ONE evening, many years ago, I sat atop the roof of a monastery in the Natron Valley, Egypt, with a Coptic Christian clergyman. I called him Abuna Shedraq. Abuna is a title in the Coptic tradition, as how one would refer to a priest as “Father.”

Abuna’s robe was black, and so was his headdress. A cross was tattooed over his left vein. He had lived there for several years: isolated, locked in the desert, without television,