Attend to me and hear me.
I am restless in my complaint.
– Psalm 55
“You’re up at the crack, Captain. Is that your raghead taxi turning toward the gate?”
Sandrene perked up at the sound of the sergeant’s voice. Only half-awake, she stood near the young man at the end of a long, gravel drive and stifled her irritation. It was a state made worse by not enough morning coffee as an antidote to too many gin and tonics last night. She peered through the growing grey dawn at a blue and white Peugeot in the distance. “That should be mine,” she said.
The sergeant nodded. “Can never be too certain when these vehicles show up all alone. A raghead behind the wheel could be sitting on a bomb as soon as look at you.”
Sandrene held her tongue. She detested the terms so many soldiers here at South Camp used to describe Egypt’s Sinai Bedouins. Men, women, children; it scarcely mattered. All the locals were disparaged as ragheads, gippos, sniggers, or worse – terms to denote lesser humans. The oaths, she knew, were mouthed as soldierly sport; some speaking the words as a harmless joke for a laugh, others wielding the epithets because everyone else did, and a few saying them as heartfelt, racial slurs. No matter their motivations, though, she hated hearing the words spoken and always made it a rule to chastise the soldier speaking – unless he or she outranked her. The sole exception to her principle was the man standing alongside her: Sargeant Daniels. Toward him, she stayed fixedly non-judgmental, tribalistic even, for Sandrene and the sergeant together represented the sole British military contribution to the peacekeeping contingent among thirteen other nationalities stationed here at South Camp outside the coastal resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh. The sergeant – a lean, mustachioed twenty-five year old Coldstream Guardsman ten years younger than Sandrene whose last posting was at Buckingham Palace – returned Sandrene’s indulgence by treating her as a sort of genial elderly aunt rather than the nursing officer she was.
The sergeant straightened a crease on the sleeve of his ironed desert camo field shirt. His terracotta-coloured beret sat on his head at a perfect tilt. Sandrene looked at him and smiled tiredly. She was certainly not so fussy about her own uniform, preferring to wear her camos loose, even baggy, but she was still pleased to have exchanged her soldierly garb for the jeans and thin jumper she wore on this mild spring morning, including the purple trainers she sported in place of combat boots.
Sargeant Daniels cleared his throat. “Expect you’re off to your monastery again, Captain? If you don’t mind my asking?”
Sandrene stirred herself. “Saint Catherine’s? Affirmative. Have you visited yet?”
“Don’t fancy the ride, ma’am. Three hours each way in a gippo taxi? Then what? Nothing there but more desert and a bunch of old bearded men from Greece or wherever.”
Sandrene picked up the small rucksack that was her luggage. “My friend Father Demetrios isn’t that old. Plus, he’s an American. You’d like him.”
“I prefer to take my off-duty pleasures closer to home, ma’am.”
“Ah. Olga.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sandrene knew Olga to be Daniel’s Russian girlfriend, a snorkeling instructor at one of the resorts in Sharm el-Sheikh. More alert now, her eagerness to be on her way made her feel more talkative. “Would you like to share my taxi and go into Sharm to visit the lovely Olga?”
Daniels kept his eyes trained on the distant taxi. “I’m on duty another four hours. No Olga or an icy pint of Stella until then.”
Sandrene glanced to where another soldier stood positioned nearby inside a low sandbagged guardhouse; one of the Colombians. He was behind a .50 caliber machine gun aimed in the direction of her taxi. She waved at the young man and received a relaxed grin in return. After eight months in a camp populated with less than four-hundred other soldiers, there were few Sandrene did not know or, at minimum, recognise, not the least from having seen them as patients. She looked back at the sergeant. “You can’t get Eduardo up there to cover for you while you dashed into town for a quick shag?”
The Coldstreamer pulled his shoulders straighter. “Captain Buxton, I don’t for a second believe you’re suggesting I leave my post early to pursue earthly pleasure.”
“Not in a million years, Sergeant Daniels. You’re an absolute rock.”
“Very good, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”
Sandrene had her fill. She was not genuinely in a mood to tease the man. If she were, she would have worked Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex for less than a year now, into their banter. Sandrene had only recently learned from another nurse in the camp that Daniels adored the American-born Duchess ever since he had met her and her husband, Prince Harry, at Windsor Castle.
The two soldiers stood side by side and watched as the taxi snaked around staggered cement barriers as it crawled towards the gate. Daniels moved to lift the red-and-white striped rising arm barrier that stretched across the road like a hovering railway tie so Sandrene could exit.
“Shall we expect you back today, Captain, or are you going to party after dark with the monks?”
“I’m staying to dance on the tiles ‘til I fall down,” Sandrene said, then reconsidered. She could not be anything less than honest with her sergeant. “I need a break from soldiering, Daniels. From the camp, from uniforms. And I especially need a break from bloody nursing. I’m completely knackered. I…well, you know how it’s been.”
The sergeant kept the gate aloft, poising it like a military salute, or a benediction. He held Sandrene’s gaze with his own long, steady look. “You’ve been through a lot in the last few years, ma’am. More than your share. If anyone deserves a real bit of rest, it’s you.”
