scribble - es-sina2
October 2006
- Prologue to The Beginning
in a strange majestic gold apartment in Cairo. A fun but touristy evening in Khan Khalili brought many cries of “if you buy from my shop I will marry you” as we three girls tried to wander round. Needless to say, we came away emptyhanded, just in case, and returned to the silent empty tree-lined street of Zamalek, where traffic cops sit lonely on every corner in tiny huts. Early the following morning we cross the Nile crammed in a taxi, the deadly beauty of the Cairo haze already present as the sun attempts to peer through, as if blind, illuminating the minarets and bridges and tower blocks. Awaiting the bus in the half-built Turgoman station, we sit in an empty café with an extensive menu but which is only yet capable of serving tea and coffee and juice.
Impatient to leave the noise and craziness, the bus takes an age to reach Suez and its perturbing empty, under-construction neighbourhood. Blocks and blocks are connected with tarmaced roads complete with streetlights, yet other than the occasional carpet hanging off a balcony or a lonely child on a bike, each building and street is deserted, devoid of workmen or inhabitants.
Finally the desert! Silently in awe of the tough landscapes, sharp and coloured red-brown intersected with rock waterfalls spilling towards the switchback road from a crumbling layer above of a different shade. Occasional dune drifts of tiny soft sand are so smooth it is difficult for the eye to register they exist amongst the sharp ruggedness. They are as if like slightly pink milk, the eye skipping over the smoothness. As the sun sinks, a haze gradually turns the ranges to blue and we rush on, brakes slamming occasionally to allow unaccompanied and unperturbed groups of camels across the road and on into the blackness, or a battered Chevrolet pickup with wrapped wrinkled men hanging out the windows past at more or less a safe speed. Interior bus lights illuminate the edges of the winding road as we pass villages of mud bricks and kids wearing scruffed miniature jellabiyyas with small herds of goats.
- The Beginning
We arrive to St Catherine’s late and tired. Bedouins in jellabiyyas and winter jackets amble along the silent streets. The light from the village faintly silhouettes a mountain as we stand in utter silence on a deserted road – overwhelming and breathtaking and our first glimpse of our surroundings. The evening brought Bedouin tea on mats, very faulty plumbing, bed-bugs and malfunctioning mosquito nets but the morning sun and views possibly the most stunning wonderful humbling thing I have seen in my entire life. Towering mountains of oranges and browns surround the tiny silent village where the sound of children playing football on rough ground carries and fills the cool air of the valley. Breakfast at a table in the shade at the foot of these majestic forms encourages reflection, silence, and just being, as some hajjis arrive to eat at the next table. Relaxed, comfortable, and at ease at last, kids wave and shout hello and giggle pleasantly from the other side of the road. It is a little disarming to question a Bedouin in Arabic where the monastery is, and for him to reply in perfect fluent English as two men on camels pass on a nearby track in the sun. We arrive at the monastery, almost camouflaged between two steep mountain ranges, and a few trees and strange gardens lead up to the high solid walls which are dwarfed by the surroundings. Tiny Bedouin boys offer camels, good camel, good price, for trekking up Jebel Musa but we continue past, each on our own personal hajj up the mountain. Each turn brings views more stunning than the last as the world unfurls and extends as we snake up the path, more and more ranges materialise in the blue distance. Flat valleys scattered with odd buildings seem more a dream as another village appears and sounds of children make it into earshot. A narrow pass of blue rock leads up and out into Elijah’s Hollow and the haze of peaks beyond stretches and stretches until the peaks blend to the hazy sky as if to continue to forever. The steps to the summit and the physical and mental pain they brought to an unfit body were dissolved as the chapel roof crept into view, a sturdy structure with possibly the best view in the world. Black mountains looking towards the sun are red in the opposite direction as we spin under the emerging stars and for a few seconds we on top of the world see everything in orange, red, purple, blue and then cold descends as the intensity of colour fades and we sit with our backs pressed to the still-warn chapel walls. Huddled silent, occasionally speaking, we look to the stars, alone on Jebel Musa. Bedouin boys sort out mattresses and blankets for us on the best spot to watch the sunrise, the flat roof of a