Once more unto the beach.

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With ten hours separating it from the capital by bus, Dahab is less a cozy seaside oasis than a light at the end of a long, dark, particularly congested tunnel. The ride from Cairo is a grueling feat of endurance: my knees scrunched close to my chest, my contacts crusted to my eyes, my neighbor taking labored breaths that recall some of the less-savory scenes from Apocalypto. When we get to the station in Dahab a couple of hours earlier than expected - which is to say right on time - I’m more than a bit bewildered and dazed by the glaring sunlight. There are touts circling and making lunges for our bags, a German couple arguing over the cost of a cab. I’m pushed into the back of a pick-up by a cheerful, slightly menacing kid in a sleeveless tee, who’s repeating “We love Dahab! We love Dahab!” with the sort of mindless intensity that suggests he learned the words at the point of a bayonet.

I’m reluctant to backtrack, having gotten a fair taste of this town three weeks ago. Yet while there’s absolutely nothing keeping me from making tracks to Jordan by nightfall, I’m a bit surprised, at the reception desk of Penguin Village, when I go digging through my wallet to pay for a three-night stay. Inertia is a terrible, powerful force after six-plus months on the road, and the thought of a few lazy days on the banks of the Red Sea, sipping mango lassies surrounded by bare mid-riffs, is enough to make Shackleton himself put on a pair of flip-flops and take a breather.

I’m also pleasantly surprised to find that I’ve been missed. A few of the guys I met around town last time - dive instructors and waiters and touts from the local hotels - greet me with genuine sincerity. Khalid, the waiter who took such a liking to Paul, gives me a long, affectionate hug and inquires about my friend. “How is Ball?” he asks earnestly - Egyptians having an oddly difficult time pronouncing his name. I assure him that Ball is doing well and asks about him often, the look in Khalid’s eyes suggesting a ravished sort of contentment.

While some of these fleeting friendships seem frozen in time, things in Dahab are moving quickly. In the past three weeks a pedestrian promenade has been paved along the main shopping drag, cheerful white lampposts planted along the side. New decks and palapas have popped up on the waterfront; a hotel swimming pool that was just a dirt hole when I last saw it now looks fit for an Olympiad. The workers - local Bedouins - are hammering and sawing, the dirt and sawdust sprinkling their turbans. It’s a familiar scene around town, where the modest effort to rebuild what was lost in last year’s bombings is far outpaced by the effort to rebuild its reputation. A decade ago, when this place was making its name as a small-scale Goa, just a handful of resorts fronted the water - the Hilton, the Swiss Inn, the Iberotel. Campsites were as numerous as the shiftless stoners who populated them, and the salty spray of the sea mixed with the pungent odors of hashish, patchouli, and countless heads of unwashed hair.

Not surprisingly, given the money that’s poured into Sharm el-Sheikh next door, Dahab’s been trying to spruce up its image. To some degree it’s worked: along with the latter-day hippies and drifters who come to the town today, there are Russian tour groups and English families and garrulous Bavarians whose massive bellies loop over their immodest swim trunks. Most stay in one of the more upmarket resorts that stretch like a string of pearls along the coast on the outskirts of town. In fact, one of the perverse consequences of last year’s bombings was the growing suspicion that Dahab has done too well too quickly - that its success at becoming a legitimate tourist destination has also made it a legitimate target.

I meet the owner of Al Capone in front of his restaurant, a cell phone clipped to his belt, a studious look on his face as he watches a worker pat down fresh concrete with a trowel. In last year’s bombings, Ehab lost two of his waiters. His face is grave as he talks about that day; he stamps out a cigarette and points to where the first bomb went off - just across the pedestrian bridge - and then the second, steps from his restaurant. “I saw bodies everywhere, blood everywhere. There was blood on the umbrellas,” he says, gesturing to the seaside patio.

Most of the new developments around town were started well before that tragic night. When I ask how much of his restaurant was destroyed by the bombing, Ehab looks surprised. Al Capone itself was hardly even damaged; the plan to remodel the kitchen and dining room was drawn up a few years ago. “I don’t want to stop for the bombing,” he says resolutely. “I must continue my life.”

Khalid wasn’t even in Dahab last April; he moved here a month ago, arriving just a few weeks before me and Paul showed up. It’s been tough going for him, at 22, separated from his family for the first time. He makes wistful faces as he talks about his mother in Cairo, or speculates about his prospects for the future. He doesn’t like Dahab, and the life he’s struggling to make for himself. After I’ve eaten he hands me a slip of paper with the bill tallied up. Across the top he’s written: “It is an honor to have your friendship.” This Khalid sure knows how to make a guy feel like shit. Moments earlier he’d asked me to write something for him, and I barely managed to fire off a few words about “the best waiter in Dahab,” as if I’d been writing out a birthday card for some chubby kid with a bad complexion and low self-esteem.

He invites me to have tea with him and his friends when his shift is through. There’s a delay as the manager keeps him to wait on one last table, the look on his face suggesting it’s one more in a long line of indignities. Afterward we hop into the back of a pick-up truck and go barreling down the road, his cousin - a cook at the restaurant - tagging along. They take me to a strip mall in Asalah, just a few minutes from the main drag in Dahab. There are a handful of low concrete shops squatting side by side: a café, a convenience store, an auto body shop, a restaurant with greasy chickens turning on a spit. Outside the café are plastic lawn chairs arranged around a dirt lot, empty cake wrappers and bags of chips blowing past our feet. At least thirty men in windbreakers and bomber jackets and gelabbiyah are drinking tea and watching a wrestling program dubbed into Arabic. There’s a dire intensity to how they sit there, their faces registering an almost professional regard for each head lock and body slam. These are connoisseurs, their judgment no doubt honed by countless hours in front of the tube. Apart from a few wisecracks they watch in silence, their eyebrows rising with approval at a nifty move, their jaws clenching at each new plot wrinkle.

The wind picks up and we move to a different café. Dice rattle across the tabletops as men play backgammon; Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan are on the big screen, yukking their way through Rush Hour. Khalid gets a game board and orders a few more cups of tea. It’s an average night in the life of your average Egyptian. We play a few rounds; I take the first game, Khalid evens the score with the second. He smiles sweetly when his phone rings: it’s his family, calling from Cairo. He chatters and laughs and passes me the phone. “Say hello to Walid,” he says. I take the phone and say “Assalamu lekum, Walid.” This sends everyone into hysterics. Afterward Khalid smiles and sighs and looks around with a sinking recognition.

“These people work many, many hours,” he says. “They start very early and end very late.” He pauses to consider something. “It’s no good to just go home and go to work,” he adds. “They come here to laugh and be with friends.”

We share some brief words of parting on the way back to my hotel. His cousin, whose English is threadbare, smiles shyly and shakes my hand. I’m up for much of the night, still wired on three cups of tea and thoughts of the next day’s travels. I take a walk along the water, its white skirt rustling along the shore. There’s a lonely dog howling at the moon; a few drunk guys are laughing on their way back from the bars. In the semi-darkness I pack my bags then doze off at close to four. I sleep fitfully for about an hour and wake up with the sunrise call to prayer, urging the faithful to get out of bed and do something.

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