on why I identify with dates

After living in Egypt for a while, one realizes that it's more than possible to go do things on the weekend that average people only dream about, like ride horses at the pyramids, relax on a felucca on the nile, bask in the sun on the red sea, explore the library in Alexandria, and, well, climb Mt. Sinai. My friend Robyn and I have done all these things (and more), but our first adventure was a trip to sinai. One early morning, we hopped on a bus for a gazillion hour ride to st. katherine, the little town at the base of the mountain. For sustainance, we brought with us some bread, honey, and dried dates. I had no idea the implications of this decision at the time, but soon discovered that dates are the most delectible, sweet, satisfying snack known to man. mmmm my mouth is watering...

Anyways, when we arrived, the manager of a local bedouin camp invited us, along with some other travelers, to stay at his camp for a couple hours while we waited for a decent time to start climbing. If you want to see the sunrise, it's best to start the trek around 2 in the morning. Shocked and suffering because of the FREEEEEEEZING desert night air (deserts get cold...who knew?), we didn't even hesitate. Hot tea, blankets, a room to rest up...excellent. But this guy was weird. He really wanted to be our friend, made it seem like everything he did for us was a special favor, even though we were paying customers. He kept calling Robyn his "honey." Without getting into it too much, it got awkward, and we wanted to be alone, and we were really insanely out of control cold, so we locked ourselves in our room to wait out the few hours...

I don't know how to emphasize how annoying it was for Hamdi (the manager of the camp) to keep calling Robyn "my honey." She kept saying "Hamdi I'm not your honey" and I kept saying she's married (she's not). It wasn't like he was really hitting on her...but, it's Egypt, where the first question out of any taxi driver's mouth is "married?" But that's a whoooooole other story.

While hiding under the blankets, we intermittently ate the dates that were left from the bus ride. It was rediculous. We weren't hungry. The dates had taken over...in fact, we were so full and cold we couldn't bring ourselves to take the blankets off and leave the room to climb Sinai for sunrise...we passed out shivering, in a date-induced coma.

The next morning, we climbed Mt. Sinai, and it was so perfect! We were practically the only ones climbing, and it was bright and sunny and beautiful, and no one was at the top...such a great day. I'll never forget it.

We went back to the camp to get our stuff, and we looked at this box of dates...there were few remaining. We wanted to eat them, but there was like a supernatural force field keeping our hands from putting another date in our mouths...we couldn't eat even one more. And there was Hamdi, with his "my honey's"...we were ready to go home.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I started calling Robyn my honey too...obsessively. I even changed her name on my cell phone to "my honey"...and somewhere in there she started responding to "my honey" with "my dates"...and somewhere in there too we figured out the arabic word for dates: bela7. So from that moment on, i was bela7. When taxi drivers wanted to know my name, instead of saying rebekah which get's butchered beyond belief by native arabic speakers (wabaka...reminiscent of chubaka), I would respond with, Bela7. Usually the guy is so confused by a white girl with an arabic word for a name, and a common fruit no less, that he shuts up! It's magical.

To this day, I can't really eat dates, but I think of them fondly.