Life and Death

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage So the doctors save someone's life by inflicting even more pain on them? You have to wonder just what is going on in everyone's mind. I live in a country that is remote from the concept that everything has a cure, that life should be safe and risk free, that disease has no place in life. In Egypt, disease is a fact of life. Death is a fact of life, and once someone has died, in most cases, there are no autopsies or post mortems. The body is collected by the family, washed with respect and love, and placed in a resting place within 24 hours. I don't need to know exactly what killed someone, because sooner or later death will inevitably come for me and all those that I love. It is inescapable. All of the interventions in the universe will not change that fact. And now it looks as though some interventions might indeed not be worth the outcome. If I had a choice between dying from pneumonia fairly rapidly or being made a cripple to live in great pain, I'm not sure that I would vote for the cripple.

Then there is the issue of risk of injury. Each time I visit North America I am more horrified by the things that people there believe that they should be protected against. To judge by many of the more ridiculous law suits that receive outcomes favourable to the plaintiff, people now believe that the world should be made idiot-proof. I wonder if this is what killed off the dinosaurs, honestly. The world is not, never was, and never shall be, idiot-proof. Any fool with the tiniest bit of ingenuity can manage to get himself maimed or killed....I mean, what mother in her right mind would tell her daughter that it's a good idea to drive with hot coffee between her legs? I see here the other extreme, I would grant you. Pedestrians routinely step off the sidewalk without a glance, young men ride in microbuses hanging out the door, boys catch rides on streetcars by jumping on to the connecting pin at the back, the list goes on forever. One of my friends when I was growing up in California lost his leg catching a ride on a freight train. His parents lectured him for being a fool and he learned to live without his leg. No one sued the train company for having trains there to tempt idiotic young men into trying to jump aboard.

There are times when my heart leaps to my throat when I see some death-defying act of idiocy. There are times I want to stop parents and shout at them for allowing their roughly 8 year old to stand on the divider between the front seats of a Mercedes with his head out the sun roof. But do I want to have someone telling me who can ride my horses or play with my dogs? No, thank you. I like the fact that Egypt is, in some senses such as in the freedom to be an utter idiot, not a safe country. No one is going to knowingly harm you here, but you had best keep your wits about you even walking down the street or it is entirely possible that you could do something quite stupid and get killed as a result. I think that on the whole Darwin might have approved.

Israel Announces Official Decision to Remove Arafat

I've been up to my ears in visitors, work and trying to keep my life on an even keel lately, so I've been really remiss on blogging. Got to move it up on my priorities. But this article in the New York Times has really ticked me off. I would truly like to ask the American people to re-examine their values that they would support this kind of action. What would they say if the Palestinians asked to have Sharon "removed"....the fact that he'd been very legitimately accused of war crimes in the massacres of Shabra and Shatila in Lebanon by the World Court didn't go over very well. The world is probably not much worse than it ever was in terms of good guys and bad guys, but I really hate watching this kind of thing. I wonder if the minions of the Roman empire felt the same as the non-US/Israeli world feel about the way things are happening. I'm sure that it's not that far off. I'm having many thoughts about those who have lived under the "benevolent" guidance of colonial powers and why they haven't been too happy. Right now, there are a lot of us in the position of having to be under the "guidance" of the American empire, but the guidance seems to be pretty half-assed when it gets a bunch of poor, culturally ignorant American kids stuck in a country like Iraq where they have no idea of the culture, historical issues, or language. This isn't good for anyone.

A Little Night Music Maybe there is a curse to things that work too well. I sat here last night with my niece from Sudan musing about the horrors of the power blackout in the US. A young traveller was supposed to arrive last night from New York via Frankfurt, but she never took off. She's trying to get out of New York again to catch up. I know that our airports have been shut down for sand storms and parts of Cairo may have no power on any given night, but we have nothing of the scale the US experienced.

We have blackouts all the time, or are they grey outs or whatever....but the electricity in Egypt is so erratic that we are all used to having it fail at random inopportune moments. It's a good reminder that life isn't actually under our control, I believe. Yes, it's annoying. There are plenty of times that I've retired to get a good night's sleep at 8:30 because there's been no electricity for the computer, TV (a singularly lonely object), or for reading. I've even had to walk down 8 flights of stairs in the dark....or had to decide not to walk up them! What a terrible price to pay! The upside to a patched-together power grid is the fact that while bits and pieces of it fail regularly, they are easy to fix and it's unusual to be away from power for more than a few hours. All in all, I think I prefer to have frequent inconveniences to massive failures.

