Topless in Ramadan

Sharm el Sheikh is located in the Bermuda Triangle between Las Vegas, the promised land and a ghost town. It’s up to you to decide which corner is closest. 2000 years ago, Moses led his people through the Sinai in search of the Promised Land. Today, two crowds of people chase up Moses’ mountain every morning. There is nothing to find except their own claustrophobia in the middle of the desert.

We wanted to go there ourselves, alone. But Mubarak sells his country as a fairy tale from the Arabian Nights. Today, robbers are called Islamists and wait just behind the last checkpoint for unbelieving individual tourists. As a result, there are hardly any hire cars, I won’t light the thorn bush in front of St Catherine’s Monastery and nobody throws the first stone.

There is a sign on the road: Charmimg Sharm. Behind it, the wind has blown plastic bags into the airport fence. Construction workers get on the bus. Their shoes have fallen apart because there is a lot of building going on. A resort with seven large water slides passes by in the desert. Fat redfish hang from the balconies. The casino was built like an ancient Egyptian temple. Next to it are the ruins of a hotel that was never completed. I smile.

A thousand and one nights as a motto. This is how they build, this is how they live, this is how they dine. A different theme night every day. The Italian spaghetti tastes just like the Mexican spaghetti tastes just like the Egyptian spaghetti. Everything is interchangeable, empty and lights up like Las Vegas at night. Even the workers are all from Cairo. “You don’t live here” they say. Correct. But then what do you do here?

Get reanimated to DJ Bobo on the beach at noon? Admire the mix of styles of global architecture in the desert and dream of Las Vegas? Go topless on the sunbed with a cocktail and wait for the next cigarette butt-collecting servant to finally convert to extremism on the penultimate day of Ramadan after seven hours without food and water at 42 degrees? Slap the drunken Russian with the Spetznatz tattoo because he screams for his happy hour even after the end – and gets it? Or just turn the air conditioning down another two degrees and watch Judge Barbara Salesch? I start to ponder.

The last few days, even the wind has gone. What I have left of Sharm el Sheikh is a big grin from kiting. 10 blisters on 10 fingers. Sore muscles everywhere, a coral bite on my heel and, after Montezuma’s visit, the near invention of the “Sharm El Sheikh Shit Air 180”. Gratitude for every wind that caressed my kites. And what else? A good holiday with good people. Off home!