ST. CATHERINE'S MONASTERY
The huge entrance gate was closed and I banged on the iron knocker. Nothing happened for a while and I kept on knocking at intervals. Eventually, a voice told us in Arabic that the monastery had locked up for the night and could not open its doors. I answered in Greek, telling the man that I had a woman with me and had nowhere to spend the night. He asked us to wait a while and after about fifteen more minutes, to our vast relief, a young monk by the name of Brother John opened and we entered.
'I would not have opened the door had you not spoken Greek,' he said. 'What can I do for you?'
'We need a place to sleep.'
He asked us to follow him. Have we had dinner? No? The kitchen was closed but he would try to prepare something for us, after we washed.
He led us up some steps to the guesthouse.
'I am afraid,' he told us with a smile, 'that even if you are married you cannot stay in the same room.' He showed me my cell and the bathroom and told me he would pick us up in half an hour. Then he left with Corina to take her to the women's wing.
I had a glorious shower with warm water. Half the fatigue was gone but I felt a little sleepy. I just lay on the bed a few minutes and was on the verge of dropping off to sleep when I heard the knock on the door. It was Brother John and Corina.
'Shall we go for dinner?' he asked and did not wait for an answer but led the way and we followed him outside the guest quarters, down the steps to the courtyard. It was very cold outside. Opposite was the mosque of the monastery. It was built sometime in the eleventh century to appease Arab invaders. We turned to the right in front of it and walked towards the basilica and along its side towards a building, which in the moonlight also looked like a church. It had sharp arrows on the top of each of its four corners, in the gothic style, with Frankish inscriptions and coats of arms on them. It was the old dining room of the monks. Inside the room was a long table with rococo carvings in the Renaissance style, built in the seventeenth century in Kerkyra and the walls had murals painted in the sixteenth century, depicting scenes from the Old Testament. The table was set with two plates, two spoons, dishes of steaming rice, sweet peas, green salad and a small breadbasket. A jug of water and two small glasses of red wine were also on the table. Brother John asked us to sit and to start eating while the food was still warm. He left us as we ate and when he returned after a while, I told him we would like to go up Mount Sinai.
'Tonight at two o'clock there is a party going up the mountain to see the sunrise. There are very few people and I suggest you join the party. It is something you must not miss. I shall inform the Brother in charge and he will wake you up at two thirty. At three, you will assemble at the gate for the ascent. Dress well and take some blankets along to keep warm at the summit. When you return at about nine you can have some breakfast and then visit the Monastery before you leave. Now I think you ought to go directly to your rooms so you can sleep a little. I shall see you in the morning.'
I heard the knock deep in my sleep and broke into a sweat trying hard to think where I was. As if emerging from the depths, zooming through layers and layers of consciousness, I remembered. Got up, switched on the light and stumbled to the door. I opened and a smile greeted me.
'Good morning, Corina. How nice to see your smile first thing in the morning.
Or should I say, in the middle of the night? Did you, at least, rest a little?'
'Good morning Michael. Yes, sure, I slept like a log until they woke us up.' We went down to the gate and joined the rest of the party. A monk called Brother Gregorios was to accompany us up Mount Moses, Djebel Moussa in Arabic, as Mount Sinai is called locally. The party was small. It consisted of a French couple in their forties and two German men, slightly older. We addressed a general 'Good Morning' and Brother Gregorios explained in very indifferent English that the climb would take between two to three hours depending on our endurance. We shall go up the so-called camel path and return by a path consisting of three and a half thousand steps sculpted on the rocky mountain by the monks. He asked if we had water with us and blankets because, he said, after the exertion of the climb that will keep us warm we will feel very cold at the summit. 'We are fortunate to have a full moon tonight,' he added.
'In winter,' he said, 'visitors are few. In the spring and autumn and especially at Easter they are too many. At night on this path, particularly when there is no moon, it is like a candlelit procession going up the side of the mountain each party with its own source of light. At the summit you hear all the languages of this world.'
An hour later, we were at the halfway point and we took a ten-minute break. We were getting a first taste of the views and scenery we would enjoy later in full. The rocky mountains, their summits and precipices in the moonlight gave the eerie feel of another world. Now and then, a howl of a wolf or a hyena added to the feeling of alienation. Corina was as alert as an animal. At every howl, she glanced at me with a smile enjoying the feel of the wilderness, of nature at its most arid and inhospitable. We did not have any complainers among us and so in another hour we reached the summit.
'Here, on this Holy Summit,' Brother Gregorios told us, 'Moses spoke with God several times and received the Ten Commandments. There is a small church of the Holy Trinity, which was built recently with the stones from the ruin of an ancient church of Justinian's time. On the north side of this church is the cave where Moses sheltered and fasted for forty days before meeting with his God. I shall show you now from where to start your descent so that each of you can leave when he pleases. It will lead you directly to the Monastery.'
