A long way from anywhere

Sunday April 13 - Monday April 14, Cairo, Egypt
It was all going so well. Indeed it has been one of the most interesting day's filming I think I've ever done. But now it's past 11pm and the crew bus has broken down. We are 50km from Cairo, there's desert all around, and on the highway trucks thunder past. Their frequent horn blasts celebrate that they're on their way home -- and that we're not.

With our fixer Romaney and crew of four (our cameraman joins us at the location), I left Cairo yesterday morning. We first drove north, went under the Suez Canal and then down the east coast of the Red Sea before turning into the desert mountains and up to the foot of Mount Sinai. A journey of seven hours and numerous military checkpoints. Tedious as it is, there's some consolation in the notion that even well into the twentieth century making this pilgrimage took days and days on camels.

We've come to film at the Greek Orthodox monastery of St Catherine's, the oldest continuously inhabited Christian community in the world. Monks like Father Justin, our exceptional guide, have celebrated their faith here for some 1,700 years, rising each morning for prayers at 4.30am.
Sunday afternoon we recce the monastery, with Father Justin taking us around the compact site of the basilica, chapels, living quarters and a library crammed inside towering defensive walls. These were sponsored by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century CE and they include high on one side a wooden hut from which a basket could be lowered to the ground. Until the nineteenth century this was the only way in or out of what was effectively a desert fortress.
The next morning we start filming at 6am but many of the pilgrims who now come here in organised coach parties have been up since 2am, climbing to the top of Mount Sinai to worship and to see the dawn come up over the Red Sea. As we scramble around on the rocks of the valley (that's the crew below), we see the faithful straggling back, on foot and camel, ready to visit St Catherine's during the three hours that it is open to visitors on five mornings each week.
We go inside -- through a conventional door -- and spend the morning being taken around by Father Justin. Just before midday inside the main basilica we are privileged to watch, and to film, the veneration of the relics of St Catherine. What are believed to be the saint's skull and her left hand, both encased in silver reliquaries, are brought out for the faithful -- almost all from Russia -- to file past and to kiss. Many also kiss the icons of the basilica's iconostasis and all are given a silver ring by a priest to commemorate the moment. To me, this ritual, which has been taking place for a millennium and more, is simply unfathomable, but I deeply respect the importance that it has for all those taking part.
There's much that's remarkable about the building and the community: the presence of the Burning Bush, believed to be that which God used through which to speak to Moses; the presence alongside the main basilica of a mosque; the astonishing collection of icons, many of which are in the basilica but some of which are also displayed in a well-presented museum; and overall the extraordinary sense of sacred continuity.

In the afternoon we interview Father Justin in the library of St Catherine's, which contains one of the world's greatest collections of sacred manuscripts. The climate and the monastery's remoteness have ensured the survival of an astonishing number of precious manuscripts and printed books. Putting up lights here and moving around with the camera makes me as nervous as I've ever been on a shoot. I have next-to-no desire to be known as the person responsible for burning to the ground one of the world's great libraries. But all goes smoothly as Father Justin shows us an illuminated document from a Muslim Ottoman ruler granting St Catherine's the right to continue to worship within the Christian faith. He speaks movingly about the importance of the close relationship between the monks and the Muslim Bedouin with whom the monastery has lived and worked alongside for centuries. As he concludes with thoughts about how this coexistence has lessons for the world today, a mobile phone of one of the crew goes off. Grrrr. We re-take and all's well.

That is, until the breakdown nine or so hours later. Romaney gets on the phone, and although it doesn't seem as if there's an Egyptian version of the RAC, he has his son drive out from Cairo to rescue some of us and then a tow truck come for the bus. When we finally get to where we're spending the night, an ice cold beer goes down very well. (John Wyver)