Rawan has the most incredible eyes.
At first they’re green. You get a second look, they’re yellow.
When she’s finally looking at you and you’re gazing back into them, they’re hazel.
Then the sun hits her face, the light fills them from a distance and you realise – they’re gold.
It’s been a long night.
It’s 11 a.m., I still haven’t slept.
We’ve hiked a mountain, watched the sunrise, stood where Moses stood, driven out to the wilderness and back, now I’m finally back in my bed, ready to sleep.
And what I remember most from it all are – Rawan’s golden eyes.
13 hours earlier…
“The guy said 10:30.”
“No no no, ten sharp!” he screams at me through the phone.
“Okay I’m coming!”
It’s 9:55.
I grab my stuff and scramble out the door. The meeting point is at the supermarket, just two or three minutes away. There are no streetlights in the alleys running off the beach, but it’s a full moon. I can see.
In the distance I see the van arriving.
Is that the guy?
He sees me power walking and nods at me.
That’s the guy.
“St Catherine’s?”
I nod. “Do we have a couple of minutes? I need to buy some things.”
“Of course, take your time.”
Take my time? You were rushing me out the door five minutes ago.
I buy a bottle of water, a can of Sprite, and six bars of chocolate. Then I jump in the van, out of breath, and wait.
10:05.
10:10.
10:15.
What happened to ten sharp?
Finally at 10:20, another couple shows up. We do the hello-introduction thingie. Brazilian. Friendly.
We head off. Two blocks down the road we stop to pick up another guy. Also Brazilian. Naturally, he and the couple start chatting. I don’t speak Portuguese, but I can guess what they’re saying. Oh wow you’re from Brazil too, what are you doing in Egypt, oh you’re from Sao Paulo cool, me too.
After ten minutes we stop. The driver is yammering away on the phone. He’s speaking Arabic, but again I can guess what he’s saying. This hotel beside the pizza place, right? Yes, we’re here, where are you?!
After fifteen minutes, three young ladies jump inside. The rest of us are semi-sleeping, but these three are loud. They ask if they can put on their music. Driver says sure. They blast it. And talk. And laugh. A million decibels. I’m guessing they took a power nap to prepare for the night ahead. Now they’re wired.
We pick up one last guy, from Israel, then start the drive to the mountain.
We are climbing Mt Sinai tonight.
Mt Sinai is famous for a few things. First, at the foot is St Catherine’s Monastery. It’s the longest active monastery in the world. The summit has an Orthodox church built in 1934, and a mosque still used by Muslims today. And finally, according to both the Bible and Quran, it’s where Moses received the Ten Commandments from the Tablets of Stone, a zillion years ago.
We arrive around 1:30 a.m. I am barely awake. We get off the bus. Now I’m barely awake and freezing cold. We get taken into a small shop selling hot drinks and snacks. Now I’m barely awake, freezing cold and hungry.
As we sit and wait, we finally get a chance to chat with one another. The Brazilian guy is Daniel. He’s studying in Lebanon on exchange, now he’s in Egypt, fleeing the war. The Brazilian couple is on a trip around the world. They’ve just been to China. They find out I’m from New Zealand, and excitedly tell me they’re going there next. Cool. The Israeli guy is talking to the Egyptian girls in Arabic. I ask him, how do you know Arabic? He says, because I’m Arabic (he’s Palestinian). Oh. Stupid question. The Egyptian girls are a classic travelling trio, on a one week getaway. In backpacker speak, we call them Charlie’s Angels.
Charlies Angels
Noun
1. A group of three female friends travelling together, who move everywhere as a group of three and never separate. Usually young and rowdy. Avoid if possible.
We head to the starting checkpoint. There are passport checks, security checks, ticket checks.
We stand in line and wait.
The guide keeps saying, “Yella, yella, yella.”
One of the Egyptian girls is next to me.
I ask her, “What’s yella?”
She looks at me. “What’s yellow?”
No, “yella.”
“Oh! It’s like, let’s go.”
