Enough of an adventure, in fact, to overcome my longstanding aversion to camels, first developed in the Mauritanian Sahara where their Chewbacca howls and the Satanic buzzing of the pestilence of flies that follow in their stinking, growling, flatulent woke me, without fail, at dawn.

One of my few complete Arabic sentences, in fact, is “No thank you. I do not want a camel.”

The boy, who learned to ride Bedouin style in Petra, has no such aversion to conquer… Particularly not with two other kids to show off to.

Ras Abou Galoum is a beautiful spot, there’s no denying it.

But what are three modern kids to do on a deserted beach for two whole days with no computers?

Z’s used to time offline, but that tends to be when we’re actively doing stuff (riding horses, climbing mountains, trekking…)

Would the digital detox kill all three of them?

Well, the digital detox didn’t quite go as planned, it has to be said.

Our dive guide had not two but FOUR mobile phones, one an iPhone complete with episodes of Achmed the Dead Terrorist which he, as an Egyptian, finds a) hilarious and b) excellent training material in English idiom.

And L had somehow managed to smuggle a Nintendo DS aboard his camel.

Still, they snorkelled over an absolutely lovely coral lagoon, as bright and fresh and colourful as I remember the Blue Hole being ten years ago, and, but for a stonefish lurking at 5 metres, quite ridiculously safe.

In Ras Abou Galoum, there are blue triggerfish that don’t attack, even when they’re nesting. Even the clownfish, usually quite hilariously assertive over their anemone nests, don’t feint at you.

And the purple jellyfish that bloom all over the national park at this time of year? Stingless.

Diving, I caught one in the water. It felt, well, rubbery. Surprisingly solid. And not in the least bit slimy, more like a pencil eraser than anything aquatic.

The eels in the eel garden were smooth and firm, and a long, green sea cucumber felt like fun fur.

Late in the afternoon the Bedouin who provides tea, food and mats and carpets set up a campfire, and the kids sprang into life, fetching flammables and tending the fire.

The reason for a fire in temperatures way over 40?

To keep the tea warm and fend off the flies.

Or, of course, if you’re a child, to cook jellyfish on, using a tin can you found on the shore.

Up and down the beach the three of them prowled, collecting jellyfish after jellyfish, and transporting them in shells to their fiery doom.

Chuck in a parrot fish beak and some seaweed. Roll in sand. Place on a board that is destined to burn.

And you have a scent as if someone burned the ocean. Amazing.

Sitting in the twilight, with the mountains of Saudi Arabia glowing pink across the Red Sea, I thought, “I like this life of ours.”

And lying under the moonlit, desert sky with only a gellabiya between us and the shooting stars above, falling quietly asleep in utter safety, I realised that even modern children, like these three, can make their own entertainment out of absolutely nothing.

Just like we used to, back in the day before computers ruled our world.

The post Jellyfish Soup appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

The time change between London and Egypt is two hours. The flight time is approximately five hours.

Z is firmly nocturnal, and likes nothing better than to spend his unaccompanied minor flying time appreciating fawning hosties while gaming until his battery dies and bitching mentally about which cheapskate parent put him on a plane WITHOUT GAMES IN THE BACKS OF THE SEATS AND TOUCHSCREEN ONES AT THAT…

So, leave London 10.30pm, arrive Sinai 5.45am.

Doesn’t get much better than that, does it?

He’s TOTALLY going to sleep on that flight, NOT.

As I thought I’d made perfectly clear on email.

Conducting a cold case review of said inter-parental email exchange, however, I’m not entirely sure that I did.

I’d clearly used up all my passive-aggressive reserves in a rather whiny sequence along the lines of “What do you MEAN? I PAY for him to come to London from Beirut? Oh, alright then…”

Cultural studies majors, please note.

The Anglo-Australian exchange where I thought I’d made it CRYSTAL clear that this flight was a REALLY bad idea reads like this:

“Cool bananas. I’ll book that on the weekend with BMI. It looks like an early arrival (5.45am).  Will that be okay?”

“I can cope with an early arrival, and give Z a couple of days to recover from the dislocation (he will barely sleep on a night flight — you know what he’s like about staying up late, will be watching movies till 3am), so, yes, go ahead and book it.”

Can you guess which half of this exchange is British, and which half Australian?

Or, for that matter, which half is male and which is female?

a) I thought I’d said “No” and I actually said, in so many words, “Yes”. And, further, not just, “Yes,” but, “Yes, go ahead and book it.”

b) Jesus! How passive-aggressive is that?!

To be honest, it wasn’t technically the best day to be flying into Egypt, either. What with the elections and all (for an overview on some of this, start here), things felt, even here in the whirl of kittens and desert and shisha pipes and diving and palm trees and rooftops that is Dahab, well, tense.

The Egyptian presidential elections had resulted in a runoff that had me scratching my head and miming spoiling a ballot paper whenever anyone asked me which way I’d vote if I was Egyptian.

It was Ahmed Shafiq, former general, army strongman, and Mubarak’s choice of prime minister, versus Mohamed Morsi, the so-far-not-caught-being-corrupted official candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Ladies, liberals, revolutionaries! Take your pick! Islamist? Or military-backed old regime strongman?

