I wanted to call this blog ‘Return of the Killer Tomatoes’ or ‘Return of the Jedi’ or … ‘Return of the King’, but actually, it’s me, not tomatoes or jedi or kings, who is returning. To Egypt. Yeah!

There’s an Egyptian saying, ‘He (or she) who drinks the waters of the Nile will return’.

While I hate to be a statistic, or predictable, perhaps that’s what’s happening. So I will be charging up this blog again. So hold onto yer pants for the next instalment, some time after February 12!

Well people, it hardly seems possible that the feast was so many days ago. I’m back in Melbourne and debating whether or not to upload unpublished blogs. Is it weird? There’s so much more to write about, and I will be writing it all for upcoming magazines and newspapers. Can I beg your indulgence?

Cairo didn’t sleep last night – shops were open till around 4am, people wandered the streets eating ice cream, chilling out and waiting for prayers to commemorate Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice.

A walk through Islamic Cairo saw flocks of sheep and tethered cattle in the main squares, being sold off to those who then had them butchered on the streets, which are, actually running with blood. I photographed a slick of blood, only to have a woman shrieking from a window above that I shouldn’t be shooting such things.

But everyone was happy for me to snap them carving the head from cows, disembowelling sheep and painting the walls with their bloody handprints.

There was a tense moment when I nearly fell on a great mound of cow’s intestines on the footpath, but for the most part, everyone’s in a good mood, taxis are giving way to pedestrians, shopowners not charging outrageous prices … it’s only me who’s tired and cranky and needs to sleep… and I’m probably the only one who did in Cairo last night…

You could be forgiven for saying Egyptians just can’t wait to begin the Sacrifice – the annual celebration of Abrahim offering to sacrifice his son for God’s wishes. “The streets will run with blood,” said friends ghoulishly.

So it was a bit of a surprise when I came home tonight for a few hours’ power napping to find that a few people just couldn’t wait, and my doorman, Hosni, was busy slaughtering a sheep in the foyer, with a butcher and a third strapping fellow to hold down the wriggling brown sheep.

“Hello, would you like to take a photograph?” asked the butcher in excellent English (weirdness number two).

Then he invited me to do as the locals do and dip the palm of my hand in the animal’s blood at print my hand on the wall. Which I did. If this is a taste of things to come (in about four hours’ time) I can’t imagine what tomorrow brings…

Well people, I can safely say that yesterday was a day of extremes for Cairo. The morning started with a visit to the animal section of Souk al-Gomma, the Friday market that rambles down dirt streets, beneath freeway flyovers, into the City of the Dead…

Some of the products for sale are indistinguishable from the mounds of rubbish that line the walkways – piles of broken cassettes, single shoes, wonky sunglasses – but there are also clothes, food, antiques… and then there’s the pet section, where a six-month old puppy that threatens to grow the size of a small horse could be yours for LE5000 (more than $1000).

The pet section is grotesquely amazing. Prospective buyers lounge on crates watching a man parade a massive, scarred blue Great Dane for sale, its savage barking at the prompting of teasing small boys attracting a great deal of interest. German Shepards are extremely popular, and young long-eared puppies wait mournfully for someone to befriend them, accepting a soft pat so gratefully, you just want to take them home immediately.

Slim-bodied snakes crawl over the hands of their traders – young boys learning from their fathers – wild-eyed chameleons shudder at the intensity of the noise and the only place the thickness of the pollution and fragrance of the rubbish is forgotten is around the bakhour (incense) sellers.

But the show highlight, for me, was the pigeons. Take a look at London, Rome or even Melbourne and you’d never understand how a population could adore pigeons. Locals rave about their specialist pigeon restaurants, describing the plump birds with almost lascivious glee. Apart from the regular grey flying rats we’re used to seeing, there are some absolute beauties here.

There’s large, white birds so soft they could be mistaken for a handful of tissues. Enormous brown pigeons, like fat chooks, and one black-and-white one with feathered feet and a mop top. I asked if I could take a picture, and was instantly besieged with men and boys eager to be photographed with their beloved birds. They really do love them, though you wouldn’t know it the way one bloke pulled a few large ones out through a small door and tossed them into a big brown paper shopping bag.

The souk has a bad name for pickpockets and the crush of humanity hides a multitude of sins and unspoken dealings, but apart from a light manhandling (saved countless times by my ever alert bodyguard and bag holder:) it was an amazing place to visit.

