the city and the desert

dispatches from the oldest monastery in the world

In Cairo I bought a packet of eszopiclone (branded NightCalm, dosage 3mg) from the pharmacy in the hotel. I’d been on Klonopin in London, dispensed twice-daily in poorly coordinated visits by people whom I had to argue with, but had been warned that it was illegal to bring benzodiazepines into Egypt. My other prescriptions came with doctor’s notes, in the end unnecessary; I breezed through the airport in twenty minutes, picking up my visa from the Bank of Egypt kiosk for twenty-five American dollars and through security without anyone checking my bags.

Once in Egypt, you can get pretty much anything you want over the counter in any pharmacy, though this is technically illegal. In Dahab, I bought a strip of pregabalin for one thousand Egyptian pounds (about £15) from a pharmacist (brand name Painica) who told me this was only available on the black market. Another man, of unclear pharmacological credentials, delivered it about forty minutes later. Benzos were a bit more difficult—one pharmacist told me to try another pharmacy ‘with more money’—and either way I thought it good to wean myself off before developing a dependency.

I didn’t see the pyramids. With NightCalm, I kept myself sedated day and night in the hotel room, where room service delivered hot chocolate and om ali and roast chicken and mashed potatoes and hawawashi on big carts which I left in the hallway afterwards. One day, I went out to the the Khan el-Khalili market with a diplomat’s wife who wanted gold jewellery melted down and remade into something new. I went to the Al-Ashraf Mosque, built by a Circassian sultan, where much of the material is reused porphyry and marble from Egypt’s Roman period, and then Ubered to Coptic Cairo, a maze of ancient churches and monasteries set apart from the rest of the city.

In the Convent of St George, I ran my fingers under water from a well from which the Holy Family supposedly drank during their flight to Egypt. A heavy set of chains hung from the wall and a succession of pilgrims picked them up and rubbed them along their bodies. When it was my turn, I lifted the collar around my neck and let my head bow with its weight, a sensory posture which calmed me and drew me into prayer.

It helps to remember that persecution is the bread and butter of Christian experience, something expected rather than balked at. Their witness to God was demonstrated not by professions of faith or even participation in the life of the Church, but in the quiet, supernatural courage they demonstrated in prisons and gladiatorial arenas—a courage which can’t be faked and which only comes from complete conviction that one’s treasures are laid up in heaven rather than acquired on earth. I wish I had this faith and could trust in God in the face of tribulation, not run all over the place in search of safety.