I know my life is no longer my own when his hands slide up my shirt. Before I can gasp, he asserts his grip on my breasts. The air is granite. Only my eyeballs move. My boyfriend is fossilized on the sofa lining the wall to my left. A large man wraps his arm, ominously, around Ed’s shoulders. It’s understood. We’ve walked, willingly, into a trap.
Earlier today, near the Silver Mosque, two men approach us as we sip dark, mint shai from small, glass tumblers. Cairo is as hot as one expects...and dusty. Fine sand clings to our clothes and lines our nostrils. Two years before the Arab Spring, most Egyptians are objectively, visibly, poor, including the multilingual tour guides, concierges at 3 star hotels, like ours, and these law students, who sit across from us when they hear Ed tell an inquiring child where he’s from.
“My brother married a New Zealand girl. He lives there now!“
They have dirt under their nails. Their teeth are stained by tea and tobacco, like every smile we’ve seen since landing. Ahmed speaks English well. His friend, Mahmoud, seems to understand, but seldom responds and never initiates.
We’ve been ripped off, robbed or straight up mugged by everyone we’ve met since exiting the airport. Upon arrival in Giza two days prior, we agree to pay X amount for a golden hour ride around the Pyramids. Ed chooses a Camel, which he rides with the trainer. Having heard about handsy guides taking advantage of their proximity to western women while straddling the same dromedary, I opt for a horse. I can ride alone. Following an epic sunset, filled with joy, laughter and friendly banter, they lead us, in darkness, behind the stables to renegotiate their fee with the firm demand to empty our fucking wallets.
The following day, the tween boy driving our horse drawn carriage (a necessity in Cairo, not a novelty) turns a corner into an unlit alley where multiple men board and demand we empty our pockets. Luckily, we learned our lesson last night and carry little cash. They get exactly what we agreed to pay prior to boarding.
Our new friends aren’t selling anything, though. In fact, they pick up the tab. They walk us to the next mosque serving as our guides, but, again, no “baksheesh,” the Arabic word for “gratuity,” is requested. These guys seem totally different than all the other locals who’ve approached us. Surprisingly, despite the demanding discipline of Law School, the duo has nothing but time to show us around their beloved Megalopolis.
“We’re happy to practice English,” says Ahmed.
Mahmoud keeps mum. He has yet to speak Arabic, let alone English.
We follow them all day. First, for Kitchari, a North African staple inspired by the Italian colonizers: Pasta with a spicy tomato sauce and crispy onions. They pay, again. They insist. We wander deeper into the maze of the marketplace, more narrow and circuitous as the sun shifts further west.
Time for another tea, the national past time. Backgammon boards are ubiquitous at Cairo’s cafes. At this point, Ed and I, new to the game, partner with our companions at tables for two, separated from sound & view. Ed gets the mute Mahmoud while Ahmed opposes me.
With Ed out of earshot, Ahmed, unprovoked, broaches the intimate topic of women in his life. He’s been consulting an incongruous pink cell phone dangling a girlie little charm. He tells me the infatuated English girl who gave it to him has created a complication with his wife. I know he’s lying, but why? Was the phone stolen? Bought in the black market? Fair enough. I don’t judge.
The game ends when our glasses are empty. I’m not certain I actually learned to play. They invite us for a beer in one of Cairo’s clandestine bars: legal, but as taboo as the local strip club in a rural, midwest American town. We climb through an impenetrable forest of beige buildings to discover an isolated shack, floating above the honking horns of the modern city, separated from Coptic Cairo’s crumbling clay clusters. This bar is special, Ahmed insists: high on a hill in the center of the ancient Islamic quarter where we’ll watch the sunset.
The bar is a cooler of beer on the dirt floor, not served, so much as chaperoned, by a round, old man sitting in a folding chair, watching Technicolor MGM musicals on a black and white TV. We reach for the rungs of a plywood ladder to the second floor, some portions of which are constructed of crosshatched pegboard. There are no windows to watch the sunset. I mention this. Ahmed waves away my concern while Mahmoud rolls a joint. “Ah!” I silently rationalize, “We’re in a windowless room for this, and THEN we’ll watch the sunset outside.” This is the last time I ever smoke with strangers in a strange land.
