I apologize for the lack of blogging in the past week (I received several worried messages and/or emails to the effect of whether or not I had died). I have not, in fact, died, although the fatigue is certainly starting to set in over the past week.
Synapsis.
Last weekend, Asger (intern coordinator from work) and I decided to head out to Saint Catherine Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula. For those of you who don't know, brief run-down on Saint Catherine.
The monastery was built in the 6th Century CE by the Emperor Justinian (of Justinian and Theodora fame) around the site of the Burning Bush and Mount Sinai (indeed, the building's original and formal name reflect these holy sites). To this day, it continues to be a Greek Orthodox monastery (an anomaly in Egypt), and is the only extant, unmodified known Byzantine church in the world. In the 9th Century, the bones of the martyr Catherine (a young woman put to death in several ways, including being broken on the wheel, but, as martyrs often prove quite difficult to kill, eventually beheaded) miraculously transported themselves there, hence the current name. The monastery's other claim to fame is its fantastic library collection (in terms of Christian manuscripts, second only to the Vatican in Rome) which is notoriously well-guarded following the theft of a priceless manuscript in the 19th Century by a German scholar. Today, the monastery has also become an international pilgrimage/tourist (so hard to tell apart) destination (complete with awesome website: http://www.sinaimonastery.com/en/index.php?lid=1 ), servicing primarily Christian pilgrims, with a skew toward the Asian Protestant and Eastern Orthodox.
Back to our pilgrimage. Saint Catherine is rarely reached from Cairo. Most pilgrimage arranged tours are through Sharm al-Sheikh in the Sinai and attached to a larger pilgrimage agenda on a bus. As two random guys in Cairo going there, we had a significantly less-traveled road. Namely, there is one bus that leaves Cairo once a day to go there. It leaves at 11:30 in the morning, which we took on a Friday, and proceeds to drive through two deserts (the Eastern Desert and the Sinai Desert) through the heat of the day without air conditioning to get there. We arrived at 8, unfed, hot, and disoriented. The village of Saint Catherine (about 2 miles from the monastery) is beautiful. It is oddly reminiscent of a Western National Park built in the late 1960s (red stone construction, small motel-ish facilities). Luckily for me and Asger, we encounter an old man as we left the bus in the village, not knowing where to go, who took us to his cousin's hotel-motel-"Bedouin Camp" named Mukhayyam Musa, or Moses' Camp. A weird combination of those three first descriptions, it is surprisingly well-kept and nicely priced, with each of us getting a small, basic room (but it included things like a towel) with a king-sized bed for about $9. Nice. However, the Mukhayyam Musa was not serving food @ 8pm, and our very nice self-appointed guide felt terrible about this, so he offered to take us back to his home for a dinner, which, around 9:30 we ate on his balcony overlooking the red rock hills with the village below (his house was literally the highest building in the town). It was beautiful. The director of Saint Catherine Village Agricultural Projects (even after talking with this man for 3 hours, I am unclear what agriculture he is overlooking) will definitely be receiving a thank you letter from myself.
However, by the time we left at 10:30, we could just get back to the Mukhayyam Musa in time to sleep (albeit some of the best sleep I've gotten in Egypt as the Sinai gets cold at night) for one hour until we needed to wake up to start the walk to the Monastery. A word of explanation: the tradition of visiting the monastery is to climb Mount Sinai at night for the sunrise, then descend in the early morning in order to visit the monastery, which is only open from 9 am - noon. So we began our pilgrimage.
the walk
Once at the "base camp," for lack of a better word, we started the climb up by flashlight. Mount Sinai is not an easy climb, let alone in the dark. I had also failed to realize the my Danish traveling companion had never been higher than things in Denmark (so, like, a table?) before, meaning that he began to have some horrible altitude sickness by the time we were nearing the summit at 3:30 am. Near the top, there is an area with Bedouin guys selling coffee and tea and renting blankets. Blankets? you might ask. Certainly. At the top it was windy and freezing and 3:30 in the morning. Probably about 35 degrees Fahrenheit. We needed three blankets, then started our camp out at the top. Luckily, it was empty at this point and beautiful. So far from, well, most things, the top of the mountain gets possibly the best view of the stars I have ever seen, including the full ribbon of the Milky Way. Absolutely beautiful and we were the only people up there for about one and a half hours. Starting around 5 am, the pilgrims (Russian, Korean) and tourists (British, German, Japanese) started to come in droves. Droves.
