The Art of Cartography

Taba, Egypt
November 2021

By Alex Stein-Sandiford

Crossing the border was easy if not akin to a personal time machine. The Sinai peninsula hasn’t changed a bit, at least not in the 25 years since I last came, what I could see out of the taxi window a bit  perhaps, but the essence , not one bit. 

A place so close to where I call home with the unsurpassed ability to transport one to the Orient. 

A liminal zone, something between the established and the nomadic. The spiritual home of the  Bedouin for more than 1,400 years. Home to the Saint Katherine monastery and Mount Sinai. 

Arriving at Aqua Sun made me both uneasy and uncharacteristically care free. You see I’m hardly  a hippy, prefer a heavy dumbbell to yoga and certainly don’t meditate. As I grow older and wiser I  don’t even like the sea and sun all that much. 

But I do like Cartography and Poetry. I like to etch words and people and memories on my map. 

There are three magic hours, dawn, dusk and darkness. It’s a patient landscape that indulges your  wonder, and your futile attempts to make sense of it all or to own your feelings. 

They say it takes a day to adjust to Sinai time. They’re not wrong. It’s sort of like an  unboxing, but the gift you get at the end is a little unfiltered time with you. 

I will leave you with a quote by poet Michael Ondaatje, who says:

“I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are all communal histories, communal books. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.”