Paradise lost
As one of the first journalists on the scene, Serene Assir witnesses the devastation of Sharm El-Sheikh
On the eve of 23 July, Sinai was thrown into a state of panic and grief as news of a triple bombing in Sharm El-Sheikh spread. Getting to the city from the smaller resort town of Dahab was rendered nearly impossible by the overwhelming sense of fear that took hold among resident workers.
Sinai was locked. Egypt had just fallen victim to the largest terrorist attack in in the past two decades, Sharm El-Sheikh, the country's hedonistic focus for international tourism, witness to unthinkable scenes of carnage and destruction. "Nothing like this has ever happened to us before," Mahmoud, an Internet café worker, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "We never expected such destruction to take place here." The explosions that killed 67 according to official figures (and 88 according to hospital sources), mostly Egyptians, took place in busy areas frequented by tourists and local workers.
Walking along Peace Road -- the main road that runs parallel to the city's coastline -- all seemed normal at first, barring a deadly silence. Upon arrival at the Ghazala Hotel, it became clear that what had happened was of immense magnitude. The hotel's entire façade was destroyed. Splinters of glass covered a radius of approximately 25 metres. Crowds of onlookers -- both local workers and foreign and Egyptian tourists -- gathered for several hours, mesmerised in grief, as others frantically made phone calls to loved ones. The bomb that ripped the Ghazala Hotel apart was reportedly transported by car right into the hotel, evidence of which include the skeleton of a car still visible in the front section of the hotel and vehicle wreckage strewn along the section of Peace Road facing the site.
For up to five hours after the attacks there was no significant police presence on the scene, contrary to the two bombing incidents that took place in Cairo in recent months. Red Crescent ambulance crews were, however, working as energetically as they could to pull the injured out from beneath the rubble.
Further down, groups of people were making their way out of Neama Bay in tears and shock. A second bombing that had taken place at a taxi rank just off Neama Bay's main road had taken a very heavy toll. The site itself was, hours after the blast, strewn with dead bodies only barely covered with Bedouin-style decorative rugs. Meanwhile, Neama Bay itself was as never before: deserted, the few who dared venture out walking quickly and in silence, eyeing each other up from a distance with suspicion. Along the central area of the road running through the district, all shop and restaurant windows were shattered, some café tables still laid out for meals that had been savagely interrupted.
"Rest assured," Ahmed, a Bedouin taxi driver said, "whoever staged these attacks knew exactly what they were doing. They targeted three strategic areas, seeking to cause as much destruction, death and panic as possible." "It was hell," Mustafa told the Weekly. "This is nothing like Taba, believe me, it goes far beyond that."
Indeed, the targets were people, not wealth or symbols of power. The attackers did not pick out the most luxurious hotel. Rather, they picked the one linking Peace Road with Neama Bay -- one of the busiest spots in the city. Further, the hotel was a favourite among Egyptian travellers.
Secondly, the attack in Neama Bay was staged in a parking lot: the only targets there are drivers -- and therefore locals -- and passengers -- both local and foreign.
Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly, the attack on the Sharm market area -- inhabited mostly by the Egyptian workers who serve the airport, hotels, shops and tourism services -- was the worst hit, the explosion there heard throughout a one kilometre radius.
In other words, the targets were the very core of Sharm, and not just what it stands for within the context of a globalised economy. One shopkeeper at Neama was only just holding back tears: "This is simply the worst thing that can happen to us. Never has there been such an incident in Sharm. We are sad both for those who died and because, honestly, we don't know what to do next." His colleague agreed: "Whoever did this was directly targeting all people in Sharm -- not just tourists, but also the people who make their daily bread from working here. What can be our next step?"
While speechless silence was, by the early hours of the morning, the overwhelming collective response, in hotels the mood was more frenzied. "We came here to take our minds off things," Asma, a Palestinian mother, said. "We still had three days to go but nothing can make me stay now, especially having witnessed how badly the Egyptian authorities and the hotel management handled things," she added as she gathered her suitcases and family in the reception area of the Neama Bay Hotel.