If it wasn’t for the fact that many Egyptians have to travel nine hours or so there and back to vote, I think the liberal campaign to spoil the ballot paper could really have taken off.

To add further to the tension of this dramatic denouement of the ongoing saga of what I can only call the Arab Spring while simultaneously making wind-up motions and two-finger quote marks (and, yes, I can do both those things, at the same time, and no, I do not have any spare limbs), Tahrir Square was already swelling with people.

Now, while Dahab is a long way from Cairo and folk here have the world invested in tourism, nobody, whether anti-Islamist or Islamist (I have not met a lot of folk who are pro-Shafiq qua Shafiq) was looking forward to the bloodbath that would inevitably ensue if the army announced the army (sorry! Shafiq!) had won.

Oh, yeah, and the army conducted a silent coup last week and dissolved parliament.

So… Tense. Ia a nutshell. Penalty time at a football match tense.

A football match where hundreds, if not thousands, will die if the result goes the wrong way.

More Hunger Games than football match, in fact.

As M, my driver (yes, after driving in Lebanon, I can cope with anything, but the only cheap car hire here requires committing to weeks, plus I’m no more a morning person than is my son) for the 3-O-CLOCK-IN-THE-FUCKING-MORNING start for the airport put it, “Shafiq? Morsi? I don’t care!”

He’s Bedouin. They DON’T care.

The Bedouin have been fighting Egyptian power for approximately 5000 years and many of them quite liked the Israelis who occupied this region during the 80s.

The Israelis, y’see, having kicked off the yoke of the mighty Ramses II a few millennia ago, had the basic sense to leave the Bedouin, who were fighting Ramses at around the same time and haven’t changed THAT much, to get on with their opium farms, smuggling, arms dealing, feuding and, ahem, traditional pastoral lifestyle rather than stealing their bloody land and making them kidnap tourists to swap for drug dealers as is currently the case.

So, on one level, I guess, 5.45am (4.45am, in fact, thanks to either preternatural flying by EgyptAir or a basic time change cockup on the part of BMI, and I’m reckoning EgyptAir’s planes don’t have go-faster stripes) was not a bad time to get in. Given that no one was going to be rioting or shooting people then.

Which didn’t make it feel any better when I stumbled, baggy-eyed and haggard, to the coffee-shop on the corner of my street at 3am and rang M, who was, obviously, asleep.

Because who but me would stay up till 3am precisely because they knew the next day started then?

Oh, yeah, my son.

And the lugubrious chap was in the coffee shop.

At 3am.

What are my chances?!

A rush of maternal warmth floods over me – and no, I am not making this up – as I see my son striding through the airport in his smart white shirt, his new dark jeans, and the sandals he will lose the NEXT FUCKING DAY on the beach (and only when one has gone through eighteen – count ’em — shoe shops in Lebanon looking for size 37 boys sandals can one fully appreciate the impact of this on both parent and child).

He looks, in my extremely biased opinion, quite unbelievably handsome.

And is accompanied by two firmly male hosts.

Poor Z, I think, as I shed the two coffee-shop workers who have deigned to join my table and hit on me for the last 40 minutes while M does his thing in the airport mosque (“You like Egyptian men?” “Yes, I have many Egyptian friends.” “You are married?” “Not right now, but I am very serious with someone. I was married before…” “What is his name?” “Ummm….”)

Poor, poor Z. An all-male flight crew for the unaccompanied tween male minor.

Whodathunkit?

“HELLO, gorgeous!” I say, sweeping him up in an embrace which is all too easy given he still only weighs about 30 kilos but still… well…

“Stop it, Mum!” he says. “You’re embarrassing me.”

“Oh,” I say. Of course I am. Like, d’oh. The boy’s not nine any more (incidentally, this website will be moving soon). “Was Paris fun?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Futuroscope was good.”

“How about the Louvre?” I say, deciding not even to get into the question of whether said virtual reality theme park is in Paris, which it isn’t.

“Meh,” he says.

“What?” I say. “Even the Mona Lisa?!”

“Yeah,” he says, articulating the almost universal response to Da Vinci’s masterwork in its heroic frame. “I thought it was a bit small. Nice. Good to see it. But a bit small.”

“How was your flight?”

“They didn’t have games in the seats,” he says. “BMI is a cheapskate airline AND this is a codeshare. It’s not even BMI in the first place. Now Emirates…”

I curse the family member who ever put him on a decent airline (not me) and cut him off. “You should see our new house in Dahab!” I say. “It’s totally cool!”

“Have they had the election result yet?” he says.

“Not till 3pm,” I say. “It’s a bit tense, to be honest, but we’ll be safely in the house before anything goes mental and watching it on telly like the rest of the world. We have cable!”

“Oh,” he says. “Well, nice to see you. I missed you. Sort of.”

I look at the clock. It’s barely past 5am.

There’s an infinity of hours before bedtime, and only Iranian cable to fill them. And, hilarious though both Iran Hot Fun and God TV (broadcasting out of Kansas) are, that’s looking like a long, long day.

The post Is This The World’s Most Antisocial Flight? appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

Get a load of it!

