Slouching Around Egypt

Hey again Everyone!

So after putting together a collection of all the trips I've taken, I think it's time to update this thing. Again, it's going to be epically long, and I know people get bored, so I'll make a little table of contents so you can read about whatever trips you want.

Trips - Table of Contents (relatively chronological)
Red Sea - Ein Sukhna & Dahab Scuba Diving
Dahab and Mount Sinai
Random Cairo Nights/Pyramids/Teaching English
Alexandria
The Siwa Oasis

Red Sea - Ein Sukhna, Dahab, Scuba Diving

On Friday the 31st, we took a bus to Ain Sukhna on the west side of the Red Sea. We stayed at a beautiful hotel with a beautiful beach. It took a while to get used to the idea that we were actually in Egypt and actually on the Red Sea. On the way there, we had to go through a number of checkpoints and get hassled by tourist police. I would later discover that the amount of hassling we received over 10 buses filled with Americans than we would experience later. That night, after a day of relaxing on the beach after another ridiculously terrible and incompetent presentation by Tomader where she insulted our worries and concerns, we wandered down to the beach. There was a beautiful moon over the ocean and I was able to take some pictures.

On Saturday, I woke up early and went down to the beach to read and hang out alone for a bit. The whole day was basically hanging out on the beach. We had some beers at the beach bar and met this guy, Ahmed, an Egyptian from Connecticut who was fully Egyptian and spoke dialect but grew up in the states. He pitched a crazy idea to go to Dahab, which I’d heard of from John during softball.

On the ride home on the bus from Ain Sukhna, I had an incredible conversation with Julio, who had recently converted to Islam after being a strong Catholic. He described his conversion experience as very liberating but also different because of the cold reception he received from the Georgetown Catholic community. He told me dozens of stories from the Hadith (converstions between the Prophet and his Companions that did not make it into the Qu’ran. Some of the tails had to do with the Prophet being swept away and into heaven in Jerusalem or the nature of God and the last day and what it is like to be judged by God. He explained what happens to your body after you die: that if you have been a devout Muslim and read Qu’ran a lot, an angelic figure will stay with you and give you a place to rest until the Day of Judgment. Apparently sinners faces are blackened for all to see on the last day and that your body parts speak about you to God and that revealing other people’s minor sins are a major issue in Islam. Basically don’t gossip. I was eating it up having a great time hearing all the intricacy of Islam and won’t forget that conversation. At the beginning of the conversation, I opened up Surat Yussuf and he recited Qu’ran while I followed in English.

After returning from the Red Sea, we woke up the next morning and arranged flights, out of the blue, on Egypt Air to Sharm el Sheikh then on to Dahab. It was a cooky flight, and security checkpoints etc. are completely different in Egypt. Supposedly, Ahmed, who was with us, had to bribe a number of people working at the airport to get a bottle of Grey Goose out with us. We took a long ride from Sharm in a cab to Dahab, and going through the Sinai for the first time was amazing. It was not even close to how much Sinai I would eventually see, but it was a great first exposure nonetheless.

We got there and checked out a hotel called Penguin, which was cool but budget looking. We decided to throw down the extra money and get a really nice place called Club Coralia with amazing beaches and complimentary meals and air conditioning. We got dinner and hung out at the dance show, which was a little awkward because there were random kids and Africans all dancing around. We had drinks and smoked shisha and finally decided to go out in Dahab. We got a cab out there and went to a bar called Rush that was bartended by two girls who had literally just finished Peace Corps in Jordan. We sat next to a guy who had also just finished Peace Corps. I prodded him with questions like “Do you feel like you’re trying to save people or just travel with them through the difficulties of their life?” He mostly skirted these types of questions and basically talked about how important it was to experience something like it and say “I have seen some shit…” Overall, however, it was a cool time. The bartender was pretty cute and I appreciated her Peace Corps journey so I gave her a nice tip.

The next day, we went out to the beach a little hung and got some breakfast. At one, we went diving in the sea. It was absolutely incredible. I got a little freaked out at the beginning not being able to breath quite as freely as I would have liked, but once we got well below the water, it came naturally and I was surrounded by amazing coral reefs and schools of so many different types of fish swimming in schools literally inches away from me. We saw cool octopuses and clown fish in anemone. The shelf literally just dropped off and was completely covered in reefs of coral and amazing sea life. Apparently we passed only inches above this fish that blends into the coral. It was cool looking and we found out later that it was insanely poisonous. Oh well, that’s Egypt.


After the amazing diving experience and lunch with a bunch of cats biting at our ankles, we went back to the beach and just relaxed. Seeing the sun set over the Sinai mountains on one side and coast of Saudi Arabia on the other was wonderful to say the least. After dark, we went out to dinner at Al Capone and were treated like kings, partly because of Ahmed’s Arabic and our willingness to spend money. We picked out fish from an icy cart and met the fisherman who caught them (or so they claimed). The meal was insane. We got seafood soup, then pita with every kind of diip imaginable, then an enormous tray of all the fish we had chosen set among onion candles. We had fruit for desert and three shisha pipes. We chilled out for over an hour drinking Shay Baladi (tea of my country) and finally made our way to the bus for our trip home.

The ride was interesting. It was uncomfortable physically but the ride through the desert late at night with desert and mountains flying by along the road and frequent security checkpoints made it interesting but intense and something I won’t forget. Just traveling through the Sinai in itself was incredible. We finally arrived back in Cairo after the sun rose and I jumped up on the roof to retrieve our luggage. We walked back to the hotel and crashed.


First Day of Ramadan, Dahab and Sinai

Cairo, Dahab, Sinai – Sept. 13 – 16

After finishing class on Thursday I talked to Joe to see if we were really going to make this Dahab trip work out. We wandered around the common area all day, avoiding food and water and waiting to catch out public bus. This would be a new experience for us, because we'd taken the plane and the Penguin bus back, but never the public bus.

--Right now someone is cooking and it smells incredible and I am dying here—

We got to the bus station on a long cab ride only to discover that the 5pm bus we were shooting for would be moved back to 7:30 for Iftar of the first day of Ramadan. After sitting around at this café for a while feeling sketchy, because we couldn't buy anything, we decided to go outside. Earlier I had mentioned that I really wanted to buy a toy or something, because I had a ton of small bills, and wanted to get rid of them. I felt a little ridiculous wanted to buy a toy or something, but what else can you do with like 50 cents if you're not able to buy food?!

We waited outside and watched the sun slowly….slowly…….slowwwwly sinking down in the horizen. It was a nice area though: the station was very large with a big plaza outside and we sat on a little ledge. On both sides of the plaza were different mosques. The sun was slowly getting lower in the sky tantalizing us. Fortunately I'd packed food in my bag because I'd assumed we'd have Iftar on the bus, until the whole 7:30 switch thing happened. With less than 20 minutes until Iftar, this dentally challenged chap sweeping up the plaza came over and talked to us. His name was Mahmoud, and he stuck around for a while.