It was a serious contrast to the rest of the day, which culminated in a drive through Bulaq, one of the poorest and roughest of Cairo’s suburbs, out to a wedding in the new, elite town of 6 October. Lost in Bulaq and dressed in our wedding finery, it was obvious to the people staring into the car that we weren’t from round these parts.

Named after the victory day in the Arab-Israeli war in 1973 which saw Egypt take back the Sinai, (or Yom Kippur War in Israel) 6 October so is far out of town, sort of on the Cairo-Alexander road, I’d dispute that it was actually Cairo. Neat, identical villas make up the suburbs that, from a distance look like ghost towns, so quiet in comparison to the rest of the city.
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The wedding was small and intimate by Egyptian standards, but had all the necessary requirements – the couple perched on a love seat on a stage overlooking the reception, the wedding singer with his mic turned up onto full reverb, and the belly dancer a strawberry blonde Russian who I think was actually the best dancer I’ve seen in Egypt. I still find it weird to have a robust woman clad in a pink body stocking, knockers held in surely only by sheer willpower, sliding over the bridal couple, but that’s obviously just a cultural difference. If it was me, I’d have to have a dance-off with her!

There’s a curious phenomenon occuring in Egypt at the moment. Suddenly, without warning, the streets are awash with sheep. Ok, not awash, but in a city the size of Cairo, or even Alexandria (which I’ve heard Cairenes refer to as a ‘nice village’… with a population of six million), you just don’t expect to turn a street corner and be flattened by a flock of shaggy, long-tailed sheep.

They’re tall and lanky, in a motley of brown and cream (pink if they’ve just been shorn and dipped), with long ears, long noses and fat tails. They’re the sacrifice for the Feast, on 7 December. Eid al-Adha, the ‘great feast’ is bigger than the three-day hoop-la that followed Ramadam, and is a celebration of the occasion where Abraham accepted God’s/Allah’s wishes (depending on if you’re reading the story in the Ko’ran or the Bible) that he sacrifice his son in God’s name. At the last minute, knowing Abraham was true, God replaced the son with a ram, instead.

So now Egyptians celebrate by sacrificing a four-legged animal. If you’re rich, you’ll find yourself wrestling with a cow to slaughter and share with your family, friends and the poor. If you ARE the poor, you can choose another smaller approved animal – rabbits are a popular choice.

I’m sticking around for the Feast before I make my way home for our own feast-dominated celebration, Christmas!

“Suez. Photograph. Quick!”

We’d hired a minibus to take us back from St Katherine’s monastery to Cairo, a trip of about five hours which, on the public bus, takes between seven and eight. To make ends meet, the driver had filled the bus up with other passengers, who couldn’t work out what he was pointing at.

Fair call. We’d driven off the highway, down a dusty track lined with lorries to a dead end. He pulled up, told me to photograph the Suez canal through the windscreen and was already backing up as I pulled my camera out.

Folks, it was a distinctly unattractive view of one of the world’s great engineering feats. Just a bright strip of turquoise sea hemmed in by dry, dusty desert on either side, with a line of tankers queuing up to get across – most motorists cross the canal through a 1.6km subterranean tunnel, missing the canal completely.

I took the snap, but as we were hightailing it out of the no-go photography zone, I saw it – a massive ship cruising past us, the slim canal completely obscured, so it looked like a ship of the desert … see? I can always link a camel in somewhere. Hahahhaahhahaahahahaaaaaa…

St Katherine’s monastery is well and truly on the backpacker trail. From sunny Dahab or five-star Sharm el Sheik, you can take a tour up to the mountain, leaving around 11pm, start climbing for 2-ish and hit sunrise on the peak for 5. Backpackers mingle with religious tourists from around the world, but the morning I climbed it, the antipodean accents were far outweighed by the phlegmy grumbles of Russians, Romanians and other unidentified former Eastern Bloc countries. I swear some were drinking vodka on the way up.

If you’re doing the climb on a camel, it could be quite feasible that you drink your way to the top, tho the camel track peters out 750 steps shy of the peak. On the way up with my guide Ahmed and his police mate Hazim (I’m still not quite sure why he came, but he liked the walk), I counted six tea stops, where overpriced Mars bars and tea were doled out liberally by the local Bedouin population. You can even sleep in their toasty little huts for a few dollars and wake up to do a quick pre-dawn sprint to the peak.

At the top, the nearest peak is St Katherine’s, the mountain where the saint’s remains were transported by angels after she was brutally murdered in her home town of Alexandria (think of the firework, Catherine’s Wheel). Her leathery caramel-brown skull and bejewelled left hand are still on display in the monastery, closely guarded by one of the dark-eyed monks, who chants ceaselessly while he guards the relics.

