A traveler's experience; A local's life

Hi All, As some of you might know, I was in Dahab when the 3 street bombs

went off on Monday. Beck, my travelling companion and I are both fine.

We were at our hotel about 500m down the road from the main part of

town where the bombings were clustered. We're both now back in Cairo as

planned. Below is an extract from my travel diary. 25/April/06 Dahab 0030 Well, our day started off pretty relaxing and lazy. Actually, most

of our day was spent lounging at the Penguin resturant which would be

no suprise to Vish. The rugs and pillows have a cetain pull about them

and they were much more comfortable to sleep on than the beds at the

Penguin hotel last night! Ben left on his airconditioned bus back to

Cairo at 1430 and just before 1900 we got up off our arses and prepared

to see Heather and Jonathan off. We headed off to the hotel lobby and

waited for the taxibus to the bus stop to arrive. I took this

opportunity to place the packet of water bottles I just purchased from

town into my backpack sitting in the lobby baggage area (Beck and I

planned to head up Mt Sinai overnight so we check out). Suddenly there

was deep reverberating boom. Everyone paused for a moment. Just as

everyone was about to dismiss it there was another boom. Then another.

At this point all the locals (the guys at the hotel) raced into the

street and looked towards town. A minute or two later two cars raced

away from the direction of town, horns blaring. The taxibus arrived.

There was much confusion and chaos. Everyone knew something bad had

gone down. Perhaps the only people who knew what they were doing were

the hotel guys rushing those who were about to leave on a bus out of

Dahab, into the taxibus.

---you'll notice this entry comes to an abrupt end. I may complete it in the future, I may not. At the time of writing (about 2 days after the event, in Cairo, Egypt) I was in many minds about what I should write, how I should write it, if it should be written. I didn't want to be like the media that flocked and flooded the scene the next day, nor the publisher of the photos of the bone fragments that the scuba divers found along the shore. Now as I write this a year and a half on, I want to share what I saw and felt. Not of that night of the bombing, but afterwards. Like a funeral, it's about the people who are left.

The next day we walked through town. A shop keeper swept up the broken glass from outside his shop. Next he got a bucket of water and began scubbing the blood stains from the footpath. There are embassy staff wandering around for all of us tourists, but what about the locals? They're the ones that are most affected by this. Those killed were people they worked with, saw on a daily basis, or even shared a sheesha with. When we returned to Dahab three days later, a handful of locals had already left with their families. After seeing burning bodies, I don't know if I could stay. On our return, we helped with posters for a street demonstration by the locals. Tourism is the core business of Dahab. The bombing would no doubt scare off tourists. And it did. At this time it was high season, after the bombing, it could have been mistaken for the low season. Maybe that's part of the reason Beck and I came back. Talking to one of the guys working at the hotel, by the sounds of it, they don't think it was targeted a the tourists. One of the signs I made read (those french literate, excuse my poor memory): si nous part, il sont gagne - if we leave, they win. Asked who they suspect it could be, they say the bombers are no doubt Bedouins, but the mind behind the hand? Likely to be Israeli. It's moments like this I wished I could always converse with people in their native tongue. The media was invited to the demonstration. The locals wanted the world to know that the bombing wasn't done by them (Egyptians, at least not the locals). They wanted people to know that Dahab wanted tourists.