“The CO must agree with you because she’s given me forty-eight hours’ leave. I’ll be back Saturday.”
Daniels lowered the barrier that now separated them between South Camp and the world beyond. “Hope you’re able to recharge your batteries, ma’am.”
By the time Sandrene finished negotiating a fare with the Bedouin driver in American dollars, the sun had crept above a reddened horizon and given shape to the mountainous, indistinct mass of Saudi Arabia a few miles beyond the silvery-blue waters where the Red Sea merged with the Gulf of Aqaba. As she sank into the dusty back seat with its dried and cracked upholstery that smelled of mildew, she caught a glimpse of herself in the rear-view mirror, saw a scrubbed face with blue eyes, high cheeks featuring a small mole on the left side that the occasional man had told her was attractive, and a black tangle of shoulder-length hair still wet from a morning shower. It was more the picture of a carefree holidaymaker than that of a soldier and was exactly what she had aimed for. Only a tired, pinched expression and two deep frown lines set between arching eyebrows marred the look.
The taxi retraced its way around the jumble of barriers to the main highway before racing north along the coast. They met few other vehicles which suited Sandrene. She found Egyptian taxi rides to be seat-gripping adventures at the best of times, and journeys along Sinai’s windswept swaths and narrow mountain passes displayed a death-defying quality of their own; a sobering mixture of free-wheeling drivers and the loosest observation of speed limits. She had long given up counting the mangled, charred wrecks of cars and lorries at the bottom of hills or along slender stretches of road. As the taxi barreled along, all that slowed them was the frequency of Egyptian Army checkpoints that placed a literal brake on Sinai traffic. Sandrene was grateful for them.
At the touristy town of Dahab, they turned inland. Though it was just the first week of March, the wind blowing through taxi’s open windows felt warm on Sandrene’s face. The sensation changed as the taxi climbed into the highlands and the air chilled. Despite the harrowing drive, Sandrene loved this part of the twisting journey. She reveled in the infinite view of massive, treeless mountains reaching into the distance, the rugged landscape beneath the rising sun appearing as countless hues of pink or brown only to morph under rare, stray clouds into black ledges that made the rocks appear as though daubed with long dried blood. The background noise of jangling Arabic music on the car’s stereo served to add to the sense of other worldliness she felt Sinai occupied, a land so far from the green and damp of England.
It was late morning when the taxi delivered Sandrene to Wadi El Sybaiya, the Bedouin town that served as the gateway to the monastery. The town and surrounding settlements appeared not so exotic as authentic: a hodge-podge of single-storey mud and breezeblock homes encircled by more modern looking hotels of fresh cement painted in bright colours, a lone bank, and grim municipal offices. On the fringe of the town were camping sites that attracted backpackers and then finally a sprinkling of flashier hotels advertising names like the Morgenland and Abu Salem's Garden Lodge. Running throughout Wadi El Sybaiya like veins in a dark thin hand were narrow lanes lined with dusty shops and kiosks selling plastic bottles of brightly-coloured drinks and trinkets like scarab amulets made in China.
Sandrene’s ultimate destination – the monastery guest house – was a further mile away along a tarmac road that paralleled a rock-strewn ravine. She knew from tourist maps she had found in South Camp’s library that the ravine was called Wadi el Deir. Both road and wadi were flanked by rocky slopes rising into spiky cliffs. She took her time walking, relieved to stretch her legs as she shared the road with strung-out crowds of religious pilgrims and straightforward holidaymakers disgorged from their own taxis or minibuses. A month since her last trip here, she took the crowds in stride and concentrated on nature: the broad acacia trees that dotted the wadi like opened, squashed umbrellas, now blooming with tiny flowers, each one the colour of butter. Also flaunting their springtime glory were clumps of green homath bushes sprouting red and pink blossoms. Demetrios had introduced Sandrene to these native plants during long weekend trips to the monastery since her arrival in Sinai. Each journey had presented something new to see, an unexpected fragrance to inhale. It seemed more exotic to her than the North York Moors where she had spent summers as a girl. In those rolling York uplands, all flowers except for the vast carpets of purple and lilac heather that drew coachloads of tourists were disdained by the locals as bog weeds. Sinai, though, felt unique to her, like a deserty Garden of Eden full of engaging sights and smells.
A deafening bang ripped through the air. Automatically, Sandrene flung herself forward into the sand by the road, protecting her head with the rucksack. Eyes clamped shut, she heard alarmed shrieks from women and children. She waited, panic welling inside her, as the boom ricocheted along the wadi. She could not move, could not think, as the seconds ticked by. The acrid odour of burning chemicals – a sign that an explosive had gone off – seemed to fill the air around her. Her brain shrieked bomb! She trembled the length of her body, inhaled again, but the stink had vanished.
“Are you all right, Miss?” asked a male voice in Arab-accented English.
