Places: The Journey of My Days, My Lives

by Penghlis, Thaao

  We arrived at Musturud in time to hear the muezzin calling out to prayer. The distorted grating sound reminded me of the Middle East, mysterious and surrounded by veiled architecture. The Coptic church had an arched entrance filled with mosaics of the Holy Family. I entered the church while Hani went next door to his mosque where their holy ritual blasted through microphones.

  Stepping into the light at Gabal al-Tayr in Egypt. (Photo: Jack Betts)

  Inside the Christian church the sermon was a quiet ceremony. What a contrast between two religions. I purchased some candles and went downstairs to the cave for which the church is famous. Against its main wall was a mosaic of the Madonna in prayer with hundreds of candles burning beneath in her honor. I sat there quietly taking it all in, the essence of that space lived in by the Holy Family. At these times where fear permeates the world, a story that rekindles faith encourages all of us beyond the gloom and doom.

  A young boy came down and went straight into prayer, oblivious of me being there. His palms placed upwards, he dove into a fast prayer then turned and smiled at me. He did his cross and flew back up the stairs. This happened continuously with children getting out of school. When it all got quiet again I lit a candle and gave thanks for this pilgrimage and again asked for guidance and clarity along the way.

  I came out of my prayer and I could hear the commotion of children playing, laughing and drinking water and washing themselves out of a well.

  Below the church in the cave where the Holy Family hid. Boy praying in Musturud. (Author’s Collection)

  It was hot and my turn to cool down, so I got a little crazy, once again splashing as much holy water over me as I could. And drank as much as I could. I wanted Holy flowing through me, and no matter what reservations I had, the sounds of a Coptic liturgy filled my being. Those rituals always made me feel closer to God—that direct connection when a sound touches your core and your doubts disappear into the light. Above the well was a printed sign revealing the history of this sacred space. The spring still runs after 2,000 years. The Virgin Mary used to bathe and wash the clothes of Jesus here, and by connecting to that source I found my revelation. As a sage once told me, “Let it flow through you, not from you.” When it flows from you it comes from ego, and through you it comes from a higher source.

  I met Hani outside. He looked very disappointed. He had gone into the mosque to first wash his feet and arms to be clean for his God. He took off his watch to bathe and forgot to put it back on. During prayer he remembered the watch, and he went back to the washroom after prayer but it was gone. It was a watch that his father had given him as a young man and now it was lost.

  “They stole it during prayer. What is the matter with people, they are not listening? So much for God,” he said sadly.

  I tried to comfort him, but to no avail. This watch was his treasure, a jewel of his youth. I know how much it meant that it had come from his poor father. He said it was time to go back to the hotel and rest up for the next day, so we moved on. For a brief moment I wanted to buy him a new watch and rescue the situation, but it was not my responsibility. There are so many struggles and so much poverty in this country that you can’t save everyone. Giving him work was rewarding enough and he was grateful.

  We returned to Cairo, passing hundreds of multiple apartment buildings constructed with little to no heart. The city is ugly in style and color and engulfed in heavy smog. With a history overflowing with such ancient wonders I was surprised and disappointed by their architectural choices. And if they ever had an earthquake, these buildings would collapse like a house of cards. I then realized that the ancients were not part of the culture that existed today. It came down to this—Cairo was a dying and overpopulated city with many riches yet to be found. Their government cared little for its people while they lived in their expensive fortresses, pocketing the country’s riches. Isn’t history repeating itself? Always.

  The only thing that would change this system would be a revolution, but fear permeates this city because of the brutal secret police controlling its people with an iron fist. They are easy to spot in their plain clothes, their eyes always looking to arrest. I’ve had encounters with them and I know firsthand that they can be quite threatening.

  The next morning Hani picked me up for the next stage of our journey to Samanud, a few hours outside of Cairo. We arrived to find a noisy city where locals sold their wares in the marketplace while women and children sat on dirty sidewalks calling out their specials of the day. Hundreds of fish and animal parts hung in doorways; hundreds of flies swarmed over the hanging meat with no refrigeration. I stood there repulsed, thinking, How could they eat that? Obviously health inspectors were not an issue here.

  I was surprised when a butcher’s son approached me with a plea. “Take me away with you to America, I don’t want to die here,” he whispered.

  Hani pulled me away. “You can’t save everyone,” he said.

  I turned back. I looked into the stranger’s eyes and he was crying. I sympathized with this poorly dressed young man who appeared to be in his early twenties, his hands already worn because of his hard life. Hani’s voice echoed and we moved on. It was hard to believe that this was once an important city with magnificent architecture where many massacres occurred during Pharaonic and Ptolemaic times.

  Within a few minutes I came upon the Church of Apa Anub. Prominently standing outside in its courtyard was a large heavy granite bowl encased in Lucite that was used by the Virgin Mary to grind grain to make bread for the family. A few feet away stood a well, blessed by Jesus. And for those reasons both became symbols of blessings for the church of Christian faith. I put my hand through a cut circle large enough to touch the sacred bowl and placed my written prayer inside it, a prayer for its people.

