Since I got to Egypt, I’ve been often thinking of Sherlock Holmes. Maybe it was because I first read his stories about the same time I got interested in Ancient Egypt as an 8-year-old boy, navigating the imagination traps of Egypt/Dinosaurs/Space/Comics. But that wasn’t it. I assumed it could have only been an obvious association of the process of archeology with his detective work, putting together complicated stories based in scant evidence and brilliant deductive reasoning. Again, that didn’t feel quite right.
The answer came at the incredibly beautiful and inexplicably less-visited Habu temple in Luxor. At one of the magnificent columns we stopped. And looked. Gazing at the ceiling you could still see some of the original colors that once covered all of its walls. That was the moment when the right phrase from Sherlock to Watson came to mind: “You see, but you do not observe.” That was it.
The most precious gift of travel is that it can give you a chance to not only see, but also to observe what is around you, and how it connects to your own story. Looking at these majestic feats of art, science, engineering, belief, forced me to confront the questions every traveler faces when in the presence of beauty: Why did I come here? Why am I visiting all these places? Where am I taking my life? What these ruins tell about the temple I want to build myself?
Iana wanted to put on beautiful outfits and dance. I wanted to photograph, to play drums, to have a massive party. Most of all, I wanted to make beautiful things inspired by this ancient beauty, when each move and click and beat had enough magic to bring back all colors to the temple.
So much stuff, potentially life altering stuff, is all around us. How many clues to our personal mysteries would reveal themselves to us, if only we could stop seeing like Watson and truly observing like Holmes? What secrets can we uncover when, in the ruins of our past, we find unfaded colors still remaining? I wish I could say the answers were elementary.
But here is a possible one. That day, Iana danced. I photographed. And I observed that those are some of the foundation stones in the temple we are building.
