AP Interview: US women call Egypt captors 'kind'

CAIRO — Their kidnappers gave them tea and dried fruit, and talked about religion and tribal rights. The California women were allowed to bring their Egyptian tour guide with them. One even put out his cigarette in the car when a hostage said the smoke was bothering her.

The women abducted for several hours Friday by armed Bedouin tribesmen in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula hesitated to call the men "captors," saying that the kidnappers were kind, polite and hospitable.

"All of this is an unforgettable memory," Norma Supe, a 63-year-old nurse from Union City, Calif., told The Associated Press. "Maybe God had a purpose for this. It was probably to encourage more faith in me."

Supe and Patti Ganal, of Los Gatos, Calif., were snatched Friday from a minivan on a tour of Sinai, a restive region that has seen security crumble since Egypt's popular uprising last year. There have been attacks on police stations and bombings of gas pipelines running through Sinai.

The abduction happened after Ganal, Supe, Ganal's husband and two other Americans had finished a tour of the sixth-century St. Catherine's Monastery, located at the foot of Mount Sinai where the Old Testament says Moses received the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments.

Their Egyptian tour guide, Hisham Zaki, was allowed to go with the women. Ganal, 66, who works as a leader on tours to Egypt, Jordan and Israel, offered herself as a hostage after the tribesmen demanded that two Americans get off the bus. Her husband was too physically challenged to go, she said.

"I was not afraid at all because I know God has sent us here," Ganal told the AP in Cairo, where the group was continuing with its tour.

Supe also volunteered when she noticed the two other tourists crouched under the van's windows in fear.

The Bedouins, known for their traditional way of life and hospitality, were dressed in long white robes and checkered head scarves, had Kalashnikov rifles visible, but did not hold their hostages at gunpoint, the women said.

Zaki, who had translated the kidnappers' demands from Arabic to English, asked to accompany the women as their translator. The kidnappers let him.

The Bedouins drove for a few hours through the mountains, and suggested to the women that they were doubling as new tour guides. "They reassured us, they are just continuing our tour in the mountains," Ganal said. "I said, 'Yes, what a beautiful scene.'"

Ganal, a devout Christian, said she began talking to the men about God and faith while Zaki translated.