I'm at home with unbounded internet access for the first time in a while, so I thought I'd make an entry here while I remember. And have the chance. It's been so long that I'm quite ashamed and there is so much that I wish I could write down but can't possibly or I'd be here till September and I only have two weeks.
So what happened in between January and June? University drew to a close in a pretty subdued, low-key fashion, after all the emotional stress and pyrotechnics. After three of the class left, there was none of the former underlying friction that had characterised class - at least, not in the same way - but at the same time I think that was the beginning of the end. The point at which everyone began to stop caring. I don't think Manal ever quite got over the departures; forever after, if the subject came up, we would be exposed to her continued self-questioning and justifications over what had happened. The workload, or at least the pressure to hand in work, decreased dramatically to almost nothing overnight. Even the group who had previously been so charming and enthusiastic seemed to lose their motivation. One of them left early, in April, and after that it all just lost steam. By the time the end came, I don't think anyone really was that sad - either people were glad because the end meant they were leaving Syria, or if they were staying, felt like the inevitable had only been drawn out. It was the end of an era, but such a draining one that it was more a relief than anything else.
But credit where it's due to Manal and her course. By hook or by crook I think we did get a lot out of it. Speaking is so dependent on personality and group dynamics, I don't think any course or teacher could overcome the limitations imposed by those fully; and sometimes her expectations of us were ridiculously optimistic given our level - for example, studying ancient and archaic Arabic poetry, which is about the equivalent of studying Chaucer for a foreign student of English. And she wasn't always as professional as might have been desirable - she made everything in that classroom personal, turned it into a soap opera, and seemed to feel the irresistible urge to stir up drama the same way a kid will stick his finger in the cake mix. But I'm pretty sure everyone's vocabulary, reading and writing improved beyond recognition. It was worthwhile for that.
I went travelling! I can't describe how awesome this was. Twice to Egypt - the first time with Will and Sarah, for a week, which we spent at Dahab, a great little backpackers' resort for diving halfway down the east coast of the Sinai Peninsula. It was in early March and the season hadn't started, so there was no one there, and the weather was beautiful - beautiful beautiful beautiful! You can't imagine how wonderfully strange and unfamiliar felt the sun when we stepped off the boat from Jordan onto land at Nuweiba, having come from the cold grey miserableness of Sham, still swathed in winter sweatshirts and jackets. The story of the boat journey (journeys - I must have been crazy, but I ended up taking that boat twice more in the course of later travels) is another one in itself so I'll save it for a separate entry.
Anyway, so that was the first foot I set in Egypt. It was duly fascinating, and a refreshing break from Syria. Because we were in a tourist-oriented area, everything naturally felt more relaxed and a little bit more open; there was less ogling and harassment of the 'ooh, it's a foreign female with her head uncovered and we have never seen one before!' variety and more of the 'it's a tourist! business opportunity!!!' variety, which, while it may not be intrinsically preferable, was at least a change, and is easier to rebuff.
Dahab was all we really saw (my hopes of climbing Mount Sinai went sadly unmet, but keep reading for a continuation of that story) except for a brief evening trip to the tacky, glitzy, even more tourist-oriented Sharm el-Sheikh on the southern tip of the Sinai, which left us distinctly underwhelmed and with a definite preference for low-key, peaceful, pleasant Dahab. But although we didn't do anything except laze around on decks overlooking the water, and eat, and drink, and explore the place a bit, it was still a first taste of Egypt, or a part of Egypt, I guess. Bite-size. Koshary, fava bean sandwiches, people being surprised at your knowledge of even just basic Arabic and ridiculously amused by your Syrian accent and -isms, and the constant 'g' and 'Ismak eih?' and 'Azayak?' and 'Min fein?' (to which we were fond of replying 'Sooria', just to confuse whoever asked, which it usually did). And drenched in sun! So we were happy.
Where else? Oh, and we made an impromptu visit to the resort town of Nuweiba during the course of our unanticipated 24-hour wait for the slow boat back to Jordan (like I said, another story) which was one of those unexpectedly beautiful places to go that no one tells you about.
