The Best American Travel Writing 2013 (13 page)

SARAH A. TOPOL

FROM
The Atlantic

M
Y HOST, THE
37-year-old Bedouin tribal leader Sheikh Ahmed Hashem, had served me so many glasses of sweet tea that I had lost count. It was a hot afternoon in early July, and we were sitting on the floor of his compound in Wadi Feiran, a remote village deep within Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. A single electrical cable connects the settlement’s squat cement houses; a single road runs through the surrounding mountains to the outside world. Everything felt unhurried, including Hashem’s explanation, via a translator, of his people’s complaints against the Egyptian government. But when I asked why the local Bedouin had started kidnapping tourists, he was quick to correct me: “It isn’t kidnapping. It is a
tourist safari
.”

The sheikh’s brother Mohammed, a wiry drug runner, nodded vigorously: “Tourists come to Egypt and pay for this kind of experience,” he said, beaming. “Now they are getting the same thing for free!”

During the Egyptian revolution last year, the country’s beleaguered security services mostly pulled out of the Sinai, the triangular peninsula that lies between mainland Egypt to the west and Israel to the east. Drug running and weapons smuggling spiked; in the northern half of the peninsula, shootouts between Islamic militants and the police became routine; the gas pipeline connecting Egypt and Israel was repeatedly bombed. In recent months, the security vacuum has emboldened a handful of Bedouin in the southern half of the peninsula to lobby for the release of jailed kinsmen via a novel tactic: kidnapping foreign tourists and using them as bargaining chips. Between February and early July, Bedouin tribesmen took three pairs of Americans, three South Koreans, a pair of Brazilians, and a Singaporean on “safaris” lasting between a few hours and several days.

Egypt’s Bedouin, historically nomadic Arab tribespeople who have lived in the Sinai for centuries, harbor a number of grievances against the government. After Israel returned the peninsula to Egypt in 1982, following a 15-year occupation, the Egyptian government accused the Bedouin of collaborating with the Jewish state; the Bedouin have since been rejected from military service and most government jobs. The Bedouin complain that the state’s notoriously brutal security services deal particularly harshly with them today, imprisoning hundreds of their kinsmen without trial. Bedouin villages have little in the way of infrastructure, health care, or schools compared with the rest of the country. And although the Sinai’s Red Sea coast is dotted with high-end hotels, tribesmen complain that tourist cash does nothing to improve their lives, as tourism outfits won’t hire them.

The recent rash of kidnappings is well timed to mortify the Egyptian government. The country’s economy is already in free fall, and beach tourism is a key source of foreign currency. So the government has worked to secure the release of each batch of kidnapped tourists as quickly as possible. But a strange thing has happened: some of those freed tourists have described their captivity in surprisingly glowing terms.

“All of this is an unforgettable memory,” Norma Supe, a 63- year-old nurse from California who was kidnapped in February, told the Associated Press. She called her captors kind and polite. Supe was kidnapped with another member of her tour group, 66-year-old Patti Esperanza, on a road near Saint Catherine’s, the sixth-century monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai. Their guide, Hisham Zaki, volunteered to go along as a translator. As Zaki later recalled, Esperanza demanded that one of her kidnappers stop smoking: “I told her, ‘Are you joking? You are kidnapped!’” But the Bedouin kidnapper cooperated, throwing his cigarette out the car window. At one point, Esperanza recounted, the kidnappers stopped to prepare coffee for the women, but upon learning that Esperanza does not drink coffee, they made her tea.

When I had finished my own tea, Hashem agreed to take me to the area where Esperanza and Supe had been held. We got in his truck and drove for about an hour before parking along a stretch of sand at the base of the mountains. Once brush was gathered for a fire and water was set to boil, we sat down on the ground, and Hashem introduced me to Attwa, who he said had kidnapped the Californian women. (Attwa did not provide his last name, but a source in the Egyptian security services confirmed his involvement.) Attwa lives in a shack nearby and, like most Bedouin in the area, makes a meager living smuggling drugs. He has tried in vain to find other work, he said, but is proud that he has so far managed to keep his children out of the drug trade.