When Iftar was imminent, prayers started coming out of mosques around the city, but something didn't seem exactly right. We looked at an apartment building nearby to see a family sitting around a feast, waiting to eat. Dan had already started eating and sort of gave up and kept going. I wasn't sure what was happening, so I just walked inside, where a sermon in Arabic was playing in the station, and I asked the guard, who had an apparently untouched cup of tea in front of him, whether it would be ok to eat. He kind of looked at me like "of course it's ok for you to eat." So I figured it was all good, but then looked back at the apartment building and decided I'd better wait for sure. Finally, after all the anticipation, there was no doubt when the time was right. Allahu Akbar rang out from mosques seen and unseen all around us. After hearing the original words and the Fatiha, preachers started doing there own thing, singing out al hamdu lallah and other less recognizable phrases.

Our feelings of "Praise be to God," and "God is the Greatest" were similar to those of those manning to mosques as we cracked bottled water and began eating cheese and pita. After eating a lot of cheese and pita and crackers and having a lot of water and coke out of the special seasonal "Ramadan Kareem" bottle, and eating a Mars bar, we just sat around satisfied for a while before finally, stuffed, heading inside.

At the station, a little boy sat next to Joe, who was one seat across from me, and started staring and smiling at us. I waved at him and his mom and sisters smiled and laughed. When we walked away, I said "ma salema" and he laughed. It was priceless. As we got on the bus, we were offered candied dates by the attendants. It was a lot of fun, and we could tell they really wanted to give them to us, like "give these Americans a taste of Iftar" in a good way though.

All I'll say about the bus ride is that it was eleven hours, I slept laid out across plastic covered chairs for most of the trip, and only got one to get off. We finally arrived in Dahab at 6am as the sun was rising over the Red Sea as we sat on pillows in front of the water at Penguin. Thus commenced the next part of our journey.

Anna soyume – That means "I'm fasting." I wrote that because I asked the guard and wanted to remember.

That morning, after getting off the bus, we spent the next several hours lounging on the Penguin pillows next to the ocean as the sun got higher in the sky. We ordered breakfasts (American, Spanish omelette, Egyptian) were some of the options, by those exact names.

I have to mention one constant element of our journeys to Dahab. There are always Bedouin boys or girls trying to peddle us these little bracelets. These girls mobbed penguin demanding that we buy from them. Some of these little girls were pretty militant, others were a bit more reserved, and let us choose for ourselves whether we wanted to buy their little hand woven bracelets. I decided not to buy the already made ones, but asked the girls to make me two: one with Egyptian colors (red, white and black) and the closest I could get to Georgetown colors (dark blue, black, and white). I felt like buying these was actually worth it, because they literally wove them as I was holding the end of the string then tied them onto my wrist. One German or British guy had these things literally halfway up his forearm. The girls were still hassling him. He told them, "look how many I have, these have been my biggest expense in Dahab!" in a good natured way. They still didn't leave him alone. Julio spent an hour or so trying to get this group of about ten girls to redistribute their income equally between everyone. He went to the bank and broke all of their bills into smaller change, then gave it out equally to each one. I think the only reason they allowed him to do this was because he also gave them fifty pounds divided equally among each of them as well. They were a quite the little entrepreneurs.

One of my goals for this Dahab trip was to climb Mt. Sinai so I asked one of the tourist guys, Ahmed (big surprise) whether or not we could set up a different kind of trip, because they only run tours from 11pm to the next morning for sunrise. I'd find out later that this time just so happens to be when there are approximately six or seven hundred tourists climbing up the mountain for sunrise. I was able to get together another three guys and three girls, we got a price that was right (80 LE for transport and the guide up the mountain) and got ready to leave promptly at noon.

"Promptly" in Egypt has an interesting meaning. When noon rolled around, Ahmed told us that the driver would finish praying and be right there. Julio and Ben, two guys coming on the trip, also were waiting for a different hotel to deliver their passports. To make a long story short, we left around 1:45.

The bus ride through the Sinai to the mountain was incredible. The terrain actually changes a lot relative to what one might think. It goes from ugly, craggy mountains to sandy dunes propped up against craggy mountains to little dunes and back to crags and dirty and wild camels wandering around. By the way, when we were arriving into Dahab, we saw a camel being attacked by a pack of wild dogs. It didn't look happy, but it's owner saved the day eventually. Anyway, we took a break in the desert just to run around in a wide open space (these come few and far between in Cairo) and we sat in the desert, threw dirt and sand around and did other silly "tourist in the desert" things.

We arrived at the foot of Mt. Sinai and were immediately stopped because we were told (contrary to what Ahmed said) that we needed a guide. We argued and called Ahmed and waited for the dust to settle before getting a guide. His name was Muhammad Gabla. This basically means "Muhammad of the mountain." It was pretty sweet, and we got to know him a lot better later on the way down. On the way up, one of the only things he said was "too much talk, hike makes difficult. Better quiet." Julio and I pretty much lead the charge and our group slowly spread out over time. The girls lagged behind and Joe and Ben wanted to be gentlemen and hang back with them. Julio and I were dead set on making it to the top of the mountain before sunset. The uphill hike was very hard. We finally made it around one big hill and Muhammad told us which mountain it was. It was the big one. It was very intimidating.

Muhammad told us he would go off and have iftar with a friend and that we could get ourselves up the rest of the way: "only 750 steps more." He neglected to inform us that those 750 steps were all large steps hewn into the side of the mountain going up at a brutally steep angle. Each time you would get up over a little rise you'd see more stairs. More stairs. I have a lot of respect for Moses at this point. My shirt sweated through long ago. Just a little bit more. Oh wait, more stairs. Ugh. Julio is about fifty steps behind me. I just really want to get to the top for sunset.

Finally, there doesn't seem to be any more mountain up higher so I have to be near the top. I am. Nice. When I reached the top, where there were no more stairs, I laid my bag down and climbed a bunch of boulders up to the very top of the mountain. The desert was laid out around me all 360 degrees. There are really no words to describe how incredible it was to be literally the only person I could see standing on the top of the mountain waiting for others to come up, watching the sun sunk over the horizon. I could see mountains then a bit of Red Sea with the sun reflecting off of it. I didn't even realize until now how incredible lucky I was to have been standing alone on the pinnacle of the mountain at that time. I'm basically Moses.

