Red Sea Stories

In which stories from the Sinai comfort a dying friend.

Photo by Sandro Gautier on Unsplash

It was 2010, and I was sitting on a curb in a service alley of a Best Western in Portland, Oregon, when a janitor opened the door and joined me. She lit a smoke and politely asked why I was sitting out there, of all places. I explained that I was rehearsing my speech about the importance of storytelling at the writer's conference the hotel was hosting. The janitor glanced at my empty hands doubtfully. Do you need some paper? I did. She disappeared briefly.

Only two weeks earlier, I had lost my brother to suicide. Three weeks before that, my friend Lynn had died of breast cancer. I was not in very good condition.

The janitor returned with a stack of Post-it notes. This work?

A few moments later, I stood at the podium before a sea of writers. I thought there would be anywhere from a few dozen to possibly a hundred writers in the room, but there were closer to a thousand. Expectant faces looked at me. I was supposed to talk for forty-five minutes. Something about how stories are important.

Is she holding Post-it's? Somebody sitting near the front said, loudly enough for me to hear.

I realized I had made a terrible mistake. I should have canceled. It was too late to turn back. I began to speak.

---

My friend Lynn had led an extraordinary life. She traveled, she was a journalist, she had raised two daughters, and now she was dying of breast cancer. In fact, I had just returned from another visit to Israel and was so relieved Lynn had made it until my return. I really wasn't sure she would. But she was near the end; that was clear.

Photo by Venti Views on Unsplash

Lynn’s family had moved her from her home to a rented apartment in Santa Monica with a view of the Pacific Ocean and the pier. Lynn's bed was up against the window. She was much weaker than when I'd seen her last; she'd begun to take on that yellow tinge that signals the nearness of death. Her elderly mother was there, and her daughters were too.

I sat down near the edge of Lynn's bed and tried to act normal. She looked terrible. I wasn't sure if Lynn could see me very clearly, but her eyes were fastened on me. Tell me about your last trip to Israel, she said, in a feeble voice, not at all like the usual, confident voice I was used to.

"Lynn, how are you? I said. This was not the time to talk about a stupid vacation. "I want to know how you are."

Lynn struggled to say something. Please.

I glanced in the doorway, where Lynn's mother watched us anxiously. She nodded. But first, Lynn had another request.

During the long months of Lynn's slow decline, I sat near her and knitted while we talked about her daughters, cancer, healing, and the latest juice or diet regimen Lynn was trying. I wasn't a very skilled knitter at the time, but on our last visit, Lynn asked if I had any knitting with me and, if so, if I could go get it.

I felt like I couldn't breathe; I couldn't function. Death was in the room. With a flood of tears threatening, I leaped up to grab the knitting from my bag in the other room.

I had only made it a few feet when I broke into a silent sobbing fit. I wiped my eyes, grabbed my knitting, and re-entered the room. Lynn was smiling weakly. She was waiting for her story.

I held my knitting needles clumsily and pretended to move them. "Well," I said, trying to act normal, "on this visit, I went to the Red Sea, and then after that…" Lynn held up a trembling hand, the blue veins standing out on her skin. Was the sea warm? she said. "Oh - it was - yes, it was warm, Lynn." There was a long silence.

Did you see any dolphins?

My vocal cords seized up with the effort not to scream, to shout, to sob. "Yes, there were dolphins."

Tell me.

Like Sheherazade, I set to work telling my story.

The Red Sea lies at the foot of the most narrow part of Israel. Standing in Eilat, the city on the edge of the sea, a kind of discordant, Middle Eastern version of Las Vegas, one can look just to the left and see the Jordanian City of Aqaba, and just beyond it, the golden mountains of the Saudi Kingdom. Looking just to the right, one can see the vast Sinai desert of Egypt. The border crossing into Egypt is two miles distance from Eilat.

Mount Sinai, where Moses legendarily received the Ten Commandments, is said to be somewhere in the Sinai—either that or the Saudi Peninsula. Some say it's near the Saint Catherine monastery; others are unconvinced. Although many remain hopeful, it is doubtful that an archeological dig will ever prove this event.

The famed Red Sea, also known as the Sea of Reeds, is the same body of water the Jews are said to have traversed with Moses on their way out of Egypt. Archeologists have found spears, helmets, and chariot wheels in the sea, raising hopes of finding evidence of the most famous crossing in history. Archeologists are a very busy lot in this part of the world.

