Tuesday, November 1stSinai Desert
I am travelling north along the Gulf of Aqaba from the Straits of Tiran toward the village of Dahab, along a highway built by the Israelis during the occupation that followed the Six Day War. The sun is bright, but the road is empty. Only a few Bedouins guiding camels on the western horizon.
In the aftermath of the Revolution, few choose to pass through the military checkpoints or risk the bandits (or the more fearsome human organ traffickers) that roam these deserts by night. Soon I will turn to the west and travel along the rugged two-lane road through the Wadi Nasba before entering the Blue Desert. Then at last, I will reach Gebel Musa (Mount Sinai), the stark, lifeless mountain where the Bible and the Bedouins say that Moses received the Ten Commandments. But before I reach my destination, I will have to pass through five more military and police checkpoints, not unlike the one I just navigated.
There will be barriers made from masses of jumbled concrete blocks wrapped with long serpentining strands of sharp-edged concertina wire. The road will be completely blocked, and I will have to pull off the tarmac and onto the sand before making a wide arc then coming to a stop at a small complex of cinderblock buildings. I will be confronted by dark men in green camouflage uniforms, machine guns dangling from their shoulders, the remnants of cigarettes pinched between their lips or fingers.
The solider-in-charge of the checkpoint will look at me sternly and say "marhaba" (hello) or "yalhallah" (welcome). Then the one that speaks the best English will step forward and ask to see the papers that give me permission to be in this place. As he studies the passport and the visas, others will ask why the "khawja" (foreigner) has come here. They will want a recitation of where I've been and where I'm going. They'll look for Israeli stamps in my passport. The guns, the wire, the blockades and the empty roads lend an eerie surrealism to each ordeal, as if I weren't there at all, but rather floating above it all, observing the scene as it unfolds. But in the back of my mind, somewhere distant but powerfully present, I have the sensation that it would only take one tiny spark to ignite the tenderbox that such checkpoints become in times of revolution and the fragile uncertainty of the hollow time that follows; the time when the people learn that nothing much has changed despite it all.
But if past is prologue, I'll pass safely through them all. Contrary to what many think, the Egyptians are a friendly people, even in the aftermath of revolt. Their soldiers are generally well trained professionals looking to keep the law, not break it. With luck, I'll crest Gebel Musa in time to watch the sunset, then scuttle back down through the darkness to the Monastery of St. Catherine to find shelter and a meal. More tomorrow, perhaps from the Oasis of Ain Umm Ahmed.