The others came up and we had a nice little iftar after watching the sun go down and taking a lot of photos. I think my friends get annoyed with me because I always want to take a lot. I'm like "can you take a picture of me here" and they sigh and do it. Except Julio, he's the man about it. Anyway, probably one of the most amazing parts of being up on the mountain was right at sundown, when Julio suggested that he make the Muslim call the prayer from the top of the mountain (any Muslim is allowed to do it from any high place). An aussie who heard Julio say that said "mate, I think you might have the wrong religion." Obviously, he didn't realize that this Mexican-american kid was a Muslim. Julio went to the edge of the mountain and I heard someone reciting the call to prayer. It literally sounded just like it's done from a mosque, and I was astounded to see it was him belting it out. Hearing him recite the words in the Muslim song-like recitation style was one of the more amazing experiences of the entire trip. I can't describe it, it was just amazing. "Allahu Akbar, allahu akbar. Ashaduhu an la illah illa Allah. Ashaduhu an Muhammad rasul Allah. Allahu akbar…" etc. etc.

We took back to the mountain in the dark by the beams of a flashlight. It was pretty treacherous until we met up with our guide, Muhammad Gabla, who had a nice little light to guide the way. Every once in a while we would stop to admire the absolutely incredible stars, as clear as I've ever seen them. On the way down, Joe and I were talking with Muhammad. He was discussing the everyday struggle of the Bedouin guide. Apparently there are tourists who wonder off and turn up dead a couple of days later. Muhammad told us how he has carried dead tourists down the mountain on his back. It was pretty intense. Then he went into a tirade about the Russians. He was like "tourists, always too much Russian."

We got down to the monastery at the foot of the mountain, which was founded fifteen hundred years ago. We asked if we could see it, but Muhammad told us the monks were sleeping so it was closed. Stephanie, a girl with us, was begging to get in. Finally, she was like "there's nothing we can do?" Muhammad was like "we've been talking for five minutes, there's nothing we can do." Stephanie was like "can we pay someone?" and Muhammad didn't even respond, he just walked us towards the entrance, where we worked something out to get a walk through. They brought us to the well where Moses had drank while going up the Sinai. They also brought us to the Burning Bush. It was a big bush! I suppose it's either made up or a descendant of the actual Bush, but it was still a trip. Just the fact that people for fifteen hundred years have considered it the burning bush made it breathtaking.

Our ride home was great. I slept nearly the whole way through the Sinai until we stopped to lie down in the middle of the desert in the middle of the night to look up at the stars. Again, it's unfortunate that I don't have any other words to describe the stars above the deep Sinai other than those I've just written.

We hung out at Penguin the rest of the night. We were pretty tired, but we played Kings on our room's balcony overlooking the Red Sea. It was a good time.

The next morning everyone was feeling a little sluggish. We got breakfast at Penguin on the pillows next to the ocean. The Egyptian breakfast was delicious. Later that day, we got a cab driver to sneak us around the spit next to the Coral Hotel beach. We had to wade across a sandbar but successfully claimed some lounge chairs and umbrellas on the private Coral beach. I worked on some Arabic while others hit the bar. They ran up an 800 pound bar tab because drinks at Coral were pretty expensive. They told me Muhammad the bartender couldn't make any good drinks other than Mojitos. I'd never had one before, so I sprung the $10 for one. That's a lot of money here. In fact, the amount of money I spent on two beers, two mojitos and a shot of Johnny Walker Black cost more than our four person hotel room, my trip to Mt. Sinai, and the bus roundtrip to and from Dahab. Pretty sad really.

That night we had another amazing meal at Al Capone. Lobster, crab, white fish, kalamari etc. fresh off the boat. Al Capone always does us right and provides amazing service. They even remembered us from our last trip. We were introduced to the chefs and the service folks and the guy managing, Muhammad Ali, told us we were welcome any time with big discounts. I'm sure Muhammad. It still felt nice to be treated like kings. We were harassed by the spices guy who has become a stable Dahab experience. As you walk by, he asks "you like spice? You want to buy spice? Where you from? America, oh, great place for spice, come back later maybe?" It wouldn't have been Dahab without that experience.

Our drivers back played sung prayers in classical Arabic for a good three hours. After we had a pit stop at the gas station, I asked the drivers whether they were listening to the Qur'an. They pointed to a cross hanging from the rear view mirror and said "No! We are Christian!" I apologized and they changed tapes to the Barbara Streisand mix tape. I wasn't sure which was more brutal: Coptic Christian Arabic chants or Barbara Streisand. Probably the latter.

There were two Japanese tourists who were riding in our bus. The Egyptian guys who sold them the bus ride were messing with them. They were cracking jokes with the Japanese and then said "the Americans speak Japanese." They all looked over at us, so I shouted the only Japanese I know: Watashi wa cheesuga dieskides. It means "I like cheese." The Japanese couple cracked up and everyone else who didn't understand was very impressed. Anyway, on our second pit stop around 3:45 in the morning at this little gas and refreshment place in the middle of 'effin nowhere in the Sinai. The Japanese dude got out and started doing squat thrusts. All the Arabs were shocked and trying not to die of laughter. They looked to us as if to ask "is this normal?" And we motioned back, "we have no idea what this is, this is not at all normal." It was a nice bonding experience over this ridiculous Japanese dude.

That about concluded the trip. We arrived in Cairo around seven in the morning. One funny element of the trip also surrounded the Japanese tourists. Back in Dahab, the tourist helped had asked them "where are you going in Cairo" and the Japanese just said "pyramids" and he laughed. He was like "the pyramids are in Giza, we'll drop you off downtown." So when we got to Cairo, we dropped them off in Tahrir Square, and watched them look around and start walking, just completely lost.

With that, the trip was concluded. Sinai being the centerpiece, but like everything in Egypt every interaction with Arabs or other folks (eg. Japanese) is always extremely entertaining.


Teaching, Tame Nighttime Anecdotes, Cairo, Pyramids

Random Nights/Pyramids

We've gone out a lot here, but mostly it's pretty standard shinanegins. The main difference is that here most people don't drink except for expats or students because alcohol is not permitted in Islam. Here are a couple of random events I jotted down that might be of interest.

Last night was ridiculous. That's about all I can say. Running the gauntlet of ridiculous things that happen on any given drinking night with some Egyptian and British spice thrown in. The ex-pats here learn how to party hard. Oh yeah, my flip flop broke and I walked a good 10-15 blocks around Cairo barefoot. These aren't exactly the cleanest or best paved streets. It was an ordeal, but I don't have any cuts or anything so I think I'll live. One of my nicknames here has become "Baby Earth" coined by Robby (my best friend/roomate) because of my devotion to the environment and God knows why else. So my other good friend Dan takes off his shoes and is like "I'm in solidarity with Baby Earth!" and stubs his toe after like 5 steps. Personally, I thought it was hilarious.

