We've spent the past few days in Dahab, a beach town in Sinai, in the lap of (relative) luxury. It's been quite nice to relax for a few days, and I am currently on a ferry from Sinai to Jordan where I will be visiting Petra and Wadi Rum over the next few days. The boat was supposed to leave at 12:30, but we're just pulling away now at 5:45. When you combine this experience with the one I had a week ago when we sat on the side of the road for five hours during our trip from Alexandria to Sinai waiting for a flat tire on the bus to get fixed, I think I've found every possible way to force myself to just relax and stay patient. A good book and a nap certainly help, too.
Speaking of naps, I took a very pleasant one today because I didn't get any sleep last night. On our last night in Sinai, we climbed Jebel Musa (the mountain where Moses supposedly received the 10 commandments) and reached the summit in time to see a beautiful sunrise. The Sinai is a harsh, dry desert, but at the same time it is stunningly beautiful. The sharp, rocky mountains here remind of me Yosemite, and the dryness is partially offset by the crystal clear Red Sea that lies just below the mountains.
As a group, we spent a two days snorkeling, including one at a beautiful national park called Ras Muhammad. A few of us also went on a desert safari (picture below) that included hikes through two winding, narrow canyons flanked on both sides by sheer rock faces with unique designs carved into them by the work of sand and water over millions of years.
Finally, as for Saudi Arabia, I caught my first glimpse of the country across the Red Sea from Dahab. Of course there is not much that you can see other than mountains and a few twinkling lights, but our proximity to the country sparked some interesting conversations about the cultural differences between the two countries and the phenomenon of labor migration from Egypt to Saudi Arabia and its effect on Egyptian society. One of the "friends of the program" named Shoowee (spelling approximate, a friend of the program directors and a frequent participant in our group events) who came along with us on the trip spent 10 years of his childhood in Saudi Arabia where his father, Egyptian by birth, worked as a dentist. I was particularly interested to hear about the state of relations between native Saudis and foreigners in the country. According to Shoowee, almost all the foreigners in Saudi Arabia live in a compounds with their own countrymen, and life inside those compounds is essentially a microcosm of their former lives in their home countries. Workers spend their days outside the compounds working with Saudis and other foreigners, but at the end of the day everyone returns to their own enclosure. In ten years of living in Saudi Arabia, Shoowee counted only two Saudis as real friends. He didn't go as far to say that their is discrimination against foreigners in Saudi Arabia, but it was clear from his description that huge discrepancies exist between migrants and natives there.
Learning about Shoowee's experience in Saudi Arabia led me to ask him a second set of questions about the influence of the Saudi culture and brand of Islam on Egypt over the past 30 to 40 years. We have heard from many people that Egypt's tendency to move toward a more conservative, religious-focused culture over that time period was at least partially due to the experiences of Egyptian migrant workers in Saudi Arabia and the customs and ideas that they brought back with them to Egypt upon their return. For example, whereas the hijab was rarely seen on the streets in the 1950s and 1960s, today I would estimate that in Alexandria about 95% of Egyptian women on the streets wear one. After hearing Shoowee's description of the divide between migrants and natives in Saudi Arabia, however, I asked him how Saudi culture could have such influence on Egypt. It seemed to me that if you spent a majority of your time in a compound with your own countrymen that the influence of Saudi culture would be limited at best upon your return to Egypt. Shoowee said that in a sense this idea was correct, but that just because he or his Egyptian friends didn't have many close relationships with native Saudis didn't mean that they weren't exposed to the culture and customs on a daily basis. When you're there for a long time, it is inevitable that your opinions about Islam, gender relations, etc. will be influenced if not changed simply because of the length of exposure. It is important to keep in mind that the influence of Saudi Arabia is just one of many factors that contributed to Egyptian society's move toward more conservative customs and a deeper sense of religiosity, and also that not every migrant who spent time in Saudi Arabia or other Arab countries returned to Egypt with a changed viewpoint. Nevertheless, the sheer number of Egyptian migrants to Saudi Arabia and the length of time that they have spent there (primarily because Saudi jobs are quite lucrative) has had a clear influence on Egyptian customs and society.
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