Jesus supposedly had spent his childhood in Egypt and yesterday I checked out his supposedly family pad.

(St. George church)

Welcome to Old Cairo, the oldest part of Cairo, a location dear to Coptic Christian (Coptic means Egypt is Coptic language - speak of recursion).

You could reach this cluster of churches easily by taking the city train down to Helwan and stopped at Mars Girgis. It was a pleasant albeit smelly and hot ride for me. Cairo was getting hot.

There were 4 or 5 different churches within ten minutes walk here and I went to all of them.

(St. George)

I lit a candle in St. George church (yeah, that dragon slayer); it was an old habit that I didnt' carry anymore . When I was inside the chruch I felt the urge to do it. Funny how things happen. The candles made crackling noises as they burn, creating rhythm  that I found comfortable.

I made a wish as I lit the candle; I was essentially a beggar.

I noticed a few Egyptian women prayed by touching some ornaments and the gold covered 'picture' of St. George.

I like to check out people's place of worship because this was one of a few place where people tended to be honest about themselves; less facade, more soul. There was always a serene atmosphere about these place that calm my usually turbulent mind.

In situ, there was also the old Synagogue, which was now became more of a tourist of attraction than a place of worship. That was unfortunate.

Romans were here and you could still walk on their pebblestones narrow streets under the St. George complex. It was amazing to me to find a huge tourist store (I mean mall size, although only one floor) under here. My inner capitalist smiled while my inner religious police frowned.

The Greek cemetary nearby was interesting. You could differentiate the rich Greek and the poor Greek by their tombstones. Class difference was still evident even after we die.

(Greek cemetary)

My favourite church was still "Abu something", where the crypt of the holy family was located. I loved the high wooden ceiling and the chirping birds nearby. I sat down and closed my eyes and absorbed the serenity of the place. I needed it because Cairo could really fucked up your inner balance. I couldn't enter the crypt because it was blocked. So the only sight I had of this crypt was some generic stone pillars.

Old Cairo was worth a visit although the area you could enjoy was actually pretty limited. A couple walk here and there and khalas. Don't visit the faux soux nearby.

Until next weekend.

(Hanging Church of Old Cairo)

“No,” she said. “They wanted to learn Hebrew so they can talk to us when we go down and visit.”

“When you go down there and visit?” I did not know what she was talking about.

“Last year 200,000 Israelis visited the Bedouin during Passover," she said.

“Two hundred thousand,” I said. “On just one day?”

“You didn’t know about this?” she said.

“No,” I said. Before I went to the Middle East I had no idea Israeli Jews had any kind of genuinely friendly relations with Arabs in any country except right-wing Lebanese Maronites. And a significant number of Maronites say they aren't even Arabs at all.

“The Bedouin roll our joints for us,” she said. “They sell us hashish. Israeli women like to go topless.”"

We stopped at a massive sand structure with a long and steep slope, ready to 'snowboard' our way down.

I sucked at snowboarding.

Naturally I spent my way down falling over, twice, fast. Ziyad went down well, too well actually, when at the bottom he flipped twice in the air and fell like hurried leaves in autumns, hard on the ground. He got minor concussion and lost a total two minutes of the memory he had when he was on the ground, laying down, trying to get up. We thought he was pulling our legs at first. It took us thirty ticks on the clock to realize the boy was fucked (not in a nice way). We ran down the slopes and reached him.

He survived although he had headaches for the next couple of days. Wuss.

So we continued our merry way to our location for the night camp. And we met with another jeep full of American brats studying at AUC. Great. But never mind. This was Siwa and I was in my nirvana level of chill and peace.

The guide prepared our camp and we chilled and letting ourselves be awed by the sunset.  I witnessed the sun reluctantly disappear under the horizon line marked by the flowing waves of dunes, like lovers slowly parted for a long period of time. Darkness slowly embraced us and the glitters of the stars above started to dance in our eyes.

If you let your shoes go and dip your feet on the desert sand beneath, you would feel the sands crumble crunchly, sending an estatic and sweet noise to your ear. If you climbed to the top of the dunes, you could  lay down and hug the dunes; it will hug you back. Just close your eyes and feel the breeze slowly caressing your body. Daydream.

Then we went to sleep, on a rug, with the night sky as our roof, clutching to our blankets, trying to steal a couple of hours before dinner time, our bodies nagging after being objected to the harsh bike ride earlier today. Our nap was serenaded by the chattery of the other group, high pitched girly laughters combined with alcohol infused guys making jokes.  No matter.

The twin dry woods made crackling noises as yellow flames consumed it, sharing their heat with us a stone throw away. The flame danced enticingly and I couldn't resist. I moved away from our sleep cluster and laid down next to the fire and started writing on my notebook.