hut clinging to the mountain facing directly east and reached by a bent metal ladder. Invitations to eat with them were accepted, though I refused and so as the others descended to the hut a way below the summit, proceeded to spend time completely alone and silent on top of the world with just a few scratting cats, a hundred million stars, my thoughts, everything and nothing. I sat wrapped in scarves and abbayya on the chapel steps as the wind blew cold and I felt in turn completely at peace and then nervous – perhaps with responsibility? I felt myself physically changing, my forehead and insides loosened and I breathed more easily, more freely. I was unconsciously conscious of myself and the world, myself with the world, moulded to the chapel steps. The endless silent air was broken with an invitation to rouse myself from my still huddle and to drink hot chocolate with the Bedouins. Picking our way down from the top of the world with tiny torches, it is humbling again to be sitting with a Bedouin, an old 17, as he tells us he is almost fluent in four languages, English, Russian, German and French, and has never been to school. We return to the top, our insides now warm and mine unknotted, and settle on our ledge to watch shooting stars and to just be. Wrapped in blankets, we are not cold but the chill wind floats now and then over our exposed faces. Sleep is erratic but deep when it arrives. It is still black dark when the first singing voices reach me quietly coming and going with the wind, drifting just as I sleep. Woken later by torchlights and Spanish as the first nightclimbers reach the summit and begin staking positions for the dawn, sleep becomes more impossible as more torches probe our blanket-wrapped forms and chatter and laugh. The sky is still black pricked with thousands of tiny twinkles as I decide to prop myself against the cliff behind and wait for dawn. A slight colour change on the horizon indicates a new beginning, and daylight happens imperceptibly yet quickly across the peaks rising out of the blue mist. Beams stretching until they disappear into the still starry dark emanate from a single point on the horizon, faintly striping the atmosphere. Light blue to yellow to orange and it is daylight before the sun peeks huge and orange between the layers of cloud stretching across the horizon, rising until it burns our eyes and hearts and I blink and smile and look away to the mountains lit again in an eternal cycle.
More life will be created today.
Barely room to move as we pack our stuff while the first warm rays reach into our bodies and souls and begin our descent amongst hundreds of others, Egyptians, Chinese, Swedes, Russians, Dutch. A snake of bodies winds down the mountain, some sliding, as the clefts of the mountains everywhere are striped black and orange as the sky turns blue. Light and shadow increase the size of the never-ending peaks as we walk on with people and camels and a light in the heart. Difficult to register that only a few hours earlier, I had the whole of the world to myself and was endlessly thankful for all that I had experienced, positive and negative, as the monastery again appears as we descend, me still struggling with perspectives, feelings, thoughts, and preferred silence in attempt at ordering myself. Hundreds congregated at the monastery waiting for the doors to open gave completely the wrong atmosphere to experience such a place, so we headed back to the village to eat and find transport to Dahab. Despite it being Eid, a minibus was found and the price haggled over. We go at a steady pace, passing an overturned bus in the next valley and many low-walled square houses with roofs of palm or some similar material. We drive in silence through the flat valleys of sand, the mountains surrounding us changing in colour with the sun and as we continue into the different terrain of the Eastern Sinai. Amongst the scrub brushes of an empty plateau, a Bedouin holding the hands of his two tiny children collects firewood. A little further along, his wife, all in black, walks with a large bundle across her back towards their crumpled Chevrolet by the side of the road. We rarely pass a vehicle, and all smallholdings appear empty. We climb through a small pass and a little Bedouin sits on the crash barrier with her face covered with a burqa’ decorated with coins and looks intently at the minibus, shielding her eyes from the desert sun as we rattle through. We snake through the flat valleys with the power lines, the tarmac curling out of sight round the next rugged mountain which emerges steeply from the sand. Various checkpoints later, we were on the last stretch to Dahab and towards the Red Sea, leaving the mountains behind as we crossed the final plateau to the coast and the steep hazy peaks of Saudi Arabia in the distance.
