Halloween in Sharm El-Sheikh

SHARM El-Sheikh hosted the Gaza peace summit recently. Two years ago, during a family trip to Egypt, we stayed for a few days in this beautiful resort town located along the Red Sea. It was teeming with tourists, mostly from Western countries. The weather was good, the sky was clear.

In the evening, as we headed for dinner, we saw lanterns hanging from palm trees and hollow pumpkins grinning in imported orange plastic. We heard freaky music and shrieks. Wide screens showed zombies and blood-curdling videos. Little did we realise that it was Halloween night — not in New York or London, but in Egypt, known as the land of ancient spirits.

The staff, mostly young Muslim men and women, wore ghost masks and witches’ hats, enacting scenes of fright and delight to entertain tourists from Europe, the US and beyond. Their movements were choreographed carefully — everything was designed to make the guests feel at home. The management might have called it ‘themed hospitality’, but to an outsider watching quietly from a balcony, it felt more like a theatre of contradictions.

That night, a few hundred miles away, Gaza was burning. News flashes on the resort’s muted TV screens told us about airstrikes and funerals, families crying amidst rubble and sirens. The irony was nearly unbearable — a Halloween of make-believe ghouls was taking place while ‘real ghosts’ were being born across the border. The performers smiled beneath painted masks, perhaps knowing this dissonance too well. For them, Halloween was not a tradition; it was a means of livelihood, a global ritual of service to the world’s restless tourists. After all, the economy of pleasure demanded a performance even when the world outside was crumbling.

One could sense the tension in the air — the flicker of conscience behind their masks, the quiet in their eyes when the music faded. Some of them could have had some connection with Palestine or memories linking them to the soil scorched by conflict. Yet here they were, celebrating Halloween under the shimmer of resort lights, because in this corner of the world, survival often meant smiling through discomfort.

The tourists took selfies with the costumed staff, sharing joy that rose far above worldly pain. For them, this was a break from ordinary life, a night of harmless fright. But to those who looked deeper, the spectacle was almost allegorical — a reflection of humanity’s ability to celebrate amidst catastrophe, to turn away from suffering so long as it is distant and to mask collective discomfort beneath painted faces.

When the party ended, the staffers quietly removed their masks, wiping sweat from their brows. The pumpkins dimmed, the tourists retreated to their rooms, and the real, wounded world returned to silence. The stark reality of the ruthless tourism business stood exposed, where every smile or service is a transaction designed to keep the cash flowing.