Just my torch, my thoughts and the flames. And the stream of conciousness just flew to the papers. I confessed and she listened. Some pieces of those are on this blog, the rests were kept between me and the desert.

Our nap was interrupted by the main event of the night, warm meal in the desert. Grilled lamb, chicken (bird flu be damn), fresh soup, salad, bread; the works.  And BEER !

A feast, worthy of a king's dinner. It filled us up, made us happy and kept me awake.  The rest had been sleeping on for a good two hours before I tore myself away from the fire and doused it off. A haunting howl of a desert fox dominated the night. It was completely dark. The starsth twinkled freely without a ray of moonlight.

Desert at night was cold. The sand got in your face and pretty much everywhere else. But my body didn't matter because my mind was at peace.

I wanted nothing that night and I received bliss in return.

I slept at the feet of everbody else because there wasn't enough room and I noticed strange things happening in the middle of the night (smile); lucky bastard. It was good to be sick and taken care of.

I woke up the same way like the day before, all hurting from the hard sand but with a big stupid smile. One night in the desert of Siwa made you do that.

I left Siwa grateful and enlightened. This was another world and I had a taste of it. Next time I will return with my loved one. Scratch that last part. I'm going back either way.

Our SilverKey Operation in Egypt has been fully operational in the past 6 weeks. So far so good. More pictures of our people soon :) There are thirteen of us here and we are still hiring (.Net C# developer; we are doing WinFX projects). Let me know.

Last weekend I went to two places, Mars Matruah and Siwa. The former provided beautiful white sands with warm Mediterranean water and General Rommel office-in-a-cave site.

I will write about Siwa for the rest of this post.

After two hours and change ride on a microbus that flew at 160 km/hour through the barren landscape of Western Egypt, I arrived in Siwa 'downtown', a simple square with scattered restaurants and donkey kart. Kids would politely offer their donkey taxi service to you. The day was ending; the sun was resting.

The time had been gentle to this place. Only minimal amount of progress intruded the sweet atmosphere of Siwa.

We were too late to go camp in the Great Sea of Sands. The office that issue the permits for foreigners to camp in the desert had closed. We needed the next day, 10 US dollars each and 10 LE  and our passports to get the permit. Ziyad didn't get the permit because they charge $500 dollars for Arab citizens (for hunting deers) and our guide wisely recommended that he pretended we only had four people camping instead of five.

So for the night, we stayed in a Siwian camp four kilos away from the town. Incidently this camp had a natural hot spring. There were only two hot spring in Siwa. We would go to the other one 36 hours later in the morning; but for tonight, it was jacuzzi time.

The pond was warm and full of green algae that rub softly on your skin. The smell of sulfur was strong and there were bubble constantly surfacing from the source of the spring. Mix this with a lazy desert night wind and you had a blissful combination of warmth and breeze.

Dinner was cold but nice. We ate under the main tent which would become our shelter for the night. The desert floor was covered by old carpets and the tent was made of zigsaw of quilts. There were a group of Siwian man playing their songs in their cheerful beats on the other tent. The noisy groups of night visitors slowly peeled away from our tent and went their own way home. Before midnight, there were only 8 tourists in the camp; we stayed in the main tent and the rest had their own smaller tent.

I woke up in the morning hurt. The sand maybe soft on your hand but they made lousy bed. After a spartan breakfast, we hitched a ride back to town. It's time to see what it had to offer.

After depositing our packs to a hotel, our bike ride adventure began.

We went to the nearby hills full of abandoned villages of mud and stones houses, the Shali. Jumping among ruins was fun. By now the full might of the sun had shown its effect. I was proud to say I didn't have any sunburn on this trip. Just 3 shades darker.

Our next route is to reach the Amun temple, the site where Alexander the Great went to see the Oracle of Siwa thousands years ago.  The oracle declared him as a son of God Amun.

For this previlege, I had to part with my twenty pounds. I could confirm that unlike Alexander, I was not the Son of Amun. No oracle showed up to greet me. Selfish bastard.

Our pleasant bike ride continued on sleepy dusty roads of Siwa. The thick brushes of palm trees decorated the sides of the road. There were very few cars passed these roads. Me, happy. We passed Cleopatra bath, a spring with green clear water where you can see the rock formation underground.

Cleopatra was there, with her dark skin and flowing long black curly hair. She's either a guide or taking her parents to Siwa. I didn't know where she was from.

Our next destination was to reach the lake nearby (or what it seemed at the time) and my stubborness (or can I call it persistence) forced the rest to painfully ride twenty minutes on under the midday sun of Siwa. The water was running out until just around the corner appeared this beatiful lake with rough hills on the far horizone. One single road split the lake into two. There was no car on this road and we spent time being tourists; snapping pictures and pose.