In times past, Israelis frequently traveled to nearby Taba, in Egypt, not far from Eilat, to stay at rustic campgrounds along the shore of the Red Sea outside of Eilat's more modern sprawl. But in 2004, a Palestinian terrorist drove a truck into the lobby of a hotel there and detonated a bomb, killing thirty-one people, twelve of them Israeli.

I didn't tell Lynn that part of the story.

Further, much further down the Sinai Peninsula, on the sea's edge, lies Dahab, lesser known than the larger Sharm El-Sheikh resort. Dahab is a large Egyptian village where truly dedicated scuba divers from all over the world can see the colorful fish of the Red Sea. It is technically not legal for Israelis to travel to Egypt - or to any of our border countries, but at that time, Egyptian border guards and police had a relaxed attitude about tourists coming to scuba dive and relax.

I met Lynn a year or so after I had moved to Los Angeles after my divorce. Our daughters went to the same school. Lynn was the most curious person I ever knew, so it was good that she'd been a journalist. When I met her, her cancer had been in remission for a couple of years.

There is something special in the light over the Red Sea as if the Middle East could not be more sun-drenched. To experience the gathering dusk in Eilat is to see more shades of mauve, lavender, gold, and blue than one deserves to see in this life or the next. Upon occasion, towering American warships dock in Eilat as they make their way to the Gulf of Aden or the Persian Gulf. Hulking, grey symbols of lethal power, they house entire communities of sailors.

Dolphin Reef is a small, rustic spa that sits on the edge of the Red Sea and seems to be built of nothing but planks and tree branches. For ninety shekels or about thirty bucks, you can spend the day there, with nothing between you and the sea but fluttering cloth and tree branches. There are bright pillows, low-lying chairs, and a hammock. Like the rest of the place, the dressing room is simple and very low-tech, with a concrete floor and one open shower. After showering and changing, you first encounter the warm Dead Sea salt pool. It is a small pool, dimly lit, with the fresh breeze blowing in from the sea outside. The bottom of the pool is a foot thick with rough crystals of Dead Sea salt, and on the side of the pool is a stick with a coffee can attached. With this, you can scoop up the salt from the bottom of the pool and scrub your skin with it. This pool is almost always populated by groups of older Russian ladies, scrubbing every inch carefully. The next pool is a bit larger, and also dimly lit. This is the freshwater pool, which is cool and dark, a relief from the hot salty pool before it. The last pool is the largest pool, and it is covered on top by the wooden planking but open on all sides, looking out onto the Red Sea. The water is Red Sea water, far less salinated than the first pool and lukewarm. Here, in the Red Sea water pool, you receive an Israeli massage therapy called Watsu, which is the closest you'll ever get to heaven. A therapist joins you in the water, uses a flotation device to support your knees and shoulders, and slowly, gracefully pulls you through the liquid heaven, which is when you notice there is music under the water. This therapy goes on for about twenty minutes or until you become like a limp rag.

Limp rag. Lynn cackled faintly.

Lynn had been drifting in and out of consciousness; I wasn't sure how much of my story she was really hearing.

What else? What did you eat? Lynn whispered, closing her eyes.

"Hummus", I said. "Creamy, nutty hummus with golden olive oil drizzled on top and sprinkles of sweet Moroccan paprika. Then we had tahini with a little salt and lemon juice and crunchy cucumbers that were so cold and sweet."

This food wasn't really the food they had at Dolphin Reef that day, but it didn't matter. "There were grapes,” I went on. “Big, purple grapes that were very cold and sweet. The skin burst when you put them in your mouth, and they were so juicy. And there were bright orange carrots and grilled eggplant with crunchy, cooked edges. Then we had some red wine…"

What kind? Lynn whispered.

I didn't remember. "Merlot", I said. "It was Merlot."

Lynn relaxed into her pillows.

"Listen," I said, "I recorded something I thought you might like to hear." I handed her my iPhone, but her hand was too weak to hold it, so I gently held it up to her ear. It was the sound of the muezzin, the call to prayer that I had recorded only a few days earlier while in Jerusalem. The sound, crackly and small, drifted from my phone. Lynn closed her eyes, and tears rolled down her cheeks.

So ancient, she said. So ancient.

She died two days later, at the age of fifty-three, in her bed with a view of the Santa Monica pier.

The crowd at the writer's convention in Portland was silent for a long beat. It was too soon for me to have made a public appearance and give a talk. I shouldn't have done it. The audience looked at me, and I looked at them. And then they clapped. Some people wiped away tears. Way over on the side of the room, the janitor, who'd snuck in to listen, gave me a thumbs up.

Less than two years later, I moved to the Holy Land. And I have often looked back.