Rethinking 3rd Grade Dreams

I spent the weekend sleeping in a Palm Tree branch hut on the beach in Ras as-Shaitan (The Head of the Devil) on the Red Sea cost between Nuweiba and Taba. It was wonderful. How's that for a bland descriptor?
To get to Sinai (which isn't a part of Egypt, but more on that later) you have to leave Cairo at an ungodly early hour and get on an East Delta Company bus for 70 pounds, or 12.5 dollars. The bus leaves from Tirgoman Station at 6am sharp, which is a remarkable feat in Egypt. A bus leaving from a station is in and of itself odd, but to leave on time is curious to say the least. The bus service is actually very good. It stops first at Taba, which is the border crossing between Israel and Egypt, and then continues south along the coast to Nuweiba. Dotted all along the coast are the empty husks of half-finished luxury hotels that appear to have been abandoned. Interspersed throughout all these are the Bedouin (or Sudanese) run camps on the beachs, including the one we stayed at, Ramadan Camp. Yes, they have a website.
The Sinai is the favored vacation spot for Israelis of all ages, but mostly kids my age. There are of course exceptions, and there were several families there, but mostly Israelis 22-26 getting high and snorkeling.
Sinai, from what Noga has told me, has changed a lot in the last few years since the Sinai bombings including the one that occurred on the beach we were on. It seems that the number of Israeli tourists in Sinai is back up, as there certainly plenty of Israelis there.

It's simply amazing how completely these camps, and the people there have adapted themselves to the Israeli tourists. Everyone there spoke Hebrew. I was the one on the beach least familiar with Hebrew. I may have been the only one there with only a basic knowledge of Hebrew. There were only a handful of Arabs on the beach who weren't the Bedouin workers, and even then many of them stayed in other camps, and tended to clear out for the clubs in the neighboring larger cities at night.
We pretty much spent our time reading in open grass huts, and when we weren't reading we were snorkeling. It's amazing how absorbing and reliving it is to abandon pretensions of luxury and just sit by the beach not doing anything. Which is an amazingly pretentious statement in the assumptions it makes, but that's besides the point I guess.

I remember most of my third grade year I spent assuming I would become a marine biologist, only to end up whatever I am now. Getting a chance to snorkel all weekend in an absolutely beautiful coral reef makes me thing that third grade me had a good idea there. It was so relaxing and so unbelievably beautiful. For years I have kept aquariums, perhaps the relic of my marine biologist dreams, but I've never kept salt water aquariums, they are so much work. If I ever settle down somewhere though I am going to have to look into saltwater, it was so beautiful. So tranquil. Maybe I was onto something then. I wouldn't mind if my life were more like Life Aquatic. Only different.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of the trip however was the conversations Noga had with one young Bedouin man our age. He was leaving on the same bus we were, from the same camp on his way back to his military post. He spends on weak on base, and one week off where he rejoins his family in Sinai. He made it clear that many Bedouins do not identify with Egypt, referring to Egypt as Egypt, and the Sinai as Sinai, clearly two different entities. These men were Bedouins first, and Egyptians second. Noga asked, still in Hebrew, what relations were like between the crowds of Israelis on the beach, and the non-sympathetic (or dependent) Arabs from the rest of Egypt were like. This young Bedouin man said it didn't much matter, because they'd kick the Egyptians out if there were any problems. A touch of realism perhaps, in acknowledgment that their livelihood depends to some degree on Israelis, but also a frustration and anger towards Egyptians. This guy made it clear that the increase in security following the bombings at Taba and Ras as-Shatin was very much resented by the Bedouins in Sinai. Much of this has to do with the fact, unknown to me, that Bedouins, in sharp contrast to Jordan, are not allowed to serve in the Egyptian military.

I need to look into this more, but anecdotally there appears to be some support for it. The non-Bedouin military treats the Bedouins very poorly, creating resentment on the part of the Bedouins. This was coberated by a story from Soren, who told me last night over my first cold beer since Ramadan began, about the soldiers in the White Desert needing to pack almost everything in with them for their rotations, because they would be hard pressed to procure supplies from the Bedouins in the desert. I'd very much like a chance to learn more about the Bedouin situation in Egypt. I felt more at home with Bedouin Arabic than I have Egyptian, if only because it is more like the Palestinian/Jordanian that I have picked up. I am however much more comfortable in Egyptian now than I ever have been. The Bedouin history and situation in Egypt leaves me much more sympathetic to Egyptian Bedouins than the Bedouins in Jordan, who once they were co opted by the Hashemites became both the progenitors and enforcers of Jordanian normative national ideals. This leaves the Egyptian Bedouins in a much more sympathetic historical situation, but perhaps that's just my bias bleeding through.

So to sum up, I am damn glad we avoided Sharm.