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Egyptian
dispatches: CAIRO | LUXOR | SINAI | OASES
DISPATCH: Sinai, Egypt
March 21, 1997
A ten-hour train ride from Cairo to Luxor
seems an auspicious chunk of time for this third dispatch, even though
it comes on the heels of a sleepless overnight bus trip from Sharm to
Cairo. I like this captive travel time, imagination being the major
source of diversion, coupled with the luxury of time to think.
Sharm el Sheikh and Naama Bay were once (a
mere six years ago, I hear) primitive and pristine coastlines which
scalloped between the sky-scraping mountains of the Sinai and the
throbbing underwater world of the Red Sea. Now they seem more like fresh
wounds: shrapnel of rebar, scabs of concrete, antibodies of construction
workers radiating out from the relatively healed, all-white beachside
resorts of development's first phase. By year's end the number of hotel
rooms will have doubled to 12,000, luring swarms of well-oiled Italians
and reef-kicking Germans to this most un-Egyptian wedge of ancient
earth. I'm glad I snuck in here when I did.
After a Biblical forty days and forty
nights, I emerge from the Sinai with a few more photons of light
glimmering around the ragged edges of my consciousness; unavoidable, I
think, in a place as elemental and elegantly polarized as this: barren
and starkly beautiful mountains, teeming and poly-chromed sea life.
That first week was indeed work: I loitered
in the new office of Marhaba Tours, answering erratic phones, devouring
books on the Sinai, and mingling with my multi-lingual co-workers. To
celebrate and bless this first branch of his year-old Cairo tour
company, Mamdouh reverently slit the throat of a young goat in
traditional fashion and distributed the meat to the poorer folks in the
neighborhood. Handprints of warm vermilion blood were carefully pressed
on clean office windows and shiny new bus fenders. This could be a
popular ritual in Berkeley, don't you think? Yes, I took photos.
After this, my adventuring began. I had a
sunset camel ride and dinner in the desert with Bedouin boys and French
tourists. Went snorkeling off a gaff-rigged schooner in places called
Near Garden and Ras Bob, and saw Napoleon fish, eagle rays, puffer fish,
and a huge school of flashing silver jack. Spent a solo night out in
Wadi Mandar under a blanket of stars and a goat-wool Bedouin tent.
During my two-hour full-moon stroll into the next valley, I stumbled
upon a complete camel skeleton, and after a few awestruck photos, walked
off with his gleaming white skull under my arm. The desert djinn did not
visit that night.
Then I did some traveling... Dahab is the
Bedouin word for 'gold' and appropriately describes the sandy beach of
this hippie-haven on the Sinai coast, palm-treed and dread-locked.
Vintage Hendrix competes for decibel superiority with Red Hot Chili
Peppers and Sting in the restaurants that line the beach; even though
the food is good and cheap, it's painful to linger too long. I was shark
bait during my stay there, so skipped the snorkeling, but my hotel room
was Moorish-arched and right on the beach; the chop and roll of
incessant waves provided great white noise for my reading/writing.
On the way to St. Catherine's Monastery
after a few days, the arrested motion of jagged Sinai peaks echoed the
restless profile of the sea. That first afternoon, I climbed the
Stairway of Repentance, 3700 steps to the peak of Moses Mountain, where
god painted a copper and turquoise sunset that indeed lit the mountains
on fire. Since it was dark on the trip down, I opted for a camel:
instead of watching for the rocks under my feet I was given two hours of
star-gazing at a ceiling so thick with points of light, there was almost
no sky to be seen. My Bedouin guides sang softly ahead of me and I was
transported across more than just space and time, I was out of my mind
with joy.
The next day, the idea to climb again
presented itself, this time mit laptop. I packed lunch, Powerbar, water
and Toshiba, and walked up the camel track as if it were the yellow
brick road, all switchbacks and glowing granite: I was off to see the
wizard. At the summit, I channeled god, the universe and Moses through
my keyboard and they said to keep writing. So be it and so I am. Al
hamdulilah.
The Monastery opened the following day and
the monks invited me to the noon mass. Their Greek Orthodox service was
similar enough to my childhood Latin mass that I stood in line for
communion with the few Greek pilgrims in attendance, excited to be
re-visiting this ritual of my youth. That is, until I stood in front of
the silver-bearded priest who asked me in low tones if I was Greek
Orthodox. "No, Father: Catholic." My chin crumbled as I was
led away by a sweet nun who consoled my incredibly emotional
disappointment: she took me to a chair at the back of the church where I
sobbed for a very long time. Afterwards, we talked for hours about
faith, her religion, my paradigm, and god. We met later for vespers; I
had to get back on the horse. The monks were all very sweet and Sister
Maria Magdalena and I later visited with the senior Father for my
apologies and his kind advice: more prayer.
Back in Sharm, it was high time for my scuba
check-dive. Ahmed, my instructor, has a full head of sprouting rasta
braids, looking for all like an earthbound anemone; once in the water,
the clown fish were even confused. Though fifteen years have passed
since my initial certification, I felt oddly at home breathing
compressed air sixty feet below the surface, as long as I didn't really
think about what I was doing. During one subsequent dive, Ahmed guided
my hand down to pet a huge moray eel, as diaphanous and insubstantial as
silk chiffon. His mouth gaped open, showing off a fist full of barbed
teeth; the other divers wouldn't touch him. Looked like he was smiling,
to me.
Overhead, Ahmed pointed out a lone
barracuda, hanging like a sparkling chef's saber, motionless, silver and
sharp. His mouth was open as well, but he was not smiling: we stayed low
and swam away. I discovered a turkey fish, one of most flagrantly
designed and decorated specimens in the sea, spotted, poisonous fins as
delicate as feathers angling out from its body every which way, who
confidently stared me in the eye as fascination set in. Ahmed had to
drag me away.
I will return to Sharm in May for more of
this diving: he has promised me sharks (Mother: breathe...) and maybe a
wreck dive. It's just too weird and transcendent a thing not to do more
of, and my fictional character loves it, so I must do the research.
She's quite demanding, this nameless schizophrenic wench...
Completely off the subject, but free, was a
one-day trip to Petra in neighboring Jordan. No amount of color
photographs or vivid prose had prepared me for the experience of this
rose-colored rock-cut ancient city. I rode a majestic Arabian stallion,
for fifteen minutes or so, to the entrance of the narrow Siq Gorge,
which rises up hundreds of feet on either side, all pink and gray
limestone studded with the emerald leaves of tenacious plants. After a
mile of undulating passage, the architectural details of the Treasure of
the Pharaoh grow in one's vision through a slit in the two walls, a
revelation of columns, pediments, statues and niches, all pink and cut
directly into the face of the mountain. I wandered through this
expansive city of tombs and temples for three hours as through a
rainbow, the colors of the rocks changing with every step, sedimentary
ribbons of time carved by the Nabateans 2000 years ago. A too-brief
peek, deserving a much longer gaze: I will return here sometime as well.
Now, a week in Luxor, a week in Cairo, then
I set out with a friend from CAL, Jamba, into the Western Desert. We'll
spend a month doing Alexandria, Siwa Oasis, then a loop of four other
oases back down to Luxor. I will hunt Bedouin silver jewelry, billion
year old rocks, bubbling sulphur springs and desert silence.
♦
Egyptian
dispatches: CAIRO | LUXOR | SINAI | OASES
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