The Lower Depths

A Problem of Wealth

2005-04-10T11:24:00.000-07:00

Pity the Cairene upper class. Go back a hundred years and things were so simple - if you had somehow struck it rich in the colonial system, it was easy to live the rich life (though you eventually hit the wall of British racism - some of their clubs required European blood). You simply set up shop in downtown Cairo in some beautiful new colonial building, covered with marble floors and beautiful views - perhaps of the pristine Nile, perhaps of a broad new square or avenue.

Now jump forward fifty years. Nasser has nationalized the country, staring down the British, French and Israelis by even nationalizing the Suez canal. The British still remaining in Cairo might bemoan the old days, but now you are allowed into the exclusive Gezira club, and if you are newly wealthy you're probably keyed into the coterie of officers who staged the coup against the inept King Farouk. True, the downtown of fifty years ago has dirtied somewhat, and grown too chaotic, but you've simply moved to Zamalek, the neighborhood adjacent to the Gezira club on the island across from downtown, or you've moved slightly further - to the west and Mohendiseen and Dokki, or further east in downtown.

Go forward another twenty years. The population of Cairo has doubled in size countless times since seventy years before. The late Anwar Sadat has begun the process of opening the Egyptian economy to the West (called infitah), and if you're in the Egyptian elite you're probably reaping the fruits of privatization while the Nasserist old guard peers at you suspiciously. You've no doubt abandoned Mohendiseen and Dokki - they were too quickly filled with lower class bureaucrats - and you've moved even further afield, to Maadi, south of even Giza, and to Heliopolis (or Misr Gedida - "new Cairo" in Arabic) - out east almost in the desert, where even the president has built his palace. Here you can have broad streets built for cars, with gas stations and fast food restaurants everywhere.

And come to today. Cairo has become one of the worlds megalopolises, with tens of millions of residents and a thick haze of smog that causes to be humid where once it was dry as the desert. People are everywhere, and cars are everywhere - parking on sidewalks, zooming around eachother, and honking constantly, from Shubra in the west to Maadi in the south to Heliopolis in the east. If you're rich today you've somehow placed yourself in the middle of the vast amounts of money flowing into the country from America and from the Gulf. And you've adopted their modes of development. Pull out further, create yet another gated community out in the desert, so that you can escape the honking and noise and the site of millions of fellaheen fresh from their migration from Upper Egypt searching for any way to bring food home.

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It's at such a development that I found myself on Friday. I went out to my friend Sumaya's compound far east of Cairo, called 6 of October City (after the October War in '73). The best thing to compare it to is an American exurb, particularly one that might be found in Utah or Arizona. A compound of identical beautiful villas with curving rolling streets where kids can play football (not the American variety, of course) while their parents watch the news on flatscreen TVs and drink cocktails. Sumaya's family is quite charming - her father is a homeopathic doctor and her mother a painter - but I was most captivated by the compound itself. As Sumaya's chauffeur drove us out, we watched sporadic bursts of development, with a new compound here and a glitzy new supermarket there. It seems that the further you drive into the desert outside Cairo, the closer you come to Middle America.

There are other ways to spend money here. One acquaintance, the Oxford-educated son of an Egyptian construction magnet, lives in a 14th story apartment in Zamalek (where I'm currently staying), but with half of the floor, polished wood floors, jaw-dropping 180 degree Nile views, and a large home theatre with which to watch Larry Clark movies.

Or you can simply stay in one of Cairo's numerous five-star hotels, many quite ostentatiously out of place, seeming more appropriate for some place like Dubai - not particularly surprising, with the many Gulfies passing through Cairo, particularly in the summer. The main Cairo skyline, actually, consists of these massive hotels - from the Meridien to the Ramses Hilton to the Nile Hilton to the Semiramis to the Sheraton to the Grand Hyatt, the newest of the hotels. I visited the Grand Hyatt last weekend to see a movie, and passing by the glass piano and string quartet stringing away over the Nile, it was possible for just a second to imagine I'd somehow tapped into that Gulf money.

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But I hadn't and I haven't. I'm actually scrimping by on next to no money, but am having a rousing time of it. I've been in Cairo for three weeks, and I'm terribly sorry for the delay in updating my blog - it's been about a month now. I'm working for the Tharwa Project, a website/NGO focusing on minority issues in the Arab world. I'm just writing updates on developments in Egyptian and Sudanese politics and, eventually, the occasional in-depth article about minority issues. I'm also starting to freelance for Cairo magazine, a newly retooled version of the Cairo Times. If all goes according to plan my first article there should be up by the end of the week.

I do now have a cell-phone, and I don't pay a dime for receiving calls, so feel free to call 20.010.369.1480. (Or if that doesn't work, 2.010.369.1480.) If you're interested in paying exhorbitant rates to talk to me, than I'm interested in talking to you.

Finally, if I manage to work through all the details, I'm planning on being back in the states by late June and then starting at Columbia School of Journalism in early August. I'm looking forward to seeing everybody.

And that may be it for this blog. I might update a couple times before I go - particularly if I force myself out of Cairo and see anything interesting. But right now I'm going to try to jump back into politics - with an emphasis on the Mideast, because I'm obsorbing quite a bit of that right now - over at Political Fictions.

Peace.

Wadi Barada

2005-03-16T02:31:00.000-08:00

So I spent the past several days staying in a village up in the mountains to the northwest of Damascus. Early last week I was reading in a park when I met Youssef, an 18-year old economics student who was very excited to be meeting an American. We chatted for awhile, and then he invited me to stay with him. This is a common-enough thing here in Syria, and I explained that all my stuff was at a hotel and I consequently wouldn't be able to. But Youssef showed up twice at the hotel the next several days, and eventually I agreed to go stay at his house. And it was certainly worth it.

