A few people’s kindness negated one man’s brashness

Oct 23, 2007

Egypt

Today is my last day in Egypt and I’ll tell you my trip has been an eye opener. I never thought of Egypt as the “Middle East” with Afganistan, Iraq and Iran but indeed it is. I talked politics today with an Egyptian and the first thing he asked me was in all honesty, how do people think of Egypt. I told him that people are still cautious of Muslims but are mostly scared about what will happen in the Middle East. I think alot of people when they think of Egypt, they think Pyramids not Middle East chaos.

So today I went to St Catherine’s Monastary and saw Moses’ burning bush. No it wasn’t burning but it was there green and all. On our way back to Sharm, we stopped by Dahab which is right across from Saudi Arabia (Mom don’t tell Dad I got close enough to see Saudi Arabia.) In one of the shops, I was alone with the shop owner. Now in my 12 days of being here (or so) nothing, NOTHING, has ever happened to make me feel uncomfortable. But this guy, in leading me to see something else, put his bare hand on my ass. Granted if his hand was gloved, I still would have been offended but geez! I bolted, shocked, into another store where the rest of the tour group was. I have never felt so uncomfortable. Granted yes just a hand on my butt, but we were alone in his shop and he makes a brash move like that and it was a full hand, full coverage, very obvious. I was just surprised and very very uncomfortable. So now I’m stuck in a store where there is obviously nothing i want to buy. I wait for about 3 minutes and realize I can’t be kept captive like this. I didn’t want to leave to face him, but I couldn’t just stay there either. So I took a big deep breath and walked out.