In its stylish, zinc clad elegance, casually laid on a Bedouin camel hair carpet at our camp in the desert, it looked like something from a Manhattan loft apartment circa 1992.

But…

Can you guess what it’s made from?

No?

How about now?

Still no?

How about now?

Yes, those crazy Bedouin have indeed been uprooting road signs, hammering them out and turning them into tables for guests.

And, even after our car crash this week, I still find this more funny than not.

You see, for all the danger and frustration, I do like Egypt very much.

The post The Friday Photo: Bedouin Ingenuity appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

How Safe Is Egypt?

As we approach the end of our time in Egypt, I’m going to address the hoary question of “How safe is Egypt after the revolution?”

I have seen a lot of blog posts on this topic, which seem to fall into two categories. “Raging revolutionaries and dangerous military junta – avoid!” and “What’s all the fuss about?! It’s safe as houses here!”

Neither of these are, IMHO, correct.

The aspect of last year’s revolution the Western media focused on was freedom and celebrations in Tahrir Square. But talking to ordinary Egyptians, one gets a different picture.

Many prisons were emptied after the revolution, and the police disappeared from the streets. The resultant wave of looting, rape and robbery has died down a little, but there are still more criminals and fewer police on the streets. Kidnappings, bank robberies, carjacking and motorbike robberies are rising, as, it appears, are serious sexual assaults.

Further, the revolution has wreaked havoc on an already weak economy and tourist numbers are down, which means people are more desperate. So the day to day hassle experienced by the typical tourist in Egypt is greater, as there are fewer tourists and more people struggling to make more money off them, often by illegitimate means.

Before the revolution, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood was banned. It is now the dominant political force. A number of Egyptian women (and men) have told me that the rise in militant Islam has made life even more difficult for women than before and that women feel less safe on the streets.

On a macro level, political protests remain ongoing in most cities, typically after Friday prayers.

There is under a month to go to Egypt’s presidential elections, with two months to go before the President is announced, and a high profile trial due to start in May. All of these things are likely to produce problems on the streets.

Both sides in the presidential runoff are currently claiming fraud. Although, as the junta recently abolished Parliament in what looks like a judicial coup, the results are most likely moot.

Currently, largescale protests are ongoing in the major cities against military rule. There is no hostility to tourists but an ever-present risk of violence and the political situation is volatile, and Egypt is less safe than it was.

The breakdown of control in the aftermath of the dictatorship has also unleashed simmering tribal issues, some of which impact significantly on tourists.

In the interior of Sinai tourist kidnappings are not unusual, while the Western Desert, Cairo and Port Said also have their challenges.

I’ll explain this in a bit more detail…

Sexual Harassment and Sex Crime – Women’s Safety

Egypt was generally acknowledged as one of the sexual harassment capitals of the world, and thanks to weak policing and (arguably) rising Islamism, this is getting worse, not better, since the Revolution.

Mona Eltahawy has written eloquently on Egyptian misogyny, and one conservative estimate suggests at least 200,000 Egyptian women were raped every year even before the revolution. Since the revolution, numbers appear to have risen.

Even dressed conservatively – that is to say, covered to neck, wrists and ankles with a scarf around my neck and shoulders – and travelling with my young son, I have been grabbed, groped, masturbated at, verbally abused so loudly and so constantly that both I and my son know the Arabic for “shit” and “whore”, propositioned, followed and endlessly and offensively complimented on my beauty.

This is enervating, to put it mildly.

Now, most rapists target local women, not tourists, and most sexual harassment is petty, rather than violent.

Still, the British FCO reports that rapes of British citizens are on the rise: they dealt with 26 cases of rape and serious sexual assault last year and, although tourist numbers are a fraction of what they were, reported incidents are rising. The US State Department is also dealing with more reports of sexual assault since the revolution.

Women will experience less harassment when travelling with an adult male, but this is by no means a panacea. Solo women should not expect much sympathy from police.

Sexual Harassment and Sex Crime – Men’s Safety

Amusingly, one Egyptian Arabic translation programme responds to the input “Do you know a gay-friendly venue?” with the advice “You must never say this.” It is correct.

One especially charming aspect of Egyptian underclass male sexuality is that, while it is acceptable to violently assault men who identify or present as gay, and gay men have been sentenced to hard labour, it is also fine to engage in sexual activity with the same sex – PROVIDED you are a top.

There is a flourishing but deeply undercover gay scene in Cairo, and on the streets attractive male solo travellers can expect invitations to the “hammam” (bathroom).

All the same homophobia is rampant, and Egyptian police have used Gaydar to entrap men into activities for which they can serve hard labour.

It’s worth pointing out that straight men who choose to defend their female partner’s honour cannot expect observers to support them.

How Safe is Egypt? Crime

Most crime directed against tourists in Egypt has always been petty: pickpocketing, change money scams, extortion of various forms. But since the revolution violent crime is on the rise.

Motorbike robbery is on the increase — one woman in Luxor was seriously injured after being dragged at speed behind a bike and then released — as is armed crime, including carjackings.

Convoys are necessary on some roads at night, particularly in Sinai, and if you are self-driving, you should stay with your convoy.

There have been multiple kidnappings of foreigners in the Sinai for political reasons, while kidnapping of Egyptian children for money is on the rise. Recent tourist kidnappings in the Sinai have been focused on releasing Bedouin from jail.

