Shortly after we started, we stood aside as the students/young folks marched past us, unwilling to let up, not even for a minute, until they had achieved their goal of reaching the summit. It was liberating and we were left alone with Mohamed and the wonder of that Egyptian night.
As we climbed silently along, the sides of the path like ink, we were startled one hour in to see two camels standing right beside the trail, staring at us, silent, watchful, sizing up the strangers in town.
Their handlers stood by -”Camel ride? Camel ride?”
Mohamed looked at us, leaving us to deal with these ghost like figures.
“La shokran”. No thank you.
When in doubt, fall back on your basic Canadian values and just politely decline.
Halfway to the summit, we stopped for a rest, sipped some water and munched on a trail mix bar. It was a chance to stop and look out over that part of the trek we had left behind. Far below we could see a collection of maybe one hundred and fifty twinkling lights emanating from a small village near the monastery. One building stood out. It was Mohamed who answered our questions. This little hamlet had a school, the pride of the town, and this beautiful site was that school. In the middle of this barren wilderness, where it was so hard to imagine how people survived, they had made sure that their children would receive an education. From our perch high up the mountain, the school was a beacon of hope. The night felt endless at a certain point as we continued our ascent; the hours ticked by.
Mohamed said to us at four in the morning or so:
“ There is a coffee shop in the next kilometre. We will rest.”
It would be prior to our final ascent.
There are coffee shops and there are coffee shops. This one, three quarters of the way up the Mt. Sinai trail, was built into the side of the hill. The proprietor sold chocolate bars, potato chips, Nescafe coffee and tea. He boiled the water on a small Bunsen burner of a stove. Inside we sat on benches covered in woven striped red, beige, and black matted carpets. Ten or twelve other random carpets were hung along three walls. The temperature had dropped outside but there in the interior of this remote little shop hanging on the side of a cliff, it was as warm as a Canadian home in the middle of winter, a fire crackling in the grate.