Stoned, Ahmed waxes on about his Bedouin heritage. He is proficient in their traditional massage and adamant we should try it. It’s a spiritual ritual, so he doesn’t accept payment. He has a table, nay, an altar, at his house. He’ll take us there for more privacy. I demur, because: Of course not. Never. No. I don’t want any man to touch me unless I’ve endowed him with the privilege of my intimate partnership and even that permission is probationary. Period. No alarms, though. Common tactic. Boys will be boys. Men will massage.
The silence burns as slowly as the wet weed.
Unprompted, the conversation becomes a commercial for a Papyrus museum. Ah ha! There’s the rub! The objective is to broker an expensive piece of crappy tourist art for baksheesh on the back end. This is their endgame. It must be quite a chunk of change to cover the costs of all the food, beer and pot they’ve shared with us. It’s a long con. Well, if that’s the worst of it, I’m relieved. We won’t buy, of course. They’ll be disappointed, but I’ll squeeze a few bills in their hands to cover their costs.
Relaxed, now, I have to pee...and it’s almost sunset! The spliff still smolders, but Ahmed offers to escort me. I decline his polite gesture. He insists. I laugh. He doesn’t. I have no words but, “Uhhhhh…”. The room is a cardboard box of opaque air. “I need to show you where it is. The owner doesn’t speak English.“ Oh. It’s the weed. I’m high. I’m paranoid. Everything’s fine. He descends the ladder first. I’m wearing a long but loose skirt that conceals nothing. As I look down, he’s looks up. Our eyes don’t meet. His are up my skirt. I should have been more careful. I’m embarrassed…for him as much as myself.
The unbothered barman is more interested in Fred and Ginger than me and Ahmed. He leads me to a rickety cubicle covering a hole in the ground with a moldy cup next to a trickling hose for clean up. He holds the door shut, a human lock. I squat precariously, my skirt barely maintaining my modesty. I catch his eyes through the seam of the door. Was he looking the whole time? I’m unsettled, but I have no choice but to return to the cell where my bag and my boyfriend remain.
Ed has, in my absence, agreed to a demonstration of Ahmed’s traditional technique. How the monosyllabic Mahmoud convinced him, I’ll never know. He sits in a chair and holds his arms akimbo, as instructed. Ahmed, essentially, frisks him, running his hands above the surface of his body, lightly, not unlike some hipster healer in Greenpoint, but we’re in Egypt, where, I later learned, 58 people, mostly tourists, were killed less than a decade before, during the nearby Luxor massacre, funded by Osama Bin Laden.
“No to tourists in Egypt” read a leaflet found stuffed inside a victim. A year before our arrival, to the month, 3 related attacks occurred in Cairo, on the very same streets we walked to get here. During our visit, the Sinai experienced it’s 4th bombing in a year.
I decided to visit Egypt less than a month prior to our arrival because there was a killer flight on Travelzoo and we gotta see the Pyramids, amiright?!? The internet was not what it is, and Colin Powell’s son was the head of the FCC. The news out of the Middle East was abridged, apparently.
Ed’s uneventful ritual lasts mere moments. Now it’s my turn, all three men indicate. “You love this stuff, Flan,“ Ed innocently encourages, equating this regional Reiki to yoga or meditation. I gaslight myself. Having seen the demonstration, I feel silly for having reservations. What’s the worst that could happen? Why do I always assume the worst in men? Anyway, Ed is here. We have confidence in our new friends. Despite the quiver in my gut. I don’t want to be impolite. I don’t want to offend our hosts. Bush is President, but I’M a good American.
I assume the same position, my back to Ahmed. The treatment follows the familiar framework of Ed’s until I feel fingers slide under my shirt and bind me by my breasts to a chair I never wanted to sit in. My elbows flinch to my ribs, like a tickled toddler. His forearms sandwiched by my biceps, his grip grows tighter. Like a lightning struck log, Ed is petrified. He’s 5’7” and not the least bit intimidating. He’s a lover, not a fighter, outnumbered and overmatched. Ahmed’s hands are still active under my shirt, twisting my nipples in a most un-therapeutic manner.
