A Short Stay on the Red Sea

April 2006

When an alarm clock drags you out of the depths of warm sweet sleep it is always a bit of a shock. And when it happens at the dead of four in the morning, still more so. But there are factors which can make the experience better or worse. Luckily for me, whenever I have had to set the alarm earlier than six, it has almost always been to catch a plane or a train, rather than for any other more serious reason. When the journey is for work, the alarm sounds a little worse; when it is for a holiday, it sounds a little less bad.

This time when the Braun started beeping, it was to get us all to the airport in time for our holiday flight, scheduled to leave at seven AM. The travel voucher said we were to be at the airport by five, so we had everything packed, set up and ready to go the night before. A shower, a shave and a biscuit, then I started carrying our baggage down to load the car. By four-thirty the three of us were on our way.

The drive out to the airport from central Rome takes some ninety minutes with ordinary day-time traffic, but so early in the morning a third of the time will do. We drove across town through darkness. It began raining. Just near the Sheraton I nosed into a down-hill s-bend and suddenly the car's tail slipped out on the wet tarmac. It must have been oil on the road. We slid out of the first bend diagonally. Just as I began to counter-steer, I saw a fellow about thirty yards further down-hill, getting out of his car, which was stopped facing the wrong way up the road. For one sickening moment, with the car still sliding, I thought we were going to slam right into him. But even as I gasped, the wheels gripped the road again and I managed to swerve back into a safe trajectory. My pulse-rate was around 140 and my wife was looking daggers at me.

I went a bit more gingerly from there on and we made it to international departures without any further adventures. T and S pushed a trolley-load of baggage into the terminal and I drove off to park the car in a semi-secret spot fifteen minutes' walk away from the airport, where parking is free. Lady Luck smiled - there was one last slot waiting just for me.

Inside the terminal building there were not many people around. Someone cleaning the floors and one crowd of tourists queueing up at a check-in desk. Our flight. Computer problems. The queue got longer and longer. We waited and waited. As the concentration needed for driving dropped away, and with no caffeine in my blood-stream, I felt more and more zonked, leaning on our baggage trolley, looking around blankly. T settled on an airport bench and S fell asleep in her lap. The only source of mild entertainment was a very cool, fit and trendy-looking gay couple in front of me who got chatting theatrically with another gay couple who were both short, rotund and earnest.

After what felt like for ever our bags got checked in and we tottered off to our departure gate. Morning light was grey and drizzly as a bus trundled us out to our 737. We settled into our seats and waited. The plane filled and we waited. And waited. The captain came on the intercom to say welcome on board bla bla bla we hope the tower will give us a take-off slot in about 35 minutes. Dawn chorus of resigned groans from all the pax.

At last our Boeing was pushed back and taxied off to the end of the runway as the cabin crew went through their customary mimed routine about emergency exits and life-jackets. I wish someone would do a rap version of that. "Cabin crew prepare for take-off." The pilot opened the throttles and we roared away, lifting off and finally flying away from home, south and east across the Mediterranean towards the coastline of North Africa. We crossed that shoreline somewhere east of Alexandria and flew on across the empty Sahara. The tawny surface of the desert was mottled with darker patches, whorls and waves of sand traced with ancient river-beds, crossed by occasional tracks leading mysteriously from one horizon to the other. After an hour heading south the pilot banked steeply and turned eastward.

The Nile Valley passed beneath us, a broad swathe of green cutting across the barren wastelands of the desert. And on we flew. The turquoise and navy shores of the Red Sea passed below us as we began our descent. We banked again and turned south along the western coast of the Sinai Peninsula. As the sandy coast flowed by beneath me I tried to remember the name of the French gentleman gun-runner and drug-smuggler who operated on the Red Sea in the 1920s and wrote of his adventurous life in an autobiography called "Hashish". Ah yes - Henry de Monfried. Must try and get hold of that book again.

Sharm-el-Sheikh International Airport

As we drew near to the international airport of Sharm-el-Sheikh we could see the extent of construction which has been going on there in recent years. Rows upon rows of houses studded the face of the desert which was hidden by lawns and swimming pools, tennis courts and golf courses, grids of new roads stretching out across the sand in the outskirts. When we landed all the passengers clapped. I hadn't heard that for years and got a snigger out of T&S by doing an ironic football stadium cheer about our safe touch-down. Shouldn't tempt fate I guess.

