Egypt in Living Contradiction

Prayer calls float on Cairo’s polluted air. It used to be that you could only hear the mantras from the mosque towers. But now, rusty speakers hang from high on building walls, allowing you to heed them just about anywhere. Add to this the endless conversation of car horns, punctuating the chants like a chronometer that’s lost all timing, and you quickly realize you’re not in Kansas anymore.

Looking down from our 7th floor window I can see Mohammid Farid street. Cairo’s early morning life shows locked steel shutters covering entire store fronts, a couple of women wearing fashionable veils walking purposely to some undisclosed destination and beat-up blue and white taxi cabs with their doors hanging on for dear life, coughing up black diesel fumes with every thrust of acceleration.

The ubiquitous “they” say that one day in Cairo is equivalent to smoking one pack of cigarettes. This statement has been made by many about numerous cities and whether it’s true or not, I don’t know. But judging by the number of trucks, cars, taxis and motorbikes spewing out thick black clouds of soot, I believe “they” got it right about this one. It’s been dubbed a serious health and environmental issue (it has the world’s highest level of lead and suspended particles), but by the looks of it, the government is only ‘alarmed’ and not yet in full throttle to take care of it.

As we ride out to see one of the last intact remaining ancient wonders of the world, this issue seems to have traveled here as well. If you’ve only seen postcard Pyramids, the real life versions are incredibly majestic. Taken on their own with the sun sinking between them while riding a camel, they instantly transport you back thousands of years. However, behind them extending to the end of my peripheral vision is the slow encroachment of civilization. As the Pyramids sway in the history of desert, Cairo sinks in the smog of petrol life. Add to this the cement cinder block wall that protects the Pyramids from the outside world, the tour buses parked 500m away and the refuse spread throughout the surrounding desert and you get a juxtaposition that would jar even the most verdant of travelers.

This layering of the visual experience finds me again at the height of a holy mountain. Mount Sinai rests in St. Katherine’s Protectorate of Egypt’s Sinai region. It’s been revered by the religious, the curious and the adventurous for centuries. It’s believed that God delivered the Ten Commandments to Moses at its summit.

It’s a stunning 2285 meter, 3-hour climb to the top. Beginning the hike, Nat, Herbert and I pass through deep sandy valleys until the ascent becomes steeper and jagged, dark red and orange mountains emerge around us. As we near the peak, the sharp rock outcroppings give way to smooth elongated bulges transformed by centuries of wind and rain. When we finally reach the top, the view looks like a sea of sandy red waves amid small puffy white clouds, highlighted here and there by a sporadic peaking of sunlight.

The beauty of this desolate arid landscape is awe-inspiring, but the purity of the summit is lost as I eat my Snickers bar purchased from a nearby vender. A shoddily restored Greek Orthodox chapel which once contained beautiful paintings and ornaments is closed with a heavy thick chain due to despoliation by tourists in the late 80’s. And blue and brown tarps provide makeshift shelters for a few hawkers who sell everything from colourful pebbles to poster-sized prints of the Mona Lisa.

I do feel lucky. Starting in May this place is swarming with 400 or so tourists, some with stereo’s, others with Bibles. But just like everywhere Nat and I find ourselves, we’re here in the off-season, sharing the summit with only 8 other souls. It’s peaceful and after some napping, dreaming and talking we make our way down, with minds rested but legs burning.

The next day, we move onto Dahab. This has long been one of Egypt’s hippie hangouts and scuba-diving playgrounds. The thatched huts are gone and the bay is now lined with concrete beach camps and candlelit Arabian haunts with huge cushions on the floor for lounging. Thankfully, this is as far as it will go, at least at the northern end, where the local Bedouin tribe has successfully convinced (i.e. gently threatened) the government to stop all further development.

In the Marine Garden camp, we wile away the days playing endless amounts of dominoes, eating delicious Bedouin food and watching the moon go down over Saudi Arabia on the opposite shore. But it’s not all picturesque. While Nat takes her first scuba-diving lesson, I enter the depths for a 50-minute dive of my own. Just 18 metres down, I watch entranced as a lone white plastic shopping bag drifts along with the hundreds of other fish and coral in front of me. In the end, this marred layering is almost…well…a surreal experience.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 18th, 2007 at 4:13 pm and is filed under He Said. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. Add to del.icio.us.