Kidnappings and Other Issues in the Sinai

Antipathies in the Middle East go back many, many thousands of years, and that between the Bedouin people of the desert and the Egyptian authorities has been ongoing since at least the time of the pharaohs.

Due to police weakness after the Revolution, there is turmoil in parts of the sparsely-inhabited Sinai peninsula, where many Bedouin are angry that Egyptians are benefiting from tourism, while they remain dirt poor.

The British FCO advises against all travel to Sinai north of the Suez-Taba road, where there is an ongoing conflict with Bedouin involving oil pipelines, drugs and smuggling to the Palestinian territories, and policemen are routinely kidnapped.

In tourist Sinai, particularly on the Saint Catherine’s Road, there have been a number of kidnappings of Westerners, even when riding with police escort (there were two in the last week we were there).

All foreigners were handed back quickly and unharmed. But, as with the armed Bedouin who have taken over resorts, blocked roads and extracted informal taxes from passing cars, this should not be taken lightly.

A convoy system is on place in most roads in the Sinai peninsula at night. Public buses with police escorts are generally safer than microbuses.

That said, life in the all-inclusive hotels of Sharm-el-Sheikh and the backpacker haven of Dahab continues, much of the time, as normal, though even the most obtuse traveller would be hard-pressed to miss the manned, mounted machine guns at the checkpoints.

Football Issues in Port Said

The industrial port town of Port Said is not on many people’s bucket lists. It was the site of epic riots last year after 70-plus football fans were killed at a match.

One set of fans, known as Ultras, were a driving force in the Revolution.

How so? Well, as one Egyptian explained to me, “They are used to fighting the police, because they do it all the time at football matches. So in Tahrir, when people like me couldn’t fight, they fought for us.”

The trial of those considered responsible for the deaths restarts on 5 May in Cairo, where many hardcore fans have gone.is underway, and Ultras have been active in the protests against the verdict in the corruption trial of Mubarak and his sons and will likely be active in other protests.

There are still ongoing protests in Port Said, and if the fans don’t like the result of the trial, these are highly likely to spill over into fullscale riots.

Western Desert

Thanks to the security vacuum, there is even more intertribal feuding in the Western Desert than usual. So expeditions going a significant distance into the remote desert now require fullscale army and police escorts. The required permits are harder to obtain than they were pre-revolution.

How Safe Is Cairo?

There are ongoing protests after Friday prayers in most major cities, particularly in Cairo, and notably in Tahrir Square against the military junta, which carry with them a high risk of violence, although directed at fellow Egyptians rather than tourists. Most of these are small and pass without incident, and a number of potentially inflammatory ones, notably the Land Day marches, have been cancelled for public safety.

Results should be announced on 21 June, which is likely to be a flashpoint for protests.

Over ten people were killed and scores injured during violent protests in Abbasiya, Cairo, in May, and tensions are running high in the cities at the moment for two reasons.

In the unlikely event that Shafiq wins, Islamists and liberals will be united in rage and outrage, and large scale, violent protests are highly likely. The result should be announced on 21 June.

Foreigners waving cameras around without the support of a press card and an international media organisation have been beaten and arrested on Tahrir Square, and women in crowds of protesters should expect to be groped.

The British FCO advice page, Al-Ahram, and all Cairo hotels provide guidance on where to avoid on Fridays and other days when trouble is due: I would, personally, not plan travel to Cairo until the situation is clarified.

Egypt is a wonderful, endlessly fascinating country in many ways, and can be very rewarding to travel in. Most people who follow basic safety precautions when travelling Egypt and stay well away from protests will encounter nothing more unpleasant than aggressive touts, the odd smalltime scam and, for a woman without a husband, ongoing sexual harassment.

Still, Egypt is a desperately poor country currently transitioning from a command dictatorship into…

And, well, here the jury’s out…

What is clear is that crime is rising, tribal conflicts are increasing, political conflicts are ongoing and solo women in particular should think harder than usual before travelling here.

Is Egypt safe, right now? Honestly, it depends how things play out. In general, resort towns are safer than the major cities, because the population have their livelihoods invested in keeping tourists safe. If I had a holiday booked right now, I certainly wouldn’t cancel it. But nor would I commit to flights until the situation’s clearer.

Personally, however, I would recommend you visit, and visit soon, because — and I hate to say this — things may well get worse, rather than better, in the future.

I would currently advise against spending time in Egyptian cities around the time of the presidential result: hopefully tourist areas in resort towns will remain relatively calm if the wrong result comes in.

The post How Safe is Egypt After the Revolution? appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

And in the Red Sea, the single most famous spot is, of course, the Blue Hole Dahab, a submarine sinkhole surrounded by a 900m wall of coral that drops away deep into the ocean. Just…

…Well, just try not to open your mouth in awe, yeah?

Ahem.

Although Z qualified as an open water diver in Thailand, the absence of what I call blubber and the larger pro diver calls “bioprene” meant the Red Sea in March, at 21C, was simply too cold for him to cope with.

So a scheduled cruise over the top of the Canyon in the morning at the boy’s regulation 12 metre maximum turned into rather a more adult dive.