Attwa rolled a joint as he began telling me the story of the safari. In late January, he explained, he got word that one of his sons had been killed and two other sons jailed following an altercation with the police. Ten days later, hoping to bargain for their release, Attwa and a friend armed themselves and drove toward Saint Catherine’s. Taking Supe and Esperanza from a tour bus proved surprisingly easy, Attwa said. “I used their translator to make them calm, so they wouldn’t fear anything. I explained that I needed to deliver a message to the government and this is the only way I would be heard.” He added that he’d packed bread, cheese, and juice for his captives. What would he have done if they had become hysterical? Attwa said he would have left them, but they didn’t cry, so he brought them here.

Hashem told me that the Bedouin take only a few tourists at a time because caring for larger groups could quickly get expensive. “When [a Bedouin] kidnaps some people, he must be responsible for their hospitality when he takes them around on the safari trip—their food, drinks, toilets, and their sleep. If he treats them badly, he will be held accountable,” Hashem said, referring to the tribal justice system.

The Bedouin seem to know they are walking a fine line. Too many safaris, and more repression might follow. Too few safaris, and their demands might continue to be ignored. A few hours after Attwa captured the American women, he told me, the Egyptian government promised to release his sons, and he surrendered his hostages. But here we were, five months later, and his sons were still incarcerated.

Shortly after my tea with Attwa, two more Americans and their guide were taken hostage. At first, this safari seemed different. The kidnapper, a 32-year-old truck driver, threatened to hold the hostages until his uncle (who he said had been arrested after refusing to bribe the police) was freed from prison. Four days later, however, he released them, unharmed. “We were treated just like they treat their own,” the hostages’ translator told a reporter. The kidnapper explained that in addition to the customary tea and coffee, he had served his guests roast lamb, a dish usually reserved for special occasions. He said his uncle remained in prison.

GRANT STODDARD

FROM
T Magazine

A
FRIEND TOLD
me: “If you’re looking to make some money on the side, you should try
Gidsy.com
, it’s totally up your alley.” Because it seems lately that no occupation is anywhere near my alley, I checked out this funny-named startup (
gids
is the Dutch word for “guide”) in the hope that my friend was right. Started in November 2011, the website is a Berlin-based outfit that enables travelers and other novelty seekers to find activities organized by what it refers to as “real people.” Via Gidsy, genuine humanoids like you and me can monetize our expertise, creativity, access, skills, or local knowledge by turning them into tours and activities offered for a price (and advertised through social networks that the site seamlessly integrates). Have access to a hot-air-balloon ride over Luxor’s temples at sunrise? Know how to make buttons in your Berlin apartment? Chances are someone will pay to join you. Each activity organizer sets his or her own price, and Gidsy takes 10 percent—a tribute that will eventually trickle up to the coffers of Ashton Kutcher, one of the firm’s principal investors. It’s no coincidence that Kutcher would put money into Gidsy; it’s a logical extension of sites like Airbnb (also in Kutcher’s portfolio of investments) that aim to democratize travel knowledge and capitalize on the Internet’s DIY spirit. A social media vacation, then, might involve consulting TripAdvisor to find a deal on flights, Airbnb for a place to stay, and Gidsy for stuff to do while you’re in town.

I decide that my tours will combine two or more aspects of my life and interests, excluding the amusing but impractical coupling of “5k Run Plus Guitar Lesson.” Within a couple of hours, people browsing Gidsy are offered “Scorsese’s Downtown Manhattan Tour,” in which I take movie fans to various locations featured in three of the director’s films; “A Running Tour of Manhattan,” wherein I whisk a huffing, puffing group along Hudson River Park, alerting them to points of interest; “A Historical Walking Tour of Occupied New York,” filled with mildly insightful musings on the British administration of New York City from 1776 to 1783; and a “Manhattan Kayak Tour,” in which I fuse the tedium of barely memorized factoids about the Hudson River with the exhilaration of possibly drowning in poison.

Eventually, I get a bite. Edial Dekker, a 28-year-old Dutchman living in Berlin, expresses a good deal of interest in my kayaking tour and politely asks if I can schedule one during his visit to New York in October. I’m not especially surprised to discover that Dekker is, in fact, the company’s cofounder. Without disclosing that I would be writing about the experience, I tell Dekker that the Hudson River is too cold in October, and he inquires whether there might be some other way I can amuse him and his brother, Floris, who is also a Gidsy cofounder (along with a third partner, Philipp Wassibauer), on their trip. But based on the current low level of interest in my offerings, my career as a guide might be over by then.

