The Lost Tribe of Zachariah
It wasn’t exactly the most auspicious of starts to the day I was going to end on a bus heading into the Sinai Desert under the stars. After several days of what I’m going to euphemistically refer to as a galloping case of the Pharaoh's Revenge, I wasn’t at all certain about my plans for later. For a moment, imagine you’re a fly on the wall of our apartment, and you might see the pair of us sitting on the bed, needles in our arms and drip bags taped to the wall above our heads. I was on a glucose concoction, Ali was being topped up with saline. Sweet and savoury - a bit like us. I’d already told the doctor I was feeling much better today, although I hadn’t eaten for twenty-four hours and had missed breakfast in my search for medical assistance for Ali, who was still feeling a bit pale and wan. But he offered to take my blood pressure anyway, and then went pale himself when it was even lower than Ali’s. But one thing he said stayed in my mind - there was no medical reason for me not to go on the trip later. “But you must eat,” he said as he left us. I would have done so if I hadn’t been chasing about looking for him during the morning sitting.
I asked Ali at least four times. By now it was too late for a refund, but it wasn't a huge amount of money and there was still time to rebook that trip for the middle of the week. But she was insistent. Maybe she’d taken out a policy that I wasn’t aware of and was hoping to pay for another twenty years of holidays in the event of my demise later on. She wasn’t feeling great, but she promised she’d still be alive when I returned from Mount Sinai the next afternoon. Whether I would be or not remained a question yet to be answered. But despite the ravages of the last few days, I was feeling strong - and this was one of those once in a lifetime opportunities that I didn’t want to miss. So after receiving her reassurances for a fifth time, I decided I would get on that bus tonight. What could possibly go wrong? We went to lunch as the doctor prescribed, and ignored all of the exciting fare in favour of boiled rice and sauteed vegetables. Delicious. I might stress at this point of the story that Ali never had the slightest intention of going. While she would have enjoyed the hike, the prospect of a long bus journey had put her off the idea of joining me, regardless of how she may or may not feel.
Later, after a similarly dull carb laden calorie building supper, I boarded a large comfortable looking coach. “There’s a toilet at the rear,” announced the tour guide. Nobody could find it. Perhaps he meant a hundred and sixty miles past the back of the bus at the hotel. Thankfully the troubles that had dogged me since Wednesday were now a thing of the past. Any hopes of being able to spread out in my double seat were quickly dashed when we pulled up at a service station just outside the city. As the door opened, a stream of young fit looking people climbed aboard, filling every available seat. In the row in front of me, a Polish couple set up camp, her continentally beautiful, dark and sulky, glaring at me for daring to adjust the curtain. Him short and sallow, wearing sunglasses throughout the night, head completely shaven and decorated in a sprawling black web of tattoos. His seat tilted backwards, swallowing the space in front of their compatriot sitting next to me, while I was treated to a long journey with his slumbering bald head uncomfortably close to my face. As if I needed reminding that this really was an adventure for younger types than me. When we arrived later, they chain smoked all the way up the mountain and down again as if cigarettes were going out of fashion. She pouted in between puffs with a sang-froid that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the face of a supermodel who’d just had her contract with Christian Dior cancelled.
Minutes after filling the bus we passed through the first of several police checkpoints, an official marching down the aisle checking passports. Happily, everyone seemed to have remembered to bring them. The tour guide had collected photocopies of them all, inexplicably handing me one of the three he’d made at our hotel. It wasn’t even mine. I passed it to its equally confused looking owner. The purpose of the exercise never was clear. We waited for a police escort to take us across the desert and into the mountains. I tried to sleep, my head juddering against the softly vibrating window pane. Maybe I managed half an hour where my thoughts were lost to the shifting shapes that inhabit the edges of dreams, but that was about as close as I got to going under. At least I wasn’t suffering with my earlier complaint anymore.
Five and a half gruelling hours after getting onto the bus, and two hundred and seventy kilometres from the border checkpoint, we crept along the last stretch of tarmac into St Katherine’s and parked near the monastery, where our cheerful driver grinned and flexed his bicep in solidarity as I descended into the small hours at the base of Mount Sinai. We were told he’d driven this route no less than six hundred times over the years, depositing thousands of adventurous tourists onto the trail, but here was where his journey ended. For me, the young Polish couple and the other fifty odd souls on the bus, this was just the start of our own adventure. For the next few hours, this group of people from all over the world, thrown together by fate, were my new tribe. “Group Zachariah,” named after the tour guide who'd brought us here and now handed us into the care of three wiry young Bedouins who would lead us up the mountain. ”Group Zachariah!” we would hear their cries bouncing over the dark mountain walls. “Group Zachariah!” those of us who still had sufficient energy would chime in response to let them know we weren't dead yet. Perhaps this is how religions start. Maybe one day in the distant future, pilgrims will read this nonsense and hike up the mountain looking for the lost tribe of Zachariah. But they should know here that, while Moses may well have spent forty days and forty nights in deep thought on the summit, Zachariah kipped on the coach with the driver while his tribe followed the guides up the mountain and into the darkest depths of night.
