A Long Egyptian Dream

I am accumulating scars like no other. Somewhere between being eaten alive by Red Sea coral and scaling up 20-foot Nabataea rock faces, I have decided it is utterly futile to try to keep them at bay. I have just arrived to Dana Nature Reserve, in Southern Central Jordan, near the Israeli border, after an incredibly overwhelming past week that has spanned the likes of the Arava Desert in Israel, the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, and Aqaba, Petra, and Wadi rum in Southern Jordan. I have currently stopped for a breather, and am sitting atop the Dana Tower Hotel, on plush tapestry cushions, overlooking a valley (Wadi Dana) a precipitous three thousand feet below me. There's a sign to my right that tries to get at the vibe of this place, which is like a Middle Eastern version of the Weasley house (sorry non Harry Potter fans), "Welcome tower Hotel the home and paradise of back packers. you enter as guest, you leave as friend".

The last week on the Kibbutz was bittersweet. I had started to become attached to the whole scene, waking up for communal breakfast at the Chadar Ohel, chatting there with sleepy volunteers, perky Kibbutz families, and professors from the institute. Doing work in the morning, coming back for the yogurt, humus, tchina, fresh vegetable lunch, relaxing in the midday heat until an afternoon class, and socializing and chilling the rest of the evening. In the last week, I really started to talk more with the remaining interns and students from the spring semester, a lively, fascinating crew. There was my 30-year-old water resources professor, Osama, a Palestinian living in Jordan and doing his masters on regional water use, who introduced me to all sorts of incredible Arabic music, brought a huge nargila (hookah) to our overnight camping trip in typical Middle Eastern fashion, was as likely to break out into Shania Twain songs as Jewish Shabbat prayers or beautiful hymns about yearning for the Palestinian motherland, taught me a Jordanian version of sesh besh (backgammon), and was always willing to answer my myriad question about the conflict. And then Moishe, a program associate at the Arava, who drove us to and from us endless destinations, with a big hearty laugh and excellent music taste (in terms of familiars, the likes of Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, and Santana) and on coming back from one trip detoured to stop at a sweet record shop where I could buy awesome Israeli music for as cheap as six bucks (30 shekels) a CD. My academic director, who joined our camping trip, to smoke some hubbly bubbly, and was an excellent sport when I cleaned him out at Texas Hold Em. Etan, an incredibly friendly ex-soldier, who leads solo trips into the desert wilderness, and spent an evening talking to me about the stars. I had also become really close to several girls on my program, in particular a Marin, a New York Jewish girl who was absolutely hysterical company. The last several days were particularly tough, a combination of very little sleep (I averaged about four hours) as we tried to cram in as much fun time together as possible, and heavy-duty field work in the blazing heat (gardening, weeding, mud building, etc.) I must say, manual labor in the extreme desert is not for the weak of heart. Several times, my five sleep-deprived fellow students and I, thought we were certainly tottering on the brink of senseless, delirious-laughter insanity. After a particularly raucous bout of giggles, as the girls and I were picking Neem leaves in the sustainable orchard, our supervisor asked if I was alright and sent me to the shade for ten minutes to drink water.

After the program ended abruptly on the morning of Friday, July 24th, I had had all sorts of grand delusions that with only a light backpack I would go traveling solo into the great unknown of the Arab world. Unfortunately, I kept meeting dynamic fellow travelers who insisted on accompanying me. The first of such was a friend from the Kibbutz, an Israeli Dutch (yes, I too did not know they came in that combination) banker-cum-wanderer who proposed a weekend in Sinai. Not in my schedule per se, but hey, my grandmother is half-Egyptian, so I figured why not, I always could chalk it off as some janky re-connecting with my long-lost roots. We were an interesting travel pair, as he ended up being as spacey as I am, though with better skills (a.k.a. fluent in more than just one language...the banes of American education). Getting to Egypt Friday morning was a ceaseless comedy of errors, from which I fortunately learned early on, that the best way to travel through the Middle East is to abandon all hope that anything will get done. We arrived at the Israel, Sinai border and passed through the Israel ports quite quickly, after paying a hefty exit tax, and coming to the drastically erroneous conclusion that the whole process would be relatively painless. After walking into three entrances, instead of exits, we were firmly guided to the actual border patrol line, in a hot air-con lacking, packed, crowded room in the stifling midday heat. We waited in a long, long line for what seemed like an endless time, until we finally reached the stamping window, only to be asked for our immigration cards and discover that we had not filled them out. Back, back to the back of the line we were told in a screaming English/Arabic hybrid with many strong accompanying gestures. We had the good luck of queueing behind an enormous group of travelers from India, and it was another thirty minutes before we were back at the ticket window, overly eager to hand our passports to the customs officer, only to have him stand up abruptly and say he'd be back in five (you guessed it, it was more like 45 minutes). Then, past several more passport checks, and straight into an influx of taxi drivers, all insisting simultaneously and loudly that we get in their cab. We consented to one guy, who said he would take us for 10$ a head, a huge rip off but we were in no mood to argue. It ends up by 'take us' the man really meant, have us sit in the overheated taxi for an hour and a half as he futilely waited for other tourists to fill up his van and make his trip worthwhile. Only when, entirely fed up, did we honestly threaten to walk the 40 kilometers rather than wait another minute in the parching heat, did the driver acquiesce to leaving, though charging us another 5$ a person for the inconvenience.

