St Catherines Monastery in the Sinai in Egypt Business Directory

There is a repetitive, forlorn beeping whose shrill, electronic whine pierces the desolation of the place. Every few seconds, whenever someone enters or leaves the still monastery, the metal-detectors alert punctuates the howl of the wind sweeping across the bleak Sinai wadi. The drifting cadences of the feast-day liturgy mingle with the wind, as they have down the centuries. Beyond the confines of the monasterys four walls lies the rocky plateau that runs down to the Watia Pass. The scenery is breathtaking: a harsh and waterless landscape out of which gigantic reddish-hued rocks thrust in untidy protuberances that grasp upwards to the misty sky. The gorges extending in between these silent behemoths are arid wastes that continue for miles, half-enveloped by the jagged shadows cast by the afternoon sun. Elsewhere, hills sculpted out of sheer stone plunge into over-lapping sand dunes. And in the distance, the mountains merge into jagged two-dimensional lines whose shadows criss-cross along the horizon. The landscape of Mount Sinai lies beyond the comprehension of modern urbanites, those city-dwellers who descend upon it in loud and busy droves. They attempt to impose a different conception of time in a place where the passing of a century is but a blink in the ocean of eternity. As one monk remarked: We have here the luxury of existing in a timeless vacuum. Life is only the brief interval between being separated from and re- united with our Creator.

Website: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/567/tr3.htm