It was a ghost town, completely deserted - eerie, even. It seemed that it used to be popular with Israeli backpackers but had evidently suffered a downturn after the Taba bombings. After we arrived and negotiated our way as politely as possible past a restaurant owner who was uncomfortably desperate for our custom - stopping to 'ooh' and 'aah' over a newborn kid that a young boy on a donkey rode up with in his arms, all gangling legs and unsteady steps and absolutely adorable - we suddenly found ourselves on this awesome expanse of white sandy shore, curving right round underneath the peaks of the mountains in the distance, empty except for a group of local children playing down at the water's edge, and a still, silver-blue bay.
The beach was pretty dirty, and the children's attire was indicative of the general state of poverty of the place, a reminder that this wasn't exactly paradise, if the run-down appearance of the town itself didn't suggest it. The vast open silence would have tried to convince otherwise if it could, but I think it was an apposite reminder. You can't - or if you can, should you? -separate a place from the people who live in it and sometimes I wonder if tourism encourages just that attitude. I wonder what it must be like to live in such awesome surroundings as a daily matter of course. I suppose you would take them for granted.
The second trip to Egypt was less of a chill-out trip and more of a frenetic sense-strewn five-day whistle-stop tour from Alexandria to Cairo to Mount Sinai and back to Dahab. And that makes it sound less eventful than it was. Will, Charlie and Claire and I decided to go literally the week before, found some cheap tickets online, and we were off. We flew Al-Jazeera Airways to Alexandria via Kuwait (and McDonald's for lunch). The flights passed without serious incident (except for a decidedly dodgy take-off from Damascus, and I can't say the prayers they blared out over the plane beforehand instilled a great sense of reassurance, but never mind, we got there). We clandestinely scoffed the cake we sneaked onto the plane at Kuwait Airport, and got a phenomenal extended panoramic view of the desert in its various shapes and colours.
Upon arrival, we caught a taxi into the city, a short time into which journey it became apparent that the driver was high on some form of narcotic or other (as Charlie put it, 'off his tits'), as he spent the entire drive looking over his shoulder at us and talking cheerfully to us with sublime inattention to the road, culminating in his generously offering us hash. When I say 'to us', I mean that we attempted to talk to him, but since we speak a mixture of standard and Syrian, and he spoke Egyptian, and was not particularly coherent anyway, communication was haphazard and somewhat at cross-purposes, upping the farcical quotient. However, he at least seemed to be having a very good time, which it was hard to begrudge him, despite the sense that oblivion was just an infinitesimal cross-section of time away at any moment.
Having narrowly escaped with our lives (and I don't just mean from nervous hysteria), we found a cheap top-floor hostel with dingy rooms that however benefited from a great location overlooking a square on the seafront, and embarked on a night-time explore of the city, which consisted of crawling a few bars and a pleasant encounter with some helpful and not at all suspicious locals who showed us the way to one of the only places to eat that still seemed to be open at 12 or 1 in the morning. All fun and good.
The next morning Claire and I breakfasted at the patisserie next to our hostel, on the terrace fronting the square, feeling like we could have been in France and enjoying the relaxed, European feel of the city - in that part of it, anyway. We walked to the Roman amphitheatre, which was fairly standard as these things go, and from there to the catacombs, which involved taking the tram. This was an interesting experience as we had no idea where to get off and then ended up having to walk through a distinctly more conservative area of the city...a long, colourful street lined with shops and street-stands and sellers milling around, and a slow torrent of shoppers passing up and down, and I think this was the first time I had been anywhere in the Middle East and not seen a single sign in English, anywhere. Every sign was in Arabic. It was great. English is like this infectious disease that you can't escape; it follows you everywhere, even places you would think might be immune from it are secretly carrying it. So to come upon somewhere that was having none of it was...oddly satisfying.