We stepped off the plane and into the Summer. 32°C in mid-April - a delight. Of course real Summer in the Sinai peaks out at 45-50°C, but that's another story. The light was sharp and clear as we traipsed into the airport building, the sun hot on our faces, shades essential. Inside the terminal, this side of passport control, we were met by a young fellow in a white shirt and tie, holding a placard with our name on it. He gave us entry forms to fill out and once through passport control and baggage collection, he shepherded us out to a mini-bus waiting in the car-park.

The three of us were the only passengers heading from Sharm up to Dahab, some 80 km further north up the Gulf of Aqaba. I sat next to our driver, a robust and friendly-looking fellow called Ibrahim who hailed from somewhere near Cairo. The drive to Dahab took just over an hour. We took a well-kept road which snaked its way inland and parallel to the coast of the Sinai, running along barren gravel and sand valleys between steep and jagged rocky mountains.

We saw camels walking in small groups in the desert, much to my little son's excitement. "Can we go on one Daddy? Please?" "Maybe." There is almost no vegetation there and it seems incredible that even camels, let alone men, could survive in such a harsh, lunar environment.

Our driver Ibrahim turned out to be as friendly as he looked and we chatted about this and that as a beeper pinged merrily away whenever he broke 120 kmph. When I asked if he had any children he at once looked sad: "One daughter. But she died one month ago. She was two months old." I felt awful and after mumbling something useless, fell silent. But soon Ibrahim started pointing out features of the landscape again, talking about the hard lives of the bedouin and the different sorts of tourists who come to the Sinai. The Italians were particularly well-liked - Egyptians seem to feel a kindred spirit with them, and from many points of view I can see why.

Leaving Sharm and entering Dahab we had to stop and leave papers at military check-points. Oil drums channeled traffic into chicanes and soldiers had a good look round the minibus before saluting and waving us through. The security-check seemed a somewhat token affair in a way. The Sinai has hundreds of kilometres of un-patrolled coastline facing Saudi Arabia, just a few miles to the east at the furthest, and more facing the Mediterranean to the north. It cannot be hard for threats to come ashore by night and then make their way around through the desert, circling occasional check-points. It seems that as part of the Camp David agreement, under which the Israelis agreed to withdraw from the Sinai, which they had conquered during the Six Days War, the Egyptians are barred from any serious military presence in the Sinai. This agreement is monitored, mostly by US and British soldiers who make up the Sinai MFO (Multinational Force of Observers). A side effect of this ban is that it seems to increase the vulnerability of the Sinai to terrorist attack by reducing the Egyptian state's military control of the territory.

Having cleared the check-point we drove down a long broad thoroughfare down towards the coast and the small town of Dahab. The name means "Gold" in Arabic but the resort does not attract tourist hordes as Sharm-el-Sheikh does. It has very little of the glitz of Sharm, is much quieter. It seemed to me that Dahab attracts five kinds of visitor, and none of them are the packaged tourists which throng Sharm. The visitors at Dahab are: scuba nuts, windsurfers, backpackers, Egyptians on holiday and wealthy Europeans and Israelis who see the potential of the area and are buying up land and building holiday villas there.

We reached our hotel, the Swiss Inn after about eight hours door-to-door. At first sight the place appeared pleasant and comfortable, clean and well-kept, rather than particularly luxurious.

During our stay we came to appreciate the hotel's other important virtues. The staff were all, without exception, pleasant, courteous, friendly and went out of their way to be helpful whenever they could. The hotel's beach and pool were both beautiful and kept in perfect conditions.

On the beach there was also a nursery/playground with a full-time lady guardian to keep an eye on children and give parents a welcome break now and then.














The hotel's gardens were a special source of pleasure, carefully looked after and filled with beautiful flowers. The shades of green and vibrant colours of the gardens contrasted strongly with the stark and sterile landscapes outside, reminding me that the word "paradise" came to English from an ancient Persian word for a walled garden.

The quality of the food, all buffet self-service, was consistently good, with a broad range of choices every day, including European, Arabic and Far Eastern dishes. We always ate at the pool-side - in the evenings by candle-light, under deep desert skies, beside the glowing turquoise of the illuminated water, it all created a special and romantic atmosphere. Last, but far from least, we found the other guests of the hotel were quiet, calm people. Not a place for nightclubbers, but perfect for kicking back and taking it easy.