Ahh.
Once they confirm that we all bought tickets, have visas, and none of us are fugitives, we get moving.
It’s 2 a.m.. The air is crisp. The path is rocky and difficult to walk freely, there are no lights, but the full moon shines and guides the way.
I walk with the Brazilian guy. Beirut is an awesome city, he tells me. I tell him I almost visited Lebanon, after meeting a Lebanese surfer in the Ivory Coast, who said the surf in Lebanon was great.
“You’re Brazilian, you surf?”
“Yeah!”
“So how’s the surf in Lebanon?”
He shakes his head, confused.
“It’s shitty.”
We both laugh.
The hike is supposed to be six kilometres, with a final climb of 720 steps to the top. The idea is to be at the peak for sunrise.
I calculate that by starting at 1 a.m., we will reach the peak around 4 a.m..
I ask the guide – “What time is sunrise?”
“6:50.”
Either I’m awful at math, or we’re going to have three hours of standing around staring at our shoes.
The path up the mountain is well-trodden. It winds like a never-ending “S”, there are men with camels every ten minutes, waiting for people to get too tired to climb any further.
I don’t know our guide’s name. But as the rest of the group tires, I find myself at the front, walking with him. He’s chatty. He tells me in high season, he climbs this mountain every day. In low season, it can be as seldom as once a month.
As he falls back to check on the rest of them, he tells me to go ahead.
“When you get to the coffee shop, stop and wait for us,” he says.
“Oh, there’s a Starbucks up here?” I ask.
He looks at me confused and shakes his head.
“No.”
Just a joke, bro.
I get to the coffee shop. It’s a little hole-in-the-mountain selling Coke, chocolate, and potato chips.
There are also small benches for us to sit on. I plonk myself down and wait for the others.
The Brazilian couple are right behind me. The lone Brazilian is next. Then the Israeli. Then the Charlies Angels. I can hear the three of them laughing and hooting long before they arrive.
As we get ready to start moving again, the Israeli guy cracks. He points at the camel and says, “Might need one of those.”
Two minutes later, he rides past us on camelback, grinning.
As this group of camels walk by, one passes two inches from my face. I stare, realising what wondrous creatures they are. They’re enormous. You think they’d be just like horses, but they’re bigger and clunkier, yet somehow still graceful. Secondly, their thighs are ridiculous. Massive slabs of pure muscle. “Wow,” I whisper to myself as they clobber past.
As we hike to the next stop, I’ve now figured out how this hike goes.
There is a coffee shop, or “Starbucks” every kilometre or so. The hike is six kilometres, so there’s going to be five or six Starbucks’, and we simply hike from Starbucks to Starbucks taking a rest at each one.
This gives people a chance to catch their breath, buy a chocolate bar, the group regroups for a head count, then we head on to the next.
By the time we reach the third Starbucks, I’m falling asleep.
It’s freezing cold, and five hours past my bedtime.
As I set there dozing on one of the benches, the Charlies Angels come and sit beside me.
“Hi!”
“Hi.”
Whenever you meet a group of Charlies Angels you rarely learn their names. You just know them as the blonde one, the tall one, the curly-haired one etc.
This group, I piece them together as the quiet one, the loud one, the mysterious one.
“So…you guys are from Cairo?”
The loud one nods. And then shakes her head.
She tells me she’s from some other city, which I don’t remember. And the other two are Cairenes (someone from Cairo).
“You have too much energy,” I joke with them.
“We slept already!” they scream, laughing.
As we sit there chatting, waiting for the guide to move us along, freezing our toes off, I lie down on the bench and close my eyes. Sometimes during moments like these, I smile at what a faraway place I’ve found myself in. I’m in Egypt. On the Red Sea Coast. Climbing Mt Sinai. Lying under the stars in the middle of the night. Isn’t that wild?
Another hour passes. Another kilometre. Another Starbucks.
Finally, we reach the last one.