  Objects like this in the Coptic world resonate for all of us. Its history made you feel fortunate and blessed for being there. I could hear the faint sounds of a Coptic sermon coming from inside the church. I walked in and it was packed with Christians on a Saturday morning. They turned and looked at me, this foreign intruder, with great curiosity, but to me it was a place of God and I felt safe. I couldn’t understand the sermon but that’s not always a bad thing. Your imagination expands through the sounds and the expressions on people’s faces. I stood there for an hour studying them, and all my mystery dissolved when the crowd began smiling at me.

  Apa Anub is dedicated to a twelve-year-old boy, along with the Virgin, who refused to bow to the Roman idols. Roman soldiers massacred eight thousand people, mainly women and children. Most pilgrims come on July 31, when the martyrdom of Anub is commemorated, and parents bring their children hoping for extra blessings. Many miracles have taken place here and there are three booklets recording the miracles in recent years.

  One famous one is the boy who after a few pilgrimages kept asking for the intercession of the saint, finally struggled out of his wheelchair and walked. The church keeps the chair in an enclosed window as evidence of that miracle, along with many other objects. Even though these miracles seem unbelievable to Western ears, the difference between Coptic and Western thinking is between faith and rationalism.

  The Virgin Mary Miracle Bowl. (Photo: Jack Betts)

  I thought back to the beginning of my story when the Magi had paid homage to the Christ-child, and the gifts that helped support them during their flight in Egypt. But only myrrh is mentioned at the beginning and the end of Jesus’ life, where this spice was used to embalm his body with linen wrappings, the burial customs of the Jews.

  When the Wise Men discovered the birth of Christ in the astrology chart, did they also see his death? Was that why the myrrh was presented as one of their gifts, for his embalming? Knowledgeable as they were of the Universe, I believed they did. When Herod died an angel appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up and take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” After three and a half years on the run, Joseph and
his family returned to Israel and settled in a town called Nazareth. The prophecies would be fulfilled and he was to be called the Nazarene.

  Now at the end of my search and after seeing how all these people lived, mostly in hardship, it made me reflect on my life now that I had traveled through these sacred places. What miracle was I hoping for? And then it struck me. I was already given one.

  I had arrived in America with just two hundred dollars in my pocket and survived in this competitive world with as much freedom and success as any soul would need. I wasn’t sitting in dirt somewhere begging for deliverance; no, I was sitting in the comfort of my home praying for miracles in Hollywood. But in that place God is always sleeping. It’s a cutthroat business, greatly entertaining where often the only consistency is betrayal. Of course there are happy experiences when a breakthrough is made and a star gets an award or acclaim or the opportunity to do really good work, but it’s the acquisition of money that dominates the scene. It’s a fairy tale with a sting, and I’ve loved being there and surviving. It’s been one of the best educations I’ve had in professionalism.

  We returned to Cairo and I said goodbye to Hani. It was sad but what came together was a friendship with great respect for each other. We embraced and the big bear let me go.

  Little did he know that four months later modern Egypt would be thrown into such disarray, and no one saw it coming. The people screamed from the bottom of their lungs so all the universe would know their suffering, and this time the world was paying attention.

  Sign above the sacred bowl in Musturud. (Photo: Jack Betts)

  The deposing of Mubarak would set such precedence for the rest of the Middle East, unseen in modern times. They were all handed a revolution, dictators were exposed, new powers reluctantly handed to its people, but a price was paid. Many died or were arrested fighting the military and secret police, those henchmen that constantly brutalized the powerless and the outspoken.

  But in these times of scarcity, for challenging authority and putting their lives on the line, a miracle was handed to all the people: a freedom that most of them had never experienced in the thirty years of Mubarak’s reign.

  The youth in the streets brought an awakening, a spring and a revival, making history personal and changing the face of the Muslim world with no end in sight.

  Discovering a Holy Site

  The flight of the Holy Family out of Palestine was part of biblical prophecy. In the Gospel of Matthew the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said to him, “Arise and take the young child and his mother and flee into Egypt and be thou there until I bring thee word; for Herod will seek the young child and destroy him.” There are many monuments that document their escape throughout Egypt.

  In the last few days of this particular journey, I had been reading about sacred spaces. Walking through old Cairo in an area called Babylon, I came across the old Greek Orthodox church of St. George. It was originally built in the 10th century but after a fire in 1904 resurrected again to its present structure. I walked up the steps into this place of worship, beautifully surrounded by ancient icons. I lit a candle for a blessing and as I have always believed, the simpler the words the better the prayer.

  Suddenly I heard a monk calling me, “Are you Greek?”

  “Yes,” I said, smiling.

  He put his vestments on and took me behind the altar and proceeded to bless me with incantations. After finishing his melodious ceremony, this simple man living under vows of poverty and chastity asked me to follow him.

