The Scent of The Moon

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

Like any typical Egyptian family, every summer holiday we go to the beach. We headed to Ras Sedr that year (an Egyptian town on the Red Sea coast). I remember the smell of sweat of fourteen members of my family stuffed in a two-room chalet. However, came night, my uncle, his wife, children who had still been awake and I would go to the beach. It was only a three-minute walk from the chalet. We would go there, sing and laugh all night. We didn't know It was that time of the year the sea would departure its shore for, by all means, the attractiveness of the moon.

It was all dark. My uncle turned on his flash light pointing it at the sea. The water was gone, but oddly beautiful. It came to my mind to go inside and check how it's like in there. I took a torch and started walking.

"Be careful", my uncle said. "Water might suddenly rush back".

Driven by the gravity of the moon just like the sea, I entered. Nothing but sand and rocks at first, then seashells. Five more steps, I could see a small crab every once in a while. I followed one to see where they went. There was a swamp in which, not just crab, but small fish swam and played. It came to my mind that there isn't even one fish dead on the sand. They respected nature, and nature respected them.

More swamps were there. In each were tiny fish playing, crabs, seashells and snails. I turned my torch off and looked around me. Alone standing surrounded by darkness. My eyes towards the moon. A big round luminous body of white light and the sea glittering very far away underneath it. A cold breeze would have made the moment perfect. But nothing is perfect.

I took two more steps, and I stepped over a fish, already dead. It wasn't until then that I knew what melancholy really felt like. Nothing is perfect after all. Overwhelmed as I was, I heard a noise. I looked behind to see my uncle and the children shouting my name and waving with fear.

"The sea is coming back. You are going to drown".

I ran as fast as I could stepping in the swamps probably killing many of the poor little creatures. I was terrified and I didn't even notice I lost a shoe. I was there in eight seconds to find them laughing.

"chicken", my uncle said hilariously. I laughed too. It wasn't the first or the last time he did that to me. We went back to sleep and we had to get back home the next day because water in the chalet was cut off. I left that place but took the most precious souvenir; a memory.