RED SEA ADVENTURE: EXCERPT Chapter 2 TWMH

This is a taster of Chapter 2-- Red Sea Adventure-- from my new book Travels with My Hat.  Seeking winter sunshine, I had gone back to Hurghada, a small  fishing village with one hotel in 1964. I wondered if it was still there...

...‘I want to find the Funduq Sheraton,’ I told my taxi-driver, a young man wearing designer stubble and a David Beckham 7 football shirt.

 ‘Road closed.’ His brow knitted in the rear vision mirror.

‘Izmi Hurghada thirty years ago!’ I tapped my chest with a certain pride since I had clearly graced Hurghada before he was born. But he was right. The old road was blocked by a rusty, corrugated iron fence plastered with posters advertising an ‘Eid Concert’ at the Ministry of Sound and other extravaganzas for the imminent Muslim feast of sacrifice.

‘Funduq Sheraton!’ he suddenly exclaimed, pulling up beside a crumbling circular building surrounded by leaning lamp posts and dusty trees. Grey, shabby and clearly unloved, I recognised it as the old Red Sea Tours Hotel, a large Marriott which had risen beside it being one of 160 new hotels since my visit all those years ago.

Hurghada’s long main street was still known as Sharia Sheraton, even though a new Sheraton had re-located to Soma Bay, far away from bungee jumping, kite-surfing, glass-bottom boat rides, submarine tours and other entertainments for holidaymakers flocking to the popular Red Sea resort. Wherever I looked there were hotels, cafes and shops selling tourist tat, but a sign, Harrads Hurghada, captured my attention.

On the pavement outside, glass water pipes, brass trays, wooden animals, leather pouffes, and camel backpacks were displayed beside baskets of karkady—the  dried red hibiscus flowers that Egyptians make into tea. As I raised my camera to take a picture, an intense looking man who clearly hadn’t shaved for days, got up from a dirty white plastic chair. ‘Everything inside 1GBP,’ he said, holding up a finger.

Going into his shop, I picked up a fish from a display of onyx marine life. ‘Fish 4 GBP,’ he quickly corrected himself.  Removing the stopper, I sniffed one of the half-filled, urine-coloured flagons of perfume lining a shelf. ‘Perfume 10GBP for100 grams.’ He cleared his throat. Then all of a sudden he flew into a rage.

 ‘Tourist just lookin’. No buy anythin!’  Flecks of spit appeared in the corners of his mouth as he shouted.  ‘ Every tourist fuggin Russhin. Old woman wantin sex. Fuggin rubbish. Only lookin! Pay nothin! Russhin Fuggin! Fuggin! Fuggin! Oh Allah! What we do?’

 He clasped his hands together and concerned my presence might bring on a seizure, I left him shouting to continue my walk along the Sharia Sheraton.            

 Every second shop I passed was stuffed with souvenirs. In the window of a leather-ware store, a lizard skin handbag, including the head, half-chewed away by insects, was marked 145 Egyptian pounds. I wanted to buy a plain white T-shirt, but everything had either a shark or a pyramid on it…

                 

DIVING AT DISHDABA

Excerpt from Chapter 2 Red Sea Adventure

Travels with My Hat

...My childhood dream was no longer a dream. Or a deadline. Pulling on a mask and snorkel, I followed Morris out into the bay where I looked down on an underwater Eden.

Corals covered every inch of the reef. Some were soft pink and yellow ‘flower’ corals, feathery tentacles waving as they sifted in plankton from around their colony. Others were hard, limestone corals—mosaic, organ-pipe, brain and grass coral -- interspersed with lacy orange and red gorgonian sea fans. Still others like the fawn, blue-tipped staghorn coral were the size of small sedans.

Moreover, the abundance of fish was marvellous. Extraordinary! Now I understood why Jacques Cousteau was so enthusiastic about the Red Sea where divers and marine biologists have recorded some 1,200 species. In the first minutes, I identified white, black and bright yellow butterfly fish, red banner fish, goatfish, bream, a rainbow-coloured wrasse, a surgeonfish and a cheeky triggerfish - a species that knows no fear (one of these little fellows had nipped me while I was snorkelling off Rangiora, the great atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago).