nearing sunrise (circa 5 am)
pilgrims/tourists
pilgrims/tourists
sunrise on mount sinai
not the happiest asger has ever looked due to being underslept, altitude sick, and muhammad, the bedouin i accidentally befriended by becoming his arabic-russian translator with a woman at the top. he gave me an american penny to remember him by (?); i gave him a dc metro card.
pilgrims/tourists
Here's the thing about Mount Sinai though; it might be freezing at night, but literally the second the sun was up, you could feel the heat start. Thus began the mad dash off the mountain as temperatures climbed up to 100 (around 6:15 am).
get off the mountain
Off the mountain (around 7:30), we stopped in the monastery guesthouse until the monastery opened, drinking nescafé and not eating (as they wouldn't sell us food since there was barely enough for the people staying there). The monastery guesthouse, as it turns out, is infested with blue chairs, cats.
guesthouse and its two infestations
After exhausting (literally), that option, we entered the monastery.
monastery walls
Dodging between the Russian tours, we saw the Burning Bush (cutting, made in the 9th Century, the actual site of the Bush being inside the chapel).
burning bush cutting
At this sleep-deprived point in my being, I really couldn't get over how, next to the Burning Bush, there is a fire extinguisher (in case it happens again?). I think it is actually the best thing I have ever seen.
use only in case of emergency, miracle
We toured the interior of the chapel, which is an absolutely beautiful building with some of the most famous icons in the world inside that, for better or for worse, one cannot take picture of, but here is the area near the door to the church. The monastery open to tourists/pilgrims is remarkably small, with very narrow passages. I am glad I managed to take a few photos without people.
outside the church
church entrance, bell tower
the monastery belltower and its minaret (built in the 9th century in the fatimid style for local bedouin muslims as a sign of good faith. it was never used though as its qibla does not actually face mecca. nice gesture though, and is still mentioned by the bedouin).
Once we exited the monastery (around 11), we encounter our next task for the day: how to get back to Cairo. There is one bus a day from Saint Catherine village to Cairo. It is, unfortunately, at 6 in the morning. So to take that, we'd have to wait until Sunday morning, thus missing a day of work. Unacceptable. So began the negotiations.
For the first time since I've been in Egypt, my Arabic was ridiculously useful. Nice thing about speaking Jordanian/Palestinian is that the Bedouin in Sinai (with a few, minor adjustments) can understand me perfectly. Go symbolic capital. Anyhow, with this oddly acquired skill, I set about talking to all of the Bedouin guys I could find asking if any could recommend a way home. Taxi available... for $500. No. Taxi available to Suez for only $100 each (then, presumably, find something to Cairo). No. Eventually, realizing that as a group of two our bargaining power is, well, useless, I just ask them that if they see anyone else going to Cairo, let us know. Lo and behold, ten minutes later, there are three American guys who had been in Israel looking to go to Cairo. After consulting with them for a minute (Me: "Going to Cairo?" Them: "Yes." Me: "I can negotiate for you as long as you're kind of willing to follow me, a complete stranger into wherever that takes us and count of me to be able to get you out of it." Them: "Umm... Yes?"), fanagle a cab ride for $6 a person to go to the nearest police checkpoint on the highway in the desert (what with Sinai's recent checkered past of changing borders, it is currently closely monitored to say the least). Once at the checkpoint (in about 120 degree heat), we are walking up toward the guard building when a white car zooms by with about ten people more than it can contain inside. They get out, yelling, open the passengers' side door, help a man out who clearly has a broken left leg and is bleeding at the hip. From garbled phrases, I can hear that there was a car accident, he was in the car, the other guy, not so lucky (car accidents are common in the Sinai where the equation of reckless driving + heat + old cars often results in serious accidents). As we continue to approach, it becomes clear that the other guy is, in fact, in the back seat of the white car. I'm starting to question the choices I've made in life with the amount of corpses I've accidentally seen. That said, I get to the nearest officer, ask if I can help, and am basically informed that they're waiting for an ambulance. In the meantime, we wait until a bus comes by, which we hitch a ride with for about $10 to get to the farthest northern suburb of Cairo six hours later.
Not the most restful weekend, and plenty of unforeseen events, but all in all, I am content I went to Saint Catherine. I actually think it'd be a really interesting place to do fieldwork... Fulbright perhaps.