- Prologue to The Beginning
in a strange majestic gold apartment in Cairo. A fun but touristy evening in Khan Khalili brought many cries of “if you buy from my shop I will marry you” as we three girls tried to wander round. Needless to say, we came away emptyhanded, just in case, and returned to the silent empty tree-lined street of Zamalek, where traffic cops sit lonely on every corner in tiny huts. Early the following morning we cross the Nile crammed in a taxi, the deadly beauty of the Cairo haze already present as the sun attempts to peer through, as if blind, illuminating the minarets and bridges and tower blocks. Awaiting the bus in the half-built Turgoman station, we sit in an empty café with an extensive menu but which is only yet capable of serving tea and coffee and juice.
Impatient to leave the noise and craziness, the bus takes an age to reach Suez and its perturbing empty, under-construction neighbourhood. Blocks and blocks are connected with tarmaced roads complete with streetlights, yet other than the occasional carpet hanging off a balcony or a lonely child on a bike, each building and street is deserted, devoid of workmen or inhabitants.
Finally the desert! Silently in awe of the tough landscapes, sharp and coloured red-brown intersected with rock waterfalls spilling towards the switchback road from a crumbling layer above of a different shade. Occasional dune drifts of tiny soft sand are so smooth it is difficult for the eye to register they exist amongst the sharp ruggedness. They are as if like slightly pink milk, the eye skipping over the smoothness. As the sun sinks, a haze gradually turns the ranges to blue and we rush on, brakes slamming occasionally to allow unaccompanied and unperturbed groups of camels across the road and on into the blackness, or a battered Chevrolet pickup with wrapped wrinkled men hanging out the windows past at more or less a safe speed. Interior bus lights illuminate the edges of the winding road as we pass villages of mud bricks and kids wearing scruffed miniature jellabiyyas with small herds of goats.
- The Beginning
We arrive to St Catherine’s late and tired. Bedouins in jellabiyyas and winter jackets amble along the silent streets. The light from the village faintly silhouettes a mountain as we stand in utter silence on a deserted road – overwhelming and breathtaking and our first glimpse of our surroundings. The evening brought Bedouin tea on mats, very faulty plumbing, bed-bugs and malfunctioning mosquito nets but the morning sun and views possibly the most stunning wonderful humbling thing I have seen in my entire life. Towering mountains of oranges and browns surround the tiny silent village where the sound of children playing football on rough ground carries and fills the cool air of the valley. Breakfast at a table in the shade at the foot of these majestic forms encourages reflection, silence, and just being, as some hajjis arrive to eat at the next table. Relaxed, comfortable, and at ease at last, kids wave and shout hello and giggle pleasantly from the other side of the road. It is a little disarming to question a Bedouin in Arabic where the monastery is, and for him to reply in perfect fluent English as two men on camels pass on a nearby track in the sun. We arrive at the monastery, almost camouflaged between two steep mountain ranges, and a few trees and strange gardens lead up to the high solid walls which are dwarfed by the surroundings. Tiny Bedouin boys offer camels, good camel, good price, for trekking up Jebel Musa but we continue past, each on our own personal hajj up the mountain. Each turn brings views more stunning than the last as the world unfurls and extends as we snake up the path, more and more ranges materialise in the blue distance. Flat valleys scattered with odd buildings seem more a dream as another village appears and sounds of children make it into earshot. A narrow pass of blue rock leads up and out into Elijah’s Hollow and the haze of peaks beyond stretches and stretches until the peaks blend to the hazy sky as if to continue to forever. The steps to the summit and the physical and mental pain they brought to an unfit body were dissolved as the chapel roof crept into view, a sturdy structure with possibly the best view in the world. Black mountains looking towards the sun are red in the opposite direction as we spin under the emerging stars and for a few seconds we on top of the world see everything in orange, red, purple, blue and then cold descends as the intensity of colour fades and we sit with our backs pressed to the still-warn chapel walls. Huddled silent, occasionally speaking, we look to the stars, alone on Jebel Musa. Bedouin boys sort out mattresses and blankets for us on the best spot to watch the sunrise, the flat roof of a hut clinging to the mountain facing directly east and reached