Receiving the Law

With a houseguest coming to Cairo and taking my room (No Justice! Of course the twenty-two year old gets kicked out to make room for the retired Iraqi ambassador), I headed off to Sinai to breath clean air and see some Byzantine icons for the week.

Due to my thirst for ascetic life (well, mostly just my frugality), I rented a tent for $2.50 a night and slept in an olive grove near St. Katherine's monastery. Well, it turns out that despite beautiful weather during the day, Sinai gets wildly cold at night. Like, three pairs of socks and shivering cold. And no broomball to make up for the freezing weather!

I endured and climbed Mount Sinai for the last four days. Living in the smog and noise of Cairo, as much as I love the city, makes a retreat into the mountains incredible. I don't think I've seen a sky as blue as at St. Kate's. At night, the stars just filled the sky with no street lights or houses for miles.

Most people (Russian tour groups, mostly) climb the mountain before dawn to see the sunrise. However, I'm not a big fan of dawn. If I'm awake at that time, it's usually an indication of something wrong in my life. So each day, I climbed in the morning or early afternoon with the sun shining, alone save a trickle of Germans and Frenchmen at the top.

My final ascent yesterday was the only problematic one. Aware of their power, the underpaid police who guard the gate at times now require all hikers to hire a guide, who no doubt directs half of the $20 back to the cops who keep them employed.

Passing for Arab and entering with a new friend, an Arab servant and cook to the Greek monks, saved me from hiring a guide for three days. However, yesterday the police were quite persistent.

"Oh, I'm only going to the monastery, not the mountain. No need for a guide," I lied.

"The monastery is closed today," the cop answered.

"Ummm...I'm an architecture student and I want to see the towers," I said, being not totally untruthful.

"Okay, mashi. But if you try to go to the mountains, the police will detain you."

Passing the test of intellect, I now advanced to the tests of endurance and strength. Should I bum rush the next cop, confident that he's a smoker in his mid-40s as most of Egypt's finest are? No, he's friends with the Bedouin camel guides, who WILL catch me. I chose Plan B, which involved sneaking through the garden, shushing Bedouin children and scrambling over boulders to reach the Steps of Repentence, the more vertical and penitent of the routes to the top.

Out of breath and sweating through my t-shirt, I hid behind a boulder. My heart beating wildly, I took a couple puffs of my inhaler (Thanks Mom) before continuing.

This was the hardest ascent of my time at St. Katherine's. The Steps of Repentence are aptly named. (Maybe I was repenting for fibbing to the guards and depriving the guides of their livelihood?) Though you reach the summit much quicker, in 2ish hours instead of 4ish by the conventional trail, your thighs PAY for it. Furreals.

When I got to the spring of Elijah, about 20 minutes before the summit, I stopped to rest and some Bedouins stopped to chat with me.

A small boy said in English, "You look bad."

Gasping for air, I responded, "Kid, you don't know the half of it."

After that ridiculous exchange, I talked to his uncle or cousin for a while. Apparently, the Bedouins of this region of Sinai are Jebeliyya or Gebeliyya, depending on what accent you prefer. It means "mountainous" or "of the mountain." I have to say, there is something just intensely badass about saying, "I am of the mountain."

But I digress. Unlike other Bedouins I've met, who see themselves as the pure Arabs, originally from the Arabian peninsula and source of the true Arabic language and culture, despite being Muslim, the Jebeliyya Bedouins claim descent from the Byzantine army unit the Emperor Justinian sent to protect St. Katherine's in the 500s AD.

I'm kind of a nerd for history and memory, so hearing these folk tradition was quite special. This connection to the land and the past is quite strong. Sometimes it manifests itself violently; Bedouins have carried out many of Egypt's recent terrorist acts due to their resentment toward the government in Cairo. But hanging out with the guys on the mountain, I can't think of anyone else I've ever met who lives with the land, rather than simply on it.

After sitting at the summit for a few hours and watching the sun set, I climbed down. My feet blistered from lots of hiking and after another night of shivering sleep, I'd had my fill of asceticism (and a diet of bread and clementines), so I took a bus the next morning to Dahab, the Hawai'i of the Middle East, where I now sit, sipping a beer looking out toward the mountains of Saudi Arabia, where said beverage is probably gheer qanoon, or illegal.

Location:South Sinai, Egypt