This morning, I would have put the number on the mountain peak for sunrise at about 600. There were people strumming guitars and singing sad, slow hymns. Others perched on ledges, rolled out of their sleeping bags seconds before the sun rose, and yet more just kept their noses clear of their dusty, camel-smelling blankets in a bid to counteract the freezing pre-dawn temperatures.
On the way down, the Bedouin guides skipped across the rocks, some carrying large video cameras, employed to get footage of the foreign pilgrims struggling down the hard way the 3000-odd steps cut into the rocks. Some hailed camels.

In a fit of stupidity, I climbed the mountain for sunrise, then went back up again for sunset with mum and Lars, the Swedish icon expert we’d fallen in with. It was a funny trek up, mum on a lovely white camel called Abdul, led by the gentle Eid (please, ask for him if you ever climb this mountain, he loves his camels and he was so gentle with mum, it was a pleasure to do this trek with him). We made the sunset with seconds to spare – all 30 of us on the peak.

As with sunrise, the crowd clapped appreciatively at the sun’s movements, this time as it was bleeding softly down over the blue mountains, but the climb down was in total darkness. So I accompanied mum and took a grey camel, Samba, led by 13-year-old Ibrihim, who assured me he was going to school tomorrow.

We climbed down slowly, the camels’ great pads seeking the kindest route, Ibrahim calling out to Samba, while I clung to the wooden pommels, fore and aft and debated the likelihood of childbearing. Along the way, small Bedu villages and the highway, far below, were lit with orange lights. The monastery was almost in darkness, one light on its great walls, a beacon in the night to weary travellers and pilgrims such as we in need of bed, shower and a cold glass of …um… rosé. Life’s no bed of roses, but you’ve got to get it while you can, eh?

People, I’m going to go all philosophical here. And I’m going to talk about religion. So rein in your dogmas… The reason why I’m broaching the most unpopular dinner party conversation is my recent visit to St Katherine’s monastery, high up in the mountains on the Sinai peninsula.

The Sinai is one of those places in the world that links two continents and is therefore going to always be a flashpoint for conflict – think Constantinople, the American isthums… the Sinai desert separates foes Egypt and Israel, it’s where Moses and his folk wandered, lost, for 40 years (imagine that TV series, if you thought the current one would never end…), it’s rocky, barren and geographically inhospitable.

Perched high in the mountains is St Katherine’s Monastery, a Greek Orthodox fortress-church. Remember the Greeks were here back in the 3rd century, adding a Grecian gloss to the by now decaying Pharonic culture. Alexander popped in, liked what he saw, and when he passed on at the portentous age of 33, his general, Ptolemy, took over the reins for a new era in Egypt.

In the following centuries, becoming a hermit became deeply popular – many religions men and women took to living in caves or – spectacularly in the case of showman St Simeon, on top of a high stylus – to protest against changes in the Christian church. The remote monastery was built in the 6th century, and colonised by Greek monks. When Islam swept across the country a short decade afterwards, the prophet Mohommad wrote a letter of protection for the monastery and later, Napoleon granted the monastery a similar decree of protection in 1798 and even put some cash into repairing the walls. Throughout the centuries, the monks buried their bishops’ bones in a particularly creepy charnel house, and whiled away the hours peacefully painting those sad-eyed, gold tipped icons of Christ and the Madonna.

One of these icons is St Katherine’s claim to fame – it’s the world’s oldest icon, and is displayed in the monastery museum, set up with the help of NY’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (MOMA). The tiny monastery also has the best religious library after the Vatican and is, by the way, most likely the oldest continually inhabited monastery in the world.

The other and quite possibly bigger reason to visit the monastery (especially as the events are mentioned in the Ko’ran, Bible and the Torah) is the claim that the mountain behind the monastery is where Moses climbed to receive the 10 commandments. I have to say, having climbed it twice myself, he must have been a fit old bugger.

And it’s also the spot where God appeared to Moses in a burning bush and told him to lead the Jews out of Egypt and into their own country – the land of milk and honey – following a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire by night. The burning bush is no longer burning, in fact a monk told me it has some very nice white flowers in the right season.

However, I did read that accounts as early as the 13th century reported that “the bush had all been taken away by souvenir-seeking pilgrims”. Still, it’s a nice bush. And it’s the symbolism, right?