Stop Being Mean to Yourself Page 6

  Before I understood this, I had spent much of my life turning on myself instead of backing away from whatever was poisonous. If I just try harder, do better, be more, be different, I can handle this, I had thought. It had taken me a long time to learn that the lesson wasn’t handling toxicity. It was learning to respect what was toxic to me.

  There is a feeling that comes—a gentle hit of recognition—when something is right for us. Sometimes the response is almost electric. Other times it’s more subtle. The body simply feels at peace. There is a different feeling that comes when something is wrong for us, when a person, place, thing, emotion, decision, or substance is toxic to us. That feeling can be either a strong negative reaction, a nagging sense that something is not quite right, or a blank response—we don’t feel anything. It had taken me years to learn to detect my intuitive, bodily responses. Sometimes I still denied and ignored them, thinking I could just plow through on willpower, desire, and mental fortitude. And I still had my blind spots—those places in me that drove me straight to what I knew I was allergic to.

  I had survived the terrorists in Algeria. But I did myself in when I ignored my instincts in Casablanca. I had broken my own rule: “Don’t drink the milk.”

  When I returned to my room at the hotel in Casablanca, I dug through my suitcases and found some herbs for my stomach that I had brought for an emergency such as this.

  I downed a handful, then walked to the window and opened the curtains. I saw all the same sights I had seen before, the first time I was here. Veiled women and dark-eyed men crowded the city streets. The noise from radios, cars, and ship horns blared up through the window. Soot covered all the buildings—the modern high-rises and the old Arabian shops. Maurice, my friend from America, had been right. Casablanca was indeed a dirty seaport city. But it had become more than that. Now, it had become a safe harbor and a home.

  My time here was ending. Soon I would be leaving for Cairo, Egypt. The energy of this trip was about to shift again. I had no idea what was coming, no inkling of what was in store. For just a moment, clutching my stomach, I wondered if I should cancel my plans and return to America. That thought passed quickly. I was in way too deep. There was no turning back.

  I had survived my initiation in the vortex of terrorism in Algeria. I had made my peace with Morocco. Now I was about to move into my indoctrination into the ancient Egyptian mystery school.

  I STILL DO NOT UNDERSTAND why you would spend so much time in the countries you did and then suddenly decide not to fly to Greece for the luxury part of your vacation,” my interrogator in Cairo said.

  “It was probably a combination of my allergy to dairy products and the difference in the way milk is treated here,” I said. “But I got sick from drinking the milk.”

  I hated myself for what happened next. I started to cry. “I haven’t done anything wrong,” I said. “I’m tired. I’m sick. And I just want to go home.”

  The woman looked at me. She began talking to the man standing next to her, again in a language I couldn’t understand. Then she turned to me. “I’m sorry this had to take so long,” she said. “You can go now.”

  As suddenly as this interrogation began, it ended. I didn’t understand what had just happened, but it was over. The flight to Tel Aviv had been delayed for several hours. The interrogation had lasted most of that time. I sat in the gate area waiting for the boarding call and wondered if I was being watched or observed.

  I relaxed when I reached the Tel Aviv airport. It felt airy, much lighter than the airports of North Africa, more like being inside a Lutheran church than a terminal. Because I was changing airlines here, I had to claim my luggage, pass through customs, and recheck my luggage on the flight to America. Even with the delay in Cairo, I still had over four hours before my plane departed. I gathered my suitcases, found a cart, and began pushing my way through the sprawling airport. When I passed the all-night restaurant, I decided to stop for a bagel.

  I looked around, noticing the enchanting demeanor and rituals of the people around me. I wished I had scheduled some time here on my trip. Even from this limited exposure to Israel—sitting in the airport restaurant in the middle of the night—I found the culture enticing.

  This was the land where the Christ lived, walked, and did His work.

  I remembered a conversation with Nichole shortly before I left on this trip. It happened one day when I asked her to look up a particular Bible verse for me. She copied the verse onto a piece of paper, brought it to me, and began reading aloud.

  “Matthew 22:35,” she said. “Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, ‘Master, which is the great commandment in the law?’ Jesus said unto him, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like . . . unto . . . it.’”

  Nichole stopped struggling with the thick text and just looked at me. “I didn’t know they talked like Valley Girls hack then,” she said.

  “Keep reading,” I said.

  “‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’”

  “Most people don’t know how much they hate themselves,” she said a short time later.

  I agreed.

  “When you tell people you don’t like yourself, they just scrunch their face and say things like ‘How can you not love yourself?’ Or they say, ‘I don’t understand that because I really love myself.’ But then you look at them and you know that’s not true. They hate themselves, too. They just don’t know it.

  “It used to bother me why some people had to go through so much pain in life and be so aware of it, and other people were just happy to go bowling,” she said, almost as an afterthought. “For a long time, I thought maybe we were being punished for something. But now, it doesn’t bother me anymore.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I don’t think people who have a lot of pain are being punished,” she said. “I believe they’re the chosen ones.”

