CHAPTER 2

“He, who would travel the path of the master, free must he be from the bondage of night.

Conquer must he the formless and shapeless, conquer must he the phantom of fear.”

-Emerald Tablets of Thoth

 

 

“Let’s go.” My group was assembled and we moved out of the area to catch our train from the Valley of Kings. In this highest onrush, many groups were moving out in the view of still catching the program ahead.  For me, just Hatshepsut was waiting. The train was full; my group sat in the first carriage after the motor-locomotive. I and my colleague were without place. We stood on the carriage from outside, just behind the locomotive and held the iron bars imitating the ‘walls’ of the wagon.

“OK.”

The train moved just 20 km/h, but compared with those who decided to walk, it was fast.  Parking place was empty; our driver enjoyed his ride, and made a big circle around.

Just then an idea flashed through my mind: I might fall. Then driver turned sharply to the left and the repulsion which he created by this steep maneuver took me along. I heard the bump of my head on the concrete as from a distance and then …nothing.

 

I hovered over my head. It was a very strange experience. Was it a feeling or sense? No. What else could it be? I was aware of myself being disconnected from my body, and I felt it. The body under me was just pile of ‘meat’.

Piece of human flesh without sense and motion, without support or reason to be. I, as the awareness about myself, felt, sensed, and in a very strange manner, perceived myself to be in two places at once. I was disgusted from the feeling which my body gave me.

I witnessed once a pig’s slaughter on the countryside. When it expired, the meat was just a pile of heavy muscles resigned at the mercy of butcher. He threw it on the table. It was laying on the table. He folded it, and it stayed folded. No resistance, no limitation of skeleton, just dead piece of ‘thing’.

I perceive my body as this piece of meat; numb and folded.  But the experience of being somewhere above my flesh, of simultaneous disgust and awareness that I’m not in my body, gradually became unbearable.

I started to recede. It is not a movement; it was merging with the environment, with a vastness of darkness around me. Then - sudden click. As if someone turned on the engine of the car.  But this car was my body.

I again was within my body and the strange feeling of hovering above myself left. This was myself. In a very ‘traditional’ term.  To experience ‘myself’ when my five physical senses were omitted was an indescribable task. I was vast. As small sphere of air, but without borders, penetrating the surroundings… and expanding into the whole universe.

Blood dripped from behind my left ear. It took my full attention. I found myself sitting on the ground in Turkish seat with my hands spread as yogis would have during their meditation. My head was drooped. I slowly raised my head. A sound of a sigh came from my back.

My physical senses were again in charge. I noticed someone standing by my right side. Everything was as in a dream. I touched my head with my left hand. Obviously there was a wound - bleeding. I stared at my left hand and realized the bloody lines passing from my head. A person came from the left side and placed something to my left palm.

“If you need help. We are with you.”

It was business card. ‘Association of psychics’.

I didn’t know I was guiding bus full of psychics. What an irony. They searched for spiritual experience in the place of ancient Thebes - ancient spiritual center of Egypt - while their guide experienced it. I think to see what happened to me must be a horror experience.

“What really happened to me?” I don’t know. I don’t know how much time passed since this quick premonition. But I did not care. No time, no place, none of my surroundings mattered to me. And at least people. What only matters was me.

Can I move with my legs? Can I even stand up? How did I land in this sitting position? I must have taken a leap, backflip. Just thinking about what happened brought me sickening feeling into my stomach. Someone held me under my arms and helped me to stand.

Was it applause? My group was somewhere around… It must have been a relief for them.  They didn’t pay for such an intense encounter of death even visiting ‘cemetery’.

The person beside me was my colleague. He was leading me to the small room on the side of the parking lot. There was a doctor.

I cannot recall his name. Still everything is for me as from another world. I feel to be more ‘spirit’ than body. Or everything around me is just a dream and I walk through it.

The ‘clinic’ which I was walking to was one room without windows. The holes in the walls were built, but glass no one missed. Just a bed, a table, and the doctor of course. He looked at me with such a fear in his eyes.

Did I look so horrible?  Apparently he was very uncomfortable looking at me.  I expected certain questions from a professional. Did I remember what happened to me, or how do I feel? No. He placed his full attention on my knee. I didn’t realize that my pants were torn and my knee had been scratched. But it was just a scratch, not even bleeding.

I started to become irritated.  My sense for self-preservation came up, and I wanted him to take care of my bleeding head - which he wasn’t paying attention to it at all.

Then entered a very tall policeman and he started to question me. “Why you fell? Did someone push you? Do you have any suspicion that it was not accident?”

“No. No one pushed me. It was an accident.”

Well. The doctor stared at me as if a ghost and policeman investigated me as if I was accused of something. Who, at last, would care about my injury? Or I was supposed to bleed out here?

A wave of overwhelming heat started to pass up my spine, and I began to breathe much deeper and quicker.  I thought that I was going to lose my consciousness again.

No! My will started to operate.  My will was stronger than my body. I was not going to faint again. No way!

The doctor evidently didn’t know what to do with me. He told my colleague to take me to the hospital. I wanted to hear professional medical opinion. I wanted to know if I had a concussion and what injuries I had. Did I need an X-ray or a scan or something to check my head?

“If you need an X-ray you have to go to the international hospital. The one where they are sending you is just local, not good and don’t do X-rays,” my colleague said.

“How far is the international hospital?”

“On the opposite side of Nile. Ambulance can take you there.  I called Fadel and told him what happened. Your group went to the Hatshepsut to catch the tour. Hatshepsut is closing at five.  Jana will take your group along with hers.”

“Thank you.” I was aware that the tourists were distracted, but I couldn’t pay attention to them. I was grateful that he took care.

“I want to go to the international hospital. I’m worried about my head.”