A wall of soft corals dropped 10m (32 ft) to a narrow plateau bristling with pink and mauve elk-horn coral where I spotted a red hawkfish resting in the branches of an orange sea fan, and a regal angel fish hovering near a cluster of lemon-coloured anemones. Green and mauve parrotfish were grinding the coral polyps with pharyngeal teeth and a school of eight squid, my favourite marine creature, jetted through the water like a team of Red Arrows.

When I swam after them, they flushed brown, then yellow and green, and the last animal squirted a puff of sepia-coloured ink. Coming up for air, I was brushed by a soft turquoise-trimmed nudi-branch which Egyptians know as a badia for its undulating movements which resemble those of a belly dancer.

Morris and the other boys managed to spear plenty of fish, but there was no wood to build a fire so we could cook them. Mas’udi writes of the Red Sea coast as being barren more than a thousand years ago, so unlike in the Pacific Ocean, there was no driftwood washed up on the tide-line. Ruth and I each had a tin of Chinese corned beef and a packet of biscuits brought from Hurghada, but they would not stretch far when shared between six of us. The boys had brought nothing at all...

Underwater images by Erik Bjurstrom

Photo Christine Osborne, Dishdaba 1964

YEMEN'S LAST DANCE

A prime objective within al Qaeda's long-term strategy of establishing a pan-Islamic Caliphate, is the burning desire to overthrow the House of Saud. Other operations, though catastrophic, have been largely red herrings to distract attention from its gradual infiltration of Yemen, the back door to Mecca, and the Holy Shrines.

It comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with Yemen, that this fascinating, but dysfunctional country, has become centre stage in the battle to contain worldwide terrorism.

Yemen's domestic history is a mix of on-going religious and tribal conflict.

Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, it fell under control of the Zaidi imams, a Shi'ite sect embedded in the north and on the central plateau, and contested by the Shafi's, a Sunni school of law, inhabiting the western mountain slopes and the Tihama coastal plain.

A Zaidi imam ruled the country until the dynasty was overthrown in a military coup in 1962, allegedly lead by the current President - Ali Abdullah Saleh.

This tangled bacground has resulted in swathes of Yemen being ruled by dissident tribesmen. Notably the Sa'dah area along the Saudi border, Wadi Jawf - the ancient conduit for frankincense caravans travelling north from the Hadramaut, and the Shabwa governorate, south-east of Sana'a, allegedly operational base of AQAP (the self styled Al Qaeda of the Arabian peninsula).

The Sana'a central government has no authority in these areas where foreigners, taken hostage to highlight a local need for investment in health and education, have usually been released unharmed (certain elements of the British media have even joked about going on an 'expenses free holiday' in the Yemen).

Such activities became sinister in March 2009, with the murder of Korean tourists in Shibam - a UN World Heritage town in the Hadramaut - followed in June, by the deaths and kidnappings of medical workers in Sa'dah for which al-Haithy rebels are likely responsible.

Since then the armed forces of Yemen, assisted by Saudi air-strikes against rebel incursions, have stepped up resistance to the northern revolt lest disaffected tribes compound the terrorist problem.

Despite the fact that Yemen now has more 'no go' areas than a Swiss cheese has holes, in October, the Yemen Tourism Promotion Board, launched a campaign to attract visitors by bringing a folklore troupe to dance on Paddington station, and at key spots on the Continent.

The Minister of Tourism subsequently received the 'Golden Rudder Award' for creativity, presented in Jeddah, by Arab tourism members of the GCC States - Gulf Co-Operation Council which Yemen would dearly like to join.

Abu Dhabi's announcement of a $US650 million fund to bolster the shaky Sana'a government indicates growing regional concern by the Gulf States already feeling threatened by Iran.

And Obama's U-turn over the closure of Guantanamo, largely relates to the fact that 45% inmates are Yemenis. Could Sana'a be trusted to put them on trial. Or would they be released, to potentially re-group with al Qaeda?

Yemen's destiny remains unknown. But what seems certain, is that further destablisation caused by either Zaidi rebels, or disenchanted southerners, will serve an AQAP element, thought linked to al-Shabaab, in Somalia.

While Yemen may not espouse outside intervention, the alternative to propping up the central government, could see a pincer grip on either side of the Bab al-Mandeb, the strategic entrance to the Red Sea.

copyright: Christine Osborne.
image: A Yemeni tribesman.
source: www.copix.co.uk