This is, by no means, the first time I’ve had unwanted hands on my body, but the stakes are higher and the hands are dirtier. I don’t panic. I don’t protest. I don’t let on that I’m alarmed. There will be no reason to kill me, because I am, by all appearances, willing...to do whatever I need to do to live. What feels like 5 minutes is more likely all of 5 seconds.
“This is great!“ I squeak. “I want the whole thing. I wanna relax. Let’s go to your place. You said you have a massage table there right? I’m exhausted.”
He loosens his grip.
“We can go to that Papyrus museum first, though, right? I need to get my mom a gift. That’ll be perfect. We’re so lucky we met you!”
For now, the ball is still in play. Everything is fine, as far as they’re concerned. I’m the American slut of their fantasies. How fortunate for them! I’m totally comfortable with a stranger’s hands on my breasts in the presence of my boyfriend. Nothing weird about it, at all.
Before he unhands me, though, I have to agree to his terms: a traditional Bedouin massage ritual must be performed in complete privacy with only Ahmed and me in the room, and I must by completely naked. He’s still behind me, weighing my breasts in his calloused palms.
“Of course! Sounds perfect. I’m so tired. My feet hurt so much. I can’t wait. THANK YOU!”
He finally unfastens his fists. His fingers linger beneath my bra and blouse as he withdraws from our negotiation. We calmly collect our belongings and descend the ladder. The sun has set. We missed it.
Chaotic Cairo is lit by scattered, informal fires. Ed walks beside me. He holds my hand. My senses heightened, we don’t make eye contact. I am in a state of complete concentration. Ahmed walks behind us while Mahmoud takes the lead. I am the only woman, foreign or local, on the streets. There is nowhere and no one safer to escape to. A man on a scooter slaps my ass so hard it leaves a bruise.
We arrive at an unmarked entrance to a covert courtyard concealing a series of stairs. Is this the Papyrus Museum? IS this the Papyrus Museum? I’ve just escaped one trap, I won’t walk into another. Ahmed adjusts his waistband at his lower back. A weapon? Probably a knife? Mahmoud gestures, with his hand, for Ed to follow him up the steps, shrouded in darkness. He does. I don’t know why. Ahmed gestures with his head for me to follow Ed. I refuse. He insists. I stand my ground. So does he. I will not walk in front of him. I’m furious and frightened, but my face is fixed. He reaches behind his back. I hold his gaze. He adjusts his shirt. I don’t blink. He turns and walks forward.
The game is over. He knows I’m onto him. I’m no longer a willing participant, but I haven’t caused a scene…yet. Were it not for Ed, I’d run. Instead, I follow behind at a safe distance. If I hear Ed scream, I’ll flee…for help…but where? Why did he do as he was told?
I follow four feet behind up a winding, Escheresque egress to discover, at the top, a PAPYRUS MUSEUM! A real, Lonely Planet reviewed Papyrus “Museum” filled with actual, ugly faux artifact artwork. The proprietor explains the process by which Papyrus is made, it’s historical significance and the meaning of the glyphs, while the blood drains to my feet. Adrenaline and THC are a kooky cocktail.
Our captors, as bored as we are, are conspiring in the opposite corner. Ahmed speaking with his back to us as Mahmoud silently stands sentinel. I interrupt the curator. “I’m sorry, I feel ill. Can you help us get a cab, please?” My eyes widen to indicate my discomfort with our guides. He gets it. He hands me a wrapped candy as he escorts us to the street. I shout goodbye (Why?!?!) at our perpetrators as I rush down the stairs, pushing past the Papyrus guy. A serendipitous cab brakes with a squeal, it’s rear handle flush with my hip. I pull it, climbing over the 2 tourists attempting to exit. The deviant duo emerge from the museum as we lock the doors. “The Cosmopolitan Hotel. Step on it.”
We swerve, speechlessly, toward our destination in. We don’t entertain the driver’s bid for baksheesh upon arrival. We throw the appropriate amount through the window. We force shocked smiles in response to the concierge’s warm greeting. The Art Deco Elevator Operator inquires, “You like Cairo?“ We chuckle and nod nervously. Safe in our suite, doors locked, we collapse, crying, in an exhausted embrace.
We depart for Luxor the next day. We pack our sorrows in our suitcases and pretend that nothing happened. In denial on the Nile. We manage to move through our few remaining days with some modicum of pleasure, distracting ourselves with the sites. A high masking autistic with C/PTSD from early childhood trauma and a handful of prior non-consensual scenarios, I’m good at this.
