10 years ago…

10 years ago, I had the best vacation of my life; I dare say much better than my honeymoon (and it has nothing to do with the current events).

It was the year where there was bombing activity in Hatshepsut Temple. I remember that because I kept telling my dad that his attempts to get us killed had escalated to a new level.

The trip was organized by his old friends from college; most of them are family friends to us. We were supposed to meet on an early morning, take a bus from Alexandria to Cairo, then take a Plane from Cairo to Aswan, where we take a Nile Cruise from Aswan to Luxor stopping by all the touristic places, and finally take a plane from Luxor to Cairo, and a bus back to Alexandria. You say why Alex… it’s because my dad is Alexandrian; hence, most of his college friends reside there.

It was around 10 friends of his in addition to their families which summed up to… I am not sure of the number, we were too many people, most of us already knew each other and it was FUN.

I spent 5 days barely sleeping at all, which is not new with my insomnia and all; the big deal was that I spent that time with people; we did all sorts of group games and had as much fun as I almost never had in one trip.

I will always remember my friend O and how the two us used to listen to the same albums each on her own walkman (I did say it was 10 years ago), O’s brother A and their cousin D fighting over who would sit next to N. Y being all charming like always and gathering all the girls and boys around him with his interesting stories and amazing sense of humor. K’s lovable smile and continuous sarcasm of his mother along with Y. A and N and their sweet baby mariam who is probably a teenager now, H and M with the cutest baby ever, youssef, whom I will always think of as the perfect child despite his uncle Y’s attempts to ruin that image by taking photos of him with bottles of alcohol. K’s freaky laugh, which would scare people away, and my two sisters, with their now-abandoned glasses looking extra nerdy as they walked around with books.

I will always remember the photos O and I took of Y whenever he did anything, like falling asleep in the bus, drinking water, getting out of his room in Pjs or even taking a pause on the toilet to see if we were gonna take that photo for real (which I did despite my laughter and strong urge to pee myself). I remember that the two of us had a crush on that guy but we were too proud to admit liking a guy because of his looks and charm.

I will always secretly wish to hurt my dad for removing all Y’s photos along with the rest of the photos with only the guys because ‘I got married, and my husband wouldn’t like to see that much photos of me with guys’. This reminds me, I want to ask him where he had put them, and he better not say he threw them away.

My dad told me a couple of weeks ago that we shall go on another trip to Luxor. The first words that came out of my mouth were: “I want the same group as the last time; it would be weird because we’re no longer teenagers and most of us have kids, but pleeeeeease tell your friends to join and bring their kids”.

Despite my hopes that the same people would join, or at least most of them, I know it will different, for all of us are 10 years older now. I am not sure I will be that happy this time, I am not sure I will be able to look O in the eye and tell her the husband is on a business trip when she asks me how come he didn’t join.

That’s the thing, as much as I love those people, I wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing my problems with them. None of them has known me well enough for me to do that, and it goes both ways. I think this is why we like hanging around each other; we remind one another of the good old innocent days when we were nothing but kids, before life gave us scars that we deny having when we are together.

If I had a choice, I would go back in time to relive that trip, and stay there.