Middle East Light: Fantasies and Fairytales

So, our group went on a trip with the university to Mt. Sinai (yea, the one where Moses chatted it up with God) and to a resort town on the Red Sea called Sharm El Sheikh. Mt. Sinai is the tallest mountain in Egypt (I’m not actually sure if that is even like significant or worth mentioning, but it’s what the tour guide said) and climbing up it was absolutely one of the most incredible experiences of my life. We started climbing the mountain at 2am when there was a sense of darkness and beautiful silence that could never be captured or explained. The hike was about four miles and as we got closer to the top we had to climb about 750 meters of stairs – it was a crazy workout; seriously I don’t know how Moses did it. Anyways, we walked up the mountain with these awesome Bedouin tour guides (LOVE the Bedouins) and talked a bit about their lives. My guide was still in high-school, but takes people on tours of the mountain regularly and explained that he loves it, but his life is all off track because he’s all up night showing tourists around. Also they got wind of the fact that my name was Arabic and every time we reached a mountain rest stop all the Bedouins guides would yell out “yaaa Zehraaa” which was endearing I suppose. We arrived at the top of the mountain just in time for sunrise and it was one of the most exhilarating, breathtaking moments of my life. I’ll spare you all the cliché details of my moments of clarity and spirituality, but in essence it was spectacular.

After spending the night in Sinai our group traveled to the resort in Sharm El Sheik, or “sin city” if you will, for two nights of surreal and ironical debauchery. Sharm El Sheik is essentially the Cancun of the Middle East for hard-core partiers and all types of sinful activity forbidden everywhere else in the Middle East. Rich khaleejies (Arabs from the gulf) take refuge from their stifling religious lives in places like Saudia Arabia for weekends on the red sea with tourists from all over the world, especially Europe. Women uncovered, even topless, lie on the beach casually near women covered in full burkas. Anything and everything is permissible. Pharmacies ostentatiously lined with condoms, Viagra, and other such accessories have the Quran being recited in the background as if it were all no big deal. It’s like this weird utopian society where all types of people can just mingle and be and no one cares about anything except the beach. Sprinklings of Middle Eastern flavor were thrown in sporadically, but for the most part I completely forget where I was and got swept up in this paradise. It was like a weird cultural experiment, I didn’t even know places like this exist! My buddy Hosni (Mubarak) was also chilling at Sharm El Sheikh that weekend for a meeting with Ehud Olmert at my hotel, unfortunately I didn’t get to dance with them, inshallah next time.