Another night, I went out dancing with some kids from all over the States, but particularly three students from Reed College. We had an amazing time talking about Portland. They come from all over the country but absolutely love our city. It's universal, everyone loves it. We stayed at the bar/club until three in the morning, came back to our residence, grabbed some stuff and got coffee and gave each other massages on the 17th floor balcony of our hotel looking out over Cairo then took taxis to Giza, where we took an hour horseback ride by the pyramids as the sun rose over the entire city of Cairo stretched out beside us. It was absolutely incredible. The pictures will help illustrated the trip far better than any words I could put to it. It was a lot of fun to ride horses, and the guide got us going pretty fast. I don't think I got up to a gallop, but we were definitely flying up and down dunes with the pyramids as a backdrop. My horse's name was Samara. Here is a bit more on the pyramid trip:

We cabbed to the Pyramids where we met Amir’s friend ‘Ali and he put us on horses to get ready to go. My horse’s name was Samara, a brown horse with a black mane. Trotting through the desert up to a tea camp overlooking the pyramids was a good time. We were all exhausted, but being carried on horseback made it ok and made the experience a lot of fun. We finally dismounted and sat outside the camp drinking tea, watching the sun rise and looking out over the Pyramids. This was my first trip there. One of the most beautiful elements of the trip was watching the sun rise over the entire city of Cairo laid out below us with the pyramids off to the left. The clouds/smog allowed the sun to poke through and starkly contrasted the brightness of the light. It’s a view I won’t forget soon, especially when surveying the scene around me yielded tourists and guides on horse and camel back wandering through the desert and around the pyramids.

Afterwards, we went back into the area of town next to the pyramids and sat down for some tea, fool and water until the foot of the pyramids would open for us. We reached the foot of the pyramids but decided not to go in because of the extra fifty pound fee. A few folks went in, and we were astounded by the number of tourist buses shuttling people in and out of the pyramids and the area. My friends and I climbed around on the base of the pyramids searching for some shade and a place to lean back and rest. We were all beyond exhausted after hours of drinking, horseback riding and no sleep. We reached out fill of pyramid squatting, and decided to cab it back. Before leaving, an Egyptian peddler tried to sell us postcards. He walked up to me saying “Sabah al Ful” and I responded, with the salute “Sabah al ishta!” I don’t think he gets that too often, and he started laughing, asking where I was from. I told him the United States and felt good about my ability to throw him off with a little bit of “younger” Egyptian dialect.


Teaching/Random Egypt Thoughts

Cairo – Sunday Sept. 23rd

I had my first experience with students who I’ll be teaching English tonight. The program seems like it will be an awesome way to actually meet and interact with real Egyptians.

It was a mixed experience. It was difficult to go through so many people doing one minute interviews. Most of them seemed so excited to be there and have the opportunity to learn English. A lot of them struggled quite a bit, with basic questions like “Why do you want to learn English?” or “What do you do?” or “What do you study?” I had to try to ask an easy question to finish every interview so they didn’t feel completely demoralized after they left. It was interesting speaking with some of these kids who probably read very well but can’t speak in the least. It was wonderful, however, how nice they were and cheerful. Even those who were nervous just smiled even when they couldn’t answer questions. Teaching Christians will also be a change of pace. The school is on a Christian church ground and it would be inappropriate to mix Muslims and Christians in this school here in this culture. I wonder if they have different attitudes towards life or being Egyptian than the Egyptian Muslims. The very fact that they are a small minority in a completely Muslim dominated country must make some difference.

All I can do is continue to record my experiences. I am excited that I will be teaching a class of my own. Jon Hill, who founded the program is a really funny guy. He’s a bigger guy with a big gray mustache and scrubby clothing. It sounds, however, like he’s done an enormous amount for this community and continues to work to help out these less wealthy Egyptians. I truly hope that I can make a difference in their lives by volunteering my time. Hopefully I can help them understand some history and context for the English language as well as stay before and after class to answer any questions or get to know them.

I’m excited.

This place is beginning to feel more regular. I do not feel as much like a foreigner, and there is little in the day to day that still surprises me. Every interaction is fun, but it’s not as shocking and new as it was in the past. Maybe this is what happens when you are immersed in a new culture for some time. I’m exciting that some of the subtleties of being here are starting to sink in. I hope I will have more time to explore them. Robby and I were discussing some Egyptians history and basic dilemmas in the Muslim world after I finished Reza Aslan’s “No god but God.” Aslan is hopeful that Islam will emerge from its current conflicts with a more liberal, though strictly Muslim, form of democracy embracing egalitarianism, individual liberty and moral integrity. I personally, at this point in my study, believe this religion has enormous potential to give birth to a civilization that could be truly revolutionary for mankind. Christianity has long had its problems, especially in terms of egalitarianism given the Protestant work ethic, but I think all major religions are still going to keep pressure on society to treasure individual life and work for dignifying every human life. Though economics and politics at the moment may indicate otherwise, I have faith in humankind to continue progressing. We are going to hit bumps in the road, and as Aslan says, there will be cataclysmic events, I believe that the Middle East can one day become as prosperous and successful as the United States, Western Europe and East Asia. Discovering the proper way to integrate Islam into political systems is going to be a major challenge, but in a relative absence of corruption and bitterness, with a collection of smart people, it will happen.

I hope to continue pondering this idea, and continue learning about this region and the religious, political, social and historical foundations that make it what it is today.


Alexandria

Alexandria – Sept. 28 and Sept. 29

We took a two hour train ride to Alex from Cairo which was amazing. I basically slept half the time after reading Conference of the Birds which was amazing. Two hours only the get anywhere is spectacular after traveling to and from Dahab twice.

We got to Union Hotel after a sketchy cab ride and our first crossing the street in Alexandria, which would soon prove to be a bit more difficult than crossing the street in Cairo. Standard Egyptian fare, having to wait to get a room with other people cutting in front of us. We were able to get a nice room with an awesome see view however, so it all worked out.

The next morning, I woke up early and showered and had breakfast in the hotel by myself out in the lobby. It was really nice to just chill by myself for a bit. I get to do that a lot in Cairo but never eating, or when everyone else is out sleeping. There is something liberating about being the first person awake and hanging out alone without having to talk to anyone just enjoying a croissant, laughing cow, fig jam and these other strange little bread sticks.

After breakfast, I got together with some of the girls and walked down to the library. By the library, I mean the Library: The Alexandria Bibliotecha that is famous and has cool modern architecture. It turns out it was built like four years ago, but it is in commemoration of the ancient library that was supposedly one of the first great cultural wonders in Egypt or even the ancient world. The library was very nice inside: stacks of books and computers in a kind of descending slant so that from each level above you could look at more and more of the enormous open indoor space. There was also a cool an antiquities museum in the basement with ancient Roman art and mummies and sarcophaguses.