Now, the Blue Hole is the site that Dahab is most famous for, with the Thistlegorm wreck, far away though it is, probably second, but the Canyon is a truly impressive dive.

A sinuous fissure with dramatic overhangs, carved by an earthquake into the prehistoric coral reef that forms the Red Sea bed around here, it drops away from 18m to around 50m – where there is, for technical divers, an exit through a low arch onto a vertiginous wall.

Me? Well, I’m not a technical diver. I’ve dived amazing wrecks in the Philippines and an undersea volcano in Indonesia, but, even if I were better at diving than I am, I’d still have absolutely no interest in going to depth with multiple tanks when breathing from the wrong one by mistake can kill you.

Which means I dropped into the Canyon, descending those dark, dark walls, and, basically, ambled around at 30m or so, gawping gently at the brilliant shards of light piercing the marine cliffs from up above, with schooling fish sparkling and silhouetted against the surface.

It’s a dramatic landscape of light and shadow, a world of blues and blacks. And the gentle swim up and around the Fish Pool, a pretty coral garden with the odd Napoleon fish among the fluttering smaller reef species makes a lovely contrast.

I’ve met people who have dived The Canyon three or four times, and to be honest, I can see exactly why. The combination of architectural drama and a descent into such a narrow fissure is incredible; the coral garden’s a charming end point; and, yes, there’s the arch, if that’s your thing.

And, at all points, importantly, I refrained from opening my mouth in awe.

Second dive of the day, after lunch at one of the beachfront cafes? The Blue Hole, naturally.

Now, the first few minutes of this dive are the single most dramatic dive I’ve done. Even if, for those of a sensitive disposition, the walk past the memorials to the many divers who have died here is on the nerve-inducing side.

There is an easy entry, but the best way is via a jump into The Bells, a short, tight fissure so named because it’s narrow enough to echo with the clank of tanks rattling hitting the sides. A fast descent and a few strokes brings you to a narrow chimney, where you upend and dive, headfirst, through the tunnel, dropping to 26m, and then…

… And then you emerge from the confines of the Bells out into the blue, the void of the deep blue sea, the wall that forms the outside of the Blue Hole dropping away for 900m below you, a sheer, savage cliff, with reef fish flirting among pretty corals behind you, but nothing ahead but the blue – and your whole body just goes, ‘Wow! I’m flying!’

And, gentle reader, it was shortly after my body started going ‘Wow! I’m flying!’ that I, slightly light-headed with nitrogen narcosis, rolled onto my back to look up at the view and actually opened my mouth to go, ‘Wow!’

This is not a particularly good idea underwater.

So, all of a sudden, I’m light-headed, out in the blue with no way of orientating myself and no bottom for almost a kilometre, with water in my mouth and mask, and a sensation fairly close to underwater vertigo.

In fact, neither of these base problems are particularly challenging. You can breathe around a mouthful of water and spit it out underwater. Cleaning a mask under water is one of the basic skills you learn in diver training. I do both of these things on reflex.

All the same, I find myself in a state of diver panic, pulse racing, close to hyper-ventilating, slightly trippy, panicking about the prospect of sinking into the blue, and wanting nothing more than to push the blue button on my BCD, inflate fully and head to the surface at speed.

On the plus side, I can report that basic diver training does stick well. Heading for the surface fast from depth is a recipe for the bends, and, if you’re stupid enough to hold your breath into the bargain, can kill you with lung over-expansion injuries. (There are two decompression chambers in Dahab, but I had no intention of visiting either of them.)

Hyper-ventilating is not a good idea on all sorts of levels, either.

So an unsightly period of internal dialogue commences. Which goes roughly as follows:

In conclusion, given there is only me and the lovely Tamer, the instructor I’m diving with, around, I figure I’ll go and panic on him as he’s probably used to it. Plus, if I do somehow have a complete spaz fit, inflate and ascend, he’ll be able to stop me. (I know from conversation that there is absolutely nothing more a diving instructor loves than a panicking diver fully inflating. It’s the sort of thing they punch you for.)

So… I fin over. Grab poor Tamer by the arm, and, though the panicking diver face is pretty universal, alternate “up” signs and “loco” signs until he takes me up to 15 metres, signing helfpul things like “keep on breathing”.

And, amazingly, calms me down.

The rest of the dive? Well, it’s an amazing wall: there’s nothing quite like seeing a tiny clownfish with an even tinier baby defending his nest on a giant underwater cliff. The blue is spectacular, and the swim through the saddle into the Blue Hole itself is interesting.

Frankly, there’s not much by way of coral or marine life inside the Blue Hole, but there are free divers practising stunts in the centre, and technical divers hanging around at depths where the Arch provides another spectacular exit onto the wall.

And, honestly, next time I come to Dahab, I would do both dives again. The Canyon for the dive itself, and the Blue Hole for those first amazing few minutes.

Just, hopefully, I’ll keep my mouth shut next time…

The post Diving Dahab: The Blue Hole and The Canyon appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

J laughs. “Yes!” he says. “I have been to Saudi Arabia. It’s quite a funny story.”

I nod encouragingly. J has a range of funny stories and some great Egyptian jokes.