  I finished my bagel and reached the security checkpoint seconds before a tour group of about one hundred Japanese travelers arrived. One of the security guards, a woman, pointed to a lane on the right and told me to stand there. She lined the tour group up in the lane next to me. Then she began checking them through first. I looked at the line next to me. This was going to be a long night.

  I motioned to the security guard.

  “Actually, I was here before them,” I said. “It’s late. I’m tired. And you told me to stand here. But no one is checking me through. Am I in the wrong lane?” I asked.

  “No, you’re not,” she said. “Please come with me.”

  She led me to a table removed from the crowd, at the far end of the room. On the other side of the counter stood two uniformed women. They both looked like college girls. One of them, the one with shoulder-length chestnut-brown hair, did all the talking.

  She started by asking simple questions: how long had I been traveling, who was I traveling with, what was I doing, an American woman, traveling alone. To each of my answers, she responded with an unemotional “I see.”

  She asked to see proof that I was a writer. I said I didn’t have any. She wanted to know why I didn’t bring any of my books with me. I told her I had considered it, but I had already overpacked and had no room. She asked why I had come to Tel Aviv and who I was seeing or meeting here. I told her no one, I was changing planes, not leaving the airport; it was a stopover on my way back to the United States.

  Then she returned to the subject of proving I was a writer. I showed her a few pieces of paper, letters to and from my publisher, and some faxes concerning my work.

  “What have you written?” she asked.

  “Hundreds of newspaper articles,” I said. Shit, I thought. Wrong answer. “And eight books. The one I’m best known for in my country is Codependent No More.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “A miracle,” I said.

&
nbsp; She just looked at me.

  “It’s about learning to take care of yourself when the people around you would rather you didn’t because they want you to take care of them. And so would you—rather take care of them instead of yourself,” I said.

  “What’s the name of the book you’re working on now?” she asked.

  “Stop Being Mean to Yourself.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  By now, I felt singled out, persecuted, angry. And mean. How could anyone, even her, not know what that meant? Convinced she was deliberately tormenting me, I took a deep breath, leaned closer, only inches from her face, and began talking at her.

  “We live in a world that’s very mean-spirited,” I said. “There’s a lot of it going around. People are scared. They don’t know what to expect. But the problem is, in a world that’s already mean-spirited enough, many of us have taken all that anger and all that fear and turned it on ourselves. We’re being mean to ourselves. This is a book about not doing that.”

  She paused. I thought we were done. Then she came right back at me. “What could the people in the countries you’ve visited possibly have to do with that?” she asked.

  “We have things—experiences, emotions, lessons—in common with all people,” I said quietly, “no matter where we live.”

  “Explain that, please,” she said.

  I took a deep breath. Here we go again, I thought.

  chapter 6

  Shisha

  Cairo, the densely populated capital of Egypt and the largest city in Africa, extends from the east bank of the Nile to the edge of the Sahara—the vastest desert on this planet, a desert almost the size of the United States of America. In this city of extreme contrast between old Arab architecture and glistening, new high-rise buildings, many people depend as much on horses, camels, and donkeys for transportation as they do on buses, cars, and airplanes. Islamic religion is the law of the land in this ancient center for trade, art, and the Muslim culture. While contemporary Cairo has become a Middle Eastern hub for publishing, radio, and television, some say the major export of this mystical desert capital is still life after death.

  The moment I stepped off the plane in Cairo, I knew the lighter part of my travels had just begun. The heaviness—the terror and the basic survival issues of Algeria, the poverty and desperation of Morocco—lifted. After darting through the battlefields of Algiers, walking through the Cairo airport felt almost the same as being home in America.

  I had arranged for a shuttle and a driver, who I was told would be a woman, to meet me at the airport; all I had to do was collect my luggage, pass through customs, and locate the car. As I waited in line to show my passport, I couldn’t help noticing the signs plastered all over the walls. The huge posters with bold print were not to be ignored:

  “WELCOME TO EGYPT. DRUG USERS WILL EITHER BE EXECUTED OR IMPRISONED FOR LIFE. HAVE A GOOD STAY.”

  Okay, I thought, I will have a good stay.

  I showed the customs officer my passport, cleared the security check, then headed toward the front door of the airport. It feels so freeing not to have to be protected on my way to the hotel, I thought, remembering my experience at the Algerian airport.

  Seconds after this thought crossed my mind, an extremely polite young man in a uniform darted across the room, intercepting me. He asked where I was going. I said I had been told a shuttle and a woman driver were waiting out front for me. He looked at me as if I had lost my mind.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  I insisted that I had a driver waiting. He said he would watch my luggage while I checked. I walked to the street in front of the airport and looked around. I did not see a shuttle. I did not see anybody looking for me—particularly a woman. I walked back into the airport to the young man and my luggage.

  “The shuttle isn’t here yet,” I said. “I’ll wait.”

  “I’ll find you a driver,” he insisted.

