It's the eve of Ramadan, and the sun is sinking behind Sinai's
ragged mountains. After a long day's hike, I'm taking in the
view from the summit of Jebel Abbas Pasha, among the ruins of a
palace commissioned by a viceroy of Egypt called Abbas Hilmi
Pasha. Abbas, the story goes, suffered from tuberculosis and
wanted a desert equivalent of a Swiss sanatorium. But he was not
popular with his servants: he once had a red-hot horseshoe
nailed to the foot of a groom who was slacking on the job. So
the underling did him in before the consumption could, and only
the first-storey walls of the palace were built. Dressed blocks
of stone lie abandoned at the entrance, as though a grateful
workforce simply walked off the job when the news broke. If
Ozymandias had a home, this would be it. Poor old Abbas is
largely forgotten these days. Most tourists who venture inland
from Egypt's Red Sea coast visit just two places, and I could
see one of them from my perch on Jebel Abbas Pasha: the summit
of Jebel Musa or Mount Sinai, wh