Anyway, the Catacombs were suitably musty and morbid. If you ever go there, be warned that the entrance proper is right off to the left as you go in past the ticket office; we didn't see it, and wandered straight ahead towards the grassy area where there is a sign saying 'Entry Forbidden', and a hovering guard or two, one of whom will probably try to lead you down a riskily steep and rubbish-strewn back route to the back of the off-limits catacombs and then expect baksheesh for his 'tour'. Just so you know what you're getting into. Since Claire and I had asked him where the entrance was, and not for the backstage tour of the dangerous bit, we didn't feel obliged to pay, but judging by the distinctly dour looks we got from the officials on the way out, after seeing the actual catacombs, these tours are probably an unofficially sanctioned bit of business on the side.
Having passed up the unimpressive Pompey's Pillar on the way there, we caught a taxi back to the seafront, lunched and ice-creamed and took a walk along said seafront. By that time the weather had fickly clouded over. We caught up at random with Charlie and Will, who in the meantime had stumbled into a table tennis game with local kids, among other things, and went to visit the modern Library of Alexandria together. This was an impressive dome of steel and concrete and glass that must look quite amazing under blue sky and bright sunlight (well, you probably can't even look at it), which we unfortunately couldn't get inside, not being students at the university. There are inscriptions in ancient languages around the inside of its hollowed-out wall that trigger the sudden urge to learn these languages so you can read what they say. Then Charlie, Claire and I took, for the sake of it, one of those horse-drawn barouches (whatever a barouche is, but I've always wanted to use that word and the vehicle in question looked like what that word sounds like) along the seafront back to the hostel, where it was a hasty pick up the bags and pay the bill and head off, again minus Charlie and Will, who hadn't yet got back from the university (this became something of a running theme throughout the holiday)...
The next stop was the train station - French-looking and beautiful lit up at night. The train itself was decently comfortable and clean, if a little worn, and ran on time; it took two hours to get to Cairo and once we got there spent at least fifteen minutes standing under an Arabic platform sign advertising that we were in fact in Cairo while Will attempted to get a good picture of us all on his camera, before taxiing it to the Lialy Hostel in the central Cairo, which proved a distinct upgrade on the previous night.
Then we braved Cairo: our first introduction to the game of chicken that is crossing the road (it's worse than Damascus, they don't even stop) and to the sardines-in-tins public transport system. After several minutes watching buses and services round the corner
with people hanging out of the doors, we decided that this was probably not a time-efficient option and caught a taxi instead. This was an entertaining journey if only for the analogy it spawned, in the course of conversation and in view of the reasonably well-flowing traffic system in said gargantua of a city, of Damascus to a little Arab village that had been sick everywhere, whereas Cairo was more of a 'tactical chunder'. I leave the extemporisation that followed to your imagination. It stretched as far as the River Bile... I don't remember precisely how long we had to walk in order to find somewhere to eat, I don't think many places were open in the area the taxi took us to, which according to Will's guidebook was restaurant central, but we eventually plumped for an Italian place where the pizza proved okay and Charlie ended up talking Premier League football scores with the waiter.
Day one saw Claire and I rising early to play chicken and catch the bus to the Pyramids, leaving Tweedles Dum and Dee (otherwise known as the dormice) asleep in bed. We ended up approaching them by way of a somewhat circuitous back route, after the bus driver signalled to us and an unassuming Japanese couple to get off at the entrance to a back alley somewhere in the shanty town-like area that surrounds the Pyramids. Suspicious, but having no idea where we were, and the driver being rather emphatic about it, we got off, and it turned out, after much twisting and turning through a run-down area, to lead us past the local hang-out of camel and horse drivers, on the look-out for just such unsuspecting misdirected tourists as us. I'm afraid we proved disappointing prey, though.
Seeing the Pyramids was a bit of an odd experience at first. I think I had seen so many pictures of them, the way we do, in the overexposure of the modern world, that actually being there just felt like looking at another, bigger picture. Superimposed onto the world. It didn't feel real. I'm not sure the swarms of tourists helped that feeling, either. The place was crawling with them. Package-tour ants in hats and shorts and strappy tops, snapping away with their digital antennae! Of which we were but two more, it's true. Just not package-tour. And not wearing shorts or strappy tops. (Too Syrianised for that, already.)