The guide tells us we’re at the end. Just wait here until almost-sunrise, and we’ll climb the 720 stairs to the peak.
At this particular Starbucks, they have blankets to hire for a few dollars which is a godsend. The air is biting with a fierce cold that sends frost deep into your bones. I am freezing. I wrap myself in one and sit with the Charlies Angels. They are all wearing the same baggy jeans.
“Is this the fashion in Egypt or something?”
“Yeah!”
They laugh as I tell them it was the fashion in New Zealand about twenty years ago.
The loud one pulls out a pizza box. I stare at her confused.
“You guys brought pizza?”
“It was our dinner…”
She opens it up to show five or six slices.
“Oh my goodness can I have one?”
“Of course!”
I grab a slice and savour it. “I’ve been craving pizza for the last five hours!”
As we sit there shivering in the cold, eating the final pizza scraps, I start wondering where everyone’s gone. There’s nobody around but us. I go look around the Starbucks and notice everyone cramped into a small room, napping. I follow them inside. It’s warm. There are benches to lie on. I find myself a spot and tuck under my blanket. It feels so good I fall asleep immediately.
“Let’s go!”
How long have I been asleep? I don’t know. The Charlies Angels are shaking my blanket and rushing me outside. Time to climb to the peak.
It’s still dark, but sunrise is in an hour. We get the group together, the Brazilians are fast asleep and slow to get up, but eventually we hit the stairs and start ascending.
The stairs are not really stairs in many places – just rocks conveniently placed, and it’s hard to climb in the dark. We go slowly, taking frequent breaks.
By halfway, the Charlies Angels are exhausted, heaving oxygen. I see why – it’s tough. We do another twenty stairs and stop again. And again. It’s warming me up, so I love it. They hate it.
We reach the top. It’s like a small castle. We see the little room where Moses was. We see the cathedral. The small mosque. But mostly, we just want to rest. We go sit against the wall, wrap ourselves in our blankets, and wait for sunrise.
Like most sunrises, it comes slowly, and we don’t even realise it’s happening until it’s already in the middle of happening.
As everything comes to light we take photos, hundreds of photos, climbing up on the mountains, on the walls, any shot we can find.
Once we’ve exhausted every photo angle and possibility, we sit and talk. I finally learn the Charlies Angels names. The loud one is Shahd. The quiet one is Mariam. The mysterious one is Rawan.
Finally, once the sun is well and truly up, it’s time to descend.
We climb down the 720 stairs, say goodbye to the last Starbucks guy, give him back his blankets, and head on our way.
I walk with Rawan. In the sunlight, her eyes mesmerize me. They are yellow, but also brown, and also green. All together – golden. And they glimmer, like gold, every time her face turns and glances against the sun.
It’s about a two hour trek back to civilisation. I walk with Rawan. We talk about TV shows, and travelling, and work, and food.
She lights up a cigarette.
“Isn’t that haram?”
She rolls her eyes.
The sun on the Egyptian coast is tough. It starts to beat down. Our walk turns into a dawdle. I don’t mind. She tells me her favourite food is Koshari. Her dream country to visit is Greece. She doesn’t want to go back to Cairo.
As we arrive back at base, we thank our guide for walking with us all night, tip him, and tumble back onto the bus. We fall asleep immediately.
Moments later I’m woken by the noise of Dahab, the heat on my face through the window. It’s almost lunchtime. I haven’t slept in over 24 hours. We’re pulling up to the girls’ hotel.
Everyone says their goodbyes.
Rawan smiles at me with warm, tired eyes.
I smile back.
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
I’m the last one on the bus.
As we arrive at my stop, I thank and tip the driver.
I’m sleepy, but calm, and grateful.
Walking back to my guesthouse, I take off my shoes and wander barefoot, along the sand road.
Once I arrive, I sit for a while outside, looking over the Red Sea.
What a beautiful sight, and what a beautiful night, atop Mt Sinai.
For my Mt Sinai climb, I booked my tour through GetYourGuide. It was great! Highly recommended.