Hired by the hotel, we hesitantly trust our driver, Mahmoud. Yes, Mahmoud…but every man in Egypt is named some variation of Mohammed. This one is, actually, harmless. His wife is in labor, but he doesn’t even consider attending. She’s his 2nd wife. He’s in his sixties. A widower. When the baby is born, he invites us to the hospital, where goats and chickens roam the halls freely. A nurse lifts his son, like Moses, from a basket beneath the bed the young mother recovers in. Ed takes what is still my favorite photo of my travels.
We return to Brooklyn days before my 28th birthday, our 4th anniversary, with acute PTSD and, in Ed’s case, a parasite that almost kills him. We never speak of it. He’s ashamed. So am I. We break up, amicably, 5 months later, after Labor Day Weekend, when, out of nowhere, I uncharacteristically throw a handful of paperclips at the floor near his feet in frustration over…I don’t remember what…something entirely inconsequential. Instantly, aware that I’m no longer in command of my senses and actions, I exit the building onto Broadway and Havemeyer. I immediately witness a high speed chase end in tragedy directly at my doorstep. A sign, I assume. I instantly pivot on my heels, returning to the apartment where Ed is crouched, collecting the clips. I join him on the floor. “I can’t live with you anymore,” I explain, unexpectedly, softly, through tears.
It’s two months before he finds his own place and I find a roommate. A non-refundable December holiday trip to South America with his father is already on the books. We manage our separation process surprisingly well, but, unbeknownst to me, I’m having my own invisible version of a breakdown…breakthrough? I do Hot Yoga, every day for 3 months in a not unsuccessful effort to assert control over my compromised nervous system. It was called Bikram, then, before we learned he was a serial rapist.
In December, I leave my job in Music PR as spontaneously as I left my relationship. Emaciated from my daily sauna stretch and irritable from sleep deprivation due to nightly flashbacks, everyone I knew knew something was wrong, but I never shared what. I’m not certain I knew. I was definitely disassociating, as I’d learned to do my entire life. I’ve always lived a double life. My family home was frightening. I kept secrets with a smile. My “giftedness“ got me bullied. My mask, once perfected, was more popular. My consciousness walks behind my body, observing…guarding…from a safe distance.
Following a not unpleasant Christmas in Buenos Aires and New Year’s in Rio with Ed and his Dad, I spend January, 2007, becoming a yoga teacher. By October, a teaching contract finds me on a flight to war torn Sri Lanka, where genocidal Buddhists have nearly eliminated the Hindu Tamil population. Again, the news was not nearly as global then as it is now. I had no idea what I was walking into, and for that, I’m grateful. This fool’s errand initiated a 6 month solo overland journey across India and Southeast Asia. Ed meets me in Mumbai, where we meet an American I would later date. An actor, like myself, and writer, his mother is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet whose volumes sit on my shelf. Now, in 2025, he’s awaiting trial in LA for multiple rapes, but that‘s another story…and yet, it’s sort of the same story, isn’t it?
Ed attempts to reconcile, but our paths are forever forked, not to cross again…at least not yet, 17 years later. He moves to Melbourne, where he continues to thrive with his good job, nice home, sweet wife and adorable kids. Meanwhile I’m writing from Macapá, Brazil, at the mouth of the Amazon, about to depart for my 151st Country, Colony, Territory & Exclave, committed to visiting the remaining 180 by my 60th birthday.
Until I tell the tale to a former CIA operative in 2018, following my separation from the abusive husband with whom I trauma bonded two years following the events in Egypt, I don’t realize I’d been “kidnapped.” I protest when my date uses the word, thinking it dramatic hyperbole.
“Flannery, when you want to leave and someone won’t let you, that’s abduction.
Just because you were conned into captivity, and were smart enough to escape
easily, doesn’t change the fact that, yes, you were kidnapped.“
A pause. I’m unusually silent. I feel flushed with warmth and my sacrum tingles as I experience an immediate understanding of my irrational behaviors and, simultaneously, empathy for myself instead of the disgust, disappointment and frustration I’d carried for over a decade.