The ambulance parked under the extension of the ‘clinic’ came out and I entered it together with my colleague.  He sat across and looked at me with fear in his eyes, too. He was new in the company, just started. For sure he didn’t go through such an experience yet. None of them went through any similar experiences.

People were not dying in the Valley of Kings but visiting. As at the ancient site of rest, maybe the energies of old- time had still been present for those who were sensible; but they existed without any impulse towards the visitors. Visitors were those, who supposed to reach the omnipresent memories of universe, if they desired to.

Oh, universe, dark vastness around me.  I have seen with my eyes and heard the engine of ambulance but what I perceived was just the sorrow.

The possibility of being dead reached me in full weight. I did not pity myself or anything which I didn’t do or did. I felt pity for two souls which only existed within the dark vastness around. Other people did not exist for me. I was alone in the entire universe and there were just two, whom I love. What would they do without me; my husband and my son.

The outcome of my possible death spread up as looming questions. My dear son. I brought him to this country where he doesn’t feel well, doesn’t have friends, hates the food and has to bear the inconvenience of weather, hotel, and the strange habits of people… What would happen with him if I’m not here? Where will he go, who will care for him, who will help him? The mere imagination brought tears to my eyes.

And my husband? We had just got married. Not yet a year. What a tragedy it would be for him. How would he even know what happened to me. Who would inform him? Where would my body lie?  The intense heat that expanded within my chest brought an onrush of tears and I just couldn’t stop them.

“Why are you crying?” my colleague asked me, surprised. Maybe he thought that I was in pain.

“I don’t know.”

What I would tell him? That this ‘funny’ accident let me fully realize what mattered to me? In the entire world were just two people that I cared about – Robert and Mido.  And I do not want to leave them alone? I cannot. My time hasn’t finished. It was my responsibility, and I was not powerless. The realization of their sorrow which I felt was also the understanding what I’m capable of.

Strange. People always see white light in the tunnel when they are dying. So many times I heard this suggestion that it became a cliché.  I didn’t see any tunnel. Just darkness around, and when I think about it, I still perceive that darkness. Calm, full, and deep darkness.  And two small lights pulled to me. I felt the pull, it was very strong – I call it love.  Maybe I’m the light in their life; maybe human life emits light into the universe. If there is not darkness we would not see the stars… Perhaps, it wasn’t my time to die.

The ambulance arrived to the hospital. They didn’t let me walk in, I had to sit on the wheelchair and with the pomp of exaggerated care they drove me in.

It seemed to be a small hospital. Rooms on both sides had been left open: many beds were occupied. What’s more, people were sitting on the floor. The corridor didn’t look like in hospital. It looked dirty. Everything looked shabby. Here my sense of dark vastness around me changed to a grayish emptiness. A feeling of discomfort passed through me again. They took me to a room without patients and told me to place myself on the bed.

The gray blanket looked repellent. The bed didn’t appear to me as typical excessively clean hospital equipment. I sensed dust and many dirty hands touching it; many unclean bodies lying on it. I sat on the side and expected a rush of activities that an ambulance bringing the accident patient would cause in any hospital at my home. Nothing happened. The place, even full of patients, existed without life.

At last a silhouette appeared. In a slow pace came a woman with covered head and both hands inside her pockets.

“Doctora.”

On my tours, Egyptian sellers called me so many times by this title, showing their regard and bringing my attention to their goods. Only the graduated historians bore the title ‘doctor’ in Egypt. Flattering – typical Egyptian habit.

I expected a man. She didn’t speak English. In the international hospital? No examination, no questions about my memory or whatever. She spoke to my colleague, and he translated to me.

“Who will pay for this?”

“Are you going to stay overnight?”

The question of payment didn’t come to my mind; it rather surprised me. I had an accident, almost died, my head was bleeding, and she kept her hands inside her pockets and asked for money?

All my belongings were in the bus. Such irony of the situation; people do not take their belongings to the ‘cemetery’.

“My money is in the bus and I will not stay overnight.”

Just to think about staying here a moment longer was unacceptable.  When he told her that I will not stay overnight she just turned and left. It was a very clear gesture. There was no one to help me in this hospital.

Oh, human misery. Where have you arrived? I considered medical doctor as a top of human evolvement. Their first concern was always directed toward the relief and help for the patient. I encountered many doctors in my life but never felt such a cold rejection. They always knew what the problem had been before I described it and they reacted directly. The real doctor acts without delay. I never felt the tiny hesitation in their approach. Their mission was always first.

What just happened?  Can I imagine a doctor in Slovakia witnessing accident and asking if the person has money to pay for help? Absurdity!  Doctors should have a professional conscience.

So as I was driven to the hospital on the wheelchair, I walked out from the hospital and no one even looked at me.  They regarded me as a source of money not as a human being.  In fact, I didn’t perceive any life in that hospital. Just ‘emptiness’ and corpses with a human appearance; gray and dull.

There wasn’t a spark of brightness in this ‘doctora’.  A woman! She degraded, denied her own womanhood. If woman doesn’t care, who would?

The ambulance left.

“Where is our bus?” I asked my colleague, who very patiently stood by my side.

“I paid for ambulance. I gave them all my money which I had with me. They were very anxious.”

I realized that he didn’t bother me with that and did what was needed. It was even good coincidence that he had money in his pocket.  Egyptian guides scarcely keep more than 5-10 pounds in their wallets.

He stopped the taxi and hurried driver to go quickly.  The bus had to move with the convoy, which was to leave Luxor at 6 PM. Even new, he was well oriented in Luxor and in touch with the others by phone. We arrived at 6 PM exactly.

I entered the bus with the same bleeding wound on my head as before, without any visible impact of the treatment in hospital. The silence in the bus was tangible. People were confused. I was embarrassed. They had to see my head all the way to Hurghada.