As early as 3am, all roads leading out of Sharm were filled with coaches, minibuses and cars packed with tourists pushing to get out as quickly as possible. The airport was similarly packed, foreigners and Egyptians arriving often without scheduled flights, fearful that the third explosion would not be the last.
"When the explosions began last night, hundreds of tourists and local workers grabbed their belongings and their suitcases and started to run around Neama Bay in a frenzy, just looking for a way to get out of Sharm," Mohamed, a Sharm El-Sheikh Airport waiter from Cairo said. "It was just insane. People just did not know what to do."
Both local and international airlines hurried to meet the demand by scheduling new flights and overbooking existing routes, as "tourists were calling up crying, desperate to get out of Sharm," Ahmed Mustafa, ground operations manager for Cairo Airlines told the Weekly. "Meanwhile, we have had an approximate cancellations rate of 40 per cent," he added. "It's a disaster."
Suzanna and Sabrina from Denmark were also on their way out of the city in the early hours of the morning. "It's terrible," Suzanna, who is married to an Egyptian, told the Weekly. "London, Beirut, now here. This is simply awful. It's so bad for Egypt too. So many people will lose means to earn their livings because chances are, for a good while at least, people will be too scared to spend their holidays here. It's awfully sad." As she spoke, Sabrina's husband -- also an Egyptian -- struggled to conceal his grief, tears running down his face behind his sunglasses.
Perhaps inevitably, rumours started to circulate through Sharm very quickly after the bomb attacks took place. To start with, many local workers chose to blame the destruction on familiar foreign enemies. "Many people are saying that the car that carried the explosives into the Ghazala Hotel had a foreign number plate," Ahmed said. Others, however, had a different point of view. "Personally I don't think that it can be true that the attacks were staged by foreigners. To carry out such an attack, one whose targets were so strategically chosen, you have to be either from around here or to have spent enough time here to really understand the city and its dynamics," Mohamed said. "Maybe, however, people were paid to do this ... I don't know."
"I know," Ahmed countered. "People will start to blame us Bedouins. That's what always happens when something goes wrong in Sinai. People always seem to forget, however, that we are the ones who are from here, and although there are some bad people among us, most of us are just poor workers trying to make ends meet." As he spoke, he pointed to a small Bedouin village composed of brick houses near the Sharm-Dahab road on the edge of the desert.
"Believe me, most stories that you will hear about us being rich and working for the Israelis are simply not true. Why, in my own family, five young men fought and died to liberate Sinai from Israel. And when they died, they became martyrs -- my family was not sad. On the contrary, we were proud. As far as I can see, these events are signs of the coming of the apocalypse."
Equally shaken were driver Nasser and his other, older companions. "We are Egyptian! We may be from Sinai, but we are above all Egyptian. What will we have left in Egypt -- and especially in Sinai -- without the tourism industry?" Nasser lamented.
"We are particularly sad for the foreigners who died -- for they are our guests. That shames us in the face of the world, that we could not take care of our guests as well as we should," Nasser went on. "Ah, what will we do ... I swear, if I knew that someone was going to do this I would have killed him myself. Those who kill innocent people have no morals. We've been crying all night. I can't take this. What will I feed my four children on now? How will I pay off my debts? Whoever did this targeted us all. And they've certainly hit us hard. Make sure you tell the world that. It's about something far bigger than most will think."
Reacting to how the situation was handled by security forces and the police, Ahmed lamented the fact that roads leading in and out of Sharm were not immediately closed. "If they really wanted to catch the attackers, all they would have had to do was close off the city as soon as the attacks happened. There are enough well-trained security personnel in southern Sinai to do that -- especially after the Taba bombings," he told the Weekly.
"Now, we're all going to have to worry about ourselves every time we venture out onto the roads," Ahmed added. "The entire area will become extremely sensitive. I just pray that things will be alright. However, at this point, I'm not optimistic."
C a p t i o n :
See: Taba bombings focus
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/753/fo2.htm