“There were these three Russians who hired a boat,” J says. Russians are a visible minority among Sinai tourists, while Russian working girls often ply their trade in the hotspots of Sharm el Sheikh, and, apparently, Dahab. “There was vodka. There was food. And there were 34 Russian women. Beautiful women. Long blonde hair, bodies like….” J makes 38-24-38 curves with his hands. “34 women for three men…”

“We have a phrase in England,” I say, cutting him off from his revery. “’Natasha’. It’s not very…”

“Yes! Natashas!” J says. “And there were three Russians, me and the five guys I’d hired to work with me. I thought, y’know, with 34 women and 9 guys, we’re going to have fun… But this! It was girl on girl, two girls, three girls, three girls and a guy – and the Russians all too drunk to do anything.”

“It must have been amazing,” I say.

“So the captain was teaching the girls how to steer the boat,” J says, miming a hands-on demonstration of tiller craft. “And, of course, he was not looking where we were going. All of a sudden we are 30 metres off a beach! And the girls are naked, diving in the water, naked! And we…”

“Oh f*ck,” I say. “Not on a Saudi beach? You have to be a prince to get away with that, no?”

“A beach,” J says. “Dawn comes, so we go off. But the captain, he’s a bit, well, sleepy, you know?”

What with the vodka, the beer and the general excitement of a fullblown orgy, I can well imagine the chap being a little the worse for wear. “So we see these lights,” J continues. “And he says, ‘Here we are! We’re in Dahab!’ Then I look a bit closer, and I say, ‘This is not Dahab. We’re in Saudi Arabia…’”

“Oh f*ck…” I say, again.

But, surely, J wouldn’t be here talking to me if he’d inadvertently arrived in Saudi Arabia with a cargo of naked ladies, vodka and unconscious Russians? The punishment for even *drinking* alcohol is a public whipping.

“We were lucky,” J says. “It was Ramadan. So, after breakfast, there are two hours of prayers. And, in Saudi, EVERYONE has to pray. They’re praying, or they’re in their house. So we cast off, we leave, we make it back – and that was the time I visited Saudi Arabia.”

“In Parliament, now,” J says. “Do you know what they talk about?”

“No,” I say.

“They are discussing banning the teaching of English in schools, because it’s unIslamic. Whether this book or that book should be banned. What women should…”

“But your economy, J,” I say, genuinely outraged. I’m fond of Egypt. I want Egypt to do well. With 5000 years of recorded history and its vast land area, this beautiful country could be an African powerhouse, the hub between Asia and Africa… “It’s tanking! You have no industry. Tourism’s half what it was. Youth unemployment…”

“I know,” J says, wearily. “But this is not what they care about. This is not their priority… The problem is that in Egypt, we have, let’s say, the 80%. They are poor, and for them, God is their life…”

“If you’re that poor and your life is so bad, it’s important that there’s a new life that is better than this one,” I agree. “It’s important that when your baby dies…”

“…It becomes a little angel,” J says, making sardonic wing motions with his fingers.

“Egypt is like ten or fifteen countries rolled into one,” I say. “We don’t have this divide between rich and poor in England. It’s growing. But everyone in England has enough to eat. Hardly any babies die. And very few people are really religious.”

J continues. “So, these are the 80%, and they are almost all Muslim. Then you have 15%, who are, maybe, quite liberal. So, the 15%, they are not so religious, they are educated, they may be quite liberal, maybe even travel. Some, like me, they might even think that their daughters can have sex before they are married. And then the 5%, the super-rich, who can do anything. Satanism. Drugs. You name it…”

We swing back to politics. “The Muslim Brotherhood are very organised,” J says, and goes onto describe scenes of vote buying, intimidation and ballot stuffing at the last election. “That’s how they got 74% of the vote. With money, and with…” He mimes punching.

“But some were Salafis,” I say. “Some of that vote was the Salafis.”

“This is what they do,” says J. The oldest political organisation in the Arab world, the Muslim Brotherhood originated in Egypt in 1928 but was banned for many decades. “They are very clever. They split. So the Salafis look far out, and they, the Brotherhood, can look like the centre.”

“So…” I say, dipping a toe into the mindblowingly complex maelstrom that is Egypt’s upcoming presidential election. “The current election, where Aboul Fotouh has split from the Muslim Brotherhood, and they’re talking about supporting the army’s candidate, that’s so they can get the guy they want, then turn round to the army and say, ‘See? They wanted us?’”

“I think so,” says J. “During the Revolution, we had one party, which they call a ‘Christian party’, because one of the founders was Christian and it’s liberal, the Free Egyptians Party. Then one of the founders posted a picture of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, with Mickey in a gallabiya and Minnie covered, and they said he mocked Islam, they said he hated Islam. It’s what they do. They’re clever.”

“But surely…” I say. “That 74% they cheated for, that’s close to your 80% of the country that are religious Islamists and poor, anyway, isn’t it? It’s close to what they would have got, had they just got out the vote.”

J nods.

“OK, J,” I say. The staff in the restaurant, all male, as in almost every Egyptian restaurant, are eyeing us not-terribly discreetly, clearly under the impression that J has got lucky. “There is something I really do not understand. So… You have these guys, these Muslim guys, observant Muslim guys, chasing after Western women in the tourist towns. And voting for women to be back in the home and covered, and wanting a covered wife. How does that compute?”

