The Anti-Egypt

I have arrived in Doha and have begun work. I am the newest member of a growing international team under the umbrella of a French company that specializes in event planning and sports competitions. My coworkers each have vast experience stretching back several Olympic games at least, and they each seem to be the world’s best at the very specific things they do. Qatar is trying to demonstrate it can hold the Olympics and the World Cup, so this tiny Gulf peninsula found the people who ran the last few Olympics to put on the Arab games. This phenomenon encapsulates Qatar--- an unmatched budget to bring in the very best of any and every profession to buy Qatar’s way to the top.

But Qatar is full of contradictions. Our business of assembling the venues and people to put on the games is being conducted like a Western business, but constantly in interaction with the local heads of various venues or federations. I was brought on to bridge the language barrier and the cultural barrier. In the first few meetings I understood the necessity for my own part in this. The meetings begin in English but soon revert to Arabic and go dramatically off course. In a business where people expect results in a specific timeframe, “insha’allah” is a phrase of dread. My coworkers go to meetings looking for answers and solutions to meet deadlines, but find only meandering conversation and many cups of tea. It is a comical clash of civilizations and I am enjoying it immensely.

Aside from these meetings with the heads of various venues or foundations, I’ve met very few Arabic speakers here. Our Indian drivers (there are more Indians in Qatar than Arabs) speak only a little Arabic. I am typing this at one of the restaurants in my hotel and the vastly oversized and underutilized staff is speaking a medley of perhaps 5 languages. Some Tagalog, Pashtu, Hindi, Ordu, and Thai, (maybe?) Romanian, and English between each other. The international clientele use English with the waiters, but the two white-robed Qataris at the table next me order their coffee in Arabic, stumbling up the waitress who doesn’t understand what they are asking for. Strange they cannot order a coffee in Arabic in their own country. Yet, it is strange that they make a point of not saying “coffee”, a word they surely know in English. Regardless, I have never been in such a truly international place.

The architecture is what stands out most on first seeing the city. I will post some pictures later, but there are every possible shape of building, some outfitted already with helipads, and many more still getting bigger. My own building, which is only 50 stories, is new and is still training its staff. Part of the entertainment system in my room had never been plugged in; the full set of stainless cookware still has some bar codes on it. There are still hooks on my wall where a picture frame should hang that remain barren. Perhaps this, too, sums up Doha. The streets are empty. Everyone has a driver. Why not with more workers than residents and 20-cent gasoline? Everything is new. There is no trash anywhere; public gardens are ubiquitous and carefully manicured. Everything seems fake and artificial, like an absurd fantasy world. And it is. The country follows no economic model or rationality or reason. They have huge natural gas and oil reserves on which they prop up everything.

But it is well propped up. Even in the worker’s towns, which I have driven through just once, I was struck that everything looked nice, just on a much smaller scale. Kids were out playing in public parks that still got plenty of water, and families lived in double condos in rows a hundred long, but everything looking well taken care of. Where as employees who could never afford to shop where they work run other Middle Eastern shopping malls like Cairo’s “City Stars”, the mall connected to my hotel (which could fit Natick mall comfortably into one wing) is full (as full as anything here could ever be) at night of shoppers of all nationalities, some still wearing the uniforms of their respective stores, giving the whole country a veneer of egalitarianism.

The most fascinating thing I did here was the ubiquitous “dinner with the Bedouins” tour that every Middle Eastern country seems to offer, to give tourists a chance to go out to the desert and eat under the stars around a fire. The Arab Games team went on one a few days ago; a long drive towards the Inland Sea looking over at Saudi Arabia. But our “Bedouin” guides, though they never explicitly claimed to be, were from Pakistan and Palestine; all were born and raised in Doha but chatted in clear Levantine Arabic, the language of their homeland they hadn’t ever visited. They threw on some scarves and imitated the Bedouins of Southern Arabia, who have all surely ditched the tents and camels of their past and moved into air conditioned in Doha. Talking to the guides, I was surprised to learn that they all held professional jobs during the week but did the tourist thing on the weekends for fun and a little extra money. They felt that Qatar was the place to be, and even if most of the government’s handouts went to Qataris by blood, the money and opportunity left over for the million immigrants was more than would be available in their own countries.

