The call to descend to Sinai came during Pesach,
a few days after I had announced my "Lekh Lekhâ" from the Succah.
Immediately I felt I had to let myself have a learning experience.

With some friends I traveled to Sinai and let myself be guided to a place,
called "Aqua Sun" i.e. "Water Sun", quite symbolically as I see only now.
This business then was not yet a hotel, but what I call "desert-compatible".
At that time it was the most northern hosting business on the beach,
north even of the Succah-like business Basata, "the Simple One",
which Succah visitors had advised me to explore already in 1991:

During my 7 week interim of parking outside the Alpacca Farm
- repairing my bus, collecting and editing my archive
[which later - in 1998 - was burned to ashes together with the Abraham-Succah]
I chose the feast of Shavu'ot (Pentecost), on which the Torah was given on mount Sinai,
to grant myself another Sinai learning experience.

Somewhere I got a lift by an Israeli tourist guide, who had often visited "Succah in the Desert" Because of him I reached Mount Moses. Shlomi Segev took this photo outside the pilgrims' monastery. A clasp with the symbol of "Partnership" shines on my chest. As is the usage, we left the monastery at 3 in the morning and climbed up the mountain in the crowd of the pilgrims.

"Mount Sinai is both the name of a collection of peaks, sometimes referred to as the Holy Mountains, and the biblical name of the peek on which Moses received the Ten Commandments. Mount Mousa (or Musa), also referred to as Jebel Musa, Gebel Mousa, Mount Moses or the Mountain of Moses (all of which basically means the same thing) is considered to be that biblical peak. This peak has religious significance to Islam as the place where Mohammed's horse, Boraq, ascended to heaven. The 7,497 foot mountain has 3,750 steps hewn out of stone by monks of St. Catherine's Monastery."

But I was not supposed to delight in Spirit's Heights! I was about to be trained and coached for Will's Hell

This is a typical page in my calendar diary, where I mainly recorded names and addresses - in Hebrew, Arabic and English - of the many people I met or phoned day by day and the major events/situations connected to them.

I parted from some wonderful people in Shlomi's German group, and hitchhiked all the way down to Sharem-e-Sheikh. The last driver, Mohamed, brought me to "madrasat al-bi'ah", the "School for Environment", inside the area of the harbour . In the Madrasah I met Dr. Kamaal Al-Auda who informed me about the Egyptian equivalent of an "Authority for Nature Reserves". There I met John Grainger, who later invited me to his house , so that - during a day between two nights - I could write a document asking for cooperation with the "Cabinet of Ministers" ot the EEAA, "The Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency". The "Ras Mohamed Park", i.e. the local EEAA authority, was then financed to 60% and administered by Europeans. Unlike the Israelis, this authority seemed to coopt the Bedouins for guarding nature instead of evicting them. DR. MICHAEL PEARSON, who was the Project Manager, seemed to like my concept: Nature Reserves guarded by the right people who live in them, instead of Nature Parks reserved for plants and animals.

But what disappointment, even humiliation, lay ahead of me!

On May 28, 1996 , I hitchhiked back along the long coast. The northern, narrow part of the Red Sea which runs down the Syrian-African Rift, is called "The Gulf of Aqaba", or in Israel "The Gulf of Eilat". I did not grasp then that I was driven to move along this deep rift. Nor did I understand that there was a purpose in this composition: Water and Wilderness, Desert and Sea.

In the 7 weeks (May-June 1996) between my exodus from the Succah and my descent to Sinai,
I had let the bus be repaired thoroughly, with gifts and loans from many friends.
But then the authorities said, that the bus was outdated,
and there was no way for me to get a license for driving it.

I drove it anyway - on a breakneck journey of six hours at night -
down the snaky "Road of Independence" into the Ramon-Crater,

As always - 2 angels were visibly driving behind me, -
Motti, a Jew, and Eid, an Arab, both from Beersheva,
who had gone into immense trouble to repair my bus.
When they saw the bus dangerously sliding sideward,
they stopped me, since I had fallen asleep for a second,
and Eid, a truck driver though without license, took over.
The last hour I slept on my bed like in Abraham's bosom.

