47.
How does one describe being pulled
rapidly through a smooth tube of rock so fast you can barely keep your mouth
shut and your arms from opening and losing the one treasure that is more
important than anything you have ever touched. Maybe even more important than
your own child.
You don’t try and describe it. You
just ride the wave, as they say, and wait for it to end. Hope for it to
end. And when it does, you are literally spit out the side of stone cliff face
that empties one hundred or more feet below into the swift moving Nile River.
I fall through the air and hit the
water with a painful burning slap to my right side. But at least I’m alive to
feel the pain. The pull of the current is swift in the springtime, and I’m
having almost as much trouble keeping my head above