We were enjoying pulling away from the border, watching camels just chilling on the roadside, when our car was stopped to collect a"tourist tax:. It sounded sketch, and the price was steep (100 lira, 20$ per). Moment of semi-panic as this unexpected tax cleaned us both fully out, but the driver assured us he would stop at a cash machine before our final destination. The drive down the coast was absolutely stunning. After 10 km or so of some Marriot-type development, we were zooming down a desolate desert highway that ran parallel to the red sea, with giant, crumbling granite mountains to our right, and the Jordan and Saudi Arabian coast to the East. The whole land was desolate...sand, stones, sun, and the occasional Bedouin man or woman, in full-length black robes, walking a lonesome camel, laden with colorful scarves, down the empty road. There were some, far and few between, outcrops of houses and building along the Sinai coast (the real estate was too prime to be completely undeveloped), but they were all small-scale, made of local materials like sand bricks, stones, with rounded arches, open doorways, circling outdoor stair cases, white washed adobe walls, niches, colonnettes, domes, towers, and colored stones that accentuated, not blighted, the landscape. We passed by tall mountains, hidden alcoves, single huts nested in mountain crevices, and Bedouin encampments (Haiyma) made of tattered cloth and tarp, blowing in the wind.

We pulled into our destination, a semi circular beach, dappled with small straw-roofed huts and with its namesake Devil’s Head rock. I jumped out of the car, immediately taking off my shoes to inquire about an ATM, the negation of which the simplicity of the place belied. I hopped back in the van, with no alternative than to travel an additional 20 km south to Nuweiba (never saw the shoes again). It was a nearly abandoned port town with several stops where we got money and bought a drink. It must have been quite the site, I the only woman in view, the two of us the only tourists in several weeks, and all the men chilling, watching TV., smoking Nargila, and joking in a relaxed, lackadaisical fashion. We were easily persuaded by a very cute young man that Yoni was in dire need of a haircut, and I spent the next two hours chatting with the owner of the shop in (admittedly terrible) Fosha (classical Arabic) about politics, and Obama’s speech at Cairo. Many, many hours after our intended arrival time, we rolled up to our destination.

The pace at which the rest of Egypt had been moving was warped speed compared to the rhythm at the Devil’s Head. The first night, it took over four hours for us to get to our room, probably near on two to get our meal, but only several seconds before we realized that all pretenses of efficiency were completely disregarded and that that was totally chill. There were circular shaded areas, with low lying pillows and lower tables, scattered around; hammocks, dream catchers, and paintings swaying in the sea breeze. Groups of friends sat around straight chilling, wondering amidst a languorous stupor whether it was worth walking 10 m to the sea to cool off. You’d catch bits of conversations in Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, French, occasional bouts of laughter, and snippets of music (whether it was the melodious singing of the Bedouin working in the adobe kitchen, someone mindlessly tapping to an unheard beat, or the lazy strum of a guitar). I couldn’t even really tell you what it was we did for the two full days we were there. We talked to some people (including awesome Bedouin waiters who’d come by to chat, bring tea, or share a smoke), went swimming in the Red Sea once, played a couple games of sesh besh…but mostly it was just watching people watching you, and watching the shifting landscapes: the dancing sky dense with twinkling stars, the red sand red sea and red mountains of red hot midday, or the pastel-hued waters and lavender, baby blue, and pink hills at sunset. Everyone seemed to have completely lost track of time, and no one missed it in the least. Going back to the border two days later felt like waking up from a very long intoxicating dream.