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Published: February 17th 2007
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We’ve taken the bus to Hurghada and the ferry to Sharm el-Sheikh and a minibus to Dahab that deposits us in the flowery courtyard of our hotel. Only then does it dawn on Paul that he’s deathly ill. There’ve been discouraging signs for the past few days: the high fever, the night chills, the fact that he’s spent so much time in the bathroom I suspect he’s cutting tiles and laying grout. After I’ve dropped off my bags in our room I find him wandering the lobby, his shoulders stooped, a look of utter confusion on his face. It’s the last time I’ll see him on his feet for the next 30-plus hours.
Not that I can’t also use a few days of down-time in Dahab. It’s been a brutal couple of weeks: the early-morning wake-up calls, the sight-seeing under a fierce sun, the endless
baksheesh that burns a hole in your pocket. We couldn’t have picked a better time to make it to the Red Sea, with lazy puffs of clouds drifting over the water. This town used to be a backpackers’ mecca, and while the resort developments and T-shirt stalls betray the fact that it’s grown
up a bit, we’re still a long way from the tourist overdrive of Hurghada. Dogs snooze in the shadows, backpackers snooze in the sun, Bob Marley fills the air like the faint aroma of burning spliffs. Even the touts around town are low-key, clasping your hand and calling you “brother” as they harass the shit out of you.
It’s a bucolic little beach town, in its own way. After a few days in Luxor I suspect Times Square would feel off the beaten track, but for all the tourists in Dahab, there’s none of the usual tourist bedlam. Maybe it’s the fact that there are no temples to see and no tombs to scuttle through, and that a lazy stroll can cover the waterfront, end to end, in about 40 minutes. Most of us sit Indian-style on floor cushions - there’s a simple aesthetic to this town that’s endlessly reproduced - puffing away on water pipes, sipping on Turkish coffees, staring at the red ridges of Saudi Arabia across the sea. Little girls circle with necklaces and bracelets to sell. I buy a pair from an eight-year-old with wild hair and plastic gemstones glued to her sweatshirt. She
loops and knots a few strands of colored string with nimble fingers, trying to muscle me into buying four for the price of three.
The days are busier for some than others. Quinn’s signed up for a diving certification course that grinds along for eight hours a day. I bump into her during her lunch break on day one, shivering in her wet suit, cursing the day she ever dipped a toe in the water. At night she’s hunched over her text book or reviewing safety procedures on VHS, rewinding and fast-forwarding through the footage like an offensive coordinator prepping for the big game.
It seems absurd to come to a town like Dahab not looking to dive, let alone not knowing how to swim. Along the seafront there are dozens of dive shops, the touts working the sidewalk with deals on Ras Mohammed and the Blue Hole. Half the town is flopping around in flippers and dripping from their swim trunks, the snorkels poking above their heads like antennae. Guys in sleeveless tees are heaving oxygen tanks onto the backs of flat-bed trucks. There are rapturous talks about coral walls that are starting to get on
my nerves. By the time Paul’s back on his feet he’s working on a plan to score me some cheap flotation devices. I might need a pair of rubber duckies to keep me above the surface, but there’s no reason I should be left to watch all the action from the sidelines.
After his first day in the water Paul comes back wide-eyed. He’s never seen anything like it before: the fish darting and lancing like bolts of light, schools swooping and circling with all the choreography of the Bolshoi Ballet. There are bright electric colors and strange puckered faces and things that look so alien and menacing Paul hugs the coral wall until they pass. He also comes back with a massive gash, having taken a few awkward steps on the jagged coral shelf that stretches out from the beach at low-tide. There might be some divine retribution at work. Later, he’ll learn that walking along the coral wall - a federally protected area - is encouraged with the same sort of fervor as democratic elections under Mubarak. He’ll also admit with a red, guilt-ridden face that he moved some of the hermit crabs and small crustaceans
from their little nooks in the reef, trying to arrange the perfect combination of colors for his camera’s hungry eye.
More impressive than those underwater wonders, though, is the sudden onslaught of exposed flesh around town. You spend a couple of weeks in Egypt and begin to understand why a bit of ankle in some places is like a two-page centerfold. But the rules are relaxed in Dahab, the foreign women parading their lithe limbs around and immodestly tucking into tank-tops. There are affectionate displays along the beach, short shorts showing off the pale crescent moons of plump rear ends. It’s the sort of behavior that might get you thwacked with a broomstick in Cairo, where the most extravagant expression of female sexuality seems to involve layers of make-up as thick as
hummus.
It’s got to be hard work in a town like this for your average Mahmoud-on-the-street. Close to 80%!o(MISSING)f Egyptians save themselves for marriage, but the same sex-charged signals - the hip-hugger jeans, the fluttering eyelids, the Lebanese starlets gyrating on MTV Arabia - are there to illuminate the landscape like tracers fired into the gloaming of sexual frustration. Khalid, a sweet, smiling waiter at a restaurant on the waterfront, explains to us what it’s like for a young Muslim - serious, pious, reciting his prayers five times a day - in a place like Dahab. For him, for many Egyptian men, the sight of these long-limbed girls in skimpy swimsuits - their shoulders bronzed, their breasts bobbing - stirs a mix of curiosity, desire and something approaching distaste. He’s not immune to the obvious interest provoked by a statuesque Swede lathering sunscreen onto her legs. But he couldn’t possibly imagine bringing a girl like that home to meet his grave father and disapproving mother - let alone trusting her to raise a good Muslim family.
Others aren’t nearly so torn by contradiction. We have drinks with a couple of dive instructors who have been helping Quinn with her lessons. They’re smart, thoughtful, quick-witted guys who are nonetheless eager to exchange high fives as they talk about their sexual conquests. They’ve ranked the world’s nationalities according to bedroom prowess - an impressive roll call that, for those who are interested, shows Eastern Europe the sort of attention it hasn’t seen since the Warsaw Pact. It’s a performance from which Quinn struggles to hide her obvious revulsion, as if we’ve chased our beers with a bitter cocktail of testosterone and casual misogyny. Later she huffs and pouts on the way back to our hotels, the moon a sharp crescent hanging over the sea, the occasional hiss coming our way from the lustful guys outside the cafés.
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