. He said to me: Elise, yes you were married. I know that. This is based on the thing what Abess did to you. When he took your hand in his hand and said all that litany and prayers. Don’t you understand that it was a symbolic gesture? (Saying this, my friend meant a certain chapter in my first book, in which Abess grabbed my hand and interpreted the figures of my hands so that he thought I had a good heart.) I was surprised about my friend’s opinion, but he was convinced that this gesture meant an approval of a daughter-in-law to the local people of Egypt.

There was never any priest’s blessing on my relationship with Methad, and we didn’t even sign a quick-marriage certificate, which was in common use among the tourists, in order to get to the same hotel room with Egyptian man. Mona was our proof of marriage and in the hotels, we just showed some papers from the embassy; some of which were in English. Some officers could not even read those, but pretended to understand. When we lived in Dahab we had a marriage certificate that was from Methad’s former marriage with Alice. The Egyptian police officers probably could not have seen the difference between Elise and Alice, if they had asked us about the marriage certificate.

But what did our cohabitation mean? Was it my first marriage? I have always said that I have never been married. At the age of 16, my dream had been a Finnish man and two small children who I would play with; as a homelike housewife I would be crawling on the floors with my babies. Instead of my dreams I got a quicktempered Bedouin man and an uncontrolled flow of life that I could not change. Nothing went as planned, or in controlled way. The flow of life brought me to live beside the Nile, where I stayed and I was almost to stay for good.

I lived like an Egyptian wife. I took care of my child in an Egyptian family in my husband's family’s house. I washed the laundry and dishes by hands, and heated my baby’s bathwater with a gas flame. I was rebellious, but Methad extinguished the flame of rebellion little by little and I knew that if the flame would be blown out it would be dark.

ABOUT THE FEEDBACK OF MY PREVIOUS BOOK

*This concerns the feedback I have received from Finnish people (about my first book, The Seed of New Life, which was originally published in 2011).

As the previous book contained some philosophical reflection, I have been called a renegade, pagan and a pagan of a child-raiser. In some narrow-minded religious groups some people have wondered and criticized my decision to sign myself out of the membership of the Church.

Why should anyone read a book that makes him feel bad? Why anyone should read texts that are written by a person, whose logic or feelings he can’t understand? I believe the book has found its way to the hands of those who are most interested in it. My thoughts are meant for open-minded people; not narrow-minded. The most common feedback that I have received was about the fact that the book was so exciting that one would read it really fast. This feedback was given by people who described the book as compelling. I believe those people liked my book and to those I’m writing this sequel.

I have been told that I repeated a lot of things related with depression. I noticed this myself afterwards. I had emphasized this maybe a little too much. But why I did so? Depression has a big influence on person’s communication. It is like looking at people through a veil. Therefore, it also effects on how a person experiences other people and social relations. In depression, a person is sort of looking at the world through this veil, in isolation from the rest of the world, even if there would be a lot of people around him. A depressed person’s experiences and feelings are different. Relationships change. Depression is often an explanation for why a person starts doing irrational things. Also, cynicism appears often because of depression.

I felt that I had to write about the depression in my book, so that one would understand the book better; with its weird experiences and relationships.

I often wonder if I had travelled at all if I had not fallen ill with depression. I travelled simply because I felt that my life in Finland had failed. I could not concentrate on my studies, all my relationships seemed difficult, and I did not know what I would have done. Everything had changed. I had come to a dead end in my life, from where to run away, I had to jump into the unknown. That's why I left. I felt that there was no choice. If I wanted to continue my life, I had to leave.

There is a diagnosis called bipolar disorder. It used to be called manic depression, which with all due respect, sounded less scary. (In Finnish language this new word for bipolar disorder has a hint of something that could be described as two different personalities or personality disorder, which is why I don’t like the word). I do not claim I would be suffering from this myself, but I have noticed during my life that my moods have fluctuated sharply.

In manic states of mind a depressed person releases himself. Chained dreams and emotions come to life and then this person is often called as megalomaniac. In this point one releases his emotions and does unexpected things.

A person can try to find a way out of his cage by starting trips that do not have a destination. One can get to know other people that he would never become friends with in his normal state of mind.