Anyway, after becoming an object of attraction for roaming groups of schoolchildren and young locals who all seemed to have an inexplicable desire to have their pictures taken with us - and actually having a decent conversation with a group of younger boys who were surprised that we could speak Arabic to them, before a group of older ones came along and made themselves more of a sleazy nuisance - and after penetrating the dank inner depth of Khufu (even more musty and morbid than the catacombs of Alexandria) and being joined by Will and Charlie, complete with headdresses, who sadly failed in their attempt to blag their way into the pyramid on our tickets - we went on the requisite camel ride, had lunch at whatever American fast food outlet it was right outside the site gates, and returned to Cairo by taxi and metro.
While Claire met up with a friend at the hostel, Will, Charlie and I went for a wander through old Cairo. The men at the entrance to Al-Azhar Mosque found me a headscarf to wear and we slipped in (shoeless, obviously) and wandered quietly around for a while. It was well-maintained, beautiful and serene. I very much liked it and would love to go back again if I ever had the chance. Sacre-Coeur gave me the same feeling. Sacrilege! I would be a saint if I had such friendly feelings towards the second large mosque we visited, whose name I've forgotten (it had a green and silver carpet) but which wouldn't let me in under any circumstances. While we were there, all its female worshippers were crowding through an outer gate and into a small chamber to the side, and back at the front entrance, a man came up and literally forced some oil bottles into my hand and then wanted me to pay for them. The bazaars and small, winding backstreets were colourful and interesting, especially the backstreets, which were targeted to local as opposed to tourist custom, and where there was space, crammed with people.
We raced back on the metro, spent an hour and a half traipsing round the area around our hostel looking for somewhere to eat (the sign 'Sheep Exlant Brains', with accompanying smell permeating at least the two neighbouring shopfronts deserves honourable mention here) before finally plumping on the second place we'd come across. However, the food was good, so that made up for it. Then to a bar to meet up with Claire and her friend and his friends, who turned out to include a Durham classmate of ours. Small world! Claire and I left early, being exhausted; Will and Charlie, we found out the next day, continued to live it up, somehow finding their way to a local African bar where they were the only foreigners present. You have to hand it to them. They displayed a knack for finding the unique experience.
Day two saw a visit to the National Museum, Will and Charlie-less, a certain amount of sitting around in the hostel waiting for them to complete their own visit, and at Will's behest, a last ditch-effort to dominate the rest of Cairo (i.e. Coptic Cairo) in an hour and fifteen minutes, which we perhaps inevitably didn't quite manage; after racing up the big tower whose name I've forgotten and spending disproportionately long at the top, and various taxi and Metro rides thereto and from, we were sadly left with only fifteen minutes or so in Coptic Cairo, and we barely left the road that runs parallel to the Metro stop. Still, that leaves more for another time and though ridiculous, the dashing to and fro was, I admit, exhilarating.
Then: catching the bus to Suez; the last bus from there having already gone; sitting around drinking shai outside a cafe in a godforsaken service depot at eleven o'clock at night while waiting for transport options to materialise (you get used to this); the standard injection of insanity into proceedings upon accepting a suspiciously smiley, spaced-out old gentleman's offer to take us to Sinai for a good price, only for the proposed driver to turn out to be his 12-year-old son, or grandson, or other random kid; the eventual, freezing cold service ride (needless to say with a different driver) through the desert, complete with abrupt emanation of godawful grinding noises from the gearbox about halfway through, subsequent pootling along in the darkness for 20 miles an hour for about half an hour, and eventual breakdown in the literal middle of nowhere, except for three giant fish. And Charlie's strange sleeplessness-fuelled attack of psychosis, which involved a game of 'I Spy' - played driving through the desert, in the dead of night - conducted in a crazed, creepy stalker-type voice from the back of the service and a stary-eyed face. It doesn't really get more surreal than that.
Anyway, we got to the village at the foot of Mount Sinai eventually, no thanks to any of this; upon which we dumped our bags in a room at the first camp we got to, layered up in sweatshirts, borrowed a couple of torches (minus batteries) from the owner, and leaving Claire, who wanted to sleep, took the same service to the foot of Mount Sinai. And thus, at three o'clock in the morning, almost without really realising what we were doing, it was all so haphazard and spontaneous, began our epic climb.
