At the foot of the tallest mountain in central-south Sinai lies an unexpected swath of green. It appears as if placed there by mistake, a color block in an otherwise terracotta red valley. Closer up, the elements of the smudge take shape, revealing a walled orchard, a field of tall leafy plants, olive trees and a tent. The buzzing of a generator can be heard.

For Ramadan Abu Sayed, this garden has been home for nearly 25 years. It is where his children and grandchildren were born. Sometimes hikers and backpackers pay a small fee to sleep among its trees. Today, in the midst of the downturn in tourism that followed the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the garden provides fruit and vegetables for Abu Sayed’s family.

“I’m growing pomegranates, peaches, lemons, oranges here,” said Abu Sayed, the setting sun hitting the peaks of the mountains above him. Abu Sayed, these days a quiet man in a dark gray thawb and blue scarf, grew up deeper in Sinai's mountains and moved closer to the city of Saint Catherine in the 1990s in the hope of finding work, schools for his children and health care for his aging parents.

At the time, the little town showed promise. Tourists, pilgrims and hikers had been gravitating toward the Sinai mountains since the 1960s, so gardens like Abu Sayed’s were often packed with visitors. A good livelihood could be made from tourism, and by the 1980s many Saint Catherine Bedouin had begun to leave mountain life for the newer trade.