I remember one time in Alexandria years ago when the power was actually out for a couple of days, a strange occurrence. When we found out why it turned out that the main cable was copper and someone had dug it up, melted it down and sold it! This hasn't happened quite so much, but I'd say that we would be good customers for fiber optics for our phones and such. The cables don't melt down and sell.

On the whole, I think that I really prefer semi-reliable with frequent minor problems to perfect with the chance of utter failure. After all, as humans what are we but semi-reliable with frequent minor problems? Perfection is too hard to deal with.

Radio Paradise - eclectic online rock radio I've just discovered a new reason to love my computer, Radio Paradise. It's an interesting online radio that broadcasts from Paradise, California, ostensibly, but they are working out how to broadcast from anywhere in the world with a laptop. Mellow music, and no ads. Not at all bad.

Jazz is not something that people immediately associate with Egypt. In fact, most people have never heard Egyptian music and it is an acquired taste somewhat. Traditional Egyptian music is written on a different musical scale from Western music and is usually based on poetry in Arabic. Once you get your ear tuned into the music, it fits the landscape well.

Last night a Dutch friend of mine who's also been living in Egypt for about 20 years and I went to a downtown restaurant/club with our daughters, one of my son's Egyptian friends, a visiting American, and one of my Sudanese nieces. The music was live and performed by a group of young Egyptian men on base, guitar, drums (local variety of bongo called tabla) and voice. Some of the songs were based on old traditional poetry...I didn't recognise it but the kids did. It was unlike anything that I've heard before (I'm an old jazz fan) but very beautiful. Sometimes the vocal was a call across the desert and in other numbers, it was a laugh among friends. Many of the rhythmns were those of the Middle East and people dancing to the music blended western dancing with the traditional dancing that most visitors only see in a belly dancing performance. Watching girls in jeans and tshirts shimmy and twist to the drum beat was quite something.

When I first moved to Egypt there was a group of women who got together for belly dancing twice a week. The lessons were at my place for about a year or so because I had a villa with an oversized living room that was perfect for this. The fun part of dancing is that different parts of the body dance to different instruments, like the hips dance to the tabla, the hands to the flute, the shoulders to the violins or guitars. Not so easy to learn but so much fun to do. And I appreciate good dancing even more for understanding a bit about it.

Next week the outside theatre at the Cairo Opera House has a performance of another of Egypt's jazz musicians, Fathy Salama. Fathy became friends with my late husband when he was playing with his group in Sharm el Sheikh years ago, and I've been to a number of his performances. I don't want to miss this one as he has a band now that is made up of Egyptian, Senagalese, Brazilian and even a European. Should be fun.

Driving in Sinai

USATODAY.com - New warning: Electronic devices are suspect Well, this is the second news story that I've seen about more paranoia regarding bombs and so on from the US. I think that I'm going to stay home from now on in the safe old Middle East. I travel with a digital camera and my laptop and a palm pilot and a tri-band phone that can call anywhere in the world. With the new edict, I can spend hours getting checked in, and for what? Not worth it.

I arrived home last night about 11:30 after driving from Sharm el Sheikh to Cairo. The drive takes about 5 hours (maybe less during daylight hours) and the route runs up the west coast of the Sinai Peninsula to Suez, under the Canal by tunnel, and then across the Western Desert to Cairo. The portion between Cairo and the Suez Canal is very forgettable, miles of divided highway filled with homicidal/suicidal drivers and the odd new housing settlement. Once you are in Sinai, however, it's different, although Egyptian businessmen and international hotel chains are doing their best to change that. The peninsula itself is about 300 odd miles wide in the north and about the same distance from north to south. The landscape is modern moon. Sand dunes cuddle up to bare rock cliffs, beige against black, red and grey. Occasional oases pop out of bare rock and sand like a bouquet of roses from a magician's hat, just as surprising and just as lovely.