“Well,” J says. “Every man wants to have a Western woman.” (Sharm el Sheikh, the package resort down the coast, is popular with older Western women in search of toyboys, rather as some Western men head to the Philippines or Thailand for the ladies.)

“Yeah,” I say. “I noticed. And, we’re easy, aren’t we? But what is the thinking behind it with your own women? How DOES that work?”

“So, in this culture, a man, if he plays around, he believes that what he has done will come back to him. So, if he goes with a tourist, he thinks that next time it will be a man going with his wife, his mother, his sister – it will come back on him, you see? So he covers her, he keeps her locked up at home…”

That makes sense. Depressing sense. But sense. “OK,” I say. “And, I guess it gets worse. Because when you fuck these Western women, who do what only a prostitute would do here, you begin to think that if you let your women have any kind of freedom, they will become like us. Like prostitutes, basically.”

“Yes,” says J.

We pause. Then he asks, rather tentatively, “I heard that in England women can do all the jobs that men can. I mean, I believe that women can be better at some jobs than men. But you have women working as butchers? As bricklayers? Driving taxis?”

J has been to Europe, but only for a week: the relationship didn’t work out. “Yes,” I say. “Not many women. But it’s the law in England that a man cannot refuse to give a woman a job because she’s a woman, or because of someone’s skin colour, or their sexuality, or their religion. Those are unusual choices. But we are free to make them.”

We talk a bit about religion then swing back to politics again, although in Egypt the two are inextricably enmeshed. “So, how do you think it’s going to go here now, after the revolution?” I ask.

“Well,” says J. “I think in five years, ten years time, Egypt is going to be like Saudi Arabia.”

In Saudi Arabia, women cannot vote, drive or appear in public showing more than their eyes and their hands: the legal system includes punishments such as beheading, whipping and, on rare occasions, blinding, and on one occasion the religious police beat back young girls to die in their burning boarding school because they had run from a fire immodestly clad.

“No democracy?” I say.

“No,” J says, looking around and lowering his voice. “The problem is, in some ways, I think things were better under the old regime. You could talk against Mubarak, at least in private, and people did. But you can’t argue with Allah. And that’s what these people say, that they are the voice of Allah.”

“So, no democracy in your lifetime?”

“No,” says J. “I think, 30 years from now, we will have another revolution, and this time we will have democracy. But I’ll be an old, old man by then.”

More in this series:
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 1: The Coder
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 2: The Bedouin Girl
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 3: The Future Soldier
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 4: The Guide
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 6: The Taxi Driver
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 7: The Working Mother

The wasteland that Moses and Jesus wandered has canyons with rocks so rich in reds and pinks they might be painted.

In the twilight, rocks cluster like old men gossiping or cast shadows like the ruins of ancient cities.

And when the moon rises, the landscape changes yet again.

In Sinai you can leap across canyons or walk in the footsteps of Moses. Like the Outback town of Coober Pedy, it’s closer to Tattooine than Earth.

The post Photo Essay: The Sinai Desert appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

We are standing in the desert by an acacia tree whose raw wood has been splintered and exposed. “Isn’t that taboo?” Z asks. “They’ve taken the living wood.”

“Z thought the Bedouin had a law that you could only take dead wood from a living plant,” I amplify to S. “But this is live wood that someone’s taken.”

“Yes,” he says. “There is a law.”

“So, what happens to them, under this law?”

“Yani,” S begins, resignedly. “If the sheikh catches them he will fine them some money, or a goat, or some gold, or something. But, yani, he needs to catch them first.”

Point taken. “Is a sheikh a religious leader as well as a tribal leader? Or does he just lead the tribe?” I ask. (In Mauritania, the word is used of holy men.)

“Just for his tribe,” S says.

“Ah!” I say. A few weeks before we came here, two groups of tourists were kidnapped by Bedouin in Sinai, and handed back within a matter of hours: a few days after S and I talk another group will experience the same thing. “So when those kids kidnapped the tourists, the sheikhs…”

“Yes,” S says. “The sheikh of one tribe talked to the sheikhs of the other tribes, because everyone knew who had done it, of course, and said…”

“Give those tourists back at once, you naughty boys, and treat them nicely, give them a good meal, because you are hurting our tribe’s business…” I fill in, wagging a finger.

S laughs. “What about the attacks on the oil pipelines in Northern Sinai?” I ask.

S’s face darkens. “Someone must be paying them. No one knows who. It is outside influences.”

(The main candidates for “outside influence” in Egypt, depending where you sit on the politico-religious spectrum, are America, Israel and Saudi Arabia.)

Over the small heavy glasses of hot sweet tea that fuel the Arab day, conversation turns to politics, religion and the revolution. “It’s good that Mubarak has gone,” S says. “He was greedy. He took from the people to make himself rich. Under Sadat – you know Sadat?”

I nod. Anwar Sadat was dictator of Egypt after Nasser and before Mubarak. “Sadat was a poor man, a man of the people,” S says. “He had a good heart. And he made the people rich. Under Sadat, five million people came out of poverty. Under Mubarak, millions became poor. This is what we need. A man of the people. A man who is – how do you say this? – afraid of God.”