And I understand what they mean. Waiting in line at an exchange office in the mall I am among dozens of immigrants remitting parts of their salaries back to families or relatives from home. A guy in a janitorial outfit was talks on a blackberry and sending several hundred dollars off to Cambodia. I am not trying to glorify or exemplify Qatar or its creation of a huge servant class, but Qatar gives someone the ability to provide for their family while living better than they could ever have dreamed of at home. It is an odd Arab country where one can hardly find an Arab.

A Good Samaritan

Donkey jokes are big in the Middle East. A donkey is universally understood as the zoological incarnation of stupidity; it’s an insult yelled out taxi windows from Iraq to Egypt to Morocco. So, when I heard from a Palestinian woman that her husband was serving out a fifteen year jail sentence for strapping explosives on a donkey, I thought it was a joke, the punch line of which was buried somewhere deep in the inexorable cultural chasm that separates the native speaker and the foreigner.

As she told me about the explosive donkey the other women in the room all chuckled, but the old matriarch of the family, the prisoner’s mother, looked more solemn. The wife in waiting began to explain. It was at the height of the second intifada, and resistance to the occupation had turned violent. Divided from his farm land by an Israeli checkpoint located deep in the occupied territories, her husband and three others had thought to fight back by detonating explosives near the Israeli soldiers. Rather than run into the checkpoint and blow themselves up, they strapped a donkey with a tank of fuel and explosives set to blow, and herded the unfortunate animal toward the unknowing soldiers. Luckily for everyone (not the animal), the donkey blew up well short of its target and no one was hurt, so the men were given 15 years rather than life. This is one of the many stories I have heard in Palestine of acts of desperate and futile resistance to the Israeli occupation and subjugation of an entire people. As is often said here in Palestine, if the Palestinians had tanks and airplanes and helicopters, they wouldn’t be strapping themselves with explosives.

It has been a while since I have updated this blog. Since the last post came the escalation of the Syrian uprising and my forced premature departure from Aleppo. I returned home to finish my thesis and graduate, and then spent the summer in Tangier, getting a wholly new taste of Middle Eastern and North African culture. I benefited from intensive Modern Standard Arabic classes and feel more comfortable communicating in Arabic than ever before. Morocco was touched by the Arab spring as well, but King Muhammad VI expertly funneled the popular demand for change into a new constitution by referendum. Unions and organizations were forced to back the constitution and it was marketed to the people as a major move toward democracy, though its democratic merits are debatable. Regardless, Moroccans, at least the ones I met, had no desire for an Egyptian style overthrow with all the social and economic turmoil that would cause. They see their King as a modernizer and reformer, balancing tradition with the needs of a prospering Moroccan economy. Moreover, Muhammad VI has religious legitimacy stemming from his family lineage tracing to the Prophet, and as such is a political figure immune from any real criticism. It struck me as an entirely un-Syrian experience to see anti-Constitution protests (mostly college students who didn’t think the Constitution went far enough) being allowed on Morocco’s streets and indeed protected by Moroccan security forces as they peacefully asserted their objections.

After about a month in America I am now in Palestine, translating interviews and research for Nicole’s masters thesis at the American University in Cairo. I flew into Cairo a few weeks ago and we made our way up to the West Bank by land. Cairo itself was not much different, though the city is palpably on edge. People have realized that the Egyptian Army is not the selfless savior that they'd hoped or believed it would be. Rather, it is composed of bureaucrats and politicians with the same interests as the previous regime: corrupt, ineffectual and unresponsive to their people. And alarmingly, sectarian vocabulary has entered the public dialogue sewing in Egypt the very religious strife that Assad continues to warn about in Syria, leasing his Machiavellian bargain of terror with religious minorities who support him out of fear of an oppressive mono-religious mob. And Syrian state media never misses a moment to show the sectarian violence brewing in Egypt, no doubt as a reminder to its many minorities of how much worse things could be without an Alawite at the helm. Though I have my doubts.