In the first light of the morning my angels parted from me
and I drove up towards the army base on Uzia mountain.

I got permission to stay next to the road for 3 weeks.
The 3 weeks, during which David would serve there.
An ecologist who, too, was at the base as a reservist
turned out to be the "angel on duty on my abysses".
He managed to get me the permission from his Kibbutz Lotan,
"which combines Reform Jewish and ecological values in a desert community",
to park my bus there, till I would be allowed to take it to Egypt.

This morning (2003_03_27) it suddenly occurred to me, that even during this short "time-out" on a desert height, I was once called to move along the Syrian-African Rift: "Jubilate, O barren, you who did not give birth exult, break-forth in jubilation you who did not labor ..." "You have another grandson", announced my youngest, on the public phone of that army base. "His name is Arnon!" Only now I realize, that the name derives from the same verb "ronni" with which begins the prophecy about "The Barren". Ra'ayah, a midwife for 16 years, who also delivered the 4 babies of my daughter, her sister-in-law, Ronnit ("ronni"!) had one abortion after the other, until she gave birth to Arnon June 12, 1996, at the age of 39. He was conceived in my bus on the Jewish New Year 1995. It took me 6 hours to hitchhike to Jerusalem, all along the deep Rift, to see Arnon &his parents The Arnon or Wadi Mujib is a small river flowing into the eastern side of the Dead Sea, approximately halfway along its length. It is referred to 25 times in the Bible (e.g. Numbers 21: 24; Judges 11: 18) and was once the northern boundary of Moab (Ruth, the Moabite). North of Karak in Jordan it is over 1000 m deep and after a circuitous course through a deep ravine it falls into the Salt Sea nearly opposite Engedi, Israel. This is how I - from my Salt Sea springs - view the Arnon estuary, with the largest amount of water emptied into the Sea from either side :    Towards the last hours of the last day of the 2002 Succot Festival Arnon urged Abba to drive (2 hours!) to the Salt Sea - with grandma! He watched me swimming while he "rebuilt the shore" (which on my visit with Tomer on 2003_03_17 appeared to not exist anymore at all). He made it a point to tell me: "It's me who brought you here!"

Back to 1996

When this time of resting was over, we dismantled my home, and I drove - hidden in the night - but with David at my side, down and east to Kibbutz Lotan, about 30 km north of Eilat,

On July 3, 1996, I still had to go north one more time,
in order to attend my trial at the law court of Dimona,
for having crossed the border to Egypt illegally in 1995.
On July 4, I was finally ready for my descent into "Hell".

FEAR was almost crushing me, fear of the heat, fear of lack of water & food & a place to sleep, fear of the Egyptian authorities and the Egyptian people, who - despite formal peace - weren't exactly fond of Israelis, and most of all fear of what and how I was supposed to fulfil my vocation there.

