2018:6 - Heat

 When you live in the desert, you learn to seek the shadows. Years ago on a bus trip to the Eastern desert to visit the monasteries of St. Anthony and St. Paul, I looked out my bus window and was surprised to see a single tree in a vast expanse of desert, and under the tree, a man. I blinked, expecting the vision to have been a mirage, but when my eyes refocused there he was, a single man sitting in the shadow of a single tree.

Finding the shadows is a survival strategy when you live under the glare of the desert sun. The surest way to stay cool is to keep from getting hot. And if you must be out during the day, the surest way to keep from getting hot is to stay out of the sun as much as possible. I used to be surprised to find the streets and markets of Cairo teaming with people of all ages at 10 or 11 or even 12 at night. The reason is simple though, temperatures can cool considerably once the sun sets for the day and so Egyptians who can, spend their daytime hours enclosed in their homes expending as little energy as possible and waiting for the darkness to come when they can finally emerge into the cooler evening air.

When I am out and about in the daytime I've learned to traverse the streets with the most trees, which provide the most shade and the greatest chance for protection from the hot desert sun. But at midday when the sun is directly overhead, shade is hard to come by, even on tree-lined streets. At these times, I zig-zag my way down neighborhood streets, making my way from the shadow of one tree to the shadow of the next. I can imagine the women and mostly men who sit along the neighborhood streets watching the world pass by as they drink their tea and talk to their neighbors, comment on the crazy Western woman who doesn't know enough to stay inside during the heat of the day.