After a few days in the city we left Cairo by overnight bus and arrived in the morning to Taba, the last Egyptian town before the Israel border. From this beautiful Red Sea resort town one can look out at Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, each claiming a chunk of the waterfront at the extreme north of the Red Sea. We left the filthy and disorganized bureaucratic disaster of the Egyptian checkpoint to arrive at the almost comical juxtaposition of the Israeli checkpoint. We were greeted by friendly but assiduous (and very well armed) Israeli border guards who had a field day with the array of stamps in our passports from countries with which Israeli has been or still is at war. We were finally let through, and the guards were nice enough to again stamp my passport on a removable page.

We took a short cab to Eilat bus station and took bus immediately to Jerusalem. The ride takes a little more than four hours. On the way are great views of the Dead Sea and, having taken the same bus ride on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea, it is easy to follow the somewhat mirrored landscapes, and get an idea for just how small this contentious little piece of land is. We arrived in Jerusalem in the early afternoon and walked through the Christian and Muslim quarters of the old city to get to a bus station that would take us to the West Bank. Jerusalem somewhat juts out into the West Bank and at the gate of the old city were only a long walk away from where we were staying, but the bus is the easiest way through the checkpoint to leave Israel and enter the West Bank. We had contacted a Palestinian named David who rented us a room in his family’s house just above Bethlehem in a village called Beit Jala. We arrived at his house before sunset and woke up the next morning to a beautiful but steep hillside of well-spaced houses surrounded by olive trees and grape vines, leading down into a smaller hill topped with a dozen church steeples, among them the Church of the Nativity- the town of Bethlehem.

Getting back to Jerusalem was simple and the checkpoint went quickly for us and our American passports. From above the city on the biblical Mountain of Olives, it is mindboggling to see this place that has been the focal point of so much bloodshed. It has been ruled by various groups of the three Abrahamic faiths and bears the markings and ruins of each. Bethlehem is the same way. A few minutes from our flat down the hill is the city of Jesus’s birth, full of churches and still largely Christian. From Beit Jala, where we are staying, we can see Jerusalem and Bethlehem below, and from the other side of our hill, the road leads to the hilltop town of Hebron, where the patriarchs of Arbahamic faith are buried. And between here and there, and in all directions, literally every stone has some religious significance. The history and profound impact this place has had on the course of civilization is overwhelming and enchanting. But no sooner does this awe pass that with reflection this grand significance becomes somewhat abhorrent to rationality and morality and basic respect for life and peace.

How many people have suffered or died and continue to suffer or die for the profound religious significance of all this? We are in Beit Jala, just outside Bethlehem, well within the West Bank, yet surrounded on many hilltops by neat rows of condominium-style houses, set on terraced slopes fronted by razor-wire and concrete walls, dotted with the occasional guard tower. The walls themselves are Palestinian space, speckled with graffiti calling for freedom or the enforcement of UN Resolution 194, but perched above them fly the flags of the “One Democracy in the Middle East”, “America’s Greatest Friend”, a testament to the unique breed of intractable insanity that is fervent nationalism mixed with ethno-religious dogmatism.

We are here to interview a variety of Palestinian agriculturalists, from farmers to agronomists and hydrologists, and though our issue is water rights and usage, the overarching dominance of Israeli occupation is the omnipresent theme of our discourse. I had heard of the settlements and the occupation wall before, but had no idea of the extensiveness or perniciousness of the project. To get some context I suggest you Google a map of the territories, and note the internationally recognized “Greenline” which marks the 1967 borders which are, despite what GOP candidates all seem to believe, the universally understood basis of negotiating any “Two State Solution”, and then note how far beyond the wall goes, swooping in to encompass huge swaths of land from the Palestinians. Maps can show the hundreds of settlements and outposts that chop up the territory into many Bantustans, but it was not until I was here that I was able to appreciate the mechanical efficiency of this utter domination. Our host David owns a restaurant in Bethlehem, and when he gives directions to it, he literally says go to the last building before the wall. I didn’t really understand him until I walked toward Jerusalem on a street that used connect Bethlehem and Jerusalem and then hit a concrete block 30 feet high topped with barbed wire, cutting right through the center of town. The other side of it belongs to the settlement now, and to the army for security reasons. And sitting just on the Palestinian side of it is this small but posh little café serving the famous local wines and Italian styled cuisine.

