Sharm El Sheikh

July 22-27, 2005



It was 1.30 at night, we had just returned exhausted from the center of town after we had a fabulous fish dinner. Bishara carried Dina who had gone to sleep shortly after we arrived, and along with two other family members took a taxi from the Neema Bay taxi stand.


The strong thumb shook the hotel. Salam inquired what it was and, although I felt otherwise, I told her it probably was a phantom breaking the sound barrier, we went to bed only to be woken up at 3am by my cell phone ringing. I looked at the source and it was undeclared. I decided not to answer. Minutes later Salam's cell phone which she had left in the safe rang. By the time we got to it, the phone had gone dead. The source was also unidentified. I explained that this means the call came from a phone in Israel.


Salam decided to hold on to her phone hoping it would ring again. Sure enough it did. Salam's brother Labib was awakened at 3am by baby Jad and decided to turn on the TV as he waited for him to sleep. The headline news said that there were three bombs in Sharm El Sheikh. Well we were all ok, but we knew everyone would be worried.

After seeing our TV for a while I said that there is nothing to do until morning and turned to sleep. I was not interested in the news story and I knew that there would be nothing that will require my presence at such an ungodly hour.


Sure enough by 7am the phone starting ringing. We tried to hedge off things by sending a cell phone SMS message to multiple individuals.


At 7.30 Salam went to see her parents, they said that they had slept through it as did my parents and our kids except for strange calls they got at the middle of the night from hotel receptionists asking if they were ok


It was a strange event. Had it not been for phones and TV sets nothing would be different. We decided to stay, there was no sense in cutting short a vacation now. As I told whoever asked me, Sharm El Shiekh is probably the safest place on earth now.


The hotel and surroundings had an eerie feeling, no one wanted to talk about what happened but it was clear on their minds. The signs would come in strange situations. A person on the phone talking to the hospital. An impromptu sign saying no to terrorism in English, another in Arabic saying that the brave people of Sharm will not be deterred by terrorism. Later when we went to the market a man with his head bandaged. An Egyptian owner of a juice store talking about four of his best friends dying.


We spent all day Saturday by the pool. We decided not to go far that day. When we went to the beach road that was hustling and bustling the night before, the numbers had been reduced to a bare minimum.


One of the main issues of discussion was why the attack netted so many Egyptians. Only seven out of the 84 dead were foreigners. After talking to some of the guests a theory emerged. A Bir Zeit University professor who was at our hotel told me he had returned to the hotel the night before minutes before the event and was stopped in an expected checkpoint. He said that the security people were very worried looking everyone in the face as if they were looking for something.


The theory then was that the Egyptian security somehow received a tip minutes before the blast. Naturally they fortified the protection outside the main hotels that are mostly frequented by foreigners. Near the old market apparently a checkpoint had caused a long delay and the bomber drove past the line and then detonated the bomb near the old market killing many Egyptians.


Another important theory includes beduins from the Sinai. According to this theory the Sinai Bedouins had it good during the years of the Israeli occupation of Sinai and that once the Egyptian government regained sovereignty most of the jobs in hotels and resorts went to workers from mainland Egypt leaving the bad jobs to the Bedouins. Things apparently got worst after the Taba bombing. Egyptian security rounded up literally thousands of Bedouins for questioning leaving a very bitter feeling among them. When we arrived at Sharm El Sheikh the taxi driver that my dad traveled with was very vocal in his criticism of the Egyptian president Husni Mubarak who this driver was hoping would not rule Egypt any more because he is not just to the Bedouins. The issue became a major topic in the various TV talk shows and as a result very few Bedouins were arrested and even those arrested were said to have been held only as material witnesses not as accused on any crime.


We spent our second day in Sharm El Sheikh on a boat traveling the shores of the red sea and doing some snorkeling in some of the world's best reefs. We had fresh fish almost every day we were in Sharm and on the last day we bought some more fish to take back to Amman with us.


All in all it was a pleasant and enjoyable trip save for those damn phone calls, SMS messages and the people on television talking about bombings in the resort we had come to in order to enjoy some quality time with the family.