  He lifted an iron grate out from the floor and switched on the lights below. I proceeded to follow him down a spiral staircase. There at the bottom was a 1st-century Roman theatre.

  One of the greatest moments I cherish in my journeys is discovering hidden sites where so much history is kept alive.

  He then took me through a tunnel, and in the middle of it was a small room lit with candles, illuminating the icons around it.

  “This is where the Holy Family stayed for three months while hiding from Herod’s secret police,” he explained. “This is the well blessed by the Virgin Mary, where her family drank from its sacred waters that are still flowing today.”

  I marveled that just three days ago I was reading about this and fate brought me to it. Another signpost? The right path? All I could think of was that I was standing on holy ground.

  Before leaving he said, “Sit here as long as you like. Drink some water if you are thirsty, and when you have finished come back up to the church; I will be waiting for you.”

  After he left, I pulled up the bucket from the bottom of the well and not only drank from it, but splashed the holy water all over my face. It gave me a sense of connecting again to the ancient past. No matter how many people had passed this way, it couldn’t help but make one feel that it had waited for you to arrive—and that I always believed.

  Sitting on the floor of the alcove where Jesus, Mary and Joseph hid from Herod I felt I was in the presence of God. I wondered what it must have been like for them, their thoughts, their fears and the prayers the Virgin Mary had said to bless this well.

  Before I climbed back up the stairs, I remembered again the poem by the Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy called “Ithaca”:

  “When you travel to Ithaca, make sure that your journey is long, full of adventure, full of discoveries.”

  It is a poem about exploring the paths we take in life and conquering the fears that rise up before us. Somehow any fears of the unknown disappeared while sitting in this ancient theatre, reciting “Ithaca” in that small space where the ancients spoke. I felt embraced by an audience of Holy Spirits.

  Back in the church, the monk was rolling handmade candles while blessing them at the same time. He handed them to me and said, “To light your way home.” He walked me through the convent and outside the church, his arm around my shoulder like an old friend, sharing his insights and stories about this ecclesiastical life.

  A shaman once told me that in another life I lived a life as a monk. Was this why I was singled out, through recognition of a previous existence? What I sensed as I walked out of the church grounds was that a shadow within me had been lifted, and I knew then I was not walking alone.

  Inside the great church in Cairo. (Author’s Collection)

  Inside the basement of St. George’s Church, Cairo. (Author’s Collection)

  The impressive great church interior. (Author’s Collection)

  Passage to Troy

  As I’ve previously related, since childhood I’ve always been fascinated with ancient treasures and the heroes that discovered them. One of those heroes is Heinrich Schliemann, who in the 1860s became known as the “Father of Archaeology.” His insights into Homer’s work created a map that helped him discover an incredible treasure of gold. Across the Dardanelles and into Hissarlik of modern-day Turkey, he uncovered within a mound nine civilizations built on top of each other.

  And so he began deciphering the riddle of which one of these nine civilizations was Troy. It had to be a burnt city because the Greeks (the Achaeans) had set fire to it during the Trojan War.

  At enormous personal expense and with great difficulty he searched through the ruins below Mt. Ida where the ancient gods dwelled. Finally, in May 1873 with his wife Sophia beside him, Schliemann found the lost burnt city of The Iliad between levels six and seven. His discovery gave flesh to the mythical heroes of Homer and changed the face of history. A golden trove of necklaces (sixteen thousand pieces of gold) and other beautiful objects were found and donated to the Berlin Museum in the late 19th century. During World War II the treasure disappeared, believed to have been destroyed by the Allies during the bombing of Berlin.

  Schliemann passed in 1891 outside a hotel in Naples. He died alone and his coffin was transported to Athens, where he was buried opposite the Aegean Sea so he could always see those famous black ships sailing to Troy.

  In 1994, Schliemann’s treasure surfaced in the basement of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow
. Two curators, Akinsha and Koslov, found the war booty stolen in WWII inside the gallows of the museum. They brought it to the world’s attention and ended one of archaeology’s greatest mysteries. Greece, Germany and Turkey all laid claim to the prize but with no results. Russia was forced to exhibit it the following year, keeping Schliemann’s discovery alive again, one hundred and fifty years after his death. The controversy still continues today.

  I decided to follow Schliemann’s footsteps by going to Athens and getting permission to access his diaries and documents in the Gennadius Library. Two weeks and 60,000 documents later, I felt as if I had entered his soul. Researching his personal letters from all walks of life in English and Greek, I felt transported to the 19th century. So many letters in front of me, I was tempted to steal a love letter to Sophia; it was a fleeting thought but satisfying nonetheless. That certainly would have made me a hypocrite. I was sharing the room with a female archaeologist, and she looked up during that highly emotional moment.

  Ruins of Troy. (Author’s Collection)

  Standing on the ruins of the real Troy. (Author’s Collection)