After this, the party dispersed. I moved around with Corina to admire the moonlit summits and crags of lesser mountains all around us. A truly barren, lunar landscape. In a little while, we looked around for somewhere to rest and cover ourselves because the stronger wind of the summit made us feel the cold more intensely. We went to the church, to the side that was sheltered from the wind. Our four companions were already there huddled in their blankets, resting on the wall of the church. The Germans, each in his own blanket side by side. The French couple had put one blanket on the ground to sit on and they shared the other. As I was undoing my knapsack, I asked Corina which style she preferred, German individualism or French intimacy. She laughed and said she left it up to me. The choice was a difficult one. If she chose the German style, I might feel hurt, if she chose the French style I might consider it too unashamedly inviting.
'Thank you,' I said, 'for not wanting to hurt me and allowing me to opt for intimacy. In any case I think we are intimate enough to share each other's warmth.'
'I believe we have already been doing this for some time.'
'Yes of course, in another sense.'
I put one blanket on the ground after folding it to make it thicker and more comfortable for our behinds. Corina sat on it, her back to the wall of the church. I put half the other blanket around her, sat next to her, covered myself and closed the blanket like a tent. A tent with two protruding heads.
'How do you feel?' I asked her, 'Are you comfortable? Two pillows would have come in very handy.'
'I'm fine and we should be getting warmer soon. Now it's a joint effort.'
'Lie back; close your eyes and rest. In an hour, the sunrise. The same sunrise Moses saw. If he did see it and delight in it. If he could free his mind from the crushing burden of responsibility for the Israelites. If he could break through his fevers and hallucinations of sounds and visions of God, he would have seen what we saw tonight what we shall see in the morning. There is after all a sense of awe and history even for the unbeliever on this Mount of Moses. You, as an archaeologist, must surely feel it.'
'Of course I do, Michael. I am absolutely ecstatic to be here, now, at this moment. And I have you to thank. When I first saw you on the plane, could I possibly have imagined that a week later you would be my good young friend?'
'Corina, I hardly know anything about you. It is a strange situation where two good friends are concerned. It's time we got acquainted.'
'Well, I hardly know anything about you.'
'Oh, you know the general outline. Tell me about yourself. It is a beautiful night. Very cold but crystal clear and peaceful. Moreover, we are getting warmer.'
'I was born in Norway, forty-three years ago.'
'I thought you were native American.'
'No, I am Norwegian. You can tell from my surname. But a naturalized American citizen. I was born in a small city called Trondheim, to the north of Oslo. It is the former capital of Norway and the Norwegian Kings are still crowned there. I lived with my family until I finished my secondary schooling. I was a good student and always had an inclination towards archaeology although in Norway we do not have remains of ancient civilizations such as you have here in Egypt or Greece to inspire you. I entered Oslo University on a scholarship and left Trondheim and my family more or less for good. My parents have died. I have an elder sister who is married in Trondheim and I used to visit our home now and then to see her and my parents while they were alive but never lived there again. I enjoyed my student days in Oslo and the cultural life they offered but I was the studious type. I wanted to succeed, to make something of my life and for me that meant primarily being successful in my studies. My social life was always at the periphery of my existence but it was not something I ignored. I had my share of parties and boyfriends.
'I graduated with honors and got another scholarship for graduate studies. In four years, I finished my Master's and PhD. and the university invited me to join the faculty as a junior instructor. At the time, I was interested in Prehistoric Man and got involved in research on that subject. The team I was with did searches, excavations and rummaging on the old shorelines in Scandinavia where great accumulations of shells indicate that there were summer camps on the coast and that these shells were the refuse from many meals of shellfish. We have gleaned quite a lot of information on the Mesolithic man in this way. It was a good start to my career where I was alternating between teaching and fieldwork. Then, less than two years later came the war. Germany invaded Norway in April 1940 and although the University continued functioning, our field activities ceased completely. The war years were miserable and depressing for everyone. It is a gray zone in our lives. The only good thing that can be said about them is that we survived.
'In the summer of forty-eight I had an offer from Boston University on the strength of some articles I wrote and of course the pay was far superior to what I was making. It was very tempting and a year later, I moved to Boston. I was quite happy at BU and adapted well to the American way of life. I had money, comfort, prestige as well as a good social life. One of the many men that courted me was a good-looking man called Bill Andersen. Like me, he was of Scandinavian stock and was an economist in the faculty of the University. We started by playing tennis together and going out on dates and we first slept together and then fell in love and got married in the summer of 1950. I was thirty-four at the time and Bill, thirty-eight. We lived quite peacefully and happily for eight years. I had taken my life and marriage and happiness for granted. Soon after that trip to Egypt I told you about, I felt there was something not quite normal about Bill. He seemed preoccupied and depressed. On one of the several occasions that I asked him what was wrong, he broke down and cried and told me that he was very miserable because he was in love with another woman. He could not bring himself to tell me because he loved me and did not want to hurt me. Nevertheless, he wanted a divorce.