After the library, we traveled to the site of ancient Roman Alexandria, where the forum and amphitheater had been. There was one spot in the amphitheater marked off with a round dais in which your voice felt like it was echoing back at you immediately. It was a bit like speaking into a microphone in a large auditorium, but your own voice was amplified and reverberated back into your head even more quickly. Essam, an Egyptian guide, convinced us to let him talk to us about the sight for a good fifteen minutes, so he explained the system of cisterns and public baths that had been used two and a half thousands years ago where we were standing.

Afterwards, we took a cab with Adal, who promised to drive us all over Alexandria for the rest of the day for “very good price.” He claimed he had family in Washington state, but had never heard of Oregon. Too bad for him. We exchanged numbers, just like every other Egyptian who offers you something, and got let off in a cool little square with beautiful lush palm trees and fountains. Immediately afterwards, we plunged into a narrow market street in which one could barely walk. This went on for several blocks, where we were offered every good from every shop and drugs at least two or three times. Finally we emerged in a less busy area with a big Catholic church where there were a number of Egyptian men in full monk garb on their cell phones texting and drinking tea. Interesting juxtaposition of modern and pre-modern. The Catholic church was standard but still beautiful inside. I felt an interesting feeling I’d never experienced before in any other Catholic church. Being enveloped in Muslim culture and society for over a month, it’s very easy to feel like a foreigner with a foreign religion. Despite very much appreciating and learning to appreciate Muslim culture, being inside the Catholic sanctuary filled me with a sense of belonging and purpose in a way I hadn’t yet felt in Egypt. I suppose feeling like a foreigner all the time wears on you more than you can really acknowledge without juxtaposing it with a place where you feel you are welcoming and a part of. I lit a prayer candle for friends, family and all the people I’m thinking about most while I’m here.

After finishing up our tourist activities for the day, we went back to the hotel, got some wine and beers, and had an intense political/theological conversation before going out for an expensive fresh fish dinner. On our way back, searching for a bar, we got swamped in a huge market district, Saad Zaghloul, where again, one could barely move and all of Alexandria seemed to be out on the street that night. I had an interesting exchange with a man, Ahmed (surprise surprise) who seriously didn’t believe that I was from the United States. He kept insisting that I must be Russians, claiming that Americans don’t come to Alex. I didn’t really know what to tell him, but he was nice enough to try to point us in the direction of the bar that I concluded doesn’t actually exist.

The next morning I woke up again to a breakfast mostly alone in the lobby with the sea laid out outside. Again, the sea breeze and the view were beautiful and breakfast was peaceful.

--I have to interrupt for a moment because, as I write this, I had a fifteen minute conversation with my new friend, Rashad, who works at the hotel as a server, bringing me tea as I write on the roof/balcony of the hotel. He is studying Russian working very hard to eek out a living here. By the way, unfortunately this is almost all in English, because the level of conversation is beyond my Arabic skills. Anyway, he works here full time, works as a club promoter and studies Russian. He makes 300 LE a month. That is about $55. How can one possibly live on that? It’s mind-boggling. He is working desperately hard to learn enough Russian to get a job where he can make $400 a month. That’s less than $5000 a year, but that would be about eight times more than he makes now. He hopes that we can be friends, continue to talk, go out to the club together and hang out in a situation where we are equals and he is not serving me. He hopes to go to the UK, Italy or Russia, because he speaks all the languages to varying degrees. A person like that makes $55 a month. This place is something else. He keeps saying, “but what can I do.” As a Muslim, it is difficult for him to get a job in tourism in Europe because he is Muslim and doesn’t feel comfortable serving alcohol.—

After breakfast and organizing some of the more sluggish members of our party and checking out, we took a taxi to the Catacombs. On the way, my cab driver got in an accident. I was talking with the cab driver in Arabic and trying to explain directions to my friend on the phone when we were taking a shallow left turn and a woman pulled and solidly side-swiped our cab. The cabbie got out and they yelled at each other for a good five minutes. We sat awkwardly in the cab, hoping the cabbie wouldn’t take out any of his anger on us in the form of yelling at us for trying to pay the legitimate price, because we had nothing to do with the accident. Fortunately he was pretty cool about it, but it was my first taxi accident here, although I’ve heard about several others from other kids. I’m sure it won’t be my last, but hopefully they won’t be any more serious.

The Catacombs were very very cool. They were recently excavated and contained over 300 roman tombs. We walked down a spiral staircase with what looked like a well in the middle. In fact, ancient people lowered bodies down the cavity and floated them through underwater channels to the closest site of their tomb and laid them to rest. Some tombs were ornately decorated with friezes while others were basic with rows and rows of tombs. There were no bodies in them, as they had either been robbed or removed to make this a tourist destination, but it was still eerie wandering around mazes of Catacombs fifty feet below ground. Either way, the ancient site was one of the cooler Alexandria experiences.

From the Catacombs we traveled to “Pompey’s Pillar,” a giant column jutting out from a semi-excavated dirt mound. Ironically, it had nothing to do with Pompey the famous Roman general who was defeated by Caesar, even though he was assassinated in Alexandria by Ptolemy and Cleopatra. We also had a tourist policeman impose a tour on us through the underground wells and cisterns below the pillar. It was one of the more awkward experiences for a number of reasons. He walked us through the underground complex and made us pose for strange pictures in random holes. At one point, he took my camera and just walked backwards as I followed him through these narrow tunnels, watching us on the viewfinder beckoning us towards him. It’s hard to describe, but it was very strange. We were happy to tip him and get out of there.

The next trip was wonderful. We cabbed all the way through Alex and arrived at the end of a long spit of land where an ancient Pharonic Temple had been located. Now, there is a large castle/fort on top of the site, with beautiful views of all of that section of Alexandria and a long sea wall being battered by the open Mediterranean. I sat in a gap in the ramparts and watched the sea crash up against the sea wall for a while. It was nice to relax in the sun with sea breeze and the noise of waves. The Red Sea I’ve visited doesn’t actually have very powerful waves, and these were the first I’ve experienced since being here. I was startled out of my contemplative spot when a group of Alexandrian school kids on a field trip began mobbing us as foreign white people. These kids were insanely cute and kept posing with pictures for us, saying things like “What’s your name?!” or “How are you?” They were clearly utilizing all of the knowledge at their disposal. One kid I walked by was sitting with one other friend. He started to ask “What’s your name” but messed up the last word and looked down, appearing very dejected with such a botched precious attempt to shout English at a white person. Having heard all of these kids yelling the same things at me earlier, I thought I’d help him out. I yelled back in English, but mimicking the accent these kids use “What’s your name?!” He looked up and his face lit up. He followed me around through the rest of the fort wanderings, and we had some broken conversation in Arabic. As we left the fort, kids who were standing in another corner of the courtyard started running from at least fifty meters away to ask if we were leaving and telling us to come back soon. The whole thing was priceless.

