CAIRO - I always felt I was independent and able to look after myself, but this feeling had never been put to the test, until, that is, I said goodbye to my family at Cairo Airport and jetted off to London. When I arrived in England, I found myself alone for the first time in a different country, far from my family, friends and colleagues. I was doing a three-week residency at the Young Vic theatre in London, mainly focusing on new theatre techniques, especially in the light designing branch. At first I was totally focused on the residency, but I soon found myself itching to explore every inch of a country that I'd heard so much about. I'd heard that English life and people were as cold as their weather, but, as I got to know them, I discovered that they are very practical and organised people. If this is what it means to be cold, I wish my fellow Egyptians were cold too! I took the Underground every day from Tooting, where I was staying, to Waterloo, where the Young Vic is, and the commute taught me a lot about English people. I also use the Tube to travel to the office of this newspaper in Ramses Street, so I was able to compare the two. From the very first moment, I realised how organised the English are, when I saw them standing on the right side of the escalator going down to the Tube platform, leaving space to the left for anyone in a hurry wanting to move ahead of them, without any problems or arguing. It made me sorry to recall how Egyptians often quarrel while doing something as simple as buying a ticket. Meanwhile, English women aren't just pretty faces with fabulous bodies and nice clothes; they are also very cultured human beings. Every time I took the Underground, I noticed that almost every woman was reading a book, even if she was standing up; they didn't waste time preening themselves or looking at what the other women were wearing or how they'd done their hair. Despite the great differences between Egyptians and English people, Egypt and England have some striking similarities. Both countries are busy, full of lights, have a long history and open their arms to people from every country, providing them with jobs too. London, which welcomes people from all over the world without any kind of discrimination, is home to a huge number of Indians, Afghanis, and Pakistanis. Tooting, where I stayed, was like a small Indian city, where I found myself surrounded by countless Indian restaurants, clothes stores and other shops, while all the butchers have a notice in the window announcing that their meat is halal, which means that the animals are slaughtered according to the Islamic Sharia. This cosmopolitan city is home to people from many other countries, not just Indians. You will find the black sitting beside the white, fully veiled women queueing together with fashionably dressed teenage English girls. As an Egyptian who enjoys sun most days in winter, I missed the sun as much as I missed my family. Sunny days in the foggy city London are a rarity, and this made me long for home. If you are alone or single in London, it's easy to feel sorry for yourself. But I didn't have a minute to waste in London. There was so much to see: museums, old churches, palaces and much more. One day, I woke up feeling tired and sick, unable to go out and do some exploring. The same thing happened when it was raining heavily or snowing. London's most famous landmarks include Big Ben, London Bridge and the Tower of London, popular with tourists from all over the world. But this great city has more than just that to offer. There are the Scientific Museum; the Natural History Museum full of fossils and stuffed animals, some of which are extinct; the National Museum, containing paintings from all over the world; and the London Museum, for history lovers. As I strolled down some of the narrow streets with their old buildings, I felt that I was a character out of one of Charles Dickens' novels, David Copperfield or Hard Times, perhaps. I experience phases of really missing dear old Cairo and my family and friends, but, when it came to coming home, I realised that I was really going to miss dear old London too! “Who knows whether I'll ever come back here again?” I asked myself. None knows for sure what tomorrow will bring, but one thing I'm sure about is that I've been very fortunate to be able to visit a great city with a great history like London.