The main attraction of Dahab was (and is) for me that it a very good windsurfing spot. South of Dahab, just in front of the foreign hotels, there is a long sandy beach with a large lagoon of very shallow water at one end, reserved for kite-surfers. There are at least four or five windsurfing clubs along the beach, testifying to the reliability and quality of wind-supply there. I had booked with one of these clubs through a specialist German travel-agency which operates on Internet. I had never heard of the club before and so felt extra lucky that it turned out to be an exceptionally well-run and welcoming set-up.

I attended a five-day course and found myself in the "Intermediates" group with others like myself who were happy getting at least one foot into the straps and hooked into the harness. Most of the other participants proved to be very good company and pretty high-powered too. Amongst them were several undergrads, at least one Royal Navy officer, a high-energy particle physicist, a financial engineer, an anaesthetist and more of this calibre.

Our instructor was very professional. He looked like a First XI player or stroke scull or both and made the course most enjoyable, explaining techniques and providing good clear advice with easy-going optimism ("By the end of the week, you'll all be doing water-starts"),
understated humour
("You'll find yourself accelerating into the carve-jibe at a stupid speed, hanging on like grim death and thinking HELP I'm going to die. Don't worry. That's normal.")
and some colourful expressions I'm dying for a chance to use again
("When you're blasting out, balls to the wall and hair on fire, whatever you do make SURE you go between the buoys, or you'll wipe out on the reef .")

For four days out of seven the wind blew consistently at Force 5, cross-shore. That strength of wind is right at the upper limit of my ability. It generates an absolutely huge force on the sail which, if controlled just the right way, translates directly into vast acceleration and high speed across the water. And that is a heavily addictive drug as far as I am concerned.

The down side is that if you get one little thing wrong, say shifting your weight a shade too far forward, then all that power is more than enough to slam you around like a rag-puppet. Wiping out massively on day one I managed to gash my knee and shin nicely, then on the last day I thought I'd broken a toe, but luckily it turned out to be no more than a colourful bruise. Others at the club had hands, legs and feet taped up too so I felt encouraged that at least it wasn't only me. Experts look (and are) relaxed on the water, but two hours per morning were enough to sap my energies for a day and leave me aching the next morning. The song says it's a fine line between pleasure and pain, but there are some cases where you can stand with one foot either side and windsurfing is one of them.

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III. Riding Camels to a Bedouin Birthday Party

Half-way through our week at Dahab it was my son's sixth birthday. At this age birthdays are Major Events and S had been looking forward to his for over a month. He woke up at twenty-past-six that morning and was very pleased with the two presents which we had brought with us from home. But the thing he had really been looking forward to was the excursion on a camel which we had promised him as a birthday treat. As luck had it, the windsurfing club had arranged a "camel safari" into the desert hills behind Dahab for exactly that evening.

We made secret arrangements beforehand. T spoke to the Swiss Inn staff and they very sweetly had a large complimentary chocolate cake made for us. Candles were found and all was delivered in a large cardboard box. I told the organisers at the windsurf club about it and they agreed to carry the cake for us. They also said they would arrange a special surprise for S. "You will see. He will like it." We had no idea what it would be.

At five in the afternoon all those who signed up for the safari gathered and climbed aboard three ancient 4x4's kitted out in true Middle Eastern fashion with baubles, artificial fur seat-covers and other such goodies. One of the cars had a device connected to the brakes which played Arabic music whenever the driver braked. Wonderful.

We set off and drove for about fifteen minutes to a spot on the outskirts of the town where we were met by a group of about a dozen bedouin men and children with twenty or thirty camels. The children were a bit scruffy-looking but cheerful and full of energy - shunting us tourists towards our camels. The original plan was that S would ride a camel together with me, but when asked if he would ride one of his own he immediately said yes, and so he did.

It took nearly half-an-hour to get the entire party saddled up and ready to go. Riding a camel for the first time is quite something. You sit in a saddle which rests on top of the hump, the highest point of a rather tall beast, a good ten feet off the ground. It would not be a good thing to fall off one of these, but on the other hand you would really have to make an effort to do so. As the camel walks along it makes a lolloping front-to-back motion in the saddle. With one leg hooked around the pommel and under the other leg, you must keep your waist loose to absorb the motion. Once that is sorted out you can settle down to enjoy the scenery, chat with your neighbour and think about the millions of people who have travelled across the sands on camels - merchants and brigands, touareg blue men and European explorers, soldiers and bedouins.

