Free Stop Being Mean to Yourself: A Story About Finding the True Meaning of Self-Love by Melody Beattie Page B

between lanes of cars, making their own lane in a space where there wasn't enough room for a motorcycle. Cars turned left or right whenever they felt like it, from whatever lane they were in, despite the implications of any oncoming traffic.
    I leaned toward the driver.
    "This is like playing bumper cars," I said.
    He smiled and nodded.
    In spite of the apparent chaos, there seemed to be a rhythm, a flow, to the driving. I didn't see that many accidents, and I was checking. I guessed it would be okay. I leaned back and let myself go for the ride.
    Although it was late, almost 10:00 P.M., when we reached the hotel, I wasn't tired. Something or someone was calling to me. Later I would learn it was both .I asked the driver to wait for me, then quickly checked into my room and returned to the taxi.
    The driver, an intense, darkskinned, chainsmoking man of medium build whom I guessed to be about fifty, spoke a thick combination of Arabic and broken English.
    I didn't know exactly where to tell him to go, or where there was to go here in Cairo. Except for my hotel reservations, I was traveling on instinct. He started driving around
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    aimlessly. As the night had worn on, the traffic had increased. The streets now felt frenzied. Soon so did I.
    After about ten minutes, we drove into a quieter part of town. Wherever we were, it felt calmer, more peaceful. Suddenly, I saw a section of the Nile—the river that flows north, the longest river in the world, Cleopatra's river. ''Ahh,'' I said. Just as suddenly, the driver swerved away from the river and headed in the direction we had just come from, back into the chaos. He drove around and around. It looked to me as if we were going in circles. I began pointing in a direction; I wasn't certain why.
    "Go that way," I said. "Drive there!"
    He followed my orders. Soon we began clearing the intense traffic of the downtown area. I felt a different energy pulling me toward it.
    "Keep going," I said.
    Suddenly, in the distance, I saw them—rising above the skyline, lit with colored lights for the night shows, the tips of the ancient pyramids of Giza. Now I knew what was beckoning me.
    "That's it," I said. "That's why I'm here."
    He drove past the tourist stands to a fenced area on the other side of the pyramids. I jumped out of the car and ran to the chainlink fence. The three great pyramids of the pharaohs—Khufu, Khafre, and Menkure—rose majestically from the dust of the Sahara. The warm night winds blew Page 82
    gentle billows of sand through the air. My black shoes turned light brown from the dust as I soaked up the energy from these mysterious monuments to the afterworld.
    In half an hour, I had moved from the pandemonium and tumult of the swarming city of Cairo to the edge of the Sahara Desert and one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of this world.
    I stood, my nose to the fence, and gaped.
    I had just entered one of the most powerful spiritual vortexes on this planet.
    Only a few moments later, I felt a sinister presence impinging on my reverie. I turned around. Three swarthy men in their late twenties or thirties were moving menacingly toward me—coming at me, cornering me against the fence.
    I frantically searched for my driver. He was standing back about twenty feet away from me, watching. I looked at him, flashing an unspoken message to help. He avoided my eyes, turned his back on me, and began to walk away.
    My God. I couldn't believe it. He was leaving me for dead.
    I couldn't speak. I couldn't find words. It felt as if my throat was closing. I felt paralyzed. I stood frozen, watching it happen. The men were only feet from me.
    "Don't abandon me!"
    I don't know if I screamed the words or transferred them telepathically.
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    The driver heard.
    He stopped in his tracks and spun around. Then he looked at me with the oddest expression, as if he was relenting or changing his mind. I felt a flickering of recognition—something almost as ancient as the pyramids—about this