The Barada River runs from way up in the moutains on the Syrian-Lebanese border down through Damascus. Wadi Barada is a particular cluster of villages around the river some 45 km northwest of Damascus. Kfeir el-Zeit is Youssef's village in Wadi Barada. The scenery is absolutely stunning. There are snow-capped mountains everywhere in the background, and the villages of the Wadi are all built on the slopes of the hills around the river. While the main building material is, as everywhere, concrete, this doesn't diminish the beauty of the village.

Youssef lives with his immediate family on the top floor of a three story building. He shares a room with his 16-year old brother Rami, and as far as I could tell his sister Nehma slept in their parents room. Bashir, Youssef's father, is a banker in Damascus with the government real-estate bank. I didn't meet Youssef's mother until I'd been there for a day, but Samia is an incredibly warm woman who works as a housewife and wore a veil reminiscent of an Eastern European headscarf.

Although Youssef's immediate family lives on one floor of that building, his extended family occupied the rest of the building and several others immediately adjacent. I'm not sure how many members there are total in the family, but it seemed to me close to half the village was some sort of cousin, or great grandmother, or husband of cousin etc.

And what all did I do there? I did manage to walk quite a ways around the village and its environs. Rami showed me the old colonial French train station, and we hiked along the Barada for a ways. But most of the time I was passed around Youssef's extended family and friends; I moved from one living room to another, and in each one I would be slowly introduced to increasing multitudes of friends and family. Then a meal would appear (regardless of the fact that I may have eaten one two hours before), and I'd be munching on olives and eggplant.

And oh, the food! I will admit that by the end, after my fifth or sixth meal of the day, I was beginning to tire of the food. And something I ate is surely responsible for my current stomach problems. But thankfully I can't pinpoint what that might be. Because everything was so amazing. Youssef's family grew fresh olives, apricots and walnuts, and all three of these things made repeated appearences in every meal. The apricots, in particular, made for a particularly good drink. But then there was fousulia, a bean and tomatoes stew that I never got sick of. And falafel, eggs, hummous, rice and yoghurt. But my favorite thing by far were the baby eggplants that had been stuffed with walnuts, peppers and garlic, and then marinated in olive oil. Amazing.

On Monday I accompanied Youssef's cousin Ahmed to the local middle school, where he teaches math. I sat in on two math classes, in addition to an English class and a French class. In all of the classes I was more of a distraction than anything else, but in the English class I did speak a bit with the kids, who are much better at writing than speaking the language, and in the French class I spoke a bit as well (though this was obviously more of a challange for me). I was, on the whole, fairly impressed by the school. While there were at least thirty kids to a class, the school wasn't quite as reliant on rote memorization as I'd imagined it might be. However, Ahmed is a fan of corporal punishment, and it was beyond awful watching him slam the palms of kids who'd written the wrong answer on the blackboard. (His rational was that they hadn't studied enough, but it seemed equally likely to me that they simply didn't fully understand the order of operations - what was being taught that day.)

Back in the village, conversations went all over the place. My Arabic was about the equivilent of the English of the best English teacher in the village (the school principal), so I spoke almost completely in Arabic. Everybody had the standard questions about me (what do I do? how do I like Syria? what do my parents do? how many brothers do I have?) and the standard questions about the States (what's NYC like? how tall is the tallest building in America? is GWB the president of all the Americas? is there a lot of crime?), and then of course the conversation would turn to politics and religion.

Religion I can take. People constantly ask if I'm Muslim, I reply that I'm Christian (disinterested agnostic somehow doesn't seem the appropriate answer). Then if we dwell on the subject, it's in order for me to understand that Muslims consider Jesus and Moses prophets just like they consider Muhammed a prophet. Therefore, why don't I consider Muhammed a prophet? Or, alternately: it's one thing to consider Jesus a prophet, but quite another to consider him to son of God. Because God, I must understand, is indivisible and isn't in the business of having children.

This is charming, as prosetelyzation is always charming. I think I get off on it so much because I consider the whole business not a little ridiculous - but then how else could I consider myself a secular Blue Stater?

As for politics, as much as I try to postpone it the conversation always turns to two subjects: 9/11 and Israel. For some reason the idea that the CIA was responsible for 9/11 I find just as charmingly ridiculous as much of the religious discussion. But then there's the conviction that Israel was responsible, and that 400 Jews were warned not to go to work that day. This gets me more upset every time I hear it. I repeat myself that conspiracy theories are of necessity a way of life in this region, and that this one speaks much more to ignorance than to hateful anti-Semitism, but it still gets me upset. I got the most upset while arguing with Ahmed's older brother Muhammed, who's a young doctor in the village. Muhammed had a constant barrage of questions about why Israel killed children on a daily basis, and why the US supported Israel, etc. While I'm obviously no great fan of Israel, I found myself sounding like an AIPAC activist while talking with Muhammed; while I made clear that I deplored Israel's killing of children, I said that any killing of civilians was by definition immoral. (Muhammed was of course quick to disagree.) But then I went on, saying that Israel wasn't anti-Muslim, talking about the Palestinians in the Knesset and the secular socialist origins of Zionism. When I started getting into the support of the Christian right in the States for Israel, Muhammed interrupted by asking "but don't the Christians believe that the Jews killed Jesus? Why should they support them?"