Our little troop set off at a sedate pace, heading uphill, away from the sea and into a broad sandy valley between jagged rocky mountains. After a half-hour's stroll, the camels were made to kneel and lie down so that we could disembark. Lead by one of the guides we walked up a fairly steep and narrow path to the top of one of the hills. The view from the top was marvellous. In the failing pink and grey light of dusk we could see the lights of Dahab twinkling on far below, the waters of the Gulf of Aqaba, mirror-still in the evening calm, and off in the distance the hills of Saudi Arabia on the far side of the sea. Behind us the rocky mountains of the Sinai, repetitive layers of sharp stone leading away to the darkening horizon. It was a view to be remembered in years to come.

Down we came again and climbed back onto our grunting camels. Another half-hour's gentle walk brought us to a point near the head of the valley where rugs had been laid out on the sand for us and bonfires were merrily crackling in the darkness. We all flopped out on the rugs and sipped happily at bottles of water or good cold Stella lager. Darkness fell and the stars came out. Living in a city it is a rare treat to ever see the Milky Way and conversation on the rugs soon turned to matters of constellations, galaxies, star names and the Big Bang theory.

In due course our suppers were ready - grilled lamb, rice, pitta-bread and spicy beans were served. S was tired and began to get grumpy when the food took time arriving. He had more or less forgotten about his birthday by that point. A little further down the valley one of the pick-ups switched on its headlamps and we could only vaguely make out some sort of preparations going on there. In a little while the lights were dimmed and one of the guides walked up, smiling and calling out for S. I hoisted him up onto my shoulders and we walked down to see what surprise was waiting.

As we drew near in the dark, a circle of flame some ten yards across was lit on the sand and inside it, in letters of fire, "Happy Birthday S" in English and in Arabic. In the centre of the ring, on a crate, the secret birthday cake, with candles on it waiting to be lit. As I stepped into the ring the company broke into song with "Happy Birthday To You". I lit the six candles and in a couple of tries S had them all blown out. He cut the first slice with a large carving knife to a round of friendly applause. The guides had a drum with them and began to sing with great enthusiasm in their own language. The cake was so big that I was able to offer a taste to the entire company, starting with the local children who looked pretty pleased about this. In a few minutes the entire cake was polished off.

Hubble-bubbles were brought out and the air filled with the perfume of apple-scented tobacco. By about ten the meal was over and we were ready to return. S woke up and was all for climbing back onto his camel to ride back in the dark, but T decreed that he was too tired so the two of them rode back down in a pick-up while I came back down in moon-light by camel.

"That was the best birthday in my life," stated S firmly as we returned to base in the windy back of a jeep. Sweet words for a father to remember

One of the main attractions of the Sinai Peninsula is the famous Monastery of St. Catherine's. This is an Orthodox monastery nestling in a desert valley in the heart of the Sinai Desert, not far from Mount Sinai itself. I will not go into the history of this extraordinary complex, which is described well here, and here, (both articles worth a visit), but it is an extraordinary place, easily interesting enough to warrant the long drive from Sharm or Dahab. Luckily for me, the day we chose for this excursion there was no wind at all, so I had no remorse about missing out on windsurfing. Yup, all culture, that's me.

A mini-bus picked us up at seven-thirty in the morning and we drove off towards St. Catherine's through the growing heat. Our guide was a pleasant young fellow who gave us an interesting talk on the history of the Sinai, from the times of Moses through to the establishment of the Christian monastery, its survival in the early days of Islam, the matter of the Six Day's War and Camp David (the agreement was signed at St. Catherine's Rest House - just a few miles away from the monastery) and on the current relations between the Orthodox monks who still lead the monastic life at St. Catherine's and the local population. He also told us that the Bedouins of the Sinai fall into two quite distinct groups: the "modern" bedouins, who live near the tourist enclaves and make a living from them, and the "traditional" bedouins, who lead a very tough nomadic existence in the desert as their ancestors have done for centuries.

It struck me that he discussed a number of potentially prickly subjects in a most balanced and delicate manner. I feel sure that had there been Muslim and Hebrew tourists in the mini-bus as well as Christians, none of them would have felt offended by anything he said, and that is no mean feat.

