DAHAB MEMORIES

I still have cramps in my belly and as soon as I got to the office this morning, as nearly every morning, there are problems to solve… it seems as if things never come up right, that everything is a hindrance… and everything seems too much for me right now. Nevertheless, I should be happy and think that I am very lucky, that things always come up the right way for me. I am sitting in my office in Cairo, in front of the computer, lucky among many… how many people will not have been able to go back to their workplace today after the five days of Egyptian national holiday? 70? A hundred? The means of communication do not yet agree.

A long weekend: Friday and Saturday, together with a bridging Sunday to link the normal weekend to a Monday of pagan holiday, Sham El-Nissim, agricultural celebration of pharaonic origin, and Tuesday 26th of April, Sinai Liberation Day –moment in which Taba became Egyptian again, back from Israeli rule, curiously enough, the same year I was born, twenty-five years from now -.

Egypt is an amazingly beautiful country, with thousands of options on where to spend some holidays. After a period of some stress, my friends and I decided for the busy Sinai peninsula to enjoy the sun and waters of the Red Sea. Ras Shatan, 40 Km. from Nweiba, was the place chosen: huts made of cane and palm-tree leaves facing a stony beach and… nothing to do. Idyllic.

However, too quite for my friends, so much used to chaotic life in Cairo (not for me that I spend half of the month in Sohag!). So, after two days of sea and sun, we opted for a change. Dahab, only one hour away by car, was the perfect place. All of us had already been there the previous holidays, for Aid Kibir, celebration of Moses sacrifice; it took place after the Christian Catholic Christmas. Reason enough to try a new place… but the options available in Dahab were too tempting. There everything can be found; from the quietness of the sandy beach with turquoise waters to the greatest comforts and advantages of the big city: party, internet connection, restaurants with a wide offer –from the typical Egyptian “foul” to very savoury grilled seafood-,…

So by Sunday 24th we were already in Dahab, as most of our foreign colleagues – the Italian community in Cairo was almost fully there, for example -. Again, sun and relax, not much more. And me, with a horrible diarrhoea, alike two other of my trip mates. On the 25th we woke up late… it does not feel like waking up too early when you are on holidays. Not much profit can be made out of a day that starts late… so we could only enjoy water one hour at the most, in the “Blue Lagoon”. Back in the hotel, I started feeling the effects of the tiredness produced by the sickness. Thus, after saying goodbye to three of my friends who were leaving that same afternoon by car, I went to sleep. Only other friend and I were left. The five of us could have fitted in the car. However, the seven hours between Cairo and Dahab would have been eternally uncomfortable –due to the little space in the back seats- and they would have been multiplied because so much weight would have affected the little power of our NGO’s old car. Nada refused to drive in those conditions (the “brava” Nada who is able to drive in Cairo, “the lawless city… as far as traffic is concerned”). My Egyptian friend, Mahmoud, and I considered also taking the bus that same afternoon, but my health situation invited to little movement and to avoid so many hours closed in a bus –prevented from going to the toilet at free will-. Moreover we still hoped I would feel better the next morning, so at least we would be able to have a last swim before going back to stress.

After the nap, which took longer than expected, I remember I was unable to move fast. Anyway, we had just missed the sunset, which was the only activity planned for the rest of the day… maybe going to dance later? If I felt better. Shower, after sun lotion for the burns of the day before, get dressed… slowly. Finally we got out, without a fixed route, we only had in mind that I needed minerals from the pharmacy. Afterwards? Probably towards downtown, heading down the paved little street full of bazaars, to end up walking along the calm promenade sprinkled with colourful restaurants and diving centres. Actually, we had not even talked about the subject.

In the pharmacy, Mahmoud is trying to make understand the attendant what we were looking for while I concentrate in trying to catch some of the conversation in Arabic. All of a sudden, a dull sound, not very far, but not deafening. Another one. We go out to the street, to see what’s going on. We walk towards the sound. Still a third one. As we move forwards white smoke can be seen escaping the pedestrian little street. People re agitated, someone is crying, others are running.