We left Sharm rather late, stopping at the Marriott Bakery for smoked salmon sandwiches to sustain us on our journey. Sound a little un-Egyptian? Not really, but the pharaohs would have liked them if they'd had them. The first stretch took us over the line of mountains that runs the length of Sinai angling into the point of the triangle that jabs south into the Red Sea. These mountains run right down to the sea at Ras Mohamed, one of the loveliest reef parks around. Barren stark rock, the hills are carved with trenches that testify to years of war in the area, trenches that must have been nightmares in the summer heat. Now they are not occupied but just cast a solemn gaze down on the frivolous cars flying by.

The second stretch of the journey is flat sand run-off from the hills to the north from the western gate of the park to Tur el Sinai. I've never been into Tur, which for many years was the port in which sea-going pilgrims from Mecca rested long enough to determine that they weren't bringing any epidemics back to Egypt. From Tur the road heads inland to a long valley between the main mountain ranges and a coastal range to the west. This valley is virtually featureless other than the odd acacia tree and camel. But if you are not the driver and have the luxury of gazing out of the window, the passing mountains are hypnotic and absorbing. Changes in rock layers bring changes in colour with changes in texture, and the edges are knife sharp against the sky like something created by computer.

The end of this valley is at the junction of the main road with another road that heads off into the mountains. This road, to Wadi Feran, goes all the way into the center of the mountains to the monastery of St. Katherine. The route itself is a trip into time, winding in and out of Bedouin villages in the oases that line the wadi (a watershed). On the way to Cairo, we give the turn off a regretful miss and head west to the sea again. By now the sun was setting and we all were in awe of the sunset arrayed before us. Egypt's dust gives us sunsets to die for, although it's worth living to see as many of them as possible. Yesterday's was a knockout. The sky over the Gulf of Suez was a wine red with a silver strip to mark the edge of the sea on the far coast. The sun was an electric orange through the haze, a bright ball that gradually slipped below the lavender hills behind Hurghada.

I'm asked many times why I don't just fly to Sharm from Cairo, and I always answer that I enjoy the decompression time that the drive gives me. The hours that take me from Cairo to the moon let me relax when I'm there and let me postpone the crash landing when I get back to Cairo.

Damaging The Reefs

Time can get away from me sometimes. I think of things that I want to comment on and then find that a week has gone by....or maybe two. I'm back in Sharm for a few days before my daughter goes back to college. August may seem like an odd time to go to Sharm el Sheikh as it is the hottest month and Sharm is only cooler than Aswan by virtue of the wind off the sea. But it is one of my favourite months. The Perseid showers come at the end of August and light up the skies with falling stars. The sea is so warm that it feels like a hot bath for the first ten centimetres or so. Snorkeling has a sensation like drinking coffee with ice cream in it. The sun is burning, the water is bath warm to about half way down the ribs and the cold water chilling the front of your body. Amazing.

Not all of the aspects of snorkeling are wonderful though. If you've never been to the Red Sea, it is an unforgettable experience to be swimming among brilliant fish of every size and shape. But it was even more incredible when I came here the first time over 10 years ago. The last time I was here I went snorkeling at Ras Um Sidr, near the Sharm lighthouse. The reefs are greyer than before, the product of the dust that has blown into the sea as the building has taken over the shore. Sand and dust kill coral. Tumbled stands of old fan coral lie like Roman ruins along the edge of the reef. Looking for some of my favourite fish, the clown fish, was disturbing because I didn't see a single pair. Neither did I see any anemones, the territory of choice for clown fish. Today I looked for clown fish along our reef at Coral Bay. I only found one pair. Not good.

There are some signs of hope, however, even though they may be somewhat tenuous. Last year I saw millions of crown of thorns starfish along the beach hiding under rocks and coral outcroppings. This year I can find none. Crown of thorns starfish eat coral and are a serious pest. They are also rather creepy looking with long, snake-like spiny arms. One of the difficult things about collecting these predators of coral is that if you should accidently break off a piece of one arm, the piece can regenerate a whole starfish. Where those starfish have gone is a mystery. As my snorkeling buddy noted, they might simply have moved to another bay having exhausted what they wanted to eat here.

Another sign of hope is rather more heartening, however. Among the dead corals there are new soft corals growing and some new hard corals as well. Soft corals are less spectacular than hard corals, but if you take the time to examine them closely they are lovely. Some are shaped like bells that open and close with the current. Others are pastel colours, long like grass or short as velvet. Hopefully now that the building boom has slowed the reefs will have a chance to come back.