With few takers, I begin tweeting about my capers and describing them on Facebook with instructions for my people to retweet and repost. Still no takers. So I slash my prices and add more tours. On Gidsy, if an activity doesn’t enlist the minimum number of people set by the organizer within 24 hours of its start time, it’s automatically canceled. One by one, I receive automated e-mails telling me that what I have to offer has failed to capture anyone’s imagination and that my event is being called off due to barely contained lack of interest.

The Occupied New York and Scorsese walking tours are the first to be nixed, followed by the running tour. I decide to post another activity, something that’s quintessentially me and that I don’t have to cram for: scavenging food. You see, earlier in my writing career I had to become creative in how I housed, clothed, and fed myself. I started by recovering bags of discarded, barely stale bagels and soon discovered that there were luxury food items being given away all over town. In a short while, I had amassed a wealth of knowledge on the best spots and the best times for grazing. Thankfully, it’s been a while since I’ve depended on free food for sustenance. So I spend a day scouring my old haunts to see if the pickings are still plentiful. Though we live in financially trying times, the volume of food being thrown out is greater than ever. I hurry home and write a post.

“Free food samples are designed to guilt-trip people into making a purchase. But hold your nerve and you could eat the equivalent of a three-course meal, absolutely free! I’ll take you on a tour of New York City’s best free-food locations. Over a 2–3 hour span, I guarantee to fill you to your bursting point with delectable morsels, gratis!”

After several tweets, retweets, posts, and reposts, I get nine takers, and we set a meeting time, 6
P.M
. on Thursday in Chelsea. I focus on that neighborhood because it promises the highest concentration and greatest diversity of free food. Not only is Chelsea Market the gourmet freeloader’s one-stop shop, it’s also near the Thursday-night art-gallery openings, which are generally stocked with free wine and nibbles.

Before we set out, I quickly give the group—now down to six—a few pointers on boldness and tell them they’ll get extra credit for going back for seconds. I hand them all ziplock sandwich bags and tell them not to let being full stand in the way of collecting samples that can be saved (even frozen!) for later.

We begin at Wrapido, a Middle Eastern joint on Eighth Avenue. Here, a tray of bite-sized falafel chunks are placed on a pedestal on the sidewalk. After five minutes of conspicuous loitering while we wait for a fresh batch, the group descends upon the tray like a swarm of locusts as flabbergasted cooks peer through the window. Then we hoof it to Chelsea Market, where I know about a wine tasting at Chelsea Wine Vault that is on until seven. We bum-rush the woman from Stark Thirst—a winery in Sonoma County—and each have a splash of a crisp, clean unoaked Chardonnay. One of the group even wants to buy a bottle, but I remind her that spending money is anathema to the ethos of the tour. (Later, however, someone else breaks the rule by buying a crunchy cheddar from Vermont that we tasted at Lucy’s Whey.)

After sampling a dozen types of infused olive oil at the Filling Station, we check into L’Arte del Gelato, where I demonstrate to the group how not to be cowed by eye rolling. When it comes to ice cream, the usual custom is “two tries then buy.” Despite a salvo of tsking I make it to five unchallenged tries. But the rest of the group can’t handle the contempt, which is just as well because being upstaged by newbie moochers would be shameful.

We’re already 10 minutes behind schedule when we unexpectedly pass several food carts on the High Line that have started the process of calling it a night. The hipster pedant running the Northern Spy Food Co. cart tells me that it wouldn’t be “food safe” to give me the items he’s in the process of throwing away because they contain dairy. “You have nothing without dairy?” I ask. Begrudgingly he hands me two large hot biscuits. “They’ve been in the oven awhile,” he says. “They might not be great.” But oh, they are! The seven of us tear at the biscuits like a pack of wolves pulling apart a rabbit. One of my group simply asked the guys from another truck if we could sample their cooking before they shut off their grill. The two chefs make three types of miniature tacos for us, which we all agree are exquisite.