Modern Dilemma

**I guess tonight's bombing sort of seals the deal...Eilat? Naah**

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While walking the dog this ayem, I stopped into my neighborhood cafe to wish the owners a top of the morning. Strewn across one of the tables was a copy of Israel's Yediot Ahronot daily with a cover photo that begged caption reading.

For anyone who has ever liened in one of the Sinai Desert's "crunchier" spots, today's image was classic: Israelis lounging beside Sudanese and Bedouins on the multi-colored carpets that line cushions of Bedouin tent hangouts. Barefoot, sipping glasses of hot tea with mint, deeply tanned. The caption went something like: We're not afraid and we're not coming home just yet

Well judging by the ear-to-ear grins, no wonder they're not feeling particularly alarmed by Monday's triple blast a dog's bark away that claimed 28 lives. They appeared to be on the "special Sinai plan", if you know what I mean.

I want to go down to the Sinai too and hang out in the Bedouin tents playing backgammon with Suleiman or Assi, depending upon who sits down first. I don't desire the "special plan" but I do want to Scuba dive, sunbathe, read by candlelight when the sun goes down while drinking cheap wine from a paper cup and nibbling post-melt, malformed chocolate bars I've lugged across the border in my rucksack.

I've been longing for such a retreat for months. But every time I mention it people warn that the Israeli government is advising against travel down south yonder due to all sorts of unstable types that do things like blow up tourists as a means of further improving Egypt's perenially-suffering tourism industry.

I generally poo-poo those type warnings but then my radar isn't always up to speed. My brother, at wit's end and disgusted with my "they'll never fire missiles on us" brevity, took it upon himself to seal a room in our shared Tel Aviv apartment 24 hours prior to missile strikes back in 1991.

So what's a girl to do? And considering my family's combined passport mix - Israeli, American and Danish - we really won't announce our origins or current domicile should we go desert bound lest an Al Qaeda squadron be lurking nearby. Traveling with a very verbal 4-year-old informant however - I'm from San Francisco and my mommy says you never pay for dinner. Is that true? - might present a liability.

So what's the alternative? Eilat? No comment. Divers, silence seekers and chusha enthusiasts everywhere know exactly what I'm talking about right here. Who wants to blow up a bungalow village anyhow? But apparently someone did.

I'll have to give this one some thought.