I am reluctant to go near. “Is it gunfire?” I ask puzzled; “No, don’t worry, it isn’t. And I trust the military experience of my friend. “A bomb?”, “No, it doesn’t smell of…” gunpowder, he meant gunpowder. No, in fact it did not smell. Then, it still smelt of nothing. Although I tried to recognise the smell of burnt plastic that he was suggesting, I could not recognise any smell at all. “It must have been electricity”. Already very close to the entrance of the alley, we hear people shouting “El-cahrab. El-cahrab”… He was right, it had only been a short-cut, not much to worry about…

The vehicles (of any kind: micro-buses, jeeps, taxis…) started to come near to the entrance of the alley, and others speeded away. Suddenly, a pick-up van open at its back, stopped right in front of us. A man covered in blood, lying on his belly on the open back, was lifting his head, bewildered, wondering why the car had stopped and they were not rushing towards the hospital. Soon his companion, who had jumped out searching for who knows what, jumped back into the car and told the driver to speed up. Few meters behind a fast car was following… but I had enough time to recognise somebody cuddling the head of a little baby, not many months old, all red in blood. Two days later I would find out that it was a German baby, and that it did not make it. Neither did its parents. They laid already dead in the street when I saw their baby rushing by me in the car.

The alley was destroyed… a jewellery shop all scorched, and the bazaar in front had most of its products blackened. Some still had smoke coming out of little flames that were extinguishing by themselves. It did not seem possible so much blood… only because of that? Never trust electricity… People were helping to pick up bodies and they took them out of the alley in any possible way, waiting for a car to take them. A black woman, with veil and sterilised gloves, devoted herself to help people on the floor. I stepped with my sandals slowly over the small fragments of glass on the floor. I could no react, so I stood back. I was only able to look, unable even of getting down my saliva. I was trying to avoid running people bumping into me, so not to bother. I wanted to keep cold; I knew I could not help, that by trying to do it I would slow up the work… I even thought of taking pictures… those moments of panic, confusion and at the same time cooperation, were unique… nobody would ever see them if I did not take pictures… but I considered it disrespectful. Then –I remember the smell of blood- I felt nauseous, it was unbearable. It stank of flesh… human flesh. It was worse than the smell of the butcher’s in Cairo… There were puddles of blood, with plastic flip-flops left in the border… I remember a piece of flesh there too… a basket with dry flowers had been knocked over another puddle of blood. The flowers were called “hands of Mary”, that is what Livia had told me the evening before, an Italian girl who was spending those days with a friend that is working for the Italian Cooperation. Some hours later I would find out that she had been there, very close, trapped between two of the bombs and that their low power was what had saved her. We did not know yet it had been bombs. I can not recall when we started to be aware of that. I imagine it was only when the rumours grew so big so they became the only possibility. The supermarket El-Gazel had all its shop windows blown up… it was the only shop I could recognise… a memory came to my mind, of four months ago, when we bought there the torches to do our night climb up the mount Sinai, where Moses was revealed the Ten Commandments… and it came to my mind the memory of two previous evenings, when we were walking down that little street, stopping in some of the bazaars that now I could not to recognise… Now the owners of the bazaars, desperately, were gathering together all their belongings and were closing down the shops; they did not escape without protecting before what was left, little or of little use if the future of Dahab after that moment was taken into consideration.

We were downhearted, unable to speaking, unable to understand… in that miserable sate we were pushed towards our hotel by sturdy and authoritative men that were making us recoil, rendering us far from the zone. In the entrance of our hotel, sitting down in the high sidewalk, we were watching cars go back and forth, now there were even ambulances… I think it was then when we started to understand that it had been a terrorist attack, it had been bombs. I think it was then the first time that I got down my saliva since I heard the explosions. I looked towards the pharmacy, it was closed. Mahmoud was smoking and had a lost look in his eyes. I must have looked like a ghost. Suddenly, everybody ran towards the other end of Dahab… a hotel there had also been attacked… again general chaos…. Fortunately, it had all been a false alarm… at least up to now it has not been confirmed that actually a hotel far away from the centre was attacked.

Now I know that what I had seen was nothing. It was only the impact of the third bomb. Farther away, two more bombs had exploded, causing many more dead and injured. Now I know that an Italian friend and his family were jut a shop further away from the first bomb. He escaped any harm thanks to the little expansive wave. Today I have also found out that somebody working with me should have been walking around there that afternoon; a last moment decision allowed me to be speaking to him instead of having to visit him in the hospital or the cemetery, as it happened to his friends, a whole family, who he should have met with.