On the walk back down the sea wall and main drag along the water, called “Cornish,” we noticed a large group of people down by the water. A group of fisherman had just brought their boat up and were selling fish to the gathered crowd. A group of kids were also sitting along the sea wall, waiting for waves to crash up and were literally snagging baby fish out of the breaking waves to sell as bait.

We’d had a pretty full day and were ready to catch the train back to Cairo. We had about an hour to kill, so we hung out back at Union Hotel, got a bottle of wine, and chilled out rehashing stories about the kids we’d seen that day, other cool sites, and lamented the need to return to busy, dirty, responsibility-laden Cairo. When we bought tickets at the train station, I had to fight to not be cut in line at every turn. It was especially frustrating when two women asked me to move, because they said I was in the women’s line, when clearly there had been several men before me buying tickets. Although I’d been there for fifteen minutes in line, these women walked up and edged their way to the window where I was finally about the get my tickets. When those in front of us finally left, the first woman began to ask for hers. I glared at her and raised my hands like “What are you doing?” She immediately apologized, like she hadn’t done anything wrong or intended for me to get offended. I’m tired to being a tourist taken advantage of. Sometimes it just takes a look and a gesture to show people that you have the balls not to let yourself be taken advantage of, even in somewhat trivial situations.

The entire thing was a wonderful relaxing, touristy historical journey away from Cairo for a weekend. I feel like most of the above speaks for itself, so I don’t need to go back over how cool it was to be in a city founded by Alexander the great in the fourth century BC. The only potential drawback was nearly being hit by cars twice, and the taxi incident. Fortunately, I’m used to close brushes with cars back in Cairo all the time. These two incidents were by far the closest to serious injury however. Fortunately, I was able to pull some matrix-like agility and survive. I wonder if I’ll be back. It’s a beautiful place to breath in fresh air. As ironic as it sounds to crave the fresh air of a city of nearly six million, it truly was a needed break from the insanity that is Cairo.


Siwa Oasis

Siwa Oasis – October 4th – October 7th

So, this trip to Siwa was put together, like most trips I’ve had so far, at the last minute. In fact, we found out a couple of days before we left that we had a three day weekend, so we brainstormed places to go and decided on Siwa. Siwa is an oasis in the middle of the Sahara in western Egypt, about 70 km from the border with Libya. I’d heard a bunch of stories about this amazing place, and a lot of research we’d done claimed it was one of the best spots in the entire Middle East to visit.

Given all of this coolness, my friend Joe and I decided to make it happen. He figured out a way to charter a bus that would pick us up from our dorm, take us to Siwa, then take us back. The ride is around ten hours. We spent the next two days frantically recruiting people to come with us. There was a lot of convincing, politicking and finagling, but we got sixteen people, more than we’d hoped. I sat in the lobby as people filtered out to the bus and felt like a travel agent as I checked their names off the list and collected money. We soon discovered, however, that if more than ten Americans were traveling anywhere, we would have to have a secret police guard accompany us. We had no idea, and basically the government just had to scramble to bring some guy to come with us. It took about an hour and a half for him to arrive, and we sat around listening to people complain while this American kid, Grant, who is like literally six foot eight and really bulky sang random songs in falsetto. He would become the trips MVP. During all of these shinanagins, for an hour and a half, little kids from the apartment building windows and the street were waving and saying “Bye bye, bye bye” for literally an hour. My God they have a lot of energy. Finally we got on the road, to everyone’s intense excitement.

Our first stop of the overnight ride through the barren desert was actually a gas station next to a famous preserved battle field. It was nighttime, so we couldn’t see anything, but there is supposedly a massive desert field with hundreds of bombed out rusting panzer tanks. In the gas station, the girls erupted in screaming because some sort of lizard had jumped out of the toilet. I didn’t know this at the time, so hearing their screams and seeing the faces of the Arab dudes was both funny and embarrassing. I glanced down at one of their t-shirts. It read “Permanent Time Out,” which is exactly what all of these girls needed at that point.

Everyone clambered back on the bus and passed out. The next stop was in a ridiculous Podunk town in the middle of the desert that looked a little bit like you would imagine Tijuana looks like. The girls were basically not allowed off the bus. That’s just how things go when you’re in places where the people aren’t used to foreigners. A couple of friends and I got out and ate Sahur (pre-dawn meal during Ramadan) with our bus drivers. I hadn’t actually had ta’amea or fool since Ramadan so this was awesome. I guess it had been three weeks, and these were like staples for me, so it was a welcome comfort.

Our final stop before actually reaching Siwa (you thought this would never end) was to stop to pee in the desert and watch the sunrise over the vast, flat rocky-sandy landscape.
I’d seen the sun rise over Cairo and the crags and mountains of the Sinai peninsula and the Red Sea, but not the open desert. It was miraculous.

Over the horizon we finally saw green, which turned into a massive forest of palm, date and olive trees. It looked like paradise from afar, but the closer we got it, the more people realized the city is clearly not developed at all. A lot of the buildings are one story brown stone, looking really dingy, and all the roads were dirt with donkey shit everywhere. It was endearing though, especially when we pulled up to a little hostel/hotel with enormous piles of trash heaped outside. After all the “desert oasis paradise” talk that Joe and I (the Paul Wolfowitz architects of the trip) had shoveled onto everyone, people seemed a bit skeptical. We checked in, got rooms, laid down for a few and got breakfast on the roof. Mahmoud, the guy working there, told us there was no breakfast, but he said he’d make an exception because the guidebooks claimed this place did have breakfast. Umm…ok Egypt. One spectacular element of Siwa is that there is minimal car traffic (a town of 25,000, most people ride bikes or donkey carts) so we rented bikes for like $1.50 for the day and sped off into the paths winding through the oasis to find some of Siwa’s acclaimed natural springs. The bike paths were lined with palm and date trees, and around every bend we had to avoid plowing into someone biking or donkey-ing in the opposite direction. They’re not like LA palm trees. The forest was dense and thick with these. Biking through this western oasis in Egypt was surreal.