The drive through the desert probably seems less extraordinary to Americans and Australians, who have deserts of their own, but for this European, the desert landscape is spell-binding. The colours, the forms, textures, and heat of the desert are all unfamiliar and enthralling. The Sinai contains mountain ranges, gravel plains, stretches of sand, rocky ranges of hills - the colours range from beige and ochre through oranges, scarlets, blood-reds, blacks, greys and slatey-blue. Something about the scale and nature of the land creates a powerful psychological effect, stirring feelings of awe, respect, peacefulness. When some green appears in the landscape it makes an impact. Who knows what a desert-born Bedouin would think if he flew from the Sinai to somewhere like Tuscany.

The visit to the monastery itself was a little bit of a let-down. A mile downhill from the monastery's ramparts there is a staging post where dozens of coaches and mini-busses disgorge hundreds upon hundreds of tourists. Many of these are Orthodox faithful, both Greek and Russian. Many others, such ourselves, simply curious. The buildings inside the monastery complex are closely packed and the passageways linking them are narrow. They become packed as underground trains at rush hour, and that makes it almost impossible to appreciate the symbolism, the beauty, the peace which must reign there when the complex is closed and lives as it was intended to. It is easy to understand why the holy men of Mount Athos in Greece decided to impose severe restrictions on the number and nature of the visitors they allow in every year.

One unique aspect of the monastery is that it also houses a mosque. The tower of the minaret rises beside the bell-tower of the church and it seems the mosque was built there in order to protect St. Catherine's by making it a holy site for Muslims as well as for Christians. In the earliest days of Islam in Egypt, the story goes that the monastery was subject to frequent attacks by bedouins who wanted to raid the gold and silver treasures within. The monks decided to invite the Prophet Mohammed himself to visit the monastery, trusting that when he saw their good and simple way of life, he would ensure their survival by granting his blessing. The Prophet did indeed say that the monastery should not be attacked by Muslims, on condition that the monks paid a kind of Danegeld to them. Nowadays it seems that the locals must make a good deal of money by selling various goods and services to the crowds of tourists coming to visit the monastery.

After the long bus-ride the hot and overcrowded environment of St. Catherine's was soon too much for S, who began saying he hated the place and wanted to get out. Once outside though his good humour returned and when I suggested a bit of mountain-climbing he shot up the sun-burnt slopes like a chamoix. The view from a few hundred yards up the slope made the entire journey worthwhile.

S fell fast asleep on the return journey after lunch in a nearby hotel. We got back to the Swiss Inn by early evening, in time to have a swim and rest before our pool-side supper.

As usual when a holiday goes well, the days flashed past in a blur. All too soon the week was over and it was time to pack up and go home. We envied a Swiss-Australian couple with a little girl who were staying on for another week, but could only be glad that everything had worked out exactly as we had hoped. Our flight from Sharm to Rome was scheduled to leave at ten in the evening. Luckily the Swiss Inn was able to leave us our room, at a small additional charge, for the entire day. This meant we could enjoy the day by the sea then have a shower, change and finish our packing in all calm.

The mini-bus to Sharm airport collected us at seven in the evening. Darkness fell as we drove back along the same road we had taken before. At one point a desert-fox crossed the road in a flash before us. For some reason foxes seem particularly attractive creatures to me, and the fennec of the desert still more so. That one should cross our path seemed like a good omen.

We reached the airport without any trouble at all and put our cases through the x-ray machine. A policeman stopped me and made go back. I thought he wanted me to go through the check again, but no. Another policeman came forward and said ominously "Coral. Bug broblem." He pointed at the scanner display. I saw what the "bug broblem" was. S had collected fragments of dead and bleached coral on the sea-shore at Dahab and this showed up inside the case. I offered to leave these worthless fragments behind, but this only created a still more sombre expression in the police. "No. This bug sirius broblem. Broblem for you and for me." I began to see the light. "Well. We must find a solution. What solution can we find?" The solution was explained conspiratorially, sotto-voce: "Hundred dollar. In bus-port." Well, what would you have done? Stood on principle? Twenty euro found their way into my passport, handed over for a second inspection and that solved that problem. I felt a little bit annoyed about this sting, but no more than a little. I doubt these fellows get much of a salary and with all the money passing under their noses all day every day it is not hard to understand their inclination to dip in and fish a little out.