The Lost Tribe of Zachariah
It wasn’t exactly the most auspicious of starts to the day I was going to end on a bus heading into the Sinai Desert under the stars. After several days of what I’m going to euphemistically refer to as a galloping case of the Pharaoh's Revenge, I wasn’t at all certain about my plans for later. For a moment, imagine you’re a fly on the wall of our apartment, and you might see the pair of us sitting on the bed, needles in our arms and drip bags taped to the wall above our heads. I was on a glucose concoction, Ali was being topped up with saline. Sweet and savoury - a bit like us. I’d already told the doctor I was feeling much better today, although I hadn’t eaten for twenty-four hours and had missed breakfast in my search for medical assistance for Ali, who was still feeling a bit pale and wan. But he offered to take my blood pressure anyway, and then went pale himself when it was even lower than Ali’s. But one thing he said stayed in my mind - there was no medical reason for me not to go on the trip later. “But you must eat,” he said as he left us. I would have done so if I hadn’t been chasing about looking for him during the morning sitting.
I asked Ali at least four times. By now it was too late for a refund, but it wasn't a huge amount of money and there was still time to rebook that trip for the middle of the week. But she was insistent. Maybe she’d taken out a policy that I wasn’t aware of and was hoping to pay for another twenty years of holidays in the event of my demise later on. She wasn’t feeling great, but she promised she’d still be alive when I returned from Mount Sinai the next afternoon. Whether I would be or not remained a question yet to be answered. But despite the ravages of the last few days, I was feeling strong - and this was one of those once in a lifetime opportunities that I didn’t want to miss. So after receiving her reassurances for a fifth time, I decided I would get on that bus tonight. What could possibly go wrong? We went to lunch as the doctor prescribed, and ignored all of the exciting fare in favour of boiled rice and sauteed vegetables. Delicious. I might stress at this point of the story that Ali never had the slightest intention of going. While she would have enjoyed the hike, the prospect of a long bus journey had put her off the idea of joining me, regardless of how she may or may not feel.
Later, after a similarly dull carb laden calorie building supper, I boarded a large comfortable looking coach. “There’s a toilet at the rear,” announced the tour guide. Nobody could find it. Perhaps he meant a hundred and sixty miles past the back of the bus at the hotel. Thankfully the troubles that had dogged me since Wednesday were now a thing of the past. Any hopes of being able to spread out in my double seat were quickly dashed when we pulled up at a service station just outside the city. As the door opened, a stream of young fit looking people climbed aboard, filling every available seat. In the row in front of me, a Polish couple set up camp, her continentally beautiful, dark and sulky, glaring at me for daring to adjust the curtain. Him short and sallow, wearing sunglasses throughout the night, head completely shaven and decorated in a sprawling black web of tattoos. His seat tilted backwards, swallowing the space in front of their compatriot sitting next to me, while I was treated to a long journey with his slumbering bald head uncomfortably close to my face. As if I needed reminding that this really was an adventure for younger types than me. When we arrived later, they chain smoked all the way up the mountain and down again as if cigarettes were going out of fashion. She pouted in between puffs with a sang-froid that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the face of a supermodel who’d just had her contract with Christian Dior cancelled.
Minutes after filling the bus we passed through the first of several police checkpoints, an official marching down the aisle checking passports. Happily, everyone seemed to have remembered to bring them. The tour guide had collected photocopies of them all, inexplicably handing me one of the three he’d made at our hotel. It wasn’t even mine. I passed it to its equally confused looking owner. The purpose of the exercise never was clear. We waited for a police escort to take us across the desert and into the mountains. I tried to sleep, my head juddering against the softly vibrating window pane. Maybe I managed half an hour where my thoughts were lost to the shifting shapes that inhabit the edges of dreams, but that was about as close as I got to going under. At least I wasn’t suffering with my earlier complaint anymore.
Five and a half gruelling hours after getting onto the bus, and two hundred and seventy kilometres from the border checkpoint, we crept along the last stretch of tarmac into St Katherine’s and parked near the monastery, where our cheerful driver grinned and flexed his bicep in solidarity as I descended into the small hours at the base of Mount Sinai. We were told he’d driven this route no less than six hundred times over the years, depositing thousands of adventurous tourists onto the trail, but here was where his journey ended. For me, the young Polish couple and the other fifty odd souls on the bus, this was just the start of our own adventure. For the next few hours, this group of people from all over the world, thrown together by fate, were my new tribe. “Group Zachariah,” named after the tour guide who'd brought us here and now handed us into the care of three wiry young Bedouins who would lead us up the mountain. ”Group Zachariah!” we would hear their cries bouncing over the dark mountain walls. “Group Zachariah!” those of us who still had sufficient energy would chime in response to let them know we weren't dead yet. Perhaps this is how religions start. Maybe one day in the distant future, pilgrims will read this nonsense and hike up the mountain looking for the lost tribe of Zachariah. But they should know here that, while Moses may well have spent forty days and forty nights in deep thought on the summit, Zachariah kipped on the coach with the driver while his tribe followed the guides up the mountain and into the darkest depths of night.