In light of the conservative thing just mentioned, arriving at springs was anticlimactic, because none of the girls could go in the water. It’s considered extremely inappropriate, so we needed to find a completely secluded one. On our way across town to this island in the middle of a giant salt spring, we happened upon a little ancient history. So after Alexander the Great founded Alexandria, he decided to see what an Oracle had to say about his future. In the Western Egyptian desert, at a little oasis that would become Siwa, he consulted an Oracle that told him that if he were truly the son of Zeus, he would conquer the world. This was left ambiguous, but he did pretty well for himself. Either way, the ruins of the Temple he built to honor this Oracle burst into view after we left some tree covering. It was a pretty magnificent structure, not to mention over 2500 years old. Paying ten LE gave us free reign to climb all over the ruins and structure of the old temple. I realized that it was probably a little responsible (a little Egyptian) to walk across walls of ancient ruins, as the pieces of wall literally crumbled under my feet.

The ride from the ruins to Fatnas island was about seven kilometers, which was about the most exercise I’ve gotten since I’ve been here. It felt really good though, and the bikes were just cool. Sometimes you don’t appreciate riding a bike or don’t think it would be that fun. In Siwa it is. We road through more palm tree forest, then reached a stretch of road sandwiched by Yellow-stone-esque sulfur salt springs. In the near distance, a giant lake stretched out in front of us. Beyond the lake were rolling dunes of the Sahara. We plunged back into jungle/forest and arrived at a secluded spring. Everyone was delighted to finally shed some clothes and get into the water after hot sun and biking. The water was incredibly refreshing, despite the collection of algae against the wall of the stone wall pool. Water and bubbles were rising up from the bottom of the pool straight out of natural rocks and plants beneath. After a long relaxing dip, we picked up and explored further down a sand path into the trees.

We happened upon a café on the semi-beach of the lake where one guy was working. He abandoned his post and offered to take us out to the lake. We hiked through some sandy brush until we reached a long skinny stream with a sand embankment on the other side. We had all brought cameras and backpacks, and knew we’d have swim across, so we ditched our stuff and dove into the little stream. Over the embankment on the other side, we saw the beach of the lake looking like some serious professionally taken Caribbean post-cards. Our guide led us through the goopy mud of the two foot deep lake and told us that was the depth all the way across the vast expanse of water. The water was so salty we could just lay back and float. The floor of the lake felt like a muddy sponge, and digging a little deeper unearthed rock/salt just beneath the sludginess. The top six inches of the water was refreshingly cool. The bottom foot and a half was being heated from underneath by the earth. The Egyptian who swam out with us said that most of this lake was actually relatively new, and that a village had to be abandoned because the water expanded so quickly. Geology, crazy business. Everything about the atmosphere, the people I was with, the escape from Cairo and floating in paradise made it one of the most incredibly refreshing things I’ve done in Egypt yet. I’m told the waters have healing powers.

We hung out on the “café” on the beach for the next couple of hours. Basically there were a bunch of wicker chairs and like two tables. The café ordered rice, chicken and olives from town for us. The food was great. It was just a perfect relaxing time with beautiful sun and Siwa wrapping us up in its awesomeness. There were ripe dates literally falling off the trees all around us. They were the sweetest, freshest dates I’ve had yet, so we stashed a box (even though it was slightly against the Café’s rules) full of them to take home with us. Another cool Siwi cultural thing was their pride for their town. Several times that weekend, especially at the café, we were told that we were being served “Siwi, not Egyptian” bread, tea or olives. There is a dialect specific to the oasis that we picked up on a little bit. The people had a lot of pride in their town. It was probably because they were essentially a self-sustaining culture that has had very little to do with the rest of the country until recent years.

We biked it back on our ratty rental bikes (I think about three broke down on the way) and took a little nap before heading out to dinner. The town basically has one square with a park and a row of shops and restaurants. We went to the closest restaurant, where literally everything but pizza (i.e. cheese and vegetables and meat melted onto pita) had already sold out for the night? Week? Month? Delicious nonetheless after a long day of everything and nothing.

My friend Joe has been having girlfriend issues. Apparently in Barcelona, Ronaldinho, debatably the best soccer player in the entire world, invited her to come back to his apartment. Just a bit of the wealth of shenanigans. Despite hearing that Siwa is a virtually dry town, Joe had had a great day like everyone, but was determined to go out to a bar that night. He hired a driver to take us to this resort/bar on an island in the salt lake we had swum in earlier that day. On the way, Abdul our at that point driver, told us about Siwa and how beautiful it was. When we arrived, he introduced us to the three of four guys working at the resort, which was beautiful, especially at night with stars out and faint smell of salt and sulfur blanketing the island. We ordered bottles of wine while Abdul drank Pepsi (he loves to drink wine, but won’t drink during Ramadan) and we talked about Siwa, Egypt and the United States. We got into a discussion of how the kids at AUC basically are the same people who are going to move into the elite positions of power in Egyptian society and propagate the system here that is so supportive of corruption and oppression of the vast majority of the people. He explained that until about ten or fifteen years ago, every family in Siwa had an elder (Sheikh) in the family. If there was a dispute, the two family sheikh’s would get together and work out the problem – their word was final. Community wide decisions were made by consensus of all the sheikhs of all the families in the town. When tourism grew in Siwa, government police were placed in Siwa and the political autonomy of the area changed. I asked Abdul, in light of all of these issues, what could be done. Later that night, Abdul pulls out his satellite phone and he and Joe watch Youtube videos. Finally we need to go, so Abdul drives us back. After Siwan oases, tales of Sheikh consensus running the town, Abdul pulling out his phone and showing Youtube videos to the wind whipping across my face in the back of a pickup on the way back, the old and the new seem very mixed, very Egyptian, very indescribable.

Waking up a little out of it, it’s too early but the sun is up and roosters out our window are crowing. I wander up to breakfast and get some coffee and tea and bread and jam. Good start. A bunch of other folks are going to the Mountain of the Dead, where dozens of old Roman tombs an ancient Roman and Egyptian artwork reside. The walk through town and hike up is a bit taxing this early but I’m tough. There are two levels to the mountain. A large base flattens out and is covered in little knolls or mounds, each covering tombs. The rest of the mountain is just rocky crags (by mountain I mean big hill by the way) and it takes another ten minutes to climb. The 360 view from the mountain is spectacular. It’s the first I’ve gotten of Siwa. Palms occupy most of the panorama, but the salt lake is large on one side, while there is pure dune desert stretched out beyond the trees to our west. We’re going out there that afternoon.

After waiting an hour and a half to get some lunch at the hotel, my friends and I walked around town, looking for kufeyas and sandals for the romp in the desert. I’m not that good at bargaining, and when my friend told me “We really have to leave for the trip to the desert,” I just decided to buy the sandals I was looking at. It turns out she was being strategic and trying to get the guy to lower the price. Oh well, I’m not the most strategic buyer but what can you do? To add embarrassment, the sandals were awful.