I could continue writing about this conversation ad infinitum, but suffice to say that it was long, emotionally charged, yet always civil. And I walked away both frustrated and exhausted. Frustrated because Muhammed and others like him with whom I've talked about the same stuff are incredibly kind, warm-hearted people. But there's a deep ignorance about how America works, how Israel works, and about Jewish history. Is my use of the word ignorance - rather than bigotry - simply an apologia? Perhaps. Indeed, I think it's appropriate to question the moral choice of so many people - Arabs, Americans and Israelis - to focus their rhetorical so intently on Israel/Palestine while hundreds of thousands dying in the Sudan or the Congo are ignored. (I asked Muhammed in particular about the Sudan, as it's an Arab country, and he responded that the matter wasn't as egregious as the situation in Palestine because what's happening in the Sudan is an ïnternal matter".) But at the same time, I emerged frustrated with Israel itself. The frigid relations between Syria and Israel could be solved so easily with the return of the Golan Heights - such a tiny piece of land - and such a move would, I believe, eliminate much of the Syrian regime's raison d'etre, as well as move to eliminate much of the awful ignorance/anti-Semitism found here.

Sorry for the politics. It was only a small part of my visit to Wadi Barada, but obviously it stuck with me. I ought to go now - sickness is calling - but I am, as always, eager for any feedback. If anybody is indeed reading this blog anymore.

Shi'ite Syria

2005-03-08T01:37:00.000-08:00

So yesterday I made my way out to the Mosque of Seyyida Zeynab, one of the major Shi'ite mosques in Syria. Zeynab was the grand-daughter of the prophet, and the sister of Hassan and Hussein - the latter of whom was martyred in Karbala in 680, in perhaps the defining moment of Shi'a Islam. I'm not sure that before yesterday I'd ever been to a Shi'ite mosque, and it was definitely different. The wildly simplistic analysis of the Shi'ite-Sunni split as being comparable to the Catholic-Protestant split is absolutely ridiculous historically, but aesthetically it rings a little truer. This mosque was verging on garish - with elaborately tiled blue minarets, more color than anything this side of Istanbul, and an interior consisting mainly of silver mirrors and tiles. The interior of the mosque was partitioned down the middle - half for men, and half for women. As the men walked through the door they stopped to kiss it, and many kissed the marble at the base of the door-frame.

Later on I came back to my usual activity of sitting outside the Grand Ummayad mosque, when I met Amin, an old man whose main occupation seems to be sitting there as well. Amin doesn't speak particularly good English (his vocabulary is limited to "I love you!" and "good" or "bad"), but we communicate fairly nicely in Arabic - although the main topic of conversation is how good God is, and how similarly good the prophets Mohammed, Jesus and Abraham are. If I mention how nice the sun is today, for instance, Amin likes to remark that God gives us the sun and the skies. Point being, when I mentioned that I'd just come from the mosque of Seyyida Zeynab, Amin got very excited and led me to the mosque of Seyyida Ruqayya, another close descendent of the Prophet's, and another Shi'ite mosque. This one was even more gaudy than the other, though, as it was built by Iran some fifteen years ago and was - as Lonely Planet puts it - strangely reminiscent of Vegas. Though Amin is Sunni, he went through all the rituals of kisses and bowed heads in this mosque. When I asked him about this, Amin became very excited explaining how the faithful are all a big family, and that while I am Christian, Jesus and Muhammed were like brothers and Amin and I are like cousins. We then went for some bloog-orange juice.

I'm not here to reflect on Amin, however. As I was returning from Seyyida Zeynab, I reflected a bit on weird religious makeup of Syria, and how that plays out in its politics. Although the Asad family is Alawite (a small breakoff from Shiism that considers one of the later of Shi'ism's twelve Imams to have been a divine being), it has not maintained its power for the past 35 years by relying on Alawite supremacy - although the Alawite presense in the upper echelons of the military counts for much. Many of Hafez al-Asad's closest advisors were actually Sunni patricians; these men actually remain in the current power structure - Khaddem as VP, Shara'a as Foreign Minister and Tlass as deputy VP. These Sunni military guys had significant ties with Hariri, and also with the Saudis.

But where did this leave Syria's Shi'ite population - numbering around 700,000, or some 5% of the population? One of the most surprising alliances in the ME - and one of the strongest - is that between Syria and Iran. This alliance emerged in the 70s out of a mutual dislike of the Ba'athist regime in Iraq. (Although Syria and Iraq both had Ba'athist regimes - and although the central tenet of Ba'athism is pan-Arabism - they were quite cold to eachother up until the late 90s, when a small rapprochement occured.) Today, of course, Syria and Iraq are the prime Middle Eastern bogeymen of the Bush administration, and this has pushed them even closer together. (One Iranian paper, reacting to Bashar's speech on Saturday, claimed that Iran ought to support Syria as much as possible right now because the Americans are trying to push Syria out of the way so that Iran can be completely isolated in the neighborhood.) This alliance is only cemented with both contries increasingly intimate ties with Moscow - Putin just forgave most of Syria's huge Cold War debt on Asad's recent trip north, and Russia is of course intent on aiding Iran's nuclear energy program.

This means that Syria is moderately considerate of its Shi'ite citizens - although the mandatory religious education in Syrian schools is completely Sunni. But there is that Iranian-built mosque that I visited yesterday, and evidently the Seyyida Zeynab mosque was flooded with pilgrims for Ashura several weeks ago.

Our Leader For Ever... Amen.

2005-03-05T11:54:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching Bashar al-Asad's gripping speech to the Syrian parliament. Oddly enough, there were no vehement boos, as might happen in the House of Commons, or even stern sitting, as might happen in Congress. Rather, the parliament of dainty white-haired old men was quite enthusiastic over just about everything Bashar said. Weird.

I do apologize for communicating even less than the esteemed Mr. Asad. I've been busy pursuing professional goals - such as interviews and job stuff - and have neglected my travelogue. Though not my travels. I've managed to see much of Damascus and its surroundings, and I'm thoroughly enchanted. Although modern Damascus makes for a severely poor first impression, there's a lot that grows on you. In particular I want to emphasize how incredible so much of the city could become with some steady attention and money. If the kind of (mostly Saudi-money) flowing through Beirut suddenly shifted to Damascus, the renovated Damascene houses cum-hotels or -restaurants would make this city beyond charming.

