marhaban, 2008

"Marhaban" is the Arabic word for "welcome." I greeted the first sunrise from the summit of Mount Sinai. More about that later.



I am still in Dahab. I know a lot of people would question my decision to spend my full two weeks, a luxury of time for Egypt travelers, in little Dahab without venturing to see the famous sights of the Nile. My friends from Kuwait did find me. I was walking down the street and I heard someone call my name. I was saving Sinai and St. Catherine's monastery with the idea that I would do that with them when they got to town, but they had just come from there. Instead we spent a day snorkeling and lounging at another diving spot called Three Pools somewhere up the coast. It was very nice to visit with them. They just spent two nights here, and then boarded a bus for a 17 hour ride that was going all the way up the west coast of Sinai and down the Nile to Luxor. I decided not to join them. There were still a few things I wanted to do here, and I figured I might be able to fly directly to Luxor on some future break and have more time there. To make up for missing Luxor, I booked a day trip to Petra. Petra is a famous "lost city" in the interior of Jordan that was discovered by a Swiss explorer in the 1800's. It was featured in the movie "Indiana Jones," and was given some recognition as one of the Wonders of the World last year. Getting there involved obtaining a visa for Jordan and taking a ferry across the little finger of the Red Sea that goes along eastern Sinai. It would be easy to drive to Jordan, but it would require crossing over a short strip of southern Israel, not an easy option. Petra was marvelous. We had a very nice guide, an older Jordanian man named Abdul, who dealt with the demanding, complaining tourists in our group with remarkable patience and grace. We had lunch included in our tour, which turned out to be a feast buffet in one of the nicest hotels around Petra - it was excellent. Since I don't like simplified and sugar-coated accounts when I read other people's writing, I suppose it is incumbent upon me to be be honest about the reality of my experience in Petra. There are times when solitary travel is wonderfully liberating, adventurous and inspiring. There are also times when it is depressing. I found myself in an unfortunate mood while I walked around the ruins of Petra. It was a fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime experience to see and explore the temples carved directly into the granite cliffs... but perhaps it was bad timing for me. I will always remember it as a place where I felt a world of loneliness. In a way, perhaps it is a fitting way to to experience the reality of a once vibrant city turned into a desolate skeleton of stone. Speaking of stone, two children pursued me to buy their souvenirs - the little boy had packets of post cards and his sister had pieces of color-veined rock. I gave in to the their demands, and shortly after, our guide admonished the group not to buy any rocks from children because it encourages them to break up the ruins of Petra. I should have known.



New Years Eve was a memorable experience. Usually the trips to St. Catherine's leave at 11 p.m. so that the tourists can travel in a van and then do the long climb to Mt. Sinai in time to see the the sunrise from the summit. After that they descend and tour the monastery. Well, I heard at about 6:00 p.m. on Monday night that there was an early tour leaving for a "New Year's Eve party at St. Catherines." A party at the monastery? Huh? Did I hear that right? Well, I wasn't really interested in going to the bars and discos in Dahab, so I decided to go along for this peculiar scenario. It was a night I will not soon forget.

