Chasing the Spirit of Moses

Travel, terrorism, a sublime sunrise, and a reminder that most people aren't extremists

Watching a sunrise from Mount Sinai. (Photo via Shutterstock)

We’ve covered a lot of politics here lately. And I have some thoughts coming up in the next few days about Kamala Harris’ candidacy and potential vice presidential nominees. So perhaps it’s a good time for a politics break (well, mostly) and for some musings about travel.

The following piece is about a visit I made to Egypt some years ago. It was during the Bush administration, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and my wife and I happened to be in the country when a terrorist attack killed 88 people at a tourist resort on the Red Sea coast. We weren’t in the city where the attack occurred, but it’s still not exactly a comforting feeling to be a tourist in a country where tourists have just been targeted in a terrorist bombing. Nevertheless, the experience of being in Egypt in the aftermath of this event was both interesting and instructive.

It helped emphasize for me the reality that most people are not extremists. I always knew this in the abstract, of course, but these travels provided a real time lesson in how Muslims themselves were dismayed by these acts of terrorism. Moreover, I have to say that the people of the Middle East are about the friendliest and most hospitable people I’ve encountered anywhere in the world (my experiences so far have been in Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey).

It was a lesson too in remembering not to paint everyone from a particular country or religion or political movement with the same brush. I would include in this statement many supporters of different political parties in the U.S. today, as most liberals are not radicals and most conservatives are not anti-democracy extremists. It’s hard to remember this, of course, when the Gaza Strip is governed by the terrorist organization Hamas, when left wing protestors in the U.S. vandalize property, or when the MAGA movement that is taking over Republican politics celebrates anti-democratic views — and engaged in its own violent protest against a democratic election four years ago. Still, it’s difficult but vital to remember that most Muslims, and most American liberals and conservatives, don’t support these extremes. How some extremists get to power, well, that’s a whole other mystery for which I have few answers.

Anyway, that’s what I took from this particular travel experience. It’s called “Chasing the Spirit of Moses” because the story leads to an experience we had in hiking Mount Sinai before dawn just two days after this particular terrorist attack.

Here it is …

Chasing the Spirit of Moses

1. Soldiers at a train station

It was 6:30 a.m. when three guards approached us on the Cairo train platform, guns slung over their shoulders.

“What nationality are you? English?” one of them asked.

I hesitated. “… No, American.”

“American?! Aye!” he shouted.

Walkie-talkies crackled to life. All we heard was a string of Arabic, laced several times with the word “American.”

“Come,” the officer said and motioned for us to follow him.

On most days, our early arrival in Cairo after an overnight journey from Luxor would have been a mundane event. This is, after all, a well-worn path on the Egyptian tourist trail. But this wasn’t the most common of days. Just over 24 hours earlier, terrorist bombs had shattered the country’s composure.

My wife, Lisa, and I had heard about the bombing the previous morning when we met a guide at Luxor’s Karnak Temple. Mohammed had a stricken look on his face and said to us: “Did you see the news? Three bombs exploded during the night in Sharm el Sheikh. More than 80 people killed.”

It’s always shocking to hear news of any such attack, even when we’re not in the vicinity of such senseless violence. But not only were we in Egypt, we also had plans to travel to the Sinai Peninsula the very next day, to the town of Dahab, just up the Red Sea coast from Sharm el Sheikh.

We looked around at the street and the nearby Nile River. Everything looked the same, yet different at the same time. It was difficult to process the news that dozens of other tourists had just lost their lives, only hours away from where we were now standing.

“It is very tragic,” said Mohammed, “but you should go on with your plans today. There is more security here now. It will be very safe.”

Really, what else could we do at that point? So for the next few hours we toured Karnak Temple. But as the morning wore on and the desert sun grew more intense, Mohammed grew more introspective. “This is not a war against the West,” he said, “this is a war against humankind. These are the worst kind of Muslims who do these acts. They are using their religion for bad aims. In Egypt, we believe in a tolerant Islam. I don’t know what kind of people can do this, to kill people like this!”

For the rest of the day, questions kept circling our mind. What, we wondered, is the proper reaction to a terrorist attack in a foreign country, when you happen to be traveling in that country on the day the bombs explode? Should you leave immediately? Or, if you decide to stay, is it possible to go on with your trip as if nothing had happened?

News reports later indicated that about half the tourists in Egypt did leave in the day or two after the bombings. But a sizeable number also chose to remain. Some of them just assumed there wouldn’t be a second attack; others refused to give in to the terror (like the Australian woman we met on the train that evening who said, “I don’t like to be bullied by terrorists”); and some were just hardened to terrorism in general after a string of attacks in all parts of the world.

In the end, we also decided to stay in Egypt. I’d like to say it was a heroic decision, that we wanted to live our lives and not be bullied, and, yes, we certainly carried some of that sentiment inside. But we still would have put our safety first had we felt seriously threatened. The most compelling reason for staying, honestly, was that we didn’t feel unsafe among the Egyptians, who were gracious and welcoming.