“Want a job?“ he jokes. ”You’d be a great operative”
Perhaps I would be, if I weren’t entirely opposed to the agency and it’s activities, but the months that follow prove that I’m likely too poor judge of character to be an effective spy.
Shortly after this epiphany, a man I’ve been dating for a month, a nice liberal poet who went to Vassar and works for a non profit arts organization, hits me in the face and chokes me unconscious during what was, otherwise, consensual sex. 3 months following that, another date, an award winning war correspondent for a major publication, drugs and assaults me in my Greenpoint Avenue Goodyoga storefront. I hate to admit it, but these accumulated incidents, coupled with my marriage and divorce from a controlling, covert narcissist, overwhelm me. I’m becoming someone I no longer recognize or regard with respect. The symptoms I had experienced a decade before return with exponential strength. There’s no masking my disturbance, but still, I tell no one what I’m enduring.
Then, the pandemic. I maintain a monastic solitude that masquerades as healing, until the collective masks, literally, come off and I’m compelled to put my own, figurative, mask back on when I reopen just one flagship Goodyoga location in April of 2021. Misery loves company, though. Everyone is traumatized now, so I can at least offer understanding, though I don’t share my story.
Distracted by work, activism, and the election, I’m managing, barely, until March 2023 when a Tik Tok Tour of my live / work location goes viral, reaching well over 10 million views. More creepy men than I can count know my address, and make use of it. I’m a fish in a barrel. This time, my breakdown is visible. I find myself frozen in tears in my storefront, returning to reality only when clients uncomfortably encounter me. I close the business, sell everything I own and hit the road for good. I won’t be trapped. I’ll chew off a limb if that’s what it takes.
Thus begins the breakthrough. 2 years and 16 countries later, I’m content. Really. I’m not normal…I never was…nor am I “the same”, by any stretch, but I’m not ashamed and I’m not constantly afraid. I’m able to own and share this story, at least. I can accept most of the parts of myself and my narrative that I was attempting to conceal with humor, achievement and perfection. Intimate relationships are a challenge I’ve avoided. I was sincerely referring to myself as a Nun for about a year, but if the appropriate partner is presented…Meh. Who knows? Who cares? I’m not attached to attaining a soulmate outside of myself. I love myself as authentically as I’d hope to love someone else. I’m patient…at last. I’m kind, finally. I protect, I trust, I hope, I persevere, I keep no record of wrongs and I’ll settle for nothing less from a potential partner. I deserve safety, even if I’m the only one who can provide it for myself…but that’s likely a defense mechanism, I know. It’s a challenge to find the balance between independence and interdependence. Most relationships I’ve witnessed or experienced have veered toward codependence. It’s a challenge to find one that doesn’t feel like a compromise.
Yeah, it’s not a storybook ending, but it’s the truth.
Bad things happen everywhere, especially to women. This isn’t, in the end, a story about Cairo. It’s the story of life lived in a woman’s body and mind. Cairo wasn’t the first, worst or last time I experienced sexual assault. It was, frankly, a minor episode, heightened by the fact that we were in a foreign country where murder seemed a greater possibility than I had yet experienced.
As I continue to wander the world, despite every precaution, I find myself unsafe…but no more so than at home in New York, where 5 men tried to break into my apartment the year after that event, while my roommate and I cowered in the corners. I’m no less safe than with my babysitter’s husband when I was 4 years old. I’m no less safe than with my high school music teacher in Barre, Vermont. I’m no less safe than with any number of friends and family I trusted over my lifetime who ignored the boundaries I set and gaslit me into submission. In fact, I’m probably safer simply because I’m totally present in my circumstances and slightly suspicious of everyone I meet.
I’m a perpetual traveler, but neither in spite of or because of the events I described. It’s, simply, who I am. It’s in my DNA, in fact. Vikings, Spaniards, and Moors wandered the world and I’m the result. I have indigenous South American genes that returned to Spain, embellished with West African wisdom from Mali, Benin and Togo. Some Spanish sailor burdened me with this compulsion. Free will is an illusion.
Perhaps, subconsciously, as some have suggested, I AM tempting fate by pursuing this obsession. Perhaps I AM placing myself in harms way in an attempt to recreate these moments again so my stronger self can alter the outcome…or maybe I’m just a woman doing what any man can do without a second thought.