The van was full, and the driver knew no English at all. We told him how to say "Happy New Year" but he said it like "hebi noons yeeer" and that is what he said for the rest of the trip no matter what the question was. Can you turn down the music? "Hebi noons yeeer." Aren't you driving in the wrong lane? "Hebi noons yeeer." Still, we had fun on the way. I tried to cajole the other passengers into levity by clapping and pretending to sing along with the Egyptian music he blasted. We got to Sinai at about 9:00 or so and started to climb. There were a LOT of Japanese people there, and I met two ladies that I kept company with until they got tuckered out and accepted an offer to rent a camel ride as far as the path remained passable on camel back. The sky was a starry sky like I've seen only once or twice in my life. Incredibly gorgeous. But the wind started to get harsh, and of course the temperature dropped as we gained altitude. We had hoped to be at the summit for midnight (maybe count-down at the summit would have been something like a party), but we settled for a stop at a tea shop that was suddenly there on the climbing path, completely inaccessible and I can't imagine how they keep the place stocked, but the guys running it apparently live there all the time. (That was very bad sentence structure coming from an English teacher - do I care? Not enough to fix it.) Anyhow, nobody wanted to go in and buy tea because we're all so used to being ripped off and figured they would want 100 Egyptian pounds for a cup of tea. But we relented, and it was good because the tea was hot, and the price was acceptable, and we all got to hang-out in there with the old Egyptians dudes and welcome the New Year together. "Aum sayeed aleekum" is the way the say Happy New Year in Arabic, from what I gather. But what it meant was that we had made the early departure for nothing, and we would be getting to the summit at about 1:00 a.m. and have to wait all night for the sunrise. Considering the wind and cold, I wasn't sure how that was going to work out. As it turned out, there was ANOTHER unimaginable tea shop just below the summit. The cold wind was just howling while we huddled in there, and I couldn't really believe it when the guy kicked us out because we were staying too long! I'm sure it had something to do with the fact that he was renting blankets. I rented a large size blanket, draped it around me, and climbed the remained few hundred feet to the summit of Mt. Sinai. There are two ancient buildings up there - a small church and a mosque. Of course, both were locked up. Everybody in our group sort of stood around looking at each other as if to say, "What do we do now?" I decided it was going to be long, cold night, and the best thing to do was just make the best of it. I found a small stairway that led to a little cellar space beside the mosque, and decided I would camp down there. It was full of cigarette butts, but I decided I would rather deal with that than the freezing wind. So down I went, and only came up briefly after I started worrying that the Japanese ladies might die of hypothermia if they didn't get situated somewhere. The younger one who had haggled for the camel told me that they had figured out where they were camping and would be fine. So down I went to my little dungeon and cacooned myself in the blanket on the bed of cigarette butts to wait out the night. I think I probably got about 10 minutes of sleep total. At one point I saw a mysterious figure shining a flashlight in my eyes. I thought maybe it was one of the guys from the teashop. I sat up and looked. This was the surreal moment of the whole experience. It was an old, white-bearded monk in full black robe. He spoke to me in Greek, and I apologized in Arabic. I don't know what he said but from his gesturing I think he was worried about how cold I was. Then he just waved me back to sleep and left. How did that old guy get up there? I mean it was a HARD climb for all of us! But I just pulled the blanket around me as tightly as I could and lay back down. As the darkness gave way to gray dusk, I heard more and more voices cutting through the howling wind. One man just above my little cave talked and sang in Spanish with a booming voice. He sang some patriotic songs for Colombia and started reciting the rosary. He would say the first part of the Hail Mary and wait for someone to respond with the second part. Nobody was responding, so I started saying it in English. He probably got a kick out of hearing it coming back from the pit below him, but when I finally crawled out, I kept the blanket wrapped around me and didn't make eye contact with him. The wind remained trecherous through the morning, and it was full of dust and grit. People were singing, praying, and shouting in a variety of languages. The Colombian group the was liveliest, and they kept doing a kind of Christian cheer that went "ALPHA Y OMEGA! ALPHA Y OMEGA! ALPHA Y OMEGA! SOLO - JESUS!!" Then they would hoot and holler at the end. It was kind of catchy and cute, but reminded me of a high school pep assembly. At some point the sun started to come up, and indeed it was a gorgeous red sunrise. The mountains around Mt. Sinai were grand and dramatic. It was worth all the misery, even including the climb down. Someone I ended up on the "Penance Path" coming down, so I got to think about my sins as I tried to ignore the knee pain. St. Catherine's was awash with tourists. In defiance of the museum atmosphere I lit a candle in the chapel and sat to pray for a while, trying not to fall too much asleep. I was the last person back to the van. Everybody got into an argument with the driver for refusing to take a person to another place along way, since he had a receipt showing that he had prepaid an extra amount for the drop-off. Our driver looked at the paper and just said "Habi noons yeeer."

It is now my last night in Dahab, and I am pretty much packed and ready to go. I am trying to smuggle some booze into Kuwait with me. I bought a plastic canteen and filled it with brandy. If the Kuwaiti customs officers find it, they'll just confiscate it.

I'm really glad I decided to stay in Dahab for the full two weeks. I didn't get to see the pyramids or the sphinx, but I got to make some friends here. I say friends... I don't know. One guy I talked to thinks that all Israelis make problems because it says in the Quran that they always have and always will until Allah's wrath strikes them. He also says that he wants to open a restaurant next year, and he also wants to find a wife, but she will not help in the restaurant, because that is not the Muslim way. Arab women must just sit in the house, he says. I don't push him very hard. I let him talk. He made me a fine dinner tonight, special Egyptian chicken cooked very slowly in an oven with potatoes and onions and tomatos, and it was delicious. He refused to take a tip. The other person I got to know well was a really nice man named (can you guess?) Mohammed, who works every day from 8 am to 1 am at night in an internet cafe. I ended up hanging out and talking to him quite a bit. I talked to him about fundamentalism, hipocrisy, and demonstrative religion, and he actually seemed to understand what I was talking about. I wish I could help this guy, who is trapped in this job working 17 hour days every day with no day off, ten minute breaks for breakfast and dinner, and gets paid about 300 Egyptian pounds a month ($50). This is a guy who studied geology at the university level. That's just wrong. I'm going to give him some money before I say goodbye. It won't put a dent in anything, and maybe I'm an idiot, but when I think that I spent more on my gym membership than this guy makes in a whole year, I just can't shrug it off.

What an eye-opener Egypt has been, on many levels. I leave tomorrow with a head full of mixed feelings. I'll need that shot of brandy when I get home.