  I walked over to the money booth to exchange some American currency for Egyptian pounds. The polite young man went to arrange a taxi. When I returned to my luggage, five polite young men now waited to escort me and my baggage to the taxi. Each young man at least touched one piece of my luggage. Then each polite young man stuck his hand out, waiting for a gratuity. This could get expensive, I thought, sticking a few pounds in each outstretched palm.

  I entered the cab, gave the driver the name of the downtown hotel where I had reservations, then settled back in the seat. The driver pulled out into traffic. Soon I was on the edge of my seat.

  There were no marked lanes for traffic, at least none that drivers observed. Cars darted into oncoming traffic, passing on either the left or the right side. Drivers insisted on squeezing through between lanes of cars, making their own lane in a space where there wasn’t enough room for a motorcycle. Cars turned left or right whenever they felt like it, from whatever lane they were in, despite the implications of any oncoming traffic.

  I leaned toward the driver.

  “This is like playing bumper cars,” I said.

  He smiled and nodded.

  In spite of the apparent chaos, there seemed to be a rhythm, a flow, to the driving. I didn’t see that many accidents, and I was checking. I guessed it would be okay. I leaned back and let myself go for the ride.

  Although it was late, almost 10:00 p.m., when we reached the hotel, I wasn’t tired. Something or someone was calling to me. Later I would learn it was both. I asked the driver to wait for me, then quickly checked into my room and returned to the taxi.

  The driver, an intense, dark-skinned, chain-smoking man of medium build whom I guessed to be about fifty, spoke a thick combination of Arabic and broken English. I didn’t know exactly where to tell him to go, or where there was to go here in Cairo. Except for my hotel reservations, I was traveling on instinct. He started driving around aimlessly. As the night had worn on, the traffic had increased. The streets now felt frenzied. Soon so did I.

  After about ten minutes, we drove into a quieter part of town. Wherever we were, it felt calmer, more peaceful. Suddenly, I saw a section of the Nile—the river that flows north, the longest river in the world, Cleopatra’s river. “Ahh,” I said. Just as suddenly, the driver swerved away from the river and headed in the direction we had just come from, back into the chaos. He drove around and around. It looked to me as if we were going in circles. I began pointing in a direction; I wasn’t certain why.

  “Go that way,” I said. “Drive there!”

  He followed my orders. Soon we began clearing the intense traffic of the downtown area. I felt a different energy pulling me toward it.

  “Keep going,” I said.

  Suddenly, in the distance, I saw them—rising above the skyline, lit with colored lights for the night shows, the tips of the ancient pyramids of Giza. Now I knew what was beckoning me.

  “That’s it,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”

  He drove past the tourist stands to a fenced area on the other side of the pyramids. I jumped out of the car and ran to the chain-link fence. The three great pyramids of the pharaohs—Khufu, Khafre, and Menkure—rose majestically from the dust of the Sahara. The warm night winds blew gentle billows of sand through the air. My black shoes turned light brown from the dust as I soaked up the energy from these mysterious monuments to the afterworld. In half an hour, I had moved from the pandemonium and tumult of the swarming city of Cairo to the edge of the Sahara Desert and one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of this world.

  I stood, my nose to the fence, and gaped.

  I had just entered one of the most powerful spiritual vortexes on this planet.

  Only a few moments later, I felt a sinister presence impinging on my reverie. I turned around. Three swarthy men in their late twenties or thirties were moving menacingly toward me—coming at me, cornering me against the fence.

  I frantically searched for my driver. He was standing back about twenty feet away from me, watching. I looked at him, flashing an
unspoken message to help. He avoided my eyes, turned his back on me, and began to walk away.

  My God. I couldn’t believe it. He was leaving me for dead.

  I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t find words. It felt as if my throat was closing. I felt paralyzed. I stood frozen, watching it happen. The men were only feet from me.

  “Don’t abandon me!”

  I don’t know if I screamed the words or transferred them telepathically.

  The driver heard.

  He stopped in his tracks and spun around. Then he looked at me with the oddest expression, as if he was relenting or changing his mind. I felt a flickering of recognition—something almost as ancient as the pyramids—about this subtle transaction. In a heartbeat, just as the men were about to strike, the driver was back at my side. He put his arm around my waist, pushed the men aside, and whisked me back to the cab.

  Some threshold had been crossed, some form of communication established, between this furtive, dark-eyed, chain-smoking man and myself. He circled back around the pyramids, into the heart of a settlement I would later come to know as Giza. He drove past blocks of small Arab shops, now closed for the night, then turned onto Sphinx Street. After a few moments, he pulled into a sprawling sandlot and parked the car at the end of it, in front of a small shop.

  The plain sign in the shop’s lit window announced its name: Lotus Palace Perfumes. Tiny, ornate bottles of every shape and color—pink, red, gold, green, and purple—lined the windows and shelves. The door was open. Several men sat on a bench in front of the store. On the other side of the lot, in front of a tenement, a camel knelt on the ground, smiling and chewing hay while a woman vigorously groomed him.

  One of the men sitting on the bench rose, walked to the cab, and opened my door.