MOSES AND MARS BARS
(Written on my first day in Cairo)
Am safely out of Jordan (May 23) and safely in
Cairo!
Just arrived in Cairo by bus this May 25th from
Mt. Sinai just after noon (
Saint Katrina is the local town name).
Dad and I had flown down to the mountain on an Israeli propeller plane in
1975 on our famous drive from Holland to Saudi Arabia when the Sinai Peninsula was still in Israeli hands. It's odd but I remember almost nothing of Sinai from that trip, just a bit about the beach time we spent in Eilat on the way back to Jerusalem airport. A lay-over, I believe. That was 35 years ago!
The Greek Orthodox monastery of
St. Katherine's has been at the base of the holy mountain since about 300 AD and is the major attraction in addition to the mountain, but the one Monday I was there, it was closed for some special church holiday. (Pentecost?) An Egyptian police agent at the monastery gate gave me a tour of the outside, however. I doubted that the monastery had ever been attacked by "the Jews" (in 300 AD? What, did they congregate from all over the Roman empire after the fall of Jerusalem?), as he expertly claimed, but most of the rest of his spiel was helpful. About 25 monks live there now year-round. For religious plurality, a small mosque was allowed to be built for the
Muslim pilgrims who also revere the Prophet Musa.
TO THE TOP
I had thought pilgrims only ascended early in the cold, dark hours of the morning to get to the summit of Mt. Sinai (Horeb, Jebel Musa) by sunrise (not a very attractive option to me), but my two Canadian taxi companions from Dahab, a coastal resort - a male and female nurse couple from Victoria, BC - said they were going up later in the afternoon for sunSET, a much more attractive option, so I figured my 52-year-old body could handle 2 hours up and 2 hours down with a rest stop on top quite well
while it was light. To help the local economy (and possibly lessen the threat of lawsuits, no doubt), the Egyptian govt. requires any party to take an official bedouin "guide" to lead the way. The three of us lucked out with a pleasant 31-year-old local Jabaliyyah bedouin man, Mustafa, with whom I chatted pleasantly up and back in Arabic.
There are two official paths - the
"Path of Penitence" (all steep steps, popular with Filipino Catholic pilgrims) or the
"Camel Path" - smooth and level enough for a group of tourists on camelback to mount the mount. We walked the Camel Path. By about 1 and a half hours into it, you reach the final 500-odd uneven steps to the top. Stairmaster never gave this good a work-out! And unlike the Charleton Heston movie, no way would the
10 Commandments have been written on stone tablets that huge. You'd have to lug them down the mountain 2 hours plus! A nice medium hardback bestseller size is more like it!
It's not a remote, road-less-traveled pilgrimage. Thousands of tourists and pilgrims make the trek annually (in winter and spring mainly, so we had the mountain nearly to ourselves), and in the interest of 21st century comfort, rest stops with drinks and snacks are scattered at comfortable intervals, manned by bedouin employees: Mars bars, Snickers, potato chips, Pepsi, all the junk food an appropriately ascetic pilgrim could ever need.
At the top, you really are above it all, with ranges of barren mountains stretching 100s of miles in every direction (the sea is too far to see). West of the summit is a large sandy basin that could comfortably contain the tents of the Children of Israel, I thought. The side with the monastery is much too narrow, and the higher
St. Katherine's peak across the way is too rough and has no plain nearby. As sunset neared, I witnessed a very odd phenomenon: the giant lengthening shadow of Sinai was exactly in the shape of a pyramid! (
Twilight Zone music here.)
So, I imagined Moses at the top of this wind-swept, firm rocky pinnacle. On one side you could sit on a smooth outcropping and watch the thousands of Israelite tents in the plain below (and wonder where all the music and incense was coming from) or step back a bit and be completely hidden from view on the other side. The holy mountain is not a simple peak, but has multiple peaks of different heights.
Unfortunately, the top is now littered in parts with Mars bar wrappings, used teabags and animal (and human) waste. But that's mass tourism for you.
I tripped on loose gravel coming back down the mountain around sunset and banged my chin so that it bled a bit. But the God of Horeb was prepared for every eventuality: I had two professional nurses right behind me to bind my wound!
That evening, the three of us had a comfortable buffet meal in my Daniela Village hotel in the nearby village - with cold Egyptian Stella beer! A great way to end a mountain-top experience ...
