EGYPT: The Sinai blasts risk ruining Egypt's biggest industry and locals fear for their livelihoods if the tourists stay away, reports Chris Stephen
Jiwal is an Egyptian university-trained archeologist specialising in the rich history of his own country. In different circumstances he would be employed investigating the legacy of generations of pharaohs.
Instead, hard times and a lack of connections mean the best job he can get is putting out white deck chairs each morning on the hot sand of a resort hotel on the Red Sea coast. And after the Taba bomb across the water in the Sinai, Jiwal - his name means "Friday" - fears even this job may be about to disappear.
"Everyone is talking about the bombs," says Jiwal. "Everyone is worried that the tourists might go away." His fears are well founded.
Egypt's tourism industry - its biggest hard currency earner - was dealt a hammer blow in 1997 when Islamic terrorists killed 58 tourists at Luxor on the Nile.
They stayed away again last year because of the war in nearby Iraq, but this year was supposed to be different. Egypt has no oil, and so has worked hard to make tourism its alternative source to riches. It is hard not to be impressed by the results.
President Hosni Mubarak declared tourism "Egypt's future industry" and poured resources into it. His tourism ministry promotes both the culture-tours around the pyramids and, increasingly, sand-and-sea mass tourism on the Red Sea.
This stretch of once-deserted coastline has been transformed into a series of sprawling resorts.
Sensitive to security worries, Egypt created the Tourist Police, whose officers in their white jump suits and black berets wander Hurghada keeping order.
Unusually for policemen in the Middle East, they are happy to offer directions to lost tourists, and crack down hard even on the smallest complaint of harassment. The formula was working: the town is crammed with tourists, crime is low, and visitor numbers jumped 25 per cent this year to over six million.
And then came Taba. The bombs that wrecked the Hilton hotel and two sites to the south have reverberated well beyond the Sinai peninsula. Police checkpoints have been thrown up along the desert highway around Hurghada and in the town itself. The single orthodox church - Egypt has a small Christian community - is guarded by armed police.
But tourism is a difficult target to defend. Standing on the dazzling coast on the edge of town the problem stretches out before you: mile after mile of hotel complexes march away into the heat haze, all of which must somehow be guarded.
Also, tourism is particularly sensitive to unrest. Businessmen may take risks to travel, but tourists rarely do. "We don't want tourists to feel frightened, we are happy to have them here," says Jiwal. "You can see for yourself."
Up the beach, Mizo (26) has worked hard to create a wind-surfing business by the Golden Five hotel. He battled through a sea of bureaucracy to import boards and sails to create the perfect learning centre - pupils practice in a lagoon, then move to the nearby sea to try things out for real. Now he, too, is worried that the investment may count for nothing. "This is a good place to learn windsurfing, the conditions are right. There is no hostility to tourists here. We want to see them, we want the work."
The Taba bombing has also hit at a fault line of Egyptian politics - the yawning gap between rich and poor. "There is no middle class here," explains Ibrahim (30), a science graduate who escorts snorkellers around the local coral reefs. "Political opinions in my country are simple. If you are rich, you like the president. If you are poor, you do not."
One danger is that the government will respond to the bombings with security crackdowns, which in the past have targeted not just religious extremists but more moderate groups as well.
Not the least of Egypt's achievements was to attract tourists from their former enemy, Israel, to its resorts on the Sinai. This has almost certainly been stopped by the Taba bomb. Whether the wider tourist boom will suffer, only time can tell. All along this coast everyone from politicians to deck-chair minders are watching anxiously.