There are definite charms, however, to be found in today's Damascus. Chief among them is the 1973 October War Panorama memorial. This is a snappy little propaganda piece put up six years ago after a collaborative effort of the Syrians and the North Koreans. I kid you not. The museum is full of elaborate oil paintings depicting nationalist scenes from history (the Palmyrans resisting the Romans, Salah el-Din after his defeat of the crusaders), a whole room devoted to the beloved Hafez al-Asad (including a display of adulatory letters written in the blood of grateful Syrian soldiers), and of course the panorama itself. This was a beauty of a room which entails visitors sitting on a circular platform that slowly rotates to the drum-beat of patriotic music, allowing you to see a full 360 degree oil-painted recreation of the battle of Quneitra in the Golan Heights. I'll let you guess which side is portrayed as cowards and which side as courageous unflinching heroes. There's obviously much to be said against Pyongyang, but they certainly know how to make propaganda like it's nobody's business. You can only imagine my disappointment, therefore, to realize that this amazing place had no gift shop.

On a slightly less ridiculous note, I spent the day several days ago visiting Maalula, a quaint little village some 50 km north of Damascus. Maalula has several active Christian monasteries, but was most remarkable for its positioning. The village is perched on a hillside facing east - towards the Damascus-Aleppo highway and after that the desert. Above the village rocky cliffs jut out on either side. I hiked up one of these cliffs and was afforded some amazing views to the west of the Anti-Lebanon range - this is actually not far geographically from Baalbek (though I'm sure the social differences between primarily Christian Maalula and Hizbollah central Baalbek are rather extreme). I was equally fascinated, of course, by the sheer drops into the village that faced me to the east.

These monasteries were rather interesting, however. One of them, the Monastery of St. Sergius, was built half-way up the hill past the village on the site of an old pagan temple. Most interesting here was the square altar, which was the same alter used by the pagans. (Oh those pagans!) When the early Christians converted it, they added some raised edges just to make clear that they weren't intending on sacrificing anything on it, animal or otherwise.

The other monastery was further down the hill, perched just above the village. To get to it I had to walk through a long winding ravine that's supposedly reminiscent of Petra, but with enough grafitti and beer cans to remind me less of Indiana Jones than of some humbling nights on the banks of the Susquehanna River. The monastery at the end of this gorge was the Monastery of St. Thecla, some poor woman whom the Romans took an intense disliking to, and who was forced to flee towards the cliffs of Maalula. As the story goes, Ms. Thecla was delivering some presumably fevered prayers to Yahweh when, lo and behold, the cliff opened up and the Baccanalian gorge was born. (As for Ms. Thecla, she escaped the loathesome Romans, and grew so enamoured of the little gorge - can you imagine those Aramaic parties? - that she stuck around and died there. Then they built a monastery.)

I just finished reading Kazantzakis's Saint Francis, and therefore I have sainthood on the mind. Not that I consider myself a candidate - my lust for hummus fetteh alone would disqualify me - but its certainly an interesting thing to contemplate. What exactly differentiates sainthood from a cult of personality (and oh how I long for a personality with its own cult!)? Granted, Ms. Thecla cleft a cliff, and Mr. Asad senior totalled Hama. But both of them got thousands of people to hang up really cheesy pictures of them.

Jebel Qassioun

2005-02-25T09:07:00.000-08:00

I've been in Damascus for the past several days, endlessly wandering streets and suffering from a cold. In my mind the cold can be blamed on the rather beledi man who sat next to me for much of the 13-hour train ride to Damascus, who hacked and snored and made many other disgusting noises the whole time. But I probably had this cold before him.

I'm staying at a backpacker's hostel here, and it's actually a great opportunity to meet other people: one of my roommates is an ethnic Arab French guy who's come to Damascus to learn Arabic, and several Russians who were across the hall were quite interesting to talk to, though they did slip into a rather heated tirade against Chechens. Last night I walked around Damascus with a lanky German fellow who'd studied Arabic for awhile; we spoke only fusha, or Modern Standard Arabic, together, and met up with his Syrian friend at the Goethe Institute.

Today I climbed up Jebel Qassioun, which is the mountain that overlooks Damascus. It's from here that the Prophet first saw the city and declared that he would go no further because "I only want to enter Paradice once". While the view was certainly beautiful, there's now a little too much concrete for Damascus to make any claim to being paradise. It does, however, have a certain charm. While I'm not welcomed with tea and soda every ten steps, as I was in Deir ez-Zur, this is mainly due to cosmopolitanism, which Damascus has to a greater degree than any city I've been in since Istanbul (not high praise, I suppose). But the north-west of the city is impressively swanky, filled as it is with embassies and cronies of the regime. As you go further south and east the city becomes much more dirty and congested, until, that is, the Old City, which is the most amazing place here. Twisting street upon twisting street, all of them with huge walls hiding amazing old Damascene mansions. I plan to visit a hammam in the Old City, maybe tonight.

And with that, I'm off.

Deir ez-Zur

2005-02-22T02:33:00.000-08:00

I'm in Deir ez-Zur today, which is an amazing little city along the Euphrates in southeast Syria. The city center is half a kilometer from the river, but there's a beautiful pedestrian suspension bridge that goes across. Deir ez-Zur reminds me a bit of what Cairo might have been like eighty years ago, or what Aswan is like today, without the tourist industry. It's a very relaxed atmosphere, with people strolling through the streets and drinking lots of chai and soda, and friendlier than Fred Rogers. I can't walk fifty meters without introducing myself to somebody new, most of whom want to buy me tea. (It's remarkable my teeth haven't turned completely yellow what with the amount of tea I've drunk since arriving in Istanbul.)