'Three sentences were all it took to bring my happiness, my peace of mind to ruin. I was so shocked I could not speak. I kept asking myself, what do I do now, what happens now? Well, as you see, I have survived. The divorce is still recent and the shock is not entirely gone. But I am recuperating.'
'I am sorry Corina,' I said, 'and am glad you are getting over it. You are very lucky that you have a profession and an interest in a science to support you.'
'The most I can say with any certainty is that life goes on. How happy it will be in the future is another question. I have to get over the trauma. I feel repulsion for the male sex and that's not normal. My husband came back to me after five or six months. His affair had ended and he wanted us to get together again. I refused. I could not bear him, could not forgive him. Where did all that adoration I had for him go? I was implacable. I could not forgive a human failing. It was not even that. It was a very ordinary human attraction towards another person. An infatuation that ended very quickly, one might even say with my victory.'
'Haven't you had any other relationships since then?'
'No, that's it. That's the strange part. I was a woman who even by the enlightened Scandinavian sexual morality was super emancipated. Because I was so involved in my studies, I never took any relationship seriously. I had sex early in my teens and plenty of experience. I used to play with men with a light heart. Now I am inhibited and withdrawn. I do not want any attachments. Isn't life full of strange stories?'
'And how! What about Lizzie's and mine? This is how life is. Stories, stories, stories. Stories without end. So long as life exists, fiction will have an inexhaustible supply of reality to feed on.'
The day was just starting to break out. Dawn. A lovely name for a girl. A hint of daylight mixing with moonlight. The Germans had dozed off, while the French couple broke into whispers now and then. It was only Corina and I that were the chatterboxes. Things started moving fast. Ra on his luminous chariot was galloping towards us from the East, his horses wild and beautiful, exhaling plumes of fire. Ra, an evident God. A God of light and warmth and life. We got up and each taking a blanket wrapped ourselves up. It was bitterly cold. We woke up the Germans, said bonjour to the French couple and walked to the wall at the edge of the precipice. There was light enough now to make the moon pale at its forthcoming demise. I had the feeling Moses was nearby witnessing the spectacle. A splendid Moses with a face and a beard like Michelangelo's statue. A harsh, ascetic, holy face. And then, all of a sudden, on the horizon a sliver of orange light, which grew imperceptibly but inexorably. You did not see it grow but suddenly it was double the size and brightness, and again double, and again. Finally, the whole ball of fire was out of the ground and into the sky rising to the heavens. Gaining height and strength.
Corina was elated. The panorama was breathtaking. From where we were standing, we could see the Sinai Peninsula up to the Gulf of Aqaba. Here, we were on another planet. On another galaxy. We were, as if in the dawn of creation. The landscape rocky and unforgiving; its beauty harsh and daunting like the God of the Israelites. A setting bristling with steep and sheer mountains; the horizon distorted by rocky crests of haunting hues. Undoubtedly the colors of Genesis. In the early morning, one could not decide on the dominant color. Was it brown, red or pink, or ochre- yellow? Was it brown turning mauve or mauve turning to violet?
The day promised to be as clear and sunny and as pleasant as yesterday. On the summit, we took deep breaths to disinfect our polluted lungs. And long insatiable stares to digest and store in our memory the grandiose spectacle. A spectacle that was not only gripping in its harshness, frightening in its utter rejection of life but also reminded us of our heritage, our culture, the mythology we grew up with and found so difficult to shake off. We moved from spot to spot to see the view from every side and every angle. Round and round we went. Many times round the summit.
By about eight, we decided that we had to leave. Our companions had left a little earlier. I packed the blankets and the empty bottles. We bid farewell to the angels and the spirits that watch over this holy summit. Farewell to the panorama that filled our hearts and souls with ineffable emotions; the moon that was waiting to see us off, still there in the broad daylight, the limpid atmosphere and bright blue sky and walked to take the path of the three thousand steps. But no leave-taking from the sun. Ra, in his solar boat with his retinue of lesser Gods and dead Pharaohs in their afterlife, would be giving us light and warmth and life for the rest of the day. The rest of our lives.
Down a new path and a spectacular descent. We spotted the retreat of St. Stephen and the amphitheater of the Seventy Ancients and the two stone arches of the Confession and of St. Stephen, which in older days one could not traverse without purifying one's soul. Then, we saw the Monastery from above. What a spectacular natural setting for priceless works of art. A legacy of the emperor who built it; the kings and czars who bequeathed gifts; of the conquerors and crusaders and prophets who protected it; of the scholars who enriched it with their knowledge, wisdom and manuscripts and finally, but principally, of the lowly tens of thousands who lived in it across the ages, served it and assured its existence. The lowly monks whose skulls and bones are in the crypt of St. Tryphon, a small chapel outside the fortification. What tales each one of these skulls could tell!
