Mount Sinai, Bedouin, and Russian Tour Groups

When Moses walked up Mount Sinai to talk to God, the first words he heard were not, I think, "I am the Lord Your God." They were not, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." No, if Moses' experience at the holy mountain was anything like mine, the first words he heard were something like "Mister, mister, you want buy keffiyeh?"

My travel buddy Roma and I arrived at the base of the mountain at two in the morning to find it crawling with tourists and local Bedouin trying to sell scarves.

"Buy keffiyeh," one of the Bedouin men said, pushing a head scarf at me. "Only twenty pounds."

"La, shukran," I said, exhausting my store of Arabic.

"No, buy," he said. "Is cold at the top of the mountain, and all your money will not keep you warm."

I felt it. Synthetic. "What's it made of?" I asked.

The Bedouin smiled through stained teeth. "Keffiyeh," he said. "Like Arafat. Yassir Arafat? You know?"

Now there's a good selling point. I laughed. "Oh, this is Arafat's keffiyeh?"

He nodded, not understanding. "Yes, Arafat."

I walked away. God only knows the bad karma involved in buying Arafat's old keffiyeh. And besides, I was dissapointed in the man. I would have thought he had too much class to wear polyester.

Roma and I had pulled an all-nighter to catch the minibus from our hotel in Dahab out to Jebel al-Mousa (Mount Moses), which the Bedouin say is the biblical Mount Sinai. The mountain lies about about fifty miles inland, on the other side of a wall of shield mountains that separate it from the coast. It is desert in the purest sense, which means that it is very, very hot very, very early in the day. So to climb it without dying of dehydration, you go at night, make the punishing hike to the summit, catch the sunrise, then speed down before it gets to hot. It would be a solitary, spiritual experience. This, at least, was the plan. We hadn't figured on the Bedouin, or the camels, or the Russian Orthodox tour group.



(Sidebar: The Bedouin having lived in the area for centuries, it seems like they would have the best claim as to the location of any mountain. On the other hand, though, it's not clear whether the Bedouin were in the area before the Arab Conquest fifteen hundred years ago, which most sources would put a while after the Revelation at Sinai. It may be that the Bedouin aren't quite the authorities on the subject they would have you believe--these are the same people who say Aaron is buried at Petra.)

Around two-thirty we started up the mountain. The moon was still almost full and the desert landscape glowed with a pearly light. The white sand path was easy to see, so we could hike fast without worrying about wandering off it. We passed Saint Catherine's, a Byzantine-era monastery about half a mile up the path, and ran directly into the camels.

The way up to the summit, we discovered, is very long--most people take about two-and-a-half to three hours to do it, although a decent hiker can do it in two. So the Bedouin sell camel rides up and down so that the lazy or out-of-shape can see the top without dying. There must be many of these, because in the course of the hike I counted easily a hundred camels, perhaps more. At first--near the bottom--the Bedouin would try to stop you and ask 'Mister, do you want ride gammel?' Later, they dropped even that formality and walked by saying 'Gammel," much in the small-time drug dealers say "Crack," or "X," walking off if you didn't respond quickly.

One saw me and Roma, gestured at her, and said, "Gammel for your wife?"

"Trade?" I asked. Roma shot me a dirty look. Whatever. She wasn't going to carry me and my bags up the mountain and donate hair for making carpets.

"No, no. Ride."

"Why not? I give you her, you give me camel. She cook, she clean, she bear strong Bedouin sons." I have no idea why I was talking like this. It was late.

"No, no good," he said. Then his eyes lit up. "Take camel. Is three hours walk to top. With gammel, only one." Mind, he was leading the camel. Walking. The Bedouin have an interesting way with numbers. Another promised it was two hours walk to the top. One trying to sell me a scarf said it was very cold at the 1250 meter summit, and another next to him swore I would freeze when I reached 2000.

We heard this, or variations of it, most of the way up the mountain. And it was a long way, especially since we spent most of it passing tour groups and camels. The path was narrow, and the camel is reluctant to let you pass. It is also smelly and ill-tempered, so you don't want to get too close. I was alomst run off cliffs several times by the beasts.

As for the mountain? Well, it's spectacular. Around an hour from the summit, you see it soaring above you, a great craggy peak that looks like the work of God Himself. Beneath, lit by moonlight, you see the valley, the path white against the stone, and behind it row on row of mountains. And from there it's a long climb, culminating in seven hundred and fifty--again, taking the Bedouin at their word--slick, rough hewn steps. Each is about a meter wide, though, so you can only go as fast as the slowest person anywhere on the path. And nothing against Russian endurance--I mean, WW2, come on--but there were definitely some slow people on that hike.

Eventually, we got to the top, dug into our halwa (A mixture of sesame oil and honey. All we had for food, since Egyptian grocery stores suck) and sat out to watch the sun rise. Five minutes later, freezing, we realized the sun wouldn't come up for another two hours. We unpacked the sleeping bag, wedged ourselves into a crack in a rock that blocked the wind, and covered ourselves with the bag. I closed my eyes for a second, and woke up two hours later to Japanese voices arguing and light streaming over the mountains.

We got up, opened our eyes. I wrapped myself in a blanket and went to go watch the sun rise. The view was incredible. The Sinai Mountains stretched to infinity like the waves of a stalled sea. And then, just as the sun crested the mountains, every Japanese tourist on the mountain ran to have his or her picture taken against it. And the Russians started singing Orthodox hymns in loud, deep, choral voices. It was time to go. We sped down the mountain.

This is the point where I should reflect on the experience, tell about what it did to my spirit, how I touched the face of God. But really, I'm not at the level where I can have a spiritual experience when surrounded by Japanese tourists, and I'm not even sure the Bedouin have the right mountain. So maybe I should bitch about how tourists ruined a good experience. But I was a tourist too. So I'll close with this: Sinai was an awesome hike. Do it. God is watching. And if you can't make it to the top, well, there's always gammels.