Last night I met some men in the main square here - centered around, shockingly, a statue of the late H. al-Asad - who were getting their shoes polished, and insisted on paying for mine to be polished as well. They were a group of men who divide their time between Deir ez-Zur and Homs, which is between Damascus and Aleppo. They insisted that I return with them to their apartment, which I did. It was a surreal experience: they had a satellite TV, and we spent several hours drinking tea, smoking the nargileh (well, they did), and eating sunflower seeds while flipping through hundreds of channels. They were particularly fond of a channel that advertised for a sex chat-line, and that consisted of rather dull techno music over continued zoom-ins on a hideously ugly, bleached blonde, bikini-clad model reclining on a red Porsche. "Now this is a beautiful woman, Philip" one of them said in Arabic, using the French pronunciation of my name.

Traveling by myself is very much like this: I'm approaced much more often than when I was traveling with Stefania and Luke. When I was taking a van from Mardin to Nusaybin, the Turkish border town from where I crossed-over, I met a 26 year old school teacher who invited me to his apartment to be his guest. I declined because I was feeling a little sickly, but it was indicative of how different traveling alone is. The folks last night wanted me to sleep at their apartment as well (I didn't as I'd already checked into a hotel, and am entirely too fond of Western toilets). But talking with all of these people, my Arabic is coming back quite fast - and I'm slowly weening myself off of various Egyptian phrases and pronunciations. I'm at the level where I can convince people that I speak much better than I do, and they start to speak very fast till I can't understand. Here in Deir ez-Zur it's particularly hard, as the language is almost more Iraqi than Syrian.

I'd been quite nervous crossing the Syrian border, partially due to the recall of the US ambassador, but mainly due to the fact that such situations always make me nervous. However, it went off without a hitch. I had to go through maybe ten soldiers who couldn't really read my the English in my passport and wanted to know my parents names (and couldn't quite get their mouths around "Barbara"), but all of them were nothing but polite. Only one complained about the US invasion of Iraq. Later on, while on the bus from the Syrian border-town of Qamishle to Deir ez-Zur, we stopped at a checkpoint where the guards went through all the luggage under the bus. When they got to my bag the head soldier said "Don't open that, that's the American bag".

I spent one miserable night in Qamishle, which was almost entirely shut down due to rain. Arid little towns like Qamishle deal with rain like Istanbul dealt with snow: not at all. There was mud everywhere, and people didn't seem particularly friendly. Yesterday morning was different - with sunlight came bustling streets and much more friendly people. I only had a good conversation, however, with an attractive cab-driver who bemoaned my lack of Kurdish, as if this weren't something I don't bemoan everyday.

I'm off to Damascus tonight, via train. We'll see how that goes. Right now I have to get out of this Internet Cafe - they've been blarind 50 Cent for the past hour - and I'm eager to continue my falafel-only diet. (So cheap - 20 cents - and sooooo good.)

Mardin = Jenna?

2005-02-19T10:30:00.000-08:00

We came from Diyarbakir to Mardin yesterday, and I wish I never have to leave. Mardin is a quaint little city on a hill overlooking Mesopotamia and the Syrian border. Guidebooks countlessly envoke Old Jerusalem when describing Mardin, and I'd agree had I been to Jerusalem I'd agree. What I do know is that I've never been to a city like this before; it's all maze-like stone alleys that twist and turn and show every year of the thousands they've existed. There's a sizable Syriac (or Jacobite) population hear, and tomorrow we're going to attempt to attend an Aramaic church service, though it's questionable whether we'll be able to find the church.

Mardin is the first city in Turkey where my Arabic has been so useful; though it's also served as a painful reminder of how rusty my Arabic has become. Ma'alish, it will improve - that's half of why I'm going to Syria in the first place. Everybody here is friendly beyond belief, and I've met several people - including one guy around my age who's from Alexandria, and is now working in a restaurant here.

We spent yesterday finding a hostel (one which Lonely Planet labels "only for the desperate" and which has, thanks to the state of the bathrooms, caused me to long for constipation), and then wandering around the city, losing and finding ourselves. The most impressive architectural feat here is a thirteenth century medressa (or school) perched high on the hill, with two small domed mosques. Yesterday our visit there corresponded with that of a large group of Turkish high school kids. Once they noticed us it was all over - Luke and I were mobbed by high school girls who constantly giggled, welcomed us, asked us trivial questions about sports, and took our picture. I've never felt more like a rock star.

Today was a little more subdued, but no less exhilerating. We hiked out of the city for several miles to a fourth century monastery (built on an even older temple for sun-worship) called Deirul Zafaran, or the Saffron Monastery. Though it's now a Christian orphanage, it was once the seat of the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch (now in Damascus), and it has been well maintained. The interior is much more palatial than any monastery I've ever seen, and the exterior - set in an arid valley that wouldn't be out of place in Arizona - was equal to it.

As this is my last night with Luke and Stefania, we splurged on a meal of mezzes in a restaurant in an old Arab house. It was, hands down, the most amazing meal I've ever eaten. An Australian who's family is from the area, and who was visiting with his boyfriend and other friends, came over to chat and advise us on our selection, and everything - from the hummous to the olives to the cheese to the dishes I wouldn't even be able to name - was exquisite. Afterwards a Kurdish woman came over to our table because she wanted to practice her English. She chatted for a good twenty minutes with us about her life - born and raised near Mardin, yet never entirely sure who she was, where her family was from. She said that she can't fully speak Kurdish because it wasn't allowed in quotidien living, and there was absolutely no opportunity to study it. We wanted to speak longer with her, but she had to go.

