One of the final voyages my grandparents made before my grandfather passed away was Egypt. They brought back gifts for all their grandchildren. I was given a pyramid filled with gold sparkling dust, the pharaohs head afloat in the center. Every night, I would cup the pyramid in my palms, shake up the golden dust and watch it settle, then very gently place it underneath my pillow before resting my eyes. Growing up, we had no art in our house, except for a framed sheet of Papyrus in the middle of our living room. I always admired it.
When Jesse invited me to Egypt in 2017, my whole being filled with a quiet electricity. To follow in Cleopatra's footprints — to breathe the same ancient air — had always lived somewhere in me as an unspoken longing. I shaved my head, lined my eyes in black, and boarded the plane without knowing I was about to spin straight into history.
From the moment I landed, the air pressed against me — dry and unrelenting, sharp in my nose, on my lips, behind my eyes. Every sense was registering something out of balance. Staring through the dust-filmed taxi window, prayers drifting from the radio, I watched the streets move past — crowded almost entirely with men, each one seeming to carry more than his physical weight. A stark imbalance was blowing through this land.
esse had arranged our hotel as close to the pyramids as possible. From our terrace, the entire plateau unfolded before us. If I sat up straight in bed, I could see the peak of the central pyramid. After a brief rest we went out to explore, and were immediately swallowed by a sea of people streaming through the desert. We wrestled through the crowd until I looked up and found the Sphinx looking straight back at me. Its majesty washed over me like a wave. Not long after, we were standing within the remnants of a ruin beside the outermost pyramid. A deep stillness moved through me — and before I was fully aware of it, I was naked. Tiptoeing across the ancient stones, my fingers trailing the fractured walls, the three pyramids filling my entire field of vision. My body entered a state of calm hyper-consciousness. Time became porous. I cannot say with words what passed through me in those moments — only that it felt like arriving somewhere I had always been. The pyramids before me shimmered white, then crumbled. Half-dressed figures in white linen danced in the wind. I blinked, and everyone was clothed in black again.
For five days we returned at dawn and dusk, the plateau as our stage. Then we traveled to Ethiopia, to spend two weeks living among the Surma tribe in the Omo Valley — a complete shift of world. There, free and uncorrupted souls moved through raw nature as if it were the most natural thing in the universe. To bathe in their rivers was another dream made real. But our return to Egypt was always on the horizon. Luxor was waiting. Our bodies and minds weren't entirely ready to walk on sacreligious ground again — yet something deeper than readiness carried us forward.
The Karnak temple was swarming with tourists. Where Giza had been heavily guarded, here there seemed to be five guards for every pillar. We waited in the furthest chamber, patient as the hours thinned toward closing time, until the atmosphere softened into something like quiet. Then dust was rising beneath my feet again. The thought that perhaps no one had danced naked in this temple since the Kingdom of the Goddesses made me spin faster. And as I turned — fully, wholeheartedly — a turbaned man appeared behind Jesse, my jumpsuit in one hand, his flip phone in the other, his face a portrait of disbelief.
My eyes must have said everything. Jesse turned in an instant and tore my clothes from the man's grip. I slipped behind a pillar. What followed was something between farce and myth — the turbaned man and I circling the same pillar in opposite directions, he thrusting his phone around every edge trying to capture proof, me coordinating in urgent whispers with Jesse for the precise moment to throw the dress. I caught it and jumped into it.
By the time we reached the exit, ten guards were funneling us into the hands of the police. But before we arrived and the numbers swelled further, Jesse had emptied the card. The camera was confiscated immediately. The officers couldn't figure out how to turn it on, so Jesse helpfully showed them. No images. Where are the photos? We told them we had only been testing the light — that nothing had been taken, that I was wearing skin-colored underwear, that there had been no nudity. They didn't believe us. Jesse was strip-searched. Our phones were taken. For the next twenty-four hours we were pulled from one police station to the next like animals on a leash.
I had no real idea what an Egyptian prison would look like. The first cell we faced held at least twenty men — some collapsed on the floor, some pressing bleeding hands through the bars, voices rising. One man had been shot in the head and was made to stand facing the wall, waiting for care that wasn't coming. Jesse kept whispering, don't look — but there was no way not to. Between the two of us, we cycled through disbelief, laughter, anger, blame, and long stretches of silence that felt like falling. There were moments we genuinely didn't know if we would see daylight again. The language barrier made everything stranger, more unreal. Not one officer carried themselves with humanity. I endured energies I did not want and could not name.
At the sixth police station, we were told we would have to appear in court. Arriving at the courthouse, the building looked less like a seat of justice and more like an abandoned parking structure — no signs, no ceremony. We were led upstairs and left to wait in the dark for hours. Then suddenly summoned to the judge's office. By some quiet miracle — and because there was ultimately no proof of public nudity — we were given only a warning. Do not do something so shameful again. We nodded together. The moment I pulled the hotel door shut behind me, I collapsed into tears. I dragged myself to the sink, looked into the mirror, and could barely believe I was still there.
The next day I flew home to Belgium. Jesse stayed, returned to one of the stations, and managed to retrieve copies of our statements. With the right software, he also recovered every image.
One year later, I planned a free-diving trip to Dahab. Passing through passport control in Sharm El Sheikh, I was pulled aside, interrogated, my entry cancelled. I spent forty-eight hours in the airport under close supervision. I was escorted onto the next flight back to Belgium.
This experience was the catalyst for my exploration deep into the history of nudity, arts and religion. Being blacklisted from a land you adore is disheartening but it was one of the most insightful learning journeys. To me, that is worth a sacrifice.
Photography by Jesse Walker