by a bent metal ladder. Invitations to eat with them were accepted, though I refused and so as the others descended to the hut a way below the summit, proceeded to spend time completely alone and silent on top of the world with just a few scratting cats, a hundred million stars, my thoughts, everything and nothing. I sat wrapped in scarves and abbayya on the chapel steps as the wind blew cold and I felt in turn completely at peace and then nervous – perhaps with responsibility? I felt myself physically changing, my forehead and insides loosened and I breathed more easily, more freely. I was unconsciously conscious of myself and the world, myself with the world, moulded to the chapel steps. The endless silent air was broken with an invitation to rouse myself from my still huddle and to drink hot chocolate with the Bedouins. Picking our way down from the top of the world with tiny torches, it is humbling again to be sitting with a Bedouin, an old 17, as he tells us he is almost fluent in four languages, English, Russian, German and French, and has never been to school. We return to the top, our insides now warm and mine unknotted, and settle on our ledge to watch shooting stars and to just be. Wrapped in blankets, we are not cold but the chill wind floats now and then over our exposed faces. Sleep is erratic but deep when it arrives. It is still black dark when the first singing voices reach me quietly coming and going with the wind, drifting just as I sleep. Woken later by torchlights and Spanish as the first nightclimbers reach the summit and begin staking positions for the dawn, sleep becomes more impossible as more torches probe our blanket-wrapped forms and chatter and laugh. The sky is still black pricked with thousands of tiny twinkles as I decide to prop myself against the cliff behind and wait for dawn. A slight colour change on the horizon indicates a new beginning, and daylight happens imperceptibly yet quickly across the peaks rising out of the blue mist. Beams stretching until they disappear into the still starry dark emanate from a single point on the horizon, faintly striping the atmosphere. Light blue to yellow to orange and it is daylight before the sun peeks huge and orange between the layers of cloud stretching across the horizon, rising until it burns our eyes and hearts and I blink and smile and look away to the mountains lit again in an eternal cycle.
More life will be created today.
Barely room to move as we pack our stuff while the first warm rays reach into our bodies and souls and begin our descent amongst hundreds of others, Egyptians, Chinese, Swedes, Russians, Dutch. A snake of bodies winds down the mountain, some sliding, as the clefts of the mountains everywhere are striped black and orange as the sky turns blue. Light and shadow increase the size of the never-ending peaks as we walk on with people and camels and a light in the heart. Difficult to register that only a few hours earlier, I had the whole of the world to myself and was endlessly thankful for all that I had experienced, positive and negative, as the monastery again appears as we descend, me still struggling with perspectives, feelings, thoughts, and preferred silence in attempt at ordering myself. Hundreds congregated at the monastery waiting for the doors to open gave completely the wrong atmosphere to experience such a place, so we headed back to the village to eat and find transport to Dahab. Despite it being Eid, a minibus was found and the price haggled over. We go at a steady pace, passing an overturned bus in the next valley and many low-walled square houses with roofs of palm or some similar material. We drive in silence through the flat valleys of sand, the mountains surrounding us changing in colour with the sun and as we continue into the different terrain of the Eastern Sinai. Amongst the scrub brushes of an empty plateau, a Bedouin holding the hands of his two tiny children collects firewood. A little further along, his wife, all in black, walks with a large bundle across her back towards their crumpled Chevrolet by the side of the road. We rarely pass a vehicle, and all smallholdings appear empty. We climb through a small pass and a little Bedouin sits on the crash barrier with her face covered with a burqa’ decorated with coins and looks intently at the minibus, shielding her eyes from the desert sun as we rattle through. We snake through the flat valleys with the power lines, the tarmac curling out of sight round the next rugged mountain which emerges steeply from the sand. Various checkpoints later, we were on the last stretch to Dahab and towards the Red Sea, leaving the mountains behind as we crossed the final plateau to the coast and the steep hazy peaks of Saudi Arabia in the distance.
posted by sarsoura at 12:02 pm
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