The path led us directly to the Monastery. At the entrance, the guard, a formidable Bedouin, told us that Brother John would be waiting for us at the Archives. He greeted us with a smile. Ordered for us some tea with biscuits and we had breakfast right there in his office.
'You must be very tired,' he said. 'I hope you found the pilgrimage worth the effort.'
'Absolutely,' said Corina. 'It's an experience I shall never forget.' His eyes shone with satisfaction.
'I shall be very happy to show you the Monastery and some of the many worthwhile things it has. We are lucky at this moment to have only very few visitors and so I can devote some time to you. I am particularly anxious to give our lady Archaeologist as good an impression of the Monastery as possible. May I ask what the field of your studies is?'
'Prehistoric Man, his origins and development.'
'Ah, a very controversial subject. Modern science is not always an ally of the Church.'
'I would say, not at all,' said Corina.
'Unfortunately,' said Brother John, unwilling to elaborate any further.
We were certainly feeling the weariness when we got up to visit the monastery.
The enclosure inside the walls houses a miniature village. We walked down narrow alleys and corridors, some of which were covered overhead, across small courtyards with cypresses, flower shrubs and even vines supported by trellis. Along a tangle of ill- assorted buildings where light and shadow played hide and seek on the walls of yards and terraces. We walked to the church of Byzantine style, a real museum, where Brother John invited us to examine the extraordinary collection of icons on the walls of the narthex, the mosaic of the Metamorphosis, the icon stands and the floor. He gave us the chronology of each item. All around the main church building there are chapels and behind the apse is the chapel of the Burning Bush richly decorated in blue Arab faience. It is, perhaps, the holiest spot of the Sinai Peninsula. Here Moses saw the burning bush and heard God's voice telling him to remove his sandals because he was treading on sacred ground.
At a fast pace, it took us over an hour to see what Brother John had to show us. This included the Gallery with the icons and other works of art and a visit to the Library, which is out of bounds to visitors. When we finished our tour and collected our belongings from our rooms, we paid the small fee for board and the food we consumed and after thanking Brother John and promising to visit him again, we left for the return journey. It was eleven thirty. Fair enough. We had a good eight hours of driving ahead.
At the petrol station on the main road, I asked the caretaker if there was a quicker way across the Canal and he said we could take a ferry from Port Tewfik across to Suez and save nearly two hours travel time. Port Tewfik is a small summer resort with some luxurious villas and a small port from which we embarked on the ferry with the car. The crossing took all of half an hour and by the time we disembarked in the harbor at Suez it was already twilight. I had been in Suez once or twice before. The city was provincial and ramshackle and had a tiny Greek community. Driving around in the better section of the town, we were bound to come across a Greek restaurant. Soon enough we located one called the Taverna. We refreshed ourselves in the bathroom and the owner brought us some typically Greek dishes with salad and some beer. He told Corina in English, 'The Greeks, they like to eat well. They live to eat. You blond people, you eat to live. One cannot blame you. You don't know how to cook.' And he laughed heartily at his observation. Corina smiled but was too weary to respond.
It was dark when we left Suez. The time was seven o'clock and we had at least two more hours to go. Corina slept most of the way and woke up when we reached the outskirts of Heliopolis. She apologized for not having kept me company.
'I simply could not keep my eyes open,' she said. 'In a way, this is the end of my trip in Egypt. Tomorrow is just a sort of winding up. Official farewells and so on. All in all, a good trip, which was, of course, crowned by these two exciting days in the Sinai.'
'I think, I can say the same thing. A good first week at the start of my bread- earning days. And much less miserable than I expected. It's sad, in a way.'
'Why sad?'
'Because I am missing my Lizzie less and less. I feel remorse for that.'
'She is probably missing you less and less, too.'
'Oh, I have no doubt she will forget me much before I forget her.'
'You see! After the blow of my separation, I live from day to day. No long-term plans, and when something is going well, I know it will not last. Seize the day, is my motto. When you proposed the trip to Sinai, I jumped at it. And it was a revelation. If your American girl comes to Egypt, so much the better. But don't renounce the world while you wait for her.'
I learnt that lesson well. Since that day, I called Corina's empirical conclusions on life, the first rule and second rule of existence. The first rule was the admonition to live day by day and if you have something half-good passing by, to snatch it. The second rule was the warning that if things were moving wonderfully well, not to expect them to last.
We reached the banks of the Nile and turned into the short semi-circular driveway to the entrance of the hotel. Corina asked me up for a drink but I could hardly keep my eyes open and, furthermore, my mother would be waiting for me.
She passed through the revolving door and into the hotel. A tall, impressive but graceful figure. As I looked at her recede in the distance, I thought, and a lonely one.