So it was that the following morning we found ourselves on a train platform in Cairo. We’d arranged for a van to meet us at the station and drive us to St. Catherine and then onto Dahab. But as we watched almost all the other travelers disappear into the early morning haze, there was still no sign of our driver. Now, three armed guards were asking us to follow them.

At the front of the train station, one of the guards asked if we were waiting for a ride.

“Yes.”

“Give me the name of your driver.”

I found the name and number of the Egyptian company through which we’d arranged our transportation. He took the information and disappeared. The other two guards remained close by.

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

“He go to phone your driver,” a second guard said.

Phone my driver? I exhaled. Jeez, why didn’t he say so? These guys were just trying to help us locate our ride, I realized. This was nothing more than Egyptian hospitality. Well, with guns as props. Once we understood what was happening, it didn’t seem like such a bad thing to have our own security detail. A few minutes later, the lead guard returned and all three of them stood and waited with us until we were safely in the van and on our way.

2. “Foolish people, those terrorists!”

Shortly thereafter we left Cairo, leaving behind a sea of brown buildings and murky skies. Then we drove for six hours, past Suez and into the Sinai, through a dry, empty desert landscape that turned more rugged and lunar-like. Though it offers little in terms of vegetation, the Sinai is an important piece of land. It’s a bridge between Asia and Africa, and between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and has a significance that dates to the Old Testament.

In early afternoon, we arrived at St. Catherine, a small village at the base of Mt. Sinai, the biblical mountain where Moses is said to have received the Ten Commandments from God. St. Catherine’s Monastery, from which the town’s name is derived, is the keeper of a bush that is said to be descended from the original burning bush. The monastery is the starting point for tourists who hike Mt. Sinai in the predawn hours to watch the sunrise from atop its summit.

I gazed at the harsh, sunswept terrain and reflected on the fact that Moses may have walked this very ground. What would he think of the world today, I wondered? The words and beliefs that descended with him from Mt. Sinai live on, yet several thousand years later we are still engaged in battles between religions and cultures.

After settling into our hotel room, Lisa and I went for a walk in town and, strangely, failed to run into a single other traveler. There was a one-room store on the deserted main street, where a flickering television in the corner broadcast news reports about the carnage in Sharm el Sheikh. We asked the proprietor, a local Bedouin dressed in a galabayya, a traditional white robe, about the news.

“Foolish people, those terrorists!” he said to us. “Why kill? Why? It is crazy!”

This was just one of a string of encounters with Egyptians who, like Mohammed the previous day, were willing to open up to us. Many of these conversations were with people who relied on the tourist trade for their livelihood. They were despairing over the terrorist attack, and I sensed that in their anguish some of them spoke to us with a candor they might not have otherwise.

“You are Christian, I am Muslim,” said one person. “But we both have blood, we are both human beings. This is not Islam, to kill like this.”

To be honest, it was easy to feel self-conscious, knowing we were citizens of a country that has sometimes enraged Middle Eastern Muslims with its policies. It would be easy, we thought, for Egyptians to be furious with America and Americans, even if this particular terrorist attack was not directed specifically at the U.S. but rather at tourism in general. That is not, however, what we discovered.

“Look,” said another individual, “it is true that we don’t always like your presidents, or your government’s policies. But American people we like. People are not government. We know there is a difference.”

It was a validation, in a way, of our decision to remain in Egypt. We had some terrific experiences and conversations with local people in the days ahead. The Egyptians had always been friendly, but now it was as if they felt compelled to inform us that their culture and religion didn’t condone such acts of random violence.

The Mount Sinai trail. (Photo by Bob Riel)

3. Sunrise on Mount Sinai

That night in St. Catherine, Lisa and I struggled out of bed at 2 a.m. to head to Mt. Sinai. Improbably, we hadn’t seen another tourist since leaving the train station in Cairo, so we wondered if we were destined to be lone travelers hiking the trail in the dark, chasing the spirit of Moses. When we arrived at the trailhead, though, we saw several dozen other travelers in the vicinity, including a group of French visitors who had come during the night.

From 2:45 to 5:15 a.m., we navigated our way by flashlight up a gravelly trail that climaxed in a steep set of several hundred steps cut into the stone of the mountainside. Along the way, we were kept company by Bedouin tribespeople who hawked hot tea, cold coke, and camel rides in the moonlight.

Finally, atop the rocky summit of Mt. Sinai, we sat down to await the dawn. The sky inched its way out of blackness, with a swatch of crimson light peeking over the edge of the earth. It provided a glimpse into the jagged, ethereal landscape that surrounded us. As the sun prepared to rise in the eastern sky, it truly seemed as if the mountain were being blanketed in celestial light. It was not very difficult to imagine Moses having a divine encounter there.

Abruptly, then, the sun made a dramatic appearance — a globe of fiery brilliance climbing above the mountainous peaks of the Sinai to a round of applause and gasps. There we were, amongst a group of travelers from the Americas, Europe, Australia, and Asia, standing atop Mt. Sinai at sunrise. For a moment, at least, the specter of terrorism seemed far away.

Mount Sinai sunrise. (Photo by Bob Riel.)

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