“Into the Land of Egypt”

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 12484, 19 October 1938, Page 3

“Into the Land of Egypt”

MOUNT-' 1N *M’^TOO-PERF EC’T (32) The sun was touching the moiiufaln tops of Sinai as I said goodbye in St Catherine's Monastery. Five nr six monks came down to see me nff on mv loaf journey to Suez. ° The two cars were standing in the shadow of Justinian’s Wall. Mr Vallinis, my Greek driver, was running the engine of one, whuc Yuset, Lie cook, was iffling bedding and suit cases into the second. Father Gabriel, the young Greek from Sohag, with whom I had heroine friendly, gave me a basket of the peculiar hard, scented pears which grow in the monastery garden, and are highly prized by the monks. When I asked if I could send him anything from England, he asked for pictures of London and some George VI stamps. Such interest in the outside world astonished me, for, so far as I could discover none of the monks of Sinai has the slightest interest in anything beyond the mountain peaks surrounding their monastery. . You might think that when a visitor from the mad world invades this mountain fortress he would be plied with questions about Hitler and Mussolini. ~ T , . But not once did I hear those names mentioned in Sinai; neither did I see one newspaper there. The radio needless to say, has not invaded St. Catherine's. There is no electricity, and there is no means ot recharging batteries. I found myself wondering what was happening in the world. In the evening, when 1 would have welcomed five minutes of the Cairo ugavs bulletin, ! was told the great news of the monastery’s day: one of the Bedouin had shot an eagle! No wonder some of the monks live to he a hundred years of age! Nevertheless, even as I stood in the shadoAv of Justinian’s mighty Avail and shook hands .with the sallow, bearded monks of Sinai, a refugee from the world’s affairs quietly walked into the picture.

He was an Abyssinian monk. He carried the unrolled umbrella which every Abyssinian monk carries as a protection, not against rain, but against sunlight. This young monk. who. in spun 01

liis venerable-looking black beard, could not have been more than twenty-five years of age, came to me and asked humbly if I would allow him to squeeze into the spare car. “Where do you wish to go?” I asked him. ■

“I want to get to Suez,” he replied, “And I will then be able to find my way to Jerusalem.”

' " Are you on a pilgrimage?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. I have come from Addis Ababa. I escaped at the time of the fighting. My father and my mother were willed, so I came away.”

He looked at me with the soft brown eyes of a miserable dog. When 't told him he could pack into the, spare car, his lips parted to reveal a set of teeth like piano keys. Before we set off I asked if Ave bad his luggage aboard, but they told me that his only luggage was the umbrella and a small bundle. . y® bumped doAvn the desert Avadis ni the freshness of the morning, and m two hours the date palms of Wadi r eiran came in sight—the only oasis »i Southern Sinai. No matter haw often I may travel in the desert, I shall never n! as ? to marvel at the transformation cheated by one thih trickle of water, ror two hours we had journeyed urough a hard land of barren mountains and dry torrent beds. There was no sustenance, even - for the amel, which seems able to exist on n rp? emoi Y of Past meals, stein suddenly palm trees came in ma j * ew acres of corn and tobacnai™Vome mu d bnts thatched Avith im branches-—a little oasis of i, 0n h? an ocean of rock —all twoi . n *° being by a stream about jjv? inches in width. nni 1 18 the bind of stream that no ran notice in England. It ev tbe bottom of the garden, aw*.* 6 most enthusiastic house in- f w ould think twice about callng it a ‘stream.”

By h. V. MORTON (Author of “In the Steps of the Master,” “In the Steps of St. Paul,” “In Search of England,” etc., etc.)

I have no doubt that his professional instincts would eventually overcome all scruples, and he woud advertise it as a ‘‘delightful trout stream in grounds.” Yet in the desert of Sinai this gallant little trickle supports a whole oasis, and is famous all over the Peninsula. Some archaeologists believe that the Wadi Feiram is the place where Moses camped with the Israelites during the flight from Egypt. The mountains which rise all round it are covered with ruins of churches and dwellings of holy men, who lived there in the first centuries after Christ. The rocky walls are honey coloured with the tombs of anchorites, who forsook the wickedness of cities and went out into the desert to live and die. The monks of Sinai have some property in the wadi, and one monk lives alone there in order to guard it, and to see that the Bedouin do not encroach upon it I thought it would be interesting to pass the time of day with him. We stopped therefore at the mud wall surrounding his dwelling, and hammered on a door which had a small wooden cross nailed above it. Through a crack in the door we saw an old, white-bearded Greek monk, wearing a dusty cassock over a pair of khaki trousers, and grasping a gun. He hurled to the gate. This as Father Isaiah, one of the loneliest Europeans in the world. ‘‘Who is it?” he called from the other side of the gate. ‘‘Thieves and robbers,” replied Mr Vallinis, who never lost an opportunity of pulling the leg of another Greek.

There Avas a long silence. Looking up, we saw the solemn face of the old monk gazing down at us from the top of the wall. He loavered his gun.

“You should not joke about such things,” he said. “It is Avicked. Have you any tobacco? I have smoked dry Aveeds for many months. Come inside. . .. .”

We went into a shady garden, A pergola led from the gate to the bare little house where the monk lives. He explained to me that his lob is to keep order among the Bed■ouin and to grow the vegetables which are sent up to the monastery on Mount Sinai.

“Isn’t it very lonely?” I asked. “Why should it be lonelier than

anywhere else?” was his admhmfjfe reply. ' From what part of Greece do you come?” I asked

Suddenly the old man gave a cry, grasped his gun, and ran off into a belt of sugar-cane, where he was lost to sight. We heard the report of his gun. He came back in a bad temper. He had missed a hawk which was raiding his pigeon loft. “May I look at your gun?” I ask-

ed. . He handed me an old flint-lock muzzle-loader, whose barrel was bound with bands of brass. It was an old English gun, with the name “Tower” and the date 1859 engraved on it. What a strange fate for an old English muzzle-loader, made nearly eighty years ago for some English sportsman in a bottle-green-coat! The old monk makes his own shot by melting lead and dropping it into water. He showed me how he loads the gun, pressing the charge down with a ramrod, and packing it with dry leaves.

We left the old man with a good supply of tobacco, and a pocket full of cartridges, which he could unpick at his leisure for the sake of the powder and shot. •_ All that day we journeyed through a wilderness of coloured mountains, making our way carefully down the torrent beds. The only hying beings we saw all day were bands of Bedouin trekking Avith then* camels back from Suez, having sold their charcoal. As the sun was setting, we ci ossed the Canal and ran into Suez. In the hotel I met an English couple, a man and his wife, ivho had done lot of desert travel. “It’s the most wonderful me ioi a woman,” the wife said to me. “I should have thought it ivas a very uncomfortable one. •, “You don’t understand.” she Mid. “No man would undeistan • absolutely uncomplicated. You gel

up iii the morning, and it doesn’t matter what you wear, •'because there are no catty women to look at you.” “You wash yourself just down to the neck, as most men like to wash, in spite of the great English bathtub legend! Then you go out, and youu don't have to worry about ordering small quantities of food —the town woman’s daily tyranny —because there’s someone there to give you something to eat: People say I’m tough when I come back from the desert, but I can assure you that a month in the desert isn’t half as tiring to a woman as one week in the social life of Cairo, or any other city.” She crossed one silk leg over the other, lit a cigarette, and said: — “In other words, it’s a man’s life, and men get far more fun out of life than women.” There was no good in arguing with her. She was that kind of woman.