We were never lost.
But the path was never clear either.
Sometimes, a journey doesn\u2019t begin when you set out \u2013 it begins when you lose direction.
What feels like getting lost may, in truth, be a quiet invitation to reconsider everything.
In the summer of 1988, it all began with one sentence from my father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He suddenly decided he wanted to become an explorer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, my father \u2013 the man who would often get so lost in thought that my mother used to ask me to stand by the door and wave at him when his car approached, just to make sure he didn\u2019t accidentally drive into the neighbor\u2019s driveway.
Still, the car would sometimes go all the way to the end of the street\u2026 then slowly return, as if it had just remembered the right address.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This same man regularly relied on us to locate his keys, or would ask \u2013 visibly confused \u2013
\u201cWas it right after the traffic light, or left by the grocery store?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back then, I didn\u2019t know what went on in his mind.
How could someone be entirely present in a conversation, and then \u2013 just like that \u2013 vanish?
He\u2019d be listening, yes, but somehow not really hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over time, I learned to distinguish between the father who was truly engaged and the one whose thoughts had drifted far away.
And strangely enough, in both cases, his words still sounded logical \u2013 even persuasive. Always composed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This man, so immersed in thought that he could barely navigate a grocery aisle, woke up one morning, sipped his coffee, took a long breath of silence, and then \u2013 with a mixture of solemnity and theatrical flair \u2013 waved both hands in the air and declared:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to Egypt\u2026 to discover what has yet to be discovered!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He wasn\u2019t an archaeologist.
He wasn\u2019t a seasoned adventurer.
He was a thinker \u2013 a man who spent most of his time solving riddles and diving into oceans of books.
But it seemed that some obscure documentary he\u2019d watched the night before, or perhaps a quirky article in a morning paper, had awakened in him an ancient dream \u2013 one that had been asleep since the time of the pharaohs themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And just like that \u2013 with no real introduction \u2013 our regular summer vacation turned into an \u201cexpedition,\u201d and my father transformed into a 19th-century field explorer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As for us \u2013 the family \u2013 we found ourselves preparing to travel, still not entirely convinced this wasn\u2019t all just a joke.
Egypt had never been in our plans.
But this joke booked plane tickets, a hotel overlooking the Nile, and brought along a hat that looked suspiciously like those worn by tomb-raiding archaeologists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We checked into a dusty old hotel with a narrow room overlooking the river \u2013 a space with a strange kind of charm, as if it were caught between two eras.
The next morning, we went down to the breakfast hall before him.
And then, he appeared \u2013 wearing something we had never seen on him before:
A desert-colored linen shirt, wide-pocketed pants, a round explorer\u2019s hat, and a leather bag that looked like it might be hiding a papyrus scroll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My mother stared at him for a moment, then sighed with a tired smile:
\u201cWell, at least you didn\u2019t bring a camel\u2026 Did you tie it to the hotel door?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He didn\u2019t smile.
Instead, he raised his finger toward the ceiling as if he were seeing something the rest of us could not, and said:
\u201cNo taxis. We\u2019ll walk the city the way locals do.
Stories are born in crowded corners \u2013 not under towering monuments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I looked up toward where he was pointing.
There was only a decorated wall with a few carvings in the breakfast hall.
Before I could react, my mother nudged me in her usual way, and her eyes seemed to say:
\u201cDon\u2019t follow his finger\u2026 follow the idea.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That sentence stayed with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We often focus on what someone points to, and miss what they mean.
We watch the finger, not the thought.
We understand the motion, but miss the meaning.
Sometimes, we lose the truth because we\u2019re too fixated on the surface of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so, the adventure began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We boarded a cramped minibus that barely had room for breath, then another vehicle that seemed to struggle for breath itself.
We wandered through alleyways and markets, and at every turn, my father would point at a faded wall or a worn-out sign and whisper:
\u201cLook\u2026 don\u2019t you see something?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then he\u2019d begin explaining those markings with passion \u2013
Even though they were nothing more than a child\u2019s scribble or a peeling detergent ad, with no trace of pharaohs in sight.
But to him, it was all part of the discovery.
The journey had begun long before we\u2019d reach the pyramids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As for us, all we noticed were the heat, the exhaustion, and the screeching brakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Time passed.
Faces and streets started to blur.
We began to suspect that we weren\u2019t getting closer to the pyramids at all \u2013 we were moving away from them.
And just when we reached the height of fatigue, we found ourselves \u2013 suddenly \u2013 in the overwhelming chaos of Ramses Station, Cairo\u2019s central railway terminal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, Ramses Station.
Roughly twenty kilometers away from the pyramids\u2026
While our hotel, at the beginning of this so-called journey, had been barely three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My mother slumped onto a wooden bench, clutching her bag like she was holding onto the last thread of her sanity.
She looked at him and, with barely restrained fury, said:
\u201cWe were closer\u2026 how did we end up farther?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He, on the other hand, sat down with a calmness that bordered on pride.
As if he had just made a grand discovery.
And then he said:
\u201cYou\u2019re not afraid because something frightening happened\u2026
You\u2019re only afraid because you lost control.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That sentence cracked something open in me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fear doesn\u2019t always come from the unknown.
It often comes from losing the illusion that we\u2019re in charge.
Danger isn\u2019t always around us \u2013 sometimes, it\u2019s within us\u2026
In that subtle panic when we can no longer trace the path, or predict the next step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fear needs no cause.
It\u2019s enough to lose control \u2013 and the shadows begin to stretch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And in that moment \u2013 when the noise around us softened, as if time itself had paused \u2013 I looked at the tired faces, the wooden benches, at my father sitting there like a man who had arrived without ever moving\u2026
And I understood something I had never grasped before:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We weren\u2019t lost.
We were exactly where chaos wanted us to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not standing at the foot of a pyramid.
Not on the edge of some ancient discovery.
But here \u2013 in Ramses Station \u2013 in the heart of the noise,
in the lap of randomness that had chosen us before we could choose anything at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And perhaps\u2026 chaos was wiser than our plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What happened afterward\u2026
was something I could never have imagined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My father\u2019s dream \u2013 a dream that once seemed like a passing joke \u2013 didn\u2019t come true there,
but it took its very first step in the farthest place our minds could\u2019ve imagined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We were never lost.But the path was never clear either.Sometimes, a journey doesn\u2019t begin when…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[150],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-we-were-never-lost"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/soofch.com\/so\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/ChatGPT-Image-Apr-24-2025-01_45_37-PM.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe7qS3-Wh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soofch.com\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soofch.com\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soofch.com\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soofch.com\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soofch.com\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3613"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/soofch.com\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4041,"href":"https:\/\/soofch.com\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3613\/revisions\/4041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soofch.com\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soofch.com\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soofch.com\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soofch.com\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}