On arrival, we drove through an impressive gate with 20 ft wall surrounding a large compound of perhaps 20 acres or so (!). What was most striking was the bright(ish) pocket of green this represented next to the evenly-coloured dun tan of all rock, sand, cliff and desert around. Even the sky had an aspect of tan to the blue, somehow. Through the gate, our minibus shambled past open thatched huts with cement benches, clearly intended for bus loads of tourism, but empty and forlorn as we passed them.
Our driver crunched over gravel to the base of a cement and angle-iron step sequence that stretched up the slope before us and disappeared over a low ridge well before the massif wall high, high above. The driver’s English was a tad better than my Arabic, but not that much. He did, however, take my arm and look me in the eye: “Mama, no”, he said, glancing at my mother as she unsteadily extricated herself from the minivan and tottered about a little until she regained her balance. I was in utter and complete agreement with him, and in looking up again at the stairs along the desert slope, suddenly noticed a similar set of stairs so high up toward the massif wall as to be minuscule. I looked back at my Mum, the up to the stairs again. I already knew what her reaction would be to “Mama, no.”. She may be 80 and seem liked a timid and friendly creature dementedly smiling at everyone, waving to complete strangers and winking at people randomly, but she about as feisty as they come. I quietly suggested she might like to wait for us. Foolish me, had I forgotten she is almost completely deaf? Again: MUM, WOULD YOU LIKE TO REST IN THE VAN? “I would not” she retorted as expected, and started off for the stairs. With a shrug and a resigned heart, I held her hand once again and guided her to the railing hugging the stairs. The best I could manage to get out of my mouth without sounded like I was whining was: JUST…..JUST….PLEASE DON’T BE FOOLISH.
She repeated her retort a few times as she climbed all of the stairs a tad slower than molasses in January, and I realized how canny she was to utter this under her breath, knowing full well I could hear it as we ascended all 1029 stairs (not including the level bits between ascending flights). Oh, and did I mentioned she’s had knee replacement surgery twice and a pulled tendon in one ankle? But climb she did, proving her tenacious, British-heritage mettle – to the by top and into the cave of the Saint himself. However frustrated I might get with her, however recalcitrant she may seem, whatever, smiley-winky stuff she does to strangers, she climbed about a thousand feet up from a desert floor at almost 81 years old. Beat that.
Well, of course the place is a holy site. But there were crosses *everywhere*; created out of rock rubble, iron rod cast-offs, broken cement pipe bits, sticks, anything. It reminded me a bit of walking through Maaloula, Syria in 1994, where there were crosses painted on rocks all over the place, even up on massif faces where no human could reasonably expect to get to, unless you were Spider-Man. You might see a few photos of these crosses below here. It was quite possible to trip over them, if you weren’t careful.
At the topic the stairs at the edge of a level bit of ground was a small opening into the rock face, which weirdly resembled a, um, vulva. I was quietly surprised by a monk spending almost 90 years inside this aperture considering its appearance (to me at least. Please god tell me I’m not the first to see this resemblance and contradiction…). The tunnel went perhaps 8 meteres in to a small chamber where an icon of the Saint had been set into the rock next to a small fissure where people had stuffed papers with what I presumed were prayers written on them.
The journey down was similar to that we took up, but with the added frisson of gravity to help mum negotiate the stairs down. We went carefully.
On driving back to the deserted tourist benches, which turned out to be right next to the Monastery proper, we decided to forego the onward journey to St. Paul’s in favour of having a quick look at the monastery before us and a journey back to Hurghada before dark (which comes on fast at 4:30pm).
The monastery was unexpectedly beautiful. Quiet, green, palmed, with adobe walls and roofs, wooden doors set well into walls, and black-robed priests of the Coptic faith striding about. We were assigned one such priest who commanded excellent English and was as quiet and gentle as one would hope a Coptic priest might be. “Beagul” walked slowly with us in slippers and showed us through a few doors into tiny church naves dating from the third century, with frescoes to match. There were much younger frescoes too, these dating for the 13thC… The chapels were cool and quiet, like carpeted caves, and we felt so at ease – in contrast to the anxiety we felt earlier at foregoing St. Paul’s and having Mum climb all those beknighted stairs. It almost felt like a…a movie set. It was so beautiful. I will leave you with a whack of photos from the day. Remember to checkout Carrie’s recounting of the day too, although I suspect you’ll see a number of images that might be similar to my own as mine are to hers.