Like coming out of a deep sleep, Sandrene’s eyelids fluttered open. Her heart knocking against her chest, she focused her vision, saw people walking as before. She knew then what she had heard was not a bomb. Bombs made passers-by shrink themselves into the smallest possible target – like she did – or take off running. The quick return of normal foot traffic meant something different had happened. As the realisation penetrated her mind, her terror began to subside, like an ocean wave shrinking back into the sea. Slowly, she climbed to her feet. She felt no scrapes or cuts on her elbows or knees. Only then did she turn to the man who had spoken to her: a thin Bedouin of Sergeant Daniel’s age wearing a shapeless, ankle-length, brown, thawb.
“Are you alright?” he repeated, sounding anxious now.
Sandrene’s head cleared, and she found her voice. “Yes, thank you.” She searched along the wadi with her eyes, seeking the source of the noise.
The man pointed into the blue expanse of empty sky. “Egyptian Airplane. Fighter jet.”
Sandrene looked up, saw nothing.
“Sonic boom,” the man explained. “Very wrong. Egyptian pilots are forbidden.”
She took a deep breath, hoping he had not noticed her shaking hands. “I’ve heard the same thing. No-fly zones and all that.”
The man studied Sandrene with narrowed eyes, as if suddenly wondering about her sanity. After a moment or two, he said, “I must return to my daughter.”
Sandrene watched him hurry back toward the village. Before he was out of sight, she turned and resumed her walking toward the monastery, brushing sand and dirt from her clothes, her first uneven steps giving way to a steady stride.
A short time later, the guest house came into view: a two-storey, dun-coloured structure with arched windows and doors framed in stones painted red. Beyond the guest house rose the imposing, walled-in monastery, the two compounds separated by lush gardens overflowing with blossoming fruit and nut trees, patchwork plots of vegetables, and vines heavy with early grapes.
At the guest house, Sandrene checked in with a youthful English-speaking Bedouin behind the front desk and asked him to let Father Demetrios know she had arrived. Key in hand, she trekked to the room Demetrios had set aside for her. Like a game, the monk always reserved a different room for her and over the months she had stayed in all of them except the dormitory spaces that housed dozens in closer quarters than any army barracks. Sandrene was pleased to discover the room waiting for her was her favourite: a spacious single with cream-coloured walls in a corner of the building. The room boasted wide, double windows looking out on the narrow promenade that fronted the building, while a cluster of towering eucalyptus trees outside shadowed the room from the desert sun with their long, rustling branches.
Sandrene left her rucksack in the room, taking with her only a laden plastic grocery bag. She headed to a shaded courtyard just beyond the guest house where a snack bar was doing a thriving business selling snacks and drinks to tourists. She bought a paper cup of tea and a bag of dried apricots with Egyptian bank notes so worn they felt like silk and sat in a plastic chair at the last empty table.
It was twenty minutes before Sandrene saw Demetrios materialise in the courtyard. He was aged, though not elderly. Clad in an austere grey cassock, the small but sturdy-looking monk had a thick salt and pepper beard down to his chest and wore large eyeglasses that poked out from a deeply lined and tanned face. Resting atop his head was a dark, fez-like hat; a skoufos. He made straight for her and sat down with a rustle of cloth in the chair next to her.
“It’s a blessing to see you again, Sandrene Cassandra,” Demetrios said in a deep voice, adding her middle name in a way she always found charming. Eyes gleaming, he took her hands in his leathery fingers. “How about that sonic boom? Wasn’t it a doozy?”
Sandrene, still jittery from the Egyptian jet’s flyover, smiled thinly. “You’re the master of understatement, Padre. Did it remind you of Vietnam?”
Demetrios released Sandrene’s hands and leaned back in his chair. “Da Nang, nineteen seventy. Who could forget?”
Sandrene pushed her open bag of apricots toward Demetrios. She then reached for the grocery bag beneath the table and set it in front of the monk. “Another bottle of Rémy Martin for you, Padre. Per your request.”
Demetrios peaked at the cognac inside the bag and smiled appreciatively. “Lovely. Thank you. That leaves the final challenge of trying to split it twenty ways with the other monks, but I think I’ll just do what I always do and hand it over to the abbot. Then it’s his cross to bear – or not.” He set the bag aside. “Now, back to the airplane. Did that big boom fill you with memories of Afghanistan?”
“Camp Bastion, two-thousand fourteen. Who could forget?”
The monk regarded her kindly as he stroked his beard. “And how are you faring nowadays? You’re always in my prayers, you know.”
“And I appreciate it.” She sipped the hot, minty tea. “I have my up and down days, but I’m mending.”
“Just don’t ignore any PTSD symptoms, young lady.”
“I’m not, Padre.”
“I hope to God that’s true.” Demetrios cast a look at the people milling in the courtyard before fixing his eyes on Sandrene again. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re with us on the anniversary of your mother’s death in Sarajevo. I know it’s a melancholy occasion, but you honour us by being here.”
Sandrene had wondered how long it would take Demetrios to mention this. Three days ago, she had informed him about the significance of today’s date in the same email she sent telling him of her intended visit and her desire to talk something over with him. “Her helicopter crashed exactly twenty-five years ago,” she said, then added without knowing exactly why, “She was the last British soldier in Bosnia to receive the Military Cross – and the only nurse.”
“It’s interesting you’d want to spend such a personal anniversary at Saint Catherine’s.”
“I honestly can’t think of anyplace else I’d rather be.”