And then, on that sidewalk, I could not even mutter two words together. I thought it would be difficult for me to fall asleep… but what I did not know is that I still had a lot to see. A micro-bus stopped abruptly in front of the door of our hotel. “They are looking for people for blood donation”, translated Mahmoud for me, “I’m going”. I could not understand him. At the second trial, he seemed to give up and stay there by me, because of my incapacity to react. Then, I do not know why, I grabbed his arm and jumped into the vehicle. At least something useful we could do.

Dahab hospital, three minutes away from the centre, was another tiny chaos. People coming out, going in, pushing, with white coats or without, especially without even gloves, the floor covered in blood… and that such a deep smell of butcher’s. Between pushing and stretchers wrongly transported with blackened bodies, between needles sprouting ready to be injected, we asked about the blood donation. We had to go to Sharm El-Sheikh: that humble clinic was not able of that much. A foreigner, with oriental features, was desperately looking for his friends: “We were not together just for a second because they did not want to wait, and suddenly… have you seen any foreigner in the stretchers?” Mahmoud went to ask. I stayed hugging him. Poor guy could not even move. “No, all people injured a bit seriously have been taken to Sharm”, informed Mahmoud. We managed to leave the hospital, again trying to avoid the chaos of people, just curious or desperate or lost, Egyptian doctors and nurses in uniform and the foreign doctors in summer clothes, who have left behind their role of the idle tourist to give a hand in that situation out of control. I do not know if we left the hospital convinced that we were heading to Sharm or that it was not worth it going so far… How were we meant to come back, the city was sieged? Nevertheless, we recognised a woman with veil and gloves who previously was helping in the alley. She was panting, sat on the grass in the entrance of the hospital. Mahmoud had met her three years before in Saint Catherine monastery. We came close to her to see if she needed anything. She suffered from asthma and was trying to get back her breath after the huge effort of trying to help. She felt weak, we gave her some water and stayed with her, who needed to lain on somebody, needed to talk. While we were waiting for her reanimation, cars kept on coming and going. Some bundles of blankets were lined up in the entrance. There was nothing to be done for them now. There were at least a dozen. Suddenly, among burnt people and those covered in blood, a man came rushing, with a wooden grill between his hands –the one used to keep bread when coming out of the oven- with a kneading of blackened clothes on top. “That is a body, what is left of it”, answered to my wonder the voice by my side, without me even formulating the question. Doctor Jasmin, that was the brave woman’s name, seemed to feel better. In fact, it only seemed because I remember being there by her side for an eternity, listening to her interesting criticisms to the Egyptian health system (she was from the U.S.A, although renegade), theories about the ways in which the bombs may have been placed, where exactly they had exploded, about the call of God and its warnings… it was really a pleasure find a person of such an integrity and energy in such moments, somebody who also valued my cold blood (which one?) and who suggested me to devote to medicine… Only had she just seen me moments before…

And our night in Dahab finished late. We came back form the hotel on foot from the hospital, acting as crutches for Doctor Jasmin, who could hardly stand: nearly sixty years old, not looking older than in her forties, an asthma attack pays its toll. The network was blocked and we got into despair trying to contact those we knew were around and to let people know that those of us who we there, we were fine.

Yes, we were fine. The next morning, after hardly two hours of uneasy sleep, we waited again, on the high sidewalk, in the entrance of the hotel; this time, for the micro-bus that would take us to Cairo. The ghost city did not wake up. Only journalists came rushing with their cameras towards the place where everything had happened. The inhabitants of Dahab were immerse in sadness for what had happened and in despair for the future. The victims of that terrorist attack were not only those who no longer existed or those who are still fighting for live in hospital. Dahab and all the country will suffer its consequences.

Now I remember, only some months before I came to Egypt there were terrorist attacks in Sharm El-Sheikh. I was afraid despite the distance. I was afraid of an unknown country where I had to travel to and out of which I knew not what to expect. Today, having been so close to the disaster, I am not afraid. I feel at ease. I feel indignation and confusion, but not fear.