Postcard from Sharm el-Sheikh

As I hurriedly packed last week just minutes before leaving for the airport for my weekend getaway on the Egyptian Red Sea coast, I knew immediately what bag I would use for the trip—the sleek, blue, oval weekend bag emblazoned with the “All Ohio State Fair Youth Choir” logo (I am a very proud alum of this organization!). I had won that bag as a prize this past August when I went to Alumni Day at the State Fair, and they had a contest to see which alum had come the furthest to spend the day on the fairgrounds in Columbus, Ohio. My friend Tony had said to me when they first asked, “Wait a minute or two, and then raise your hand.” So someone had proudly announced, “Colorado.” And then one person crowed, “I’m from California!” Tony nodded to me, and I (meekly or cheekily—you decide) raised my hand, and said, “Jordan!” Heads turned, and someone said, “The country?” “Yes, I live in Jordan.” The president of the Alumni Board cheered, “You win—come up here and get your prize!”

So last Wednesday I quickly packed my prize bag as we headed off to the airport to jet off to Egypt for the weekend. Yeah, I know—those last few words were mostly for show-off purposes—jet off to Egypt for the weekend still sounds thrilling even a year after I first did it.

This was a trip with a dual purpose: (1) relax at the popular tourist resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh and (2) become one of the dozens of pilgrims who journey into the Sinai desert to the monastery dedicated to the memory of St. Catherine and Moses. I had in tow a great group of friends: Tristan, a friend and colleague in his 20s (on the trip as we reminisced about television shows he seriously said to me, “I have never heard of Laverne and Shirley, and later when I asked if he knew of Happy Days, he said he had heard once about Fonzie. Ahhhh…the sadness of being born too far removed from the glorious television shows of the 1970s!) was on a trip with a forty-something teacher (that would be me) and Nancy and Tessa, our two ladies of the sixty-something set (the things they were doing in 1968 were exciting to hear about!)

We touched down at 2:00 p.m. in Sharm el-Sheikh—we had ditched a faculty meeting to make the once-a-day 1:00 p.m. flight at the end of the abbreviated school day—whoop-di-doo! The airport in Sharm el-Sheikh—by the way, the cool visitors all call it just Sharm, so Sharm it will be—is designed to look like a great big Bedouin tent. What a great celebration of their indigenous heritage. We secure a taxi and he whisks us about 10 minutes away to our Jaz Belvedere Resort. Our quick journey showed what visionary developers can do: Sharm is not really anything but scrabby scrubby land and rocks and desert-y sand, but somebody imagined that a great resort-opolis could rise from this nothing. We turn into our gated community, and it reminded me immediately of the glorious Hilton Head resorts in South Carolina.

As we check-in, I hold my breath a little. Not about the rooms and the reservations and the Jerry Seinfeld-esque schtik from last week, but about the “all-inclusive” policy of the Resort. I hadn’t told my travel-mates, in case it wasn’t entirely true, but the desk clerk Muhammad (and by the way—seriously like 85% of the men working at the hotel are named Muhammad!) gave us our bracelets and cordially informed us that the hotel is all-inclusive—all the meals are included! Oh my—you know that sent my little German heart all aflutter! I thought the deal was good for just the lodgings—but to have all the meals included!! Wait—Muhammad told us all the drinks and all the snacks we would want are also included!! Can I move in???!

Checked in, unpacked, and moved quickly to the poolside area for a late lunch. The entire complex is designed so that you are never far removed from a spectacular view of the Red Sea (I will say this once—but why in the world is called it “Red”???? It has among the bluest, most intensely Paul-Newman-like-eye blue color anywhere. OK—enough of that. Who cares! The food is all included!!!). In the hotel lobby, by the pool, walking around the bungalow-type rooms, you feel achingly, bracingly, restoratively near the sand and the sparkling water.

As tour director (my group let me be in charge—lucky for them, it might have gotten nasty had we gone to arm-to-arm combat!) we checked out the spa and fitness center, made some reservations for massages, walked on the tawny, golden beach, and re-convened in the Mamluk bar at 7:00 (by the way, isn’t it nice to name the bar after the Mamluks—it gives us a chance to have a quick history lesson: the Mamluks were a medieval caste of former slave-soldiers who eventually created an Islamic sultanate in Egypt, conquering the French along the way, and ruling for about 300 years.)

Tessa comes back with a red wine in her hand, and Tristan with a beer, and my regal Tessa said, “Well done, John-O! Even the wine and beer are free Rrrrrrrrrreally, well done!”

At dinner—in the twilight on the balcony with our buffet never more than 50 feet away, we took in the 75 degree air and sighed. Nancy said, “It feels like we have been on vacation for days! This is marvelous.” It was delightful. We made plans for our pilgrimage the following day.