In the following hours Sharm airport revealed its true colours as one of the world's most amazingly and cheerfully disorganised airports ever. Finding out where to check in our luggage required a major investigation since none of the desks and none of the departures screens gave the least indication about it. Having checked in, we headed off to the departures lounge. It turned out to be a single vast hall, heaving with tourists. We were encouraged to see that the flat screens indicated out flight was on time, but soon discovered that this information bore no relation whatsoever to reality. All flights were departing with not less than two hours delay and the screens cheerfully posted them as Now Boarding, Departed etc when the passengers were still flopped out on the floor of the "lounge".

Entertainment was provided for all by means of the departure gate management system. As usual, the loud-speakers announced the world's second-most frequent lie ("last call for flight such-and-such") dozens of times. Great crowds would form at the relevant gate and then it would turn out either that the gate was wrong, or that the flight wasn't anywhere near boarding, or both. The net effect was that everyone completely lost faith in the loud-speaker announcements and paid them no attention any more. So, when a flight really was ready to board, airport attendants would have to walk up and down the airport calling out the flight again and again, searching for passengers. Of course this lead to further delays as passengers who had checked in couldn't be found. The last passengers to come trotting along to their gate invariably earned a loud cheer and sarcastic applause from all the others in the lounge. It was quite amusing in spite of being so late.

Our flight, which was due to depart at ten in the evening, finally took off at half-past midnight. Instead of arriving at two in the morning, we arrived at four, and got home again at five.

Later that morning I got in to work feeling more than a little like a zombie. Fortunately the following day was a national holiday so there was hardly anyone around, either in the office or at our customers'. I ploughed through piles of accumulated email. It was a fairly quiet day and in the early evening as I was beginning to think about heading home, the phone rang. It was T.

I felt ill. Reuters confirmed that bombs had been detonated by terrorists on Dahab's shopping strip, a mile or so from where we had been staying. The news was confused - suicide bombers, not suicide bombers, a hotel hit, no hotel hit, over a hundred wounded, varying numbers of people killed. I wondered if the people we had met down in Egypt were all OK and sent an email to the windsurfing club wishing well to all there. A reply was soon back saying that all staff and guests were accounted for and well - thank God. Most of the victims of the three attacks were Egyptians. Several foreigners were wounded, a handful killed, including a five-year old German boy. God help all the people suffering because of the violence of others.

The tragic and savage attack made me wonder if I had done ill to choose Dahab for a family holiday. Terrorist attacks had struck the Red Sea coast in previous years, killing many locals and visitors, but I had reckoned it unlikely that this area would be struck again. Tourism is a key asset for the Egyptian economy and I thought the state would be able to ensure safety in the Red Sea area, which is one the most popular of all with foreigners. Before setting out I had thought that all considered, Dahab appeared no more dangerous a destination than London or Paris, perhaps less dangerous than Copenhagen following the uproar about satyrical and irreverent religious cartoons in a Danish newspaper.

A good kiwi friend who called me just before we left, had said "Have a good time. Dodge the bombs. Take care." I didn't think about it for more than a moment at the time, but his macabre farewell joke had turned dreadfully true.

And then I also reflected on the influence the media have on our way of seeing events. How often do we drive over stretches of road where fatal accidents recently occurred? Statistically, and crossing-fingers, our chances of getting hurt in a car accident are a good deal higher than our chances of getting hurt in a terrorist attack, but our perception of the risk is completely different, because of the way it is presented to us.

Or again, this terrible attack, which took place 24 hours after I left, stirred strong feelings of anxiety, concern for the people I had met there and their friends and families, however briefly, simply because I had been there. Yet there are parts of the world were attacks such as these, and worse ones by far, occur on a weekly if not daily basis. They are so frequent that they scarcely even make the newspapers any more. I read the news, feel bad for those poor people for a little and then get on with my life. Yet the bloodshed and suffering are exactly the same.

I remember a conversation I had had with one of the Egyptians at the windsurfing club. We were sitting in the evening chatting about religion and I had mentioned to him our driver, who had lost his new-born baby daughter. The windsurf assistant said:

"She will wait for him and she will help him when he dies. He should not be sad. She is an angel, waiting for him."

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