Nowadays, there are diagnoses and medications for all of these phenomena. But does anyone think that this could be an important lesson of life for someone? Such events, journeys and encounters in life of a depressed or manic person may result in something good as well. These kinds of things may drive a person to do an adventure or journey that is necessary for him. The soul finds a way to release itself.

RISK

I remember my aunt once said: For her children one would give her life. I fully understand what she meant. I would give anything for Mona’s sake. I would even walk through hell for her.

Before our journey my father said to me: Elise, you well know that you have to sacrifice your whole life, if something happens and you would have to stay there, don’t you? I knew what he meant, and it was a self-evident matter for me, of course. Alternative did not even exist to me, and it felt a little cruel, that my father said so. Did he actually think that I would not stay in Egypt if my daughter would be forced to stay there? I was ready to sacrifice the rest of my life, if that would be necessary. I would never leave Egypt without Mona. It was certain. If she would stay, I would stay.

We once talked with my friend Annukka about issues related to Egypt. Annukka had also been many times in Egypt – in practice, it was as if she had lived there. Annukka said that there is strongly affecting energy in Egypt, which can be seen when something starts to go wrong. Then things really go wrong and they do so fast.

And Egypt showed me my worst fear: What would happen if you lost your daughter? What would happen if she would not be a part of your life anymore? Once you said you wanted to be in Egypt forever. What if you would stay here? Watch what you say, because words have power in Egypt.

FEAR TAKES PLACE

The aircraft rolls on the runway of Cairo. It is slowly approaching the terminal, and I feel the familiar fear waking. It sweeps over my shoulders and pushes my feet heavily against the ground. It slows down my movements and my heart rate. It makes my body limp and makes me feel powerless.

I have come to visit Cairo. Now I have come back. Over three years have passed since I moved away from Egypt. Little over two years have passed since the last time I had visited in Egypt with my daughter. At that time the trip went fine. But this time, I will have to face with something entirely different. I have brought my daughter to this country to visit her relatives who have lost their faith in me. I have brought my daughter here to meet her biological father, whose intentions towards me are not good. To him I’m a liar and a child-kidnapper. I’m a betrayer.

I have come to face my fears. I have come to size up my strength. I have come to find out, what kind of attitude the relatives have towards me, and whether it is still possible for Mona to keep in touch with them. I have come to realize that I have been blind.

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LATE AUTUMN AND WINTER 2003, HANKO

I arrived in my childhood’s home – insofar as if the time after parent’s divorce can still be called childhood – for I had already turned ten back in those times, and in many cases I was very independent: forced to take responsibility.

My mother still lived in that row house, where she had moved after divorcing my father. There she had collected baby -clothes in her bedroom. Some of our friends had brought those for Mona. There were rompers, shirts and pants; all kinds of things that were necessary in Finland, as we had to prepare ourselves for the cold winter, since it was already October. But I was not worried at all.

Everything around me felt like freedom. I got a baby stroller too; one could only dream of those in Egypt. And actually one could not even use those in Egypt, as on the city areas the street edges were high and in the countryside the streets were bumpy sand roads where the desert sand would softly whirl. On those kinds of streets the stroller’s wheels would have sunk on the soft sand. In Egypt babies were wrapped in a blanket if they needed to be carried and usually people didn’t even think about using a stroller. But now I was in Finland, and I was able to take a walk with a stroller at any time.

Apart from a small town’s common curiosity, no one would be surprised about a young mother pushing wagons. Nobody would be pointing at me on the street, and no one would laugh at the stroller. I was also able to call my friends and meet them. I could go to the store and buy whatever I wanted to eat.

I was able to decide about my own things myself. Someone could get confused about something like that because if one has lived a long time under the control of another, he does not necessarily know how to react positively to freedom. For me, it was self-evident: I had been the bird in a cage, who would not have even thought of anything else but to fly away from the cage door that had been opened at last. Sometimes it is said that one can get used to a prison and the control. For example, for the people who have lived in institutions, it can be difficult to settle back to normal life and get used to the freedom if they have lived many years under the control of someone else. Perhaps I had lived for so little time in the small village under the control of Methad’s family. Or maybe I