I am not in any diminishing the violence or real security threats endured by Israel. But let us be specific. These are checkpoints and walls and settlements that are not in Israel. They are illegal under international law and they steal the land, water, resources, and agriculture of an occupied people, while Israel illegally moves a civilian population in to change the “facts on the ground”. If Israel is the secular peace-loving democracy I sincerely hope it is, why does it incorporate these illegal land seizures, at once approving and encouraging this instigative crime? If America is the secular and peace-loving democracy I sincerely hope it is, why does it continue to support Israel as it does this? ---- the fanatic settlers which moved into Hebron in the 1967, rented out a hotel downtown, and have refused to leave ever since growing to a population of 500 people protected by several thousand Israeli soldiers, literally splitting up one of Palestine’s biggest towns into “H1” and “H2”, are doing nothing but jeopardizing any hope for real peace. When Brooklyn-born Barauch Goldstein killed 29 Muslim worshippers and wounded 200 in 1994, Hebron’s fanatic settlers built him a memorial tribute to honor his deed, which can still be viewed today. This is much the same as martyred suicide bombers are still honored on the city walls of Nablus and Gaza City. These are the less awe-inspiring aspects of the “Holy Land”.

Perhaps most painfully ironic are the many USAID projects which dot the West Bank in cities and in the country side, everything from schools to agricultural and hydrological development. The signs above these projects read, in English and Arabic, that the project is a “Gift from the American People”. I can think of no greater gift that America could give to those in Palestine and Israel who truly desire peace than to cease making America the greatest obstacle to it. We must demand that American allies obey international law if they hope to receive generous aid budgets and diplomatic support, and that they are as committed to a solution as we profess to be.

I could focus this blog entry on the countless injustices suffered by the Palestinians by the occupation and the ongoing settlement expansion, but my experience here in Palestine has been overwhelmingly positive and I my recounting of it should reflect that. The occupation and the daunting force arrayed against Palestine is never far below the surface in a deep conversation about people’s lives here, but their ability to overcome and adapt, to swallow their pride and do what is necessary to survive, is remarkable. Moreover, I am reminded constantly how wonderfully hospitable this culture is. I cannot imagine any other place where one can walk around looking for farmers to talk to and find so many people willing to help, point in the right direction, provide transportation, advice, their stories, and endless cups of tea (or those little shot glasses of muck they call coffee). As for the farmers, free samples of every crop abound, and I am reminded how much more robust a tomato can taste when it is grown naturally (fertilizers and chemicals are illegal here).

We have been shown incredible hospitality. We are renting a room in a Christian family’s house here in Beit Jala. This continues my unintentional pattern of finding Christian families and friends in every majority Muslim country I frequent. However, it must be said that this area is majority Christian and there are many more churches than there are mosques. Even the Muslim women dress less conservatively than elsewhere, perhaps as the area is more affluent with the constant stream of religious tourists coming to visit the birthplace of Jesus.

Ramallah, the administrative center of Palestine is a more metropolitan area with a cooler breeze, as it is higher above sea level. The central square is marked by a large pillar, and has been recently outfitted with a giant chair straight out of Gulliver’s Travels, representing the chair Palestine hopes to win in the U.N. General Assembly, symbolizing statehood and sovereignty. Tucked some way from the city center we visited the tomb of Yasser Arafat, attended by a Palestinian soldier in full regalia standing at attention.

Ramallah was perhaps most memorable for one man we met smoking Shisha at a streetside café. Women do not smoke in public, or at cafes which are understood to be male only, but I a okay with bringing a girl to one as long as the owner is cool with it; certain allowances are always made for foreigners. We sat down on the street side to people-watch and enjoy the water pipe, and next to us sat the most regal of gentleman, in a crisp black suit, pressed shirt, mahogany cane, and a weathered old face crinkled from a lifetime of smiling. He smoked raw tobacco and coal, not the flavored stuff to which most are accustomed. We spoke for a while, not in a pressured conversation, but in measured exchanges between draws on the pipe providing ample time for contemplation. He was born in what is now Israel, forcefully removed and resettled in Ramallah, where he grew up and married. He fathered 14 children, with one wife to who is still alive he said proudly, and now they have over 100 grandchildren in the West Bank and the United States. “A small army” I said with surprise at the number. “Not so small” he laughed coughing on smoke. He commanded tremendous respect from everyone, and I was impressed to see many 70 year old men walking by who stopped to pay some respect to the Old Man, he still many years their senior. He embodies so much of what I find charming in Arab culture. The layers of respect and adoration between generations and people, the pride, the hospitality, the friendliness, it makes you feel so welcome and at once at home. Our conversation ended when one of his grandsons, a man of 40, pulled up in a Mercedes to help him into the car. He turned around as he was leaving to welcome us again to Palestine, and wish us the blessings of God. And on a street where drivers honk incessantly trying to rush by, his Mercedes double parked in the flow of traffic saw a row of cars waiting patiently and quietly for him to get in and drive away.