Needless to say that our ride back to the hotel would be torturous; except that a discovery of a cafe on a hill saved us. It was in the middle of nowhere and packed with buzzing flies. Good enough. Our fourty minutes break only left us one hour to got back and prepared for our ride to the desert at 3.30.

Finally we were on our way.

Our Land Rover jumped, slided, and skidded on the mountains of sands, dropping to 60 degrees slopes in places and climbing on 30 degrees peak in others.

Welcome to the Great Sand of Sea of Siwa.

And I found my love for the desert, as if we were old loves reunited for the first time after years of separation, a tragic poetry.

to be continued.

Falling is what I do :)

• Live a celibate lifestyle for an extended period of time.
• Eat bad food.
• Did a 100 hour week.
• Live in Africa (sort of).
• Learn a new language.
• Fulfill my dream of eating Koshari.
• See the Pyramids, Dahab and Mt. Sinai.
• Get a Teddy bear.
• Spend 77 minutes with Jen.
• Acquire master level certfication for jay walking.
• Completed a marathon.
• Ate Hardees.
• Went Scuba Diving.
• Eat once a day.
• Got  a new passport.
• Hangout with Superluli and Nisrin.
• Met Zeead and Taher for the first time.
  
• Sober on St. Patrick's day.
• Moved out of my old apartment.
• Return to Photograpy once again.
• Shaved my head.
• Not get trapped in an LDR.
  
• Not get married.

Job creations,

Love,




Music,

Free speech,

Flammable ideas,

Food,

Family,

Brilliance,

Joy,

,

Innovation,

Troubles

Superluli and Nisrin will be coming over tomorrow night for dinner and some TV marathons. I'm thinking up a menu right now.

- Morrocan Mint Tea.

- Salade de pâtes au poivrons.

- Risotto Parmigiano.

- Grilled Chicken satay with peanut sauce.

- Strawberry with Casis Cream.

There you go. We'll have French, Italian and South East Asian mixup dinner :)

Ai pledch aliyens to di fleg

Of d Yunaited Esteits of America

An tu di republic for wich it estands

Uan naishion, ander Gad

Indivisibol

Wit liberti an yostis

For oll.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/12/opinion/12wed1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Me, Jamaican man.

If you saw me this weekend, you would know that I had reverted to my original root, to my well formed habits as an island raised boy of doing nothing important. Time passed by slowly and enviously because I ignored it. I retained my usual sun kissed darker color and spoke slower. I cared less. Rome could burn in a day and it would not have triggered any reaction in my nervous system.

I had no mission.

The place

Visual wise, Dahab is a beautiful but ordinary place. It's a sleepy tourist site with a view of rocky Saudi Arabia cliffs and the Red Sea. They however have mastered the art of chillin' and it showed. Everything here was designed to accentuate chill and reduce tension. Cafes and restaurants with their colorful Arabian mats and pillows on the floor dotted the landscape of Dahab.

I resented a bit the "hey my friend" approach of the plentiful vendors on the corniche. I found them annoying.

The secret recipe of Dahab, cheap and chill.

And ironically you can do a lot of thing in and around Dahab. Doing things are supposed to be the anti thesis to chill.

On my first day, I was restless especially after going through a nine hour bus ride from hell. I already ran a couple of miles to the hills around Dahab and walk 45 minutes to the Blue Lagoon to swim in its still water. The pleasant breakfast couldn't help ease my mind.

I was 6 hours in Dahab and I was already bored. 

Then I found out that I had to leave at 11 pm on the same Friday if I want to visit Mt Sinai (St. Catherine).

This is where the magic happened.

I left the microbus at the base of St. Catherine monastery at 2 AM and reached the top of the mountain just before 4 AM. At the beginning I was accompanied by two Polish girl and one of their boyfriend. I reached the top with only one of them, after one of the girl, Anya, got into a fight with her guy and practically dumped him near the base of the mountain. Yeah, that's how you pick up girls in Mt. Sinai. I thought I quit this rescue the damsell in distress business.

We navigated the route by dim lights of half moon and the torch from my cheap ass Nokia.

At the top, we were just 10 people. I picked up the highest point at the top and slept for an hour under the simmering sky full of stars on a narrow boulder covered under the smelly blanket I rented for 10 LE. When I woke up, the top was already packed with people but my spot because there are only so many people you can have on the boulder. We were just me, Anya, and two random dudes.

The sunrise was absolutely stunning.

And it was silent. Sort of.

And it was cold.

And it was spiritual.

If the way up was fun, the path of descend from the mountain was even better. We descend on rocks strewn path decorated by the crusted coarse sands of Sinai among red boulders burned by the intense sun.

It took me 2 hours to go up to the peak and 1.5 hours to go down. By this time, Anya was already reunited with her German boyfriend, who managed to sprain his ankle. Problem solved; injure and make up.

to be continued.