The rush from doing this is something impossible to describe. You start off in the still darkness of early morning, torch painting wan, unsteady circles on the rocky ground ahead of you, fuelled by a subdued thrill of excitement and the sense of embarking on something different - an adventure, a challenge. One that you are consciously choosing. There's no one else doing this right now except you and your friends; you're a bit odd. You walk, and you walk, and you say (in Arabic, for perversity's sake) to the camel drivers that come riding past you at intervals, in response to the inevitable question (directed at you in English), no, no, thank you, I don't want a camel. Walking is more beautiful. And that reinforces your suppressed sense of excitement and determination. So you walk, and you walk some more, and you get tired, and your legs begin to flag, but that's still okay... You take a steeper and debris-strewn shortcut to a higher level of the path, which zig-zags slowly and interminably up the foot of the mountain, and get shouted at by a man riding his camel round the distant bend that it is dangerous, dangerous! which is exciting, and rejuvenates you temporarily, and carries you a bit further, until the lack of any end in sight starts to take its toll... You keep on walking, but now you have to fight down the frustration of your obviously stamina-abundant companions striding ahead because you stop more often to rest, and the pride which insists on trying to keep up. Your legs are pretty tired by now. But you carry on, because let's face it, you're half way up a mountain at this point.
And then, at a significant u-bend, you pass a little waystation where a camel rests by the edge with its legs folded under it, and gazes out at the horizon with a serene imperturbability that could be indifference or else just simple habituation to the beauty of it. You have reached the ledge carved by the path into the mountainside. The first redness of dawn appears in the sky, and as you walk along it, slower now, you look out yourself, and you take a breather alongside the row of camels, and you have a glimpse, or a taste, of why it will be worth it. You keep going...
At six o'clock, the colours intensif€y above the silhouetted mountain range in the east, and it flies its first shimmers of gold. You haven't quite reached the top, but you've reached a rocky outcrop at the base of the final steep ascent. You sit on a rock and watch the sunrise, with a few other tourists and locals who happen to have ascended independently that night. Then you make the final ascent, against the tide as it were, while all the people who have spent the night at the top come down, and try not to crack up when, at one point halfway up, your companions, wearing their Arab headdress, take up position at either side of the steps and completely dead-pan ask for 'baksheesh, baksheesh' from the descending tourists, who actually take a few seconds to figure out what's going on and then give an involuntary chuckle over their shoulder.
Then you get to the top, and everyone else has gone down, and you are the only people up there. You shove your foot into the windowframe of the little church at the top and somehow manage to swing round the corner, get one foot into a notch in the perpendicular wall and the other into the rock face that juts out therefrom, and heave yourself up onto the flat rock next to the roof of the church, at cost of some serious agony to your upper body but it doesn't matter because now you're higher than you've ever been and looking down at the world, the hostile alien landscape outspread below in every direction and the sky is blue and the air is cold and the morning is new and there is nothing to beat this, nothing. The peace is indescribable - and the sense of freedom from everything. You feel that if everyone could come up here, and look down this, they would forget their wars, their petty conflicts, their games of power and blood and money. You wish they could. This is where we all come from, in the end. This strange and awe-inspiring earth - vulnerable! So much bigger than us and so much smaller than the universe. The scale of destructibility.
There is a little bell in the corner, on top of the church, which doesn't look like it's been rung for a while. And behind and below, a Nigerian woman walks past the church on her way down, and shouts up to you, Bless me! Bless me! Charlie says, er, I'm not a priest. But bless you anyway! And another group of Arab-looking young people who appear look up at you and shout at you in Arabic and he calls down, it's the best place! And Will, be-headdressed and de-sweatshirted (it's still cold up there but you're all pretty warm by now), scrambles down and over to another outcrop, slightly lower down, and performs the 10 Geordie Commandments for the benefit of the camera, the sky, the entirety of the surrounding mountain range and any listeners contained therein. Words drift away in the big empty vastness and you speak anyway. There's something exhilarating in making a noise when you know you won't be heard and no one or nothing will care. (Talk about a microcosm of the fundamental underlying condition of human existence!)
to be continued