I arose a little after the sun did—the sun did it much more spectacularly, and with a bold red sky, I might add—and we met our driver at 8:00. Some of us were a little late—you know how I get about punctuality, but Tessa said in an unabashedly imperious tone: “John-O, of course he will wait. After all he is our driver!” We settle in for a ride that is over two hours as we careen through the wadis and red granite mountain peaks of the Sinai peninsula, working our way inland to the middle of Sinai. Nestled at the foot of Mount Sinai is this Greek Orthodox monastery of St. Catherine, considered to be the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery in the world. Founded in 527 by Justinian (wait! I just taught about him last week!) the monastery replaced a chapel built by Empress Helena (Constantine’s mum for those at all interested) in 337 on the site where it is believed that Moses saw the Burning Bush (and of course, we marveled more than once that Moses then moved down the road from us here at KA and died). The monks renamed the monastery in the 9th century after some of the brothers claimed to have found the intact body of the famous saint (she of Alexandria and the infamous torture on a spiked wheel—a very popular saint, by the way) on a nearby mountain.

We arrive at the monastery, and it is crowowowowowowowded. At noon there is a service and pilgrims can line up to kiss the relics of St. Cat’s skull and hand. We go through the gate of the monastery (almost all of the walls are from that long-ago 6th century) and queue up to enter the Basilica of the Transfiguration.

I have to say—I have been wanting to go to St. Catherine’s long before I moved to Jordan. The Metropolitan Museum of Art offered a spectacular exhibition of Byzantine art works around the turn of the 21st century and they had secured some icons and art works on loan for the first time in history from St. Catherine’s. I had stared at the photographs and vowed I must get there. Here I was—in this nearly 1500 year-old chapel, with the incense and the pillars bearing Byzantine icons of saints and the mosaics and the line of pilgrims awaiting the spiritual fulfillment of kissing the relic. I watched from the side, and as each pilgrim received a blessing, they also received a ring to wear—a ring that looked like the spiked wheel upon which Catherine was martyred.

Outside the chapel is an enormous thorny evergreen bush, reputedly a descendant of the original Burning Bush (that’s what they say!)from which Moses heard the Lord speak. It is a species not found anywhere else in Egypt. Of course, the photogs are going crazy with the big bush and the tourist mentality. Around the walls protecting the BB there are crevices, and people traditionally write prayers and hopes on slips of paper and stick them into the crevices. Imagine the centuries of pleas and petitions. I did chuckle as I looked at the scene, and right next to the BB is a sign on the ancient wall—a “No Smoking” sign. No smoking? Not next to the BB!!

The other pilgrims all exited, but we insisted to the little old man guard that we had to see the monastery library. It is considered to be second only in importance to the Vatican in terms of Christian manuscripts. We saw some pages from a 4th century Bible, from a 5th century Bible, and a 7th century document called the “patent from Muhammad” in which the Islamic Prophet secured the protection of this monastery from any forces. There were ancient icons, many from the 8th century, which are quite rare since at that time a faction of the Church considered icons heretical and set out to destroy all those art works.

As we left the library, we had the monastery to ourselves—well, not entirely true, we could smell the lunch for the coupla dozen Greek Orthodox monks on site. But the tourist crush was gone, and we could take our time walking through the garden, dense with olive and apricot trees, through the cemetery and back to our driver (guess his name—you probably guessed it was Muhammad! By the way, one of my students told me that a common term/name for a ‘waiter’ in Arabic is ‘hammad,’ since that would most likely be his name anyway!).

We made an important decision. We needed to return to St. Catherine’s. As much as we had hoped to ascend Mt. Sinai, this was not the day. The weather was perfect, but Nancy’s knee is not. It is a nearly 4,000 step climb to the summit of Mt. Sinai, to visit where Moses spent 40 days and nights before receiving the Ten Commandments (the real Moses, not just Charlton Heston in the simulated Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza!). We made a plan to return. One can spend the night at the monastery (those crazy capitalist monks charge $30 for lodging and dinner and breakfast—even cheaper than our great deal at the Jaz Belvedere!) and then most pilgrims climb the mountain at 2:00 a.m. so that you are there for dawn. We will come back in March to complete the pilgrimage.

We speed back to Sharm, and relax for the rest of the weekend, enjoying every bit of the exceptional service, locale, sand, beach chairs, and gorgeous flowers of our hotel. As we wait in the cool Sharm airport, I whip out a bag of sandwiches—all procured from the snack bar at the hotel. Free sandwiches for everyone!

Just the right pick-me-up vacation to get through final exam period this week and next!