“We have that in English,” I say. “God-fearing.”

“Yani, let me explain. In the old days every man had to give a share of his wealth to the poor.” S talks about Umar, the disciple whom Sunni Muslims see as the prophet Mohammed’s spiritual heir. “Umar said that if a man as far away as Iraq needs a camel, he will go there and give it to him. Iraq! You see? So a man who fears god will not take from the poor.”

Even in early spring the desert is almost unimaginably harsh and it is easy to see how the moral code of Islam came about. If you refuse hospitality or charity in a place where there may be no more water for days, even weeks, the person you refuse will most likely die, so Islam has strict rules about those duties.

Likewise, in small clans and tribes existing out here on the very edge of survival, acts that tend to cause division – stealing, for example – can imperil everyone, so must be punished harshly.

“I understand,” I say. “So who did you vote for?”

This is a personal question under any circumstances, particularly in a country only recently and tentatively freed from dictatorship, and S, who is a smart guy, has a fairly good idea what I, qua Western single mother, am likely to make of what I am fairly sure is his affiliation.

“Yani,” he says, finally. “We had one election. This was for the assembly. In three months, we get to vote for the President, and I don’t know who I will vote for, because we do not have all the names yet.”

“So what about the last election?” I ask.

“We have two votes,” S says. “So I gave one to the Muslim Brotherhood – yani, these guys went to jail, they were tortured, they were banned for years. And the other I gave to an independent guy.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because politicians are all the same,” S says. “They go to the houses and they say things, they promise money, make promises, introduce themselves…”

“We call that ‘canvassing’,” I say.

“All the parties have money,” he says. “They spend money to get your vote and when they have it they do nothing. Yani, this man is an independent. I’m giving him my vote and then I’ll see what he does with it.”

“So, what about the army?” I ask.

“Yani,” S says. “The army… Who is the army? The army is my brother, my cousin, my friend. This is the army.” Crosslegged on the carpet, he spreads his arms.

“Do you think the army will let democracy happen?” I ask.

“Yani,” S says again. “I see why you are asking this. We have had three presidents from the army: Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak. But I think this time the army also…” he pauses.

“The generals will give up power?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “The soldiers. I think this time the army will let us have our president. And I think the first time, we will get the wrong one. But if we don’t like him, we can change him in four or five years, and we get a better one.”

My face breaks into a broad, involuntary grin. “Yes!” I say. “That’s it! You can change him and get a new one!”

“What sort of law do you think there will be in the new Egypt?” I ask, tentatively. S prays five times a day but strikes me as quite the boy about town.

“Ah,” S says. “You mean the old laws? No, we cannot go back to those perfect times. And, for me, anyway, Islam is inside. Like I told you about covering. You cover. But the real cover is in here.” He points to his head.

We pick up a little later. “About what I was saying to you earlier…” S begins.

“I think I understand. In English we have two words. ‘Islamic’ and ‘Islamist’,” I begin confidently, then fumble desperately for a definition. “Islamic means, well, Muslim. Islamist means, you know, following the old laws, it’s stricter… An Islamic state is made up of Muslims but does not go so far as the old laws… An Islamist state… Well, Saudi Arabia…”

I tail off. And, to be honest, I’m still stuck here. Does “Islamist” simply mean “a Muslim with religio-political views that my government doesn’t like”? What is the difference between an “Islamic state” and an “Islamist state”?

I mean, Saudi Arabia seems firmly on the “-ist” end of Islam, to me, but according to my government they are our noble allies in the fight against Islamism, which, I suppose, makes them Islamic. My brain goes into knots (and, if any of you lot can help me unlock it by providing a good definition of the two, I’d be grateful).

“But, yani, Islam was born in Saudi Arabia,” S says. Both Mecca and Medina are in Saudi, and Mohammed came from there. “And how they are now is disgusting. Alcohol. Nightclubs filled with Russian women. Gambling.”

“Umm,” I say. “Not in public, surely? They have a strong religious police. Only in the houses of rich men. And often they come to London for that, anyway.”

“They are not the true Islam,” S says. “We, now, here in Egypt, we have the true Islam.”

“So,” I ask. “How do you think it will be for women under this new government?”

“Yani, in Egypt now we have women in the schools. In the hospitals. On television,” S says, adding, with some amazement, “Even, in Cairo, they have women driving taxis! You cannot turn this back. And, yani, they say this. They say they will turn it back. But they are only saying it to get votes.”

It has been a tough five years in the Sinai desert, with even less rain than usual. Valleys that used to host sufficient greenery to feed migrating goats and passing camels are only sparsely studded with desert plants, and even old acacias are dying.

“Why is this happening?” I ask S later. “Why no water?”

My mind is on the water wars that will come to this region once the oil wars are finished, so S’s answer surprises me.

“Yani,” he says. “God is angry with us. This is his punishment to us. And when we are better people, he will send rain.”

More in this series:
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 1: The Coder
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 2: The Bedouin Girl
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 3: The Future Soldier
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 5: The Businessman
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 6: The Taxi Driver
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 7: The Working Mother