Mardin was hit particularly hard by the war in the Nineties. There are police officers on almost every street corner, all of whom are delighted to see us tourists, but who must seem quite intimidating the the local Kurds. This conversation was the best I've hard with a Kurd about the struggle, and I'm quite excited to be crossing into Syrian Kurdistan tomorrow, where I can make much better use of my Arabic.

Speed Bonnie Boat

2005-02-17T09:28:00.000-08:00

We started yesterday in Van, and finished the day several hundred miled to the west in Diyarbakir, where I'm currently writing from. Van was where the Armenian genocide of 80 years ago took place, although there's no evidence of it in the city. The Van museum supposedly has a whole section on the genocide, though it's devoted to documenting Armenian atrocities against the Turks. We tried to go, but the only room open in the museum was one devoted to Urartian artifacts, which were definitely worth it; evidently, the Urartians were contemporaries of the Syrians, and spoke a Caucasian language.

As for the Armenian genocide, we have had some discussion of it with Turks, who are eager to contextualize it within the Armenian nationalists siding with Russians and slaughtering Turkish villages - and this definitely happened, particularly further north in Kars and Erzurum. However, few genocides have occured outside the context of war and even interethnic rivalry; just because there were historic instances of Tutsis slaughtering Hutus doesn't justify the Rwandan genocide, and the 1.2 million Armenians who died in that genocide cannot be rationalized away.

After the Van museum, we took a a series of minibuses out along the southern shore of lake Van to the docks for Akdamar island. During the summer there's a regular ferry taking tourists across, but we had to wait around for the boat to come back from fishing, and watch the fishermen shovel the fish into buckets and clean the surface for us. They then brought out three plastic red chairs for us to sit in for the twenty-minute ferry ride, and then they brought us cushions and tea. It was surreal.

Sometime in the tenth century the Armenian prince was forced to take refuge on Akdamar island from the Abbasid Arab troops sweeping through southern Anatolia. The island then contained an ornate Armenian church, as well as a monastery and a palace. The prince was eventually forced to pay tribute to the Abbasids and accept Abbasid suzerainty, and latter on this set-up was repeated with the Ottoman and Safavid empires.

Today only the Armenian church remains, but it is stunning. The island itself is perfectly situated - close to the southern shore of Van but isolated enough to force some sort of spirituality. When we came the mountains behind us than dive into lake Van were covered from snow. In front of us, to the north, lake Van's deep blue waters faded into an even deeper azure which faded into the sky. Over everything was light that made me feel as though we were viewing this from behind a faint silk scrim. I'm not sure what makes lake Van so utterly gorgeous - it seems incredibly clean, and supposedly it's incredibly salty, but I've never seen anything like it. As for the Armenian church, it has weathered the years quite impressively, with a whole series of paintings still discernible.

Getting back to Van we walked a bit, and even hitch-hiked on an oil-truck. Then we bustled quite a bit in order to catch the bus for Diyarbakir. This bus-ride overlapped a bit with our trek to Akdamar, but we also were able to see dusk over the rest of lake Van. Most interesting on the bus trip, however, were the checkpoints. No longer were we brushed through: we went through several checkpoints where every passanger had to produce their ID for the soldiers or police men.

At the first checkpoint we went through yesterday, the soldier asked the three of us to follow him off the bus. I was worried they weren't going to allow us to go to Diyarbakir, but fortunately I was far off. They were just bored. We came into a room-full of soldiers going through IDs at a number of humming computers, and from behind a speaker blaring J-Lo we heard "Hey Joe!" We were quickly interrogated on New York City and what we were studying and our impressions of Turkey. When Luke replied to one soldier that he loved Turkey, the bewildered reply was "why?" It turns out that soldier was Bulgarian, and was less than enamored of his new country. After several minutes of this, and one stern piece of advice that Western Turkey is much better for tourists than Eastern Turkey, we came to the nub of why they'd pulled us into the office: they wanted to know why Bush has been threatening Iran and what, oh what, is Condoleezza Rice intending to do?

Indeed.

So entering Diyarbakir is like entering the Arab world - everything is much more familiar to me, from the sand to the architecture to the markets to the people (though most are still Turks and Kurds). This isn't entirely surprising, for we are at the start of the Tigris and, officially at least, in Mesopotamia.

Diyarbakir is, of course, the center of Turkish Kurdistan and was, up until five years ago, the center of the war here. I wish with all my might that I could speak Turkish or Kurdish in order to talk with people on the streets about these things, but I don't, and Arabic only gives some cognates. I've actually read quite a bit recently about Turkish Hezbollah, which is based here in Diyarbakir. I was immensely confused at first, for there are no Shi'a in Turkey, but it turns out this Hezbollah is Sunni and is completely separate from the Hezbollah Bush is currently attempting to convince France to label a terrorist organization, although Turkish Hezbollah may have links to Iran. Evidently the T. Hezbollah began in the Nineties working with the PKK against the Turkish government, but soon began attacking the PKK for its Marxist proclivities and "association with Armenia".

However, we've yet to witness any Hezbollah activity in Diyarbakir. Sad. Instead, we walked along the walls that surround the old city. Supposedly these immense walls, built by the Romans and then rebuilt by the Byzantines, are the longest walls in the world after China's Great Wall, but I'm a little skeptical of this fact. Regardless, they are impressive, and impressively maintained. Walking along them were countless Diyarbakirans (?), including some school kids who were so excited by us that they went and got us some candy bars. We got off the wall so that we could walk 3km outside of the city down to the Tigris, and an 11th century Seljuk bridge that spans it. By the time we got there we were in farm country, able to testament to the incredibly dark fertile soil that made Mesopotamia so important. Getting back into the city we hitched a ride on the back of a horse-drawn wagon. I don't think the horse appreciated the extra weight.

