Travel Journal-Sharm el-Sheikh to Amman

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Sharm el-Sheikh Airport

It was a long journey south fording the silent, wind swept deserts of Sinai through the seemingly endless checkpoints and tiny Bedouin camps filled with children preparing for the Muslim holy days of Eid. Somehow the checkpoints seemed less ominous in the daylight, the soldiers less stern. Together we smoke and take tea as they study my papers and chat lazily among themselves. I wonder what the security will be like in Amman?

I fly Royal Jordanian Air to Queen Alia airport in the capital city of only Arab country completely without oil. My flight departs from Sharm el-Sheikh at the tip of the Sinai, pressed hard against the turquoise waters of the Red Sea. It's a big airport, built for better days when tourists came more frequently and more easily. Now, in the aftermath of revolution and the violence that came with it, the Egyptian airport is nearly empty, a hollow cavern of near silence.

As far as I can tell, I am the only American. The few others are mostly Russians, drunk, unruly, pushy. Uncharacterisically, I take the small insults and indignities in stride, allowing them to have their way. After all, what's the rush? There are so few persons here, so many empty seats (the image). I get a coffee from the Bedouin vendor who speaks no English, take a seat and reflect on my passage through the desert, on the monks who live in the ancient monastery where I prayed only last night, on what it must be like to be a vendor of coffee in an empty airport, to be an inn keeper whose hotel is deserted, to be a citizen of a land where revolution has wrecked the economy but given the people a fresh, invigorating sense of destiny and self-determination. For a moment, no more, I am an Egyptian, overwhelmed by the dual emotional waves of fear and joy.

When I board the plane--so very empty--I marvel at how clean and bright it is, how pleasant the flight attendants are, how many small courstesies and kindnesses they show an American, with dust on his shoes and in his hair, travelling alone in a land where family and tribe are everything. I wish American planes and the frayed men and women who staff them could be as tidy, friendly and warm. I look forward to Amman, a busy, bustling city filled with educated people, automobiles, tall buildings and flickering lights. It will be such a change from the silence of the desert, from the turmoil that haunts the uncertain time on the heels of revolution.

When I arrive, I'll go into the Old City for a meal with a friend who once was a professor of history, a Jordanian, a family man now retired who in the late autumn days of his life has rediscovered his spirituality, praying to Allah five times a day, regardless of where he might be or with whom he might be. It's a discipline to be respected, like so many other attributes of the Jordanians. Then before dawn, we'll make our way into the southern deserts, going first to Petra, then further south and west to the expansive, stunning desert of Wadi Rum (where Lawrence of Arabia was filmed), and at last, when the sun is setting, crossing, quietly and without papers, into the forbidden land, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

More tomorrow.

Travel Journal-Wanaka, Central Otago, NZ

Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Cental Otago, New Zealand

The world is indeed a mysterious realm. Coincidences happen in ways that make so very clear that there is so much more at work in the universe than we can comprehend. Consider the following (true story in all respects).

Tonight I was sitting in the bar of the infamous White House in Wanaka on the South Island of New Zealand drinking a Monteith's Dark (if you're ever in NZ, try it and remember that it was a surfing philo-thriller writer who steered you straight) with my friend Bruce Hopkins (who played Gamling, General of Rohan, in two of the Lord of the Rings movies). I was listening to the tales of flyfisherman who'd come down from the mountains and to the hopes and aspirations of the bartenter who was eight months preganant with her first child. It had been a long day, all the way from the Franz Joseph Glacier (where it was snowing lightly) to the wine country, stopping along the way for a swim at Bruce Bay (in the Tasman) and a quick, cold dip in the Blue River that comes down from the mountain peaks. I was ever so slightly in a dream as I sipped and listened and told tales of my own.

Peter, the owner of the most infamous bar/restaurant in New Zealand (ask the locals...or Peter...they'll tell you all about it!), magically appeared at my side. We started to talk about the first book in the Q Trilogy then he asked about the second book to be released next year, Q: Apocalypse. I told Peter, without giving too much away, that soon I'd be headed to Chennai, India (formerly Madras) to do research for the book since important parts of it will be set there among the Christians who trace their lineage to St. Thomas. Peter smiled then disappeared behind the bar. A moment later, he returned with the placard shown in this photo. It was taken from a hotel in Chennai during Peter's last visit there only a few months before. And so we ordered dinner (a wonderful smoked fish with a fine NZ Pinot) and talked of India and of other stories I'll save for another blog.

Now you tell me--I'm sitting in one of the most remote bars in the world, a stranger in a strange land, working on the plot for book two in the trilogy, drinking a beer and thinking about Chennai, India. A man magically appears at my side with a placard from that very town and a Gladstone bag full of stories of his adventures there. Coincidence or destiny? You decide.

Travel Journal-Mt. Moses

Thursday, November 3

Mount Moses-Sinai Peninsula

The Bedouins call it Mar Mousa. Others call it Mt. Moses, Mt. Horeb or Mt. Sinai. But regardless of its name, millenia old tradition holds that it is the place where Moses ascended a difficult trail of broken stones (the same trail I ascended in the long hours of the afternoon) and received from the hand of God the stone tablets known as the Ten Commandments.

It is a demanding climb that takes many hours punctuated by many breaks along the way. Even in the coolness of the Sinai's late fall, I sweat and struggle with the broken boulders and the steep winding trail. Thankfully their are scattered Bedouin along the way who have made fires and sell for a few Egyptian pounds bottles of water and cups of fragrant sweat tea.

Late in the day, I reach the summit where I will wait for sunset and then descend in darkness to the Monastery of St. Catherine's below. I am comforted when I reach teh crest to find not only a chapel for my prayer, but a mosque close beside it so that the Bedouins too may make their prayers. In that moment of silence, a sparrow floats before me, suspended in the cool, still air. For a while, as the Bedouins and I pray peacefully together only steps from each other, I feel as if all the world is, if only for a fleeting second, as it should be.

Travel Journal-St. Catherine's Monastery

Wednesday November 2

St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai

The journey northward through the military and security checkpoints from the Bedouin fishing village of Dahab to the foot of Mar Mousa (Mt. Moses also called Mt. Horeb) was both eerie and alluring. But now that I am here, I find all my attention focused on the library of the oldest monastery in Christendom, St. Catherine's. That magnificent set of cloistered rooms and winding corridors is the basis for the scriptorium of Dier al-Shuhada in my novel Q: Awakening. It is a a magnificent collection, housing the second largest collection of ancient Christian manuscripts and codices in the world (only the Biblioteca Aspostolica Vaticana in Rome holds more).

But it isn't easy to enter the ancient library these days. Renovations are underway and Father Justin, the monk who leads the order, is away. But as with so many places, a donation and a bit of persistence opens the doors. And not only to the libary, but to the charnel house (also used as an influence for Dier al Shuhada in the novel). With luck, I'll finish my research in time to attend the Greek Orthodox services in the chapel. Then, if all proceeds as planned, tomorrow I'll climb Mt. Mousa and watch sunset from that acient peak.

Travel Journal-Sinai Desert

Tuesday, November 1st

Sinai 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.