We climbed into SUVs and hauled out of town into the desert. All the desert we’ve seen in Egypt has been barren rocky flat landscape. I had this vision that everywhere in the desert would be rolling dunes. This is really not the case, and there are specific places around the world where real dune deserts exist. I hadn’t seen any yet, but the one we were headed for, The Great Sand Sea (a stretch of Sahara with enormous dunes taking up 72,000 square kilometers), had enormous dunes that our drivers plowed straight up and down these dunes at insane angles of like 60 degrees or more. It was freaky at first, but when we got used to the ability of the vehicles to seemingly defy gravity, it became like a ridiculous roller coaster ride. We pulled up at the edge of a an enormous dune where our drivers could stop to pray and we took turns rolling down the ridge of the dune. It’s starting to become far to standard to say an experience was incredible, but riding up and down dunes and running around with desert splayed out in every direction around us was again, something difficult to express in words. I suppose the best way to put it is that seeing these parts of the earth that I’d never even imagined before filled me a sense of awe and wonder that seeing different natural phenomena like thousands of miles of rolling Sahara dunes alone could provide.

To continue the mind-blowing quality of our trip, we arrived at a natural freshwater spring the size of a small lake surrounded by green reeds and dunes on all sides. It is still difficult for me to wrap my mind around the oasis concept: the earth just provides a large body of water in one of the driest locations on the planet. The whole Siwa oasis is just this on a larger scale, but the juxtaposition of desert in all directions with a large lake in the landscape was too cool. We swam around for a good while. The water was beautifully clear, cool and refreshing. Someone must have added fish to it long ago, because natural springs that are completely disconnected from any other bodies of water can’t just summon living things from underneath the earth’s crust. All around, the experience was beyond surreal. Our next stop was at a smaller oasis as the sun was beginning to go down. This spring smelled strongly of sulfur and bubbled up water around 100 degrees Fahrenheit. As the sun began going down and the air got chilly, soaking in a natural hot spring in the middle of this unforgiving landscape filled me with awe.

Our drivers asked if we wanted pictures of the sunset, and we reluctantly left the soothing hot water. This drive was the greatest yet. The dunes were more intense and our drivers seem to have become even more adventurous with the vehicles. On one occasion, our truck had to stop and watch for one behind us, as the other vehicle had stalled teetering on the edge of a dune that must have been at least one hundred feet tall. We sat watching it just sit there for a few minutes, then finally start sliding down, pick up speed and bump up and down as it finally hit flatter land and speed towards us. After some of the bigger dunes, our driver realized that the sun was quick disappearing, and starting rocketing through the terrain. He stopped going up and down dunes and took flatter paths around them speeding along. On several occasions the sun went down over the horizon, but we were speeding along east racing the setting sun. We finally pulled up on a tall set of dunes as the sun was a giant red-gold orb descending over the mountains of sand in the distance. It’s amazing how quickly the sun sets, and it took only about a minute from when the bottom of the ball of light touched the horizon until it was completely gone, leaving behind a beautiful array of red and purple creeping over the dunes in the distance.

We arrived in a Bedouin camp as it was getting really dark, and sat around a campfire waiting for dinner. Everyone was trying to figure out how to describe all we’d seen that day. Most people we basically just giving up after a few attempts. I absolutely love sitting around campfires. I also love sitting around campfires in Western Egypt, less than 50 miles from the Libyan border after frolicking in desert springs and rolling in Sahara sand. Dinner was delicious – salad (tomato and cucumber), rice, chicken and vegetables stewed in something very tasty. There was a Spanish couple with their guide who had already been at the camp when we arrived. After dinner, we went back to the campfire to sit out and watch the stars. The dust trail of the Milky way is standard in such secluded areas, and the number of visible stars is a bit of natural beauty that is difficult to rival.

After sitting for a few minutes, the Egyptian guide leading the two Spanish people from Barcelona walked up to us and said, very nonchalantly, “The two of them will get married now. We would like it if you stay and take some pictures, sing some songs and dance.” Everyone was completely dumbstruck. He held up two pieces of paper, telling us they were the official contracts. The man and woman walked out, wearing white. The woman was wearing a knee length white skirt and white tank top. The man was wearing a white galabiyya and red head wrap. They all went into a little tent set up in outside camp and came back a few minutes later, married. All of us in the camp were still trying to digest it. I don’t know about other people, but when I see incredibly pivotal moments in other people’s lives that nearby me, I am struck. Unfortunately our bus was leaving soon, and we didn’t have much time to celebrate with them, but we figured they had planned a secluded wedding, and a longer stay would not be a missed. I struggled through some Spanish after speaking Arabic for so long. Once I got a little traction, however, I was able to communicate most of what we needed to say. We sat and told them congratulations and took some photos and rolled out of camp, again bumping along through the desert in the nighttime.

Grant and a few other kids had decided to wander out into the desert after dark. Fortunately, they were able to find their way back, but not in completely tip-top shape. Grant had been looking for a “zen” experience, so he had gotten completely naked about fifteen minutes outside of our camp. When a girl from our group found him, he quickly tied a scarf around his waist, and they kept walking. They retold this incredibly eerie tale about crossing over the top of a dune, in the nearly pitch dark, and finding themselves fifteen feet away from a completely black, human looking figure. They both stopped dead, saying the figure looked like it might be turning towards them but saying nothing. They slowly back away and dashed back to camp. For a while, we speculated as to what the figure could have been. We concluded that it was a jinn, one of the spirits that the Prophet Muhammad discusses in the Quran and Hadith. Either way, they were extremely creeped out and even those of us who hadn’t been there felt a tinge of anxiety in the car ride through the dark, open desert.

We gathered our stuff up at the hotel upon arrival back in Siwa. After hanging out with Abdul the night before at the island resort, he had asked us to call him when we returned from the desert. We called him and our bus took us to the same place on the way out. Instead of being a small group of four like the night before, we were sixteen. We all sat along a long table having drinks and sharing stories and impressions of the weekend we’d just been through. It was a relaxing end to the weekend to be situated on this island in the middle of a salt spring with the stars tossed haphazardly above in the sky. We eventually loaded on the bus, and everyone slept like rocks on the ride back through the desert to Cairo.

So all of this was composed over the last month and a half. If you're real slick, maybe you can distinguish any changing attitudes in my writing towards life/traveling here. I'm too lazy to go back and reread everything, so kudos to you if you get through it all. I'm heading to Jordan tomorrow for a six day vacation through Amman, the Dead Sea, River Jordan, Mount Nebo, Petra and Wadi Rum. You'll hear about it eventually. Hope you've enjoyed and feel free to get in touch with me about anything. I'd love to hear from people.