“Sometimes people put whisky here and hash here and go to heaven!” Amir had said, gesturing in turn at the body and bowl of a shisha pipe and then up at the sky. I only had apple-flavoured tobacco in mine – my choice among an orchard of other varieties, including banana, apricot and cherry – but, reclining on cushions, shaded by an acacia tree from the scorching Sinai sun, I was still finding the hookah transporting.
This was so pleasurable, I thought, as I sucked deeply on the mouthpiece, setting the well of cooling water in the pipe merrily bubbling and turning the little volcano of coals in the foil brazier above the tobacco a fierce carmine. This was so addictively pleasant and mellow I would open a chain of shisha dens in London! They would be the new vodka bars – salons! hothouses of literary and artistic foment! – and, moreover, perfect halfway houses for reformed cigarette smokers, such as I.
Amir, our guide, had manners as immaculate as his starched white shirts, but I still resented him slightly when he roused me from my by now elaborate reverie. The smoke suddenly felt like a last one, for I was looking forward with some dread to our mission. We were to climb Jebel Musa, Moses Mountain, one of the highest in Egypt and garlanded, like a ring of clouds, with the myths of at least three religions. I had been awaiting the adventure with excitement, but now, prone, the only myth the prospect of all that exercise brought to mind was that of Sisyphus.
We arrived at the foot of the mountain at midnight: as has become customary, we were to ascend to the summit, at 2,285m, in time to watch the sun rise over the surrounding peaks. At some unknown elevation we would pass the putative point at which Moses received the 10 commandments from God. The shepherd prophet is revered in Islam, Christianity and Judaism alike and the followers of each accord Mt Sinai – another of its names – great significance. In the past couple of millennia, they have all, too, laid some claim to the great triangular peninsula, pretty much in the middle of the Middle East, above which the mountain rears.
That monotheistic contest continues, of course, and we would not feel exempt from it. We visited Sinai just before the killing of scores of people in the car bombings of Sharm el-Sheikh, one of the glitziest, fastest-growing tourist towns on the peninsula (and which is already recovering from the attack the bombers hoped would ruin it). But we learned on touchdown that, only a day earlier, a freelance jihadist had gone on a suicidal shooting rampage against foreigners in Cairo. Tank-like cops accompanied us on our transport most of the time: we had to double back once because one had “forgotten his gun”.
The air was cold at the bottom of the mountain but it was only when I got there that I discovered that it could plunge to -4°C at the peak, so I bought, for a few piasters, a black-and-white checked cotton shemagh from one of the Bedouin guides to wrap around my head. It turned out to be striking but inadequate insulation. As the glow from the base camp faded, our vision shrank to the few metres of path, rocky and treacherous despite the occasional steps carved centuries ago by forgotten monks, illuminated by our torches and the stars. The latter formed the kind of dazzling display, like diamonds spilled across black velvet, that you forget about in the light-soaked city. But we could afford mere glimpses of it, not only for fear of tripping into the ravines into which the narrow path periodically fell away to the side but also of because we were worried about being pushed by one of the camels that loomed out of the darkness, their appearance announced only seconds before by the untranslated warning cry given by the Bedouin leading them up the mountain.
That creeping, inhuman cold also shrunk my focus to our lofty goal. Stops at tea shacks interspersed the ascent, these ramshackle structures maddeningly indistinguishable, at a distance, from the twinkling stars but gradually resolving, the closer we trudged, into solid promises of refreshment and warmth.
The other climbers had been known to us only as disembodied voices or as bottoms blocking the way but the shacks brought us together as fellow one-night pilgrims. We shared space and body heat on the benches, wrapped in the thick, rough, woollen blankets for hire from the guides, sipping tea or coffee from great kettles kept hot on the stove or nibbling on Mars and Snickers bars that were so past their use-by date they qualified as ancient treasures from another civilisation. The mood – a mixture of some Danish dourness here, some Polish piety there – was one of quiet contemplation. This proved quite uncontagious to a group of young Britons who kept shattering it with in-jokes and one of whom shrieked at one point, “I can get a signal on my mobile!”
At the summit, the sunrise – like billions before it – was less remarkable than the scene it revealed of the hundred or so of us hikers who had scrambled to occupy the highest, most precarious crags to capture it on camera. Among the multitude, the Russian Orthodox monk who lived year-round on the peak in a tiny chapel strode about his business. He must sometimes have descended to join his brothers at St Catherine’s on the plain. The oldest monastery in the world, it is home to the (remarkably lush) burning bush and a collection of 7th-century icons of Jesus.
The sun had saved its greatest revelation: that of the landscape it painted in one brighter draft after another as we made our descent. About halfway down the mountain, pausing to record in my mind the sight of infinite shades of grey resolving into the russet of the rock-flecked mountainside and the cobalt blue of the further ranges arrayed like shark’s teeth against the milky sky, I felt a twinge.
I thought later it had perhaps been the first pang of the revived nicotine addiction that would, rather than a chain of shisha parlours, be my legacy from the trip. At the time, though, it felt like the trembling of my third-generation atheism. At other deeply subdued moments, I have worried I would find religion. Exhausted now and chilled to the bone, as my sense of self threatened to disintegrate in the face of that equally bleak and awesome vista, I could not decide whether the sight was certain proof of the existence of a harsh, almighty deity or, precisely, of his absence – which was perhaps the original problem.
TAKE THE TABLETS
■ The easiest way to reach jebel Musa is from Sharm el-Sheikh or Naama Bay. Most hotels will arrange a tour for about £50 per person.
■ Libra Holidays offers flights and packages to the region from the UK. Tel: +44 0871-226 0446; www.libraholidays.net
