AURORA | This doesn’t look like the apartment of a kindly great-grandma from Oklahoma.
The walls in this upper-level apartment at the Heather Gardens retirement community in Aurora bear color swatches and geometric designs straight out of a Middle Eastern restaurant. Ancient arches recreated in line and color and soft desert tones lend the living room the feel of a desert oasis. Glass display cases containing stone scarabs and petrified shells gathered from the edge of the Sahara Desert help fill out the room; the cases would fit perfectly in the Egyptian section of any decent history museum. Alabaster statues of ancient Egyptian pharaohs, a shining brass tea service from Turkey and desert scenes conveyed in photos and paintings help complete the transporting effect of this place.
But really, it’s Jonna Castle who does the most to create the distinct sense of atmosphere. Dressed simply in a colorful djellaba (a traditional Berber robe worn in countries across North Africa), Castle has a story for every piece of décor. In between pouring cups of strong tea and describing all of the items in her glass cases in detail, this former Aurora city employee gives a human dimension to the paintings, furniture and artifacts from half a world away.
“Even as a little child growing up in Oklahoma, I always told my friends that I used to live in Egypt,” Castle said, insisting that she lived and thrived in the country in a previous life. She remembers sitting by the banks of the Nile and running her hands through stands of papyrus plants. “I just knew I used to live there. I think about that when little kids talk to me about their fantasies. I don’t think it was a fantasy, I think it was a distant memory.”
Those early memories of past lives passed in the land of pharaohs and pyramids is how Castle opens “Way Down in Upper Egypt,” Castle’s self-published autobiography released last year. The book, available at local bookstores and libraries, is a collection of vignettes detailing Castle’s extensive travels in Egypt, journeys she’s been making for nearly 25 years.
“Every time I would time I would talk about Egypt, people told me I should put it in a book,” Castle said, adding that the real effort to record her experiences came after the death of her mother. “I spent about a year writing it.”
The book covers stories from Castle’s first trip to Egypt in 1989 and includes firsthand accounts of watching country’s revolution from her home in Luxor in 2011.
“It has made me a different and unique person,” Castle said. “I don’t know how much I was like the rest of my family as a child, but I ain’t nothing like the rest of my family now,” she added with a deep chuckle.
Castle may have had childhood visions of past lives spent in Egypt, but as far as this lifetime goes, the connection to the North African country wasn’t simple or straightforward. An Oklahoma native, her early life followed a path that would seem downright traditional for most Americans. She graduated high school, went to college, got married at a relatively young age and came to Colorado when her husband’s job demanded the move.
It was only after years spent living and working in Aurora (she held posts in the mayor’s office and the city’s Parks and Recreation Department) that Castle found the bridge between the American West and the Middle East.
She volunteered as a guide for the touring exhibit “Ramses II: The Great Pharaoh and His Time” at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in the late 1980s. From there, she helped found the Egyptian Study Society, a nonprofit devoted to the study of ancient Egyptian culture, history and artifacts. The society offered Castle her first gateways into Egyptian culture. The lure of ancient history and modern culture is one that’s kept up memberships more the 25 years after the founding of the organization.
“How many ancient cultures can you study that you can still walk within their walls, delve into their temples? Not very many,” said Bill Cherf, the current president of the Egyptian Study Society. Cherf added that the society boasts more than 100 members. “We have professionals, academics and students. There are members who have been to Egypt, those who wanted to continue their own personal education.”
Castle was one of the society’s first members who took continuing her own education seriously. Her first study trip to Egypt was in 1989, and she couldn’t stay away. After her divorce in 1995, Castle budgeted a month-long trip to the country. Her travel plans changed.
“I stayed for three years,” Castle said. “I was living there, enjoying myself and practicing the language … I had to support myself when I found myself staying longer than a month.”
She dove in to the culture, finding work as a seamstress, learning the language and building friendships. She returned to the U.S. in 1998, but it didn’t take her long to get back. She started lecturing locally on the Egyptian culture, she started an annual tradition of organizing trips to the country. She met an Egyptian man, fell in love and got married in a ceremony near the banks of the Nile. She lived on the edge of the desert and in the middle of larger cities; she taught English to natives and haggled with merchants in the local market. She watched the 2011 revolution unfold from Luxor, a town made up mostly of farmers. All of these experiences show up in her book.
For the moment, Castle has returned to her Aurora home, in part to be close to her children, her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren. She left the country in the wake of a revolution, uncertain about the safety and security of a country she’d come to love in too many ways to count. She parted amicably with her Egyptian husband, whom she still contacts daily via Skype. For now, Castle has returned to her family and to her love of exploring new cultures — she’s signed on as a volunteer for the upcoming Maya exhibit at the DMNS.
Even so, Castle is still indebted to her years spent living in Egypt in too many ways to count, and she hasn’t ruled out the possibility of going back.
“I knew that if I stayed in Egypt, I’d spend the rest of my life there. I couldn’t just stay there and abandon my family,” Castle said. “But I might wake up tomorrow morning and decide, ‘OK, this is it.’ I’ve done it before.”
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at 720-449-9707 or agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com