I hitchhiked to the border of Taba and crossed it
using not my Israeli but my German passport
without understanding what made me do this.
~~~~

As always, I informed and trained myself by tracing the people, who seem to have realized dreams which are relevant to mine. The first person to meet was Hishaam, the owner of "Aqua Sun". But he had no patience to listen to my dreams. "Ask me only for specific things, which I can fulfil!" I spent the night there (for free), met Israelis and Egyptians alike, and followed Hishaam's advice to meet his cousin in Tarabin.

Tarabin, a Bedouin village on the beach north of Nuweiba, was to become my miserable town for the next 3 months. That morning I went to the cafe of Ja'fer, a one-legged man. A palm thorn in his leg had led to infection and amputation. Since I had often encountered these ghastly thorns, when I needed to gather palm fronds for the Succah and to break their lower ends by the force of my foot, I sympathized deeply. A Bedouin from the village entered the cafe and Ja'fer introduced me. It was with this man, Freidj, with whom I started my "career" in Sinai. For 3 days I lived with his family, which included an asthmatic child, in their desolate, almost roofless, compound on the bare ground. His wife Salma and Daya, a neighbor, took me up to the mountains, showed me desert herbs, boiled tea and let me taste the fruits of ?? They had mistaken me for a rich tourist who would pay them well. Disappointed as they were, they tried to make the best of my stay. One of them even gave me a cheap, but traditionally looking dress. Since the July heat seemed to be more tolerable, when I wore it, I did so, until I was adviced that it was politically unwise to do so. Also the women were scolding me for not wearing an underdress. I didn't know how they saw that, but they saw and found it indecent. Nothing I got or gathered in Sinai is left with me in Israel. To the contrary, many of my personal things are left in Sinai. But some months ago this gown returned to me strangely~~

Freidj suggested to take me to Wadi M'khaash, some 20 km north,
where drinkable water was quite close to the surface of the earth.
He said, "we" could experiment there with a pyramidion.
Though I had almost no money, not even for basic food,
I had to pay Freidj for this trip.
But it was worthwhile:

When I had crossed the border to Sinai, I had believed,
that it would take me months to gather the information,
that would make me understand, what I was supposed to do.
But with the help of - and soon the disillusion with - this man,
things started to develop with such speed, that six weeks later
we received the first guests into the first 7 tents of the "Rihlah".

This term was coined by Um-Saaleh, whom I also met there. Auwaad, her senile husband, was bothering but also helpful. His wife had a sense of humor, which raised my sad spirits, and it was with laughter, that she made the connection between my name Rachel - Hebrew for "mother sheep" and "Rihlah", the Arabic word for "wandering". Freidj accepted my general idea and liked my tents, of which I showed him the design, but he cast away my sophisticated model of the central tent for cooking, dining, meeting: "We'll use a beit-sha'ar, literally a "tent of hair", he ordained. "A traditional Bedouin tent will help to win over local people to become owners and hosts of such hosting enterprises!" A hair-tent is rectangular and made of goat and sheep hair which can be opened and closed towards the air on all sides. The upper picture gives an idea of a family "beit-sha'ar". The one, we later bought in Gaza, was much smaller. Nothing much can be seen above Ahmed, Aziz and me. How simple this sounds: "We bought a beit-sha'ar, a hair tent ." It was a maddening story like almost everything in Sinai

The design of the four triangle coat of the tent, double layered of black and silvery netshade. It was Uri, my son-in-love, who figured out, how I could save material and stitching time.

Back to my first days in Tarabin: On Shabbat, the sixth of July 1996, my small pocket calender mentions gladly; "Freidj and I found a place for the pyramidion in Wadi M'khaash." I also mention a sentence Freidj said, which I made my slogan for Sinai: "If it's wrong - we go back, if it's right - we go forward." Both, Freidj and Auwaad listed many wadis with water. One of them - Audai-il-badan - I went to explore myself. How strange, that the 'appointed' wadi, Wadi-at-Taulah, turned out to be waterless...

In hindsight the goal was not to find a wadi suitable for the model of a Rihlah.
The real goal was to experience FEAR, not my own fear, but PEOPLE'S FEAR.
After 3 nights with Freidj &Salmah I spent a night with Auwaad and Um-Saaleh.
The next day, July 9, 1996, was 'appointed' as the beginning of that experience.

