Time Passing By

Last week flew without a blink of the eye. Let me attempt to bring you, and myself, up to speed. First and foremost, I moved into my own place last week. An amazingly joyous occassion for me and my roommate, Jasmina, a fellow Brooklynite (in tha house). We are finally not crashing here and there, floating around like longterm visitors, always wondering how long until you have overstayed your welcome. We live across the Nile, very close to the University, in a neighborhood called Dokki (pronounced "doe-'ee", the 'k' is silent in Arabic). I can commute by walking (20 mins) across the Nile on the traffic-choked, exhaust-filled street and bridge, or by taking a taxi for LE 3 (3 Egyptian pounds, thereby contributing to the traffic and exhaust), or by a 5 minute subway ride (only 75 piasters). Our place is on the 10th floor, painted entirely yellow, has tons of natural light, wide-open living/dining area, and four air conditioners. Four! Each bedroom has a small balcony that looks onto the busy street below. We could be living on Broadway in Manhattan, except that we live in Cairo. Pictures to come (but if you go to the Cairo Sheraton website, you can see a nice aerial shot of the area--we are only 2 blocks away from the river).

The weekend before last included a quick trip to the Sinai coast. Yes, once again we went to our favorite beach town, Dahab, but this time it was only for 12 hrs. We arrived in the morning from the midnight bus, lazed around near the water all day, then joined another midnight bus that took us to Mount Sinai and Saint Catherine's Monastery. Mount Sinai (Jebel Musa, in Arabic), and the mountains in this region, are repleat with religious-historic events, including that famous one when Charleton Heston speaks to the divinity and receives THE moral code on stone tables engraved with lightening. Did anyone see the Ten Commandments, the movie? Neither Kate or Jasmina had, so I would reference "technicolor," "golden calf," or "fake white beard and skin darkener" without success. Alas.

One begins the 2 hour climb up Mount Sinai in the early morning hours in order to be at the top for sunrise. Me, Kate and Jasmina wandered up under the Milky Way, catching shooting stars and letting older folks pass by on their hired camels. As you get higher the air thins (elevation 8,651 ft), the path gets smaller, and you can see the bobbing rows of others flashlights following below. The last 20 minutes of the climb is strickly stone stairs, and you must merge with the heavy stream of loud European tourists to drink your tea (boiled with rosemary, aka Bedouin, very nice) at the last "rest hut" and pay an extraordinary LE10 for stale fig bars. The trek is quite a pilgrimage for tourists (and some Egyptians). At the top everyone scatters to find their own perch, ours with a sweeping view of ruffles of mountains below. Shivering a bit as the sweat dried, we huddled in anticipation of the sunrise and sighed in relief when we were finally warmed by it.

Saint Catherine's Monestary is at the base from where the climb begins. We visited after our descent, with legs wobbling as we stood before the old iconographs of the church, weary exhaustion, not awe and humility of the holiness of the site. It is one of the oldest Greek Orthodox religious centers and houses some of the rarest early (I'm talking 5th century early) Christian iconography. The styles and originiality of these works represent some fascinating pieces of graphic and religious history. Some amazing representations of Biblical stories had gracefully drawn camels, cool angular sea-green mountains with gilded trees, enamle chalices, and finely stiched robes. Among other things at the Monestary is THE burning bush, which, in case anyone is wondering, is not still burning. From what we could see, which was not much through the huge squads of tour groups, the bush is quite big and healthy looking. And, as tired as we were, the sooner we could get to our camp down the road, the better. I think we were asleep within 5 minutes of arrival.

Before I sign off I wanted to say Congratulations to my friends Seth and Laura~they married this weekend in Connecticut. I thought about you all day and am sad to have missed it. The wires said it was beautiful and rather exciting--rain storm, moonlight and all! Mabruk!