Diyarbakir is also surprisingly cosmopolitan; while the old city contains quite a bit of poverty, on the other side of the walls is a neighborhood that reminds me quite a bit of the more posh neighborhoods of Cairo, particularly Zamalek. This is nice, because I'm getting increasingly excited about getting to Syria and using my Arabic, though I'll be sad to part ways with Stefania and Luke. Finally, a note about my plans to go to Syria, as I've been emailed several articles about the current situation:

Right now I'm still planning to go. Obviously Hariri's assassination has brought the American-Syrian tensions to another level, but it sounds like a lot of posturing right now. It sounds like Lebanon is much more the powder-keg right now, with the potential for renewed war. (More optimistically, with today's turnout of 100,000 people in Beirut chanting for Syria's withdrawal, Hariri's death may trigger a Lebanese version of Ukraine's Orange Revolution.) However, I don't know how I'll be treated at the Syrian border, and if I'm turned around then I'm turned around, and I'll just fly to Egypt or something. Ma'alish.

Who Built the Ark?

2005-02-15T08:16:00.000-08:00

So we just got to Van, on the eastern shore of the lake with the same name, several hours ago. It's been a great two days.

Yesterday we pushed ourselves out of bed fairly early in order to go see Ani. The road was blindingly white, but we were distracted from it by our amazingly articulate and informed tour guide/driver. He expounded on the intricacies of Kars, the socio-political situation in the Caucases and the Middle East, and the history of everything we were seeing. The ruins of Ani are situated overlooking a deep ravine; on the other side are Armenian watch-towers. These towers are supposedly manned - thanks to the CIS and a certain post-Soviet inertia - by Russian troops, though they looked empty through Luke's binoculars.

Ani itself was rather impressive. There is a lion on the gate leading into Ani, and as CS Lewis was no doubt aware, "lion" in Seljuk Turkish is "aslan". Ani was a Seljuk town after the Armenian kingdom collapsed, and it's here that the first Turkish mosque in Anatolia was built. It's a rather ugly mosque - from far away it looked like a 19th century factory in, say, Framingham MA. Much more easy on the eyes were the Armenian cathedral and church. The latter, named after Armenia's patron saint, Saint Grigor, had some amazing frescos still intact. We weren't able to see every bit of Ani, because the snow at times rose above the waist, but on the upside, we had the place to ourselves - we were the first tourists there in a month. Ahhh, the off-season.

Yesterday we took a variety of transport in order to end up in Dogubayazit, a thriving little entrepot in the shadow of Mt. Ararat, and not far from the Iranian border. Evidently this city is the jumping-off point for the land route across Iran and into China eventually. We were tempted to cross the border, but it's hard to imagine Iranian soldiers would take kindly to suspiciously aimless 20-something Americans right now. Instead, we visited the Ishak Pasha palace today, 6 km up some mountains from Dogubayazit. The palace itself was a grand mish-mash of architectural styles (Persian, Arab, Turkish, Armenian, Kurdish and Georgian) built by some Kurdish chieftans in the 17th and 18th century, and is most memorable for it's location. It looks out over an arid valley (though for us it was simply white with snow), and not far from Ararat. Luke and I hiked up a jagged nearby mountain that was the site of an ancient Urarite fortress. If anybody knows anything about the Urarites, you're a step ahead of me - all I can tell you is that they were pretty powerful around three thousand years ago, and they built a mean fortress.

This afternoon we took a dolmus (a little van that picks up and drops off passengers as it goes) from Dogubayazit to Van. The drive was amazing, with breathtaking views of Ararat on one side, and the blinding sun creating blue mists from the mountain snow on the other. I finally got to listen to my ipod while on a bus, and it was beyond surreal to be sitting in a van with elderly Turks and Kurds watching sheep being herded under Ararat, while listening to a shuffle of artists from Rachmaninoff to Stephin Merritt to Miles Davis. Weird.

We've noticed a much heavier military presence in the past several days, particularly in Dogubayazit, where there were tanks aplenty in the streets. On the ride to Van we stopped at several checkpoints, which were invariably overflowing with bored troops. This was particularly striking when juxtaposed with the rural pastoral life outside our window. Everywhere are flocks of sheep and shephards and big hairy dogs, and tiny little stone huts with satellite dishes on the rooves. I'd love to see inside these huts - I imagine the interior far surpases the exterior - but have yet to hit upon a means of doing so.

As for Van, we're staying in a little rat-hole that's appropriately cheap but a little unsettling. This internet cafe, however, has a steady stream of Cat Stevens, and I fully approve. To those who've made it this far - I'd love to hear from you. Laters.

Georgia On My Mind

2005-02-13T07:19:00.000-08:00

So two days ago we decided to jump-start our trip to the east by flying to Trabzon, an eastern port on the Black Sea. Yesterday after going to see Sumela monastery, up in the mountains, we took a bus through the Black Mountains to Erzurum, and today we came to Kars, just a jump, hop and skip to both Georgia and Armenia. Tomorrow we're going to tour around the remains of Ani, the medieval Armenian capital which is itself literally a stones-throw away from modern Armenia.

Trabzon was a little bit of a disappointment, since I have in my head the 15th century world of Dorothy Dunnett, who described the Trabzon that was, for eight years, the final vestige of the Byzantines under the Comneni dynasty. However, I was expecting the disappointment, and I was certainly bedazzled by what we found: a charming assortment of Georgian prostitutes, swarthy sailors, stylishly veiled Turks, and busy merchants. Trabzon was historically one of the main endpoints of the Silk Road, and today it is still (I believe) the busiest port on the Black Sea. (As we flew out of Istanbul, we drove along the southern side of the Marmara and saw a collection of ships - mainly tankers - waiting to enter the Bosphorus that would put the Spanish Armada to shame.