A call from Auwaad's neighbors to Michael Pearson in Sharem-e-Sheikh!
I wanted last informations about the ecological seminary in St. Catherine.
When I learnt, that he himself would not be there, but go to a meeting in Taba,
I begged him, to visit the people in Tarabin, whom I saw as potential partners.

My aim was to tie together the authorities and the Bedouins,
and - by involving them both - to realize my dream.
The whole of the Sinai peninsula was declared a Nature Reserve,
and without authorization from Michael I had no chance with Egypt.
And on the other hand, without official backing,
I had no chance to really win over local people as Rihlah pioneers.
For though Freidj had shown signs of excitement and cooperation,
I did not delude myself.
A little prayer to myself in my calender says:
"Rachel, Rachel, accept lovingly
- without torturing your brain -
that they don't understand."

Many neighbors gathered around the fire in Freidj's compound .
After all he was a man - not a woman like me,
a Westerner - not an Israeli like me,
he spoke only high society English and not the local Arabic like me,
he had an honorable position, paid by the government,
and was not voicing crazy ideas like me,
and he wasn't sleeping on the ground in a roofless compound like me.
In short, he was respectable, too respectable, as I found out too late.

We all agreed on "Wadi Gazaaleh" much further south, for experimenting with my idea of a mobile hosting business, with Freidj as partner, and under the auspices of Dr. Pearson, Then Pearson suggested to Freidg to better his economic situation, by working as the kind of part time ranger, the Egyptian Authority for Nature Reserves had in mind, when choosing to coopt the local people instead of fighting them.

A website tells about Wadi Ghazala "To fully experience the splendour of the Sinai deserts we need to drive for an hour to Wadi Ghazala. Our camels will take us through the sandy desert and rugged mountains to the oasis of Ain Khudra. [Ein-Khudra, the"Green Spring" , (photo!) was one of the potential sites for the first "Rihlah"].

Freidg seemed to accept the offer (never oppose an official...!) and agreed to fulfill the one condition: to travel down to Sharem-e-Sheikh for arranging the formalities. This was to happen some days later, after my return from St. Catharine. Sounds simple, does it not? Never underestimate FEAR! But first I had to be prepared by a painful experience. I hitchhiked to St. Catherine, utilizing all the chances, which my various drivers provided, to inform myself. I 'saw' my tent in Wadi Gazaaleh, close to the juncture, where the St. Catherine road meets the Red-Sea coast. In the School for Environment, once built by the Israelis, I was rejected by the Sharem-e-Sheikh EEAA "friends": Dr. John Grainger, who had hosted me then, said bluntly: "You are an Israeli and you want to work with Bedouins! Bedouins are suspect to collaborate with Israel. Our status in Egypt is precarious, you are endangering us! Please, leave us alone! Don't attend the seminary!"

After some good meetings in Faraj Mahmud's St. Catherine Cafe,
I took the bus to Nuveiba, and while walking to Tarabin I got a lift.
The driver brought me to a cafeteria, which had opened that day.
I slept on the beach, but got friendly with George from Alexandria,
which resulted in getting something to eat and a shade to wait.

It was the day, on which I was to prepare Freidj for his journey to Sharem.
I came to his "house" - I waited- I went to the beach- I came back- I waited.
His wife and his son Sabakh kept comforting me with all kinds of excuses.

After 12 hours, when it was pitch-dark in Tarabin, he showed up.
I understood, that all the promises had been "kathab", deception.
Freidj would never appear in an official place unless carted there in chains.
Late at night I needed to do the painful, shameful thing and call Dr. Pearson.
Freidj at least brought me to neighbors with a telephone.

I slept at the beach that night and swam on the reef the next day.
Touching the WATER finally brought up my tears.
The tears about having been outcast by the people of the seminary:
"You are suspect! You endanger our work! Please stay away!"
but more about the broken trust and the loss of my first "partner".
It triggered many insults and humiliations I had attracted all my life.

But there was also George, and later Awaad, who had a new idea.
We took a taxi, got off 2 km to the north and walked to the beach.
There was nothing but 2 lonely cabins.
In one of them lived Eid, his son, with wife Thani'ah, and 3 kids,
and in the other Jessica, a Swiss woman, married to M'sallem.
Eid and Thani'ah were out in a boat fishing,
while a handicapped child lay under a shade.
Eid and M'sallem gave my search a new direction.
I left the EEAA authorities and the Tarabin people.
I had found another avenue.
Thank you, Awaad!