We took a short daytrip up into the mountains yesterday to see Sumela monastery, which was built by the Byzantines and then remained active until Ataturk's republic forced all the Greeks to flee in 1923. The walk to the monastery is about 1.5 miles, mostly vertical, and entirely covered by snow yesterday. The monastery was actually closed because of the weather, but we snuck up because, after all, you're not really living unless you're seconds away from death or deportation. Looking at the mountains around the monastery, we felt we could easily be in the Alps. I may have had the same thought on the drive to Erzurum last night, but we could see next to nothing, besides snow and sheer drops into a seeming abyss of darkness.

Erzurum was what I imagine Baku is: not much; a lot of grey and mud and hazy blue skies. Thankfully, we weren't there for long. Kars looks much more delightful: there's a citadel up on the main hill, and everything looks pretty and inviting. Everywhere in eastern Turkey people have been friendly beyond belief, and Kars is no exception. While rarely does anybody speak English, and while even more rarely does anybody understand why we've come to their part of the world, everybody is eager to help us get where we're going and to exchange names.

I can't write much more now, as we have a busy schedule: a hammam, dinner (Kars is the honey capital of Turkey) and then a Turkish movie. It's suprisingly easy to follow non-serious movies when you speak none of the language. Cheers.

The Sites

2005-02-09T03:07:00.000-08:00

Luke, our final travel partner, arrived yesterday afternoon. So now we're seeing the big sites: the Aya Sophia, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, etc. So I don't have much to report, but excitement abounds. And tea is everywhere. Mashallah.

Worrying Over Kirkuk

2005-02-08T01:55:00.000-08:00

Today we're mainly waiting for our friend Luke to arrive, after which point we can tackle the major monuments in Istanbul and then be off for central Anatolia.

We got into a discussion last night with this group of Turkish guys who spend half the year working at resorts on the coast, and spend the other half of the year traveling the world and lazing around Turkey. Not a bad lifestyle. One of them was a Kurd who is from the Syrian border, and he argued for quite a while with an ethnic Turk about whether Turkey has any right to interfere in Iraqi Kurdistan. It's amazing how much the people and papers here have a single-minded focus on Kirkuk and the statements of Barzani and Talabani. When Rice visited Ankara two days ago, from what I can tell the main topic of discussion was the situation in Kirkuk - not the EU, and not even Cyprus.

Anyway, the Kurd we were talking to last night then launched into a long xenophobic rant about the double-naturedness of Arabs, which used every Orientalist cliche in the book. It's hard to know what to do when people do that - I basically just blinked a lot.

And now off to some more blinking.

Moscow?

2005-02-07T03:15:00.000-08:00

Istanbul looks much like Moscow right now, with snow burying everything and all the domes on the mosques looking distinctly Russian. All we need is some fur hats.

We met a man at our hostel breakfast this morning (hard-boiled egg, cucumber and tomato slices, bread and jelly) who had just trudged in late last night. Since early November he's walked from Bristol, England. He's on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he intends to take part in some ISM actions. I'm a little skeptical of some of his observations on the human condition, but he has some great stories of getting through a blizzard singing nationalist Montenegran songs with a peasant, and the trip as a whole sounds amazing.

Meanwhile, my Pamuk book is feeling rather like Dostoevsky right now. And, with the significant disclaimer that I'm not at all qualified to make the following statement, it seems to me that modern Turkey feels quite a bit like nineteenth century Russia. I see this particularly in the relationship to the concept of the West, which can express itself simultaneously in rather xenophobic and intimate ways. More later. Time's up.

Snow

2005-02-04T08:59:00.000-08:00

We're actually waiting for snow right now. Stefania and I have spent the past two days walking everywhere we possibly could; but today has been cold and rainy and very difficult to do anything in. So we've huddled indoors sipping tea and reading. Tomorrow we're supposed to get snow and I can't wait.

We took the ferry to the Asian side of Istanbul this morning. Evidently it's a rare thing for tourists to venture over there, as there isn't much in the way of sites. We took refuge in a cafe out of necessity, and had a fun time trying to communicate with the waiter, who spoke absolutely no English. We speak absolutely no Turkish, making us unable to have anything other than tourist experiences. This annoys me to no end, and I look forward to Syria and being able to communicate on a somewhat less superficial level.

Yesterday I found a paperback edition of Snow, the latest (translated) Orhan Pamuk novel, in an English-language bookstore off Istiklal Cadessi, the capitalist center of modern Istanbul. The bookstore was like a wet dream for me, with amazing sections of both fiction and non-fiction books about the Middle East and the Black Sea region. Anyway, I'm increasingly enamoured of Orhan Pamuk, who I initially disliked three years ago, but whose My Name Is Red I loved. Pamuk is the Turkish intellectual quoted in almost every big Western article about secularism and the rest, and that's the main topic of this book. It all takes place in snowed in Kars, which is way out by the Armenian border (and next to the medieval Armian capital Ani), and which I hope to visit. So that I can speak no Turkish and feel alienated.

Right. Too much touristy alienation. More later.

Istanbul Arrival

2005-02-02T10:50:00.000-08:00

Things seem much more thriving for this season than I expected. There are many more tourists than I expected. Not much more to write: nobody wants to hear about the tourist life.

I'm traveling with Stefania Rubicondo, a friend from high school. She's heading to Italy after we part ways and I go off to Syria.

Oh yes - though I'm doing this rather than write mass emails, I do promise to respond personally to emails. I'm a much better correspondent when I have stuff to write about.

Leaving

2005-01-31T09:24:00.000-08:00

So I'm going to use this blog to spare all of you unwanted mass-emailings about my travels. If you're at this site, than presumably you're curious. And should you want to here anything more personal from me, please write me at Philip.Chaffee@gmail.com. I'm a good correspondent when I travel (though rarely, as I'm sure many of you can attest, at any other time), and I promise to reply if you write to me. Cheers.