Ahabic Religion.

These past few weeks stand out for me because of some of the unique and fascinating conversations that I have been able to have with Syrians both in the research for my thesis and in the course of my every day curiosities. As my Arabic has improved over these months, my ability to really understand people’s points of views and to communicate my own has made the whole experience of being abroad increasingly enjoyable from the perspective of intercultural interaction. I have met wonderful people here in Syria who I respect for their intelligence and ideas, though between our points of view lies centuries of change, the enlightenment, and the Atlantic Ocean. But if respectful disagreement or conflicting points of view is the rule, there are certainly a few exceptions. However, these exceptions can be revealing and potent examples of the utterly different (and perhaps incompatible) way in which different people view the world.

Primary among these is religion. As my Arabic has improved I have finally grown comfortable disclosing my doubts about religion to those who have none. Religion is everywhere here, it penetrates all parts of daily life; even people’s everyday speech is accented by invocations of God’s praise, damnation, or will. Thus it is not surprising that it comes up incessantly in conversation. I was baptized Catholic and have celebrated Christmas almost every year since I was born, but when people here persist in religious discussion, I have become increasingly forthcoming with my thoughts. The mock impersonation of religiosity, of pretending to be someone I am not, of the veiling in duress my own ideas in the doubt of cultural misunderstanding, makes me feel ever a stranger among people I know well. Honest conversation with my friends and acquaintances here has been both liberating and enlightening.

I had a fascinating talk about religion with Zilal, a 30-year-old Muslim women who is studying for her masters and lives in my dorm. She traveled with our group to Damascus last weekend; on the way back to Aleppo we stopped for a visit in the mountain village of Maloula, a small town carved into a sheer mountain stretching in broken angles to the upper plateau of a great mountain spine, accentuated by several famous monasteries and churches which are carved into holy sites in these crags. It is a holy site for Christians and Muslims alike, and our discussion began as we followed a narrow canyon up to the highest of the churches. The canyon, to my eyes, had been carved by water, with the recognizable marks of kettle holing and smoothed edges indicative of countless years of wear beyond our ability to fathom. Zilal, like many Syrians, believed in the miracle that is supposed to have happened here, that God opened this gap in the mountains so that a maiden, despised by her father for becoming a Christian in the time of polytheism, could retreat into the hills, and escape his wrath. For her, and many Syrians, a literal interpretation of these stories is crucial, and the “pick and choose” form of religion is not religion at all but heresy.

On explaining the story to me (though I’d heard this one before, its famous here) she asked me if I believed it. I said I thought that it was metaphorical, perhaps that it was a fable to extol the virtues of faith in the face of persecution, but she wouldn’t have it. None of our Syrian travel companions would (Muhammad wasn’t around). Thus we descended into questions of religion and faith. She explained to me that all good came from God, and thus that non-believers were incapable of doing good. Everything she did, she continued, was for God and thus all the good in her life was by and for Him. I pointed out that perhaps I was the one really doing good, as when I did something good it wasn’t for the expectation of a posthumous prize-basket from the heavens but simply because I knew it was the right thing to do. It is not good, she replied, unless it is done for God. She said that until I found God I wouldn’t be happy. I said that I had found God, in a way, in my wonder at the mysteries and awesomeness of the universe, and that this wonder for me gave me the same happiness and security that she derived from God. If we both derive the same wonder and amazement from these forces in our lives, perhaps these forces are two manifestations of the same awesome power, or for me, the same fathomless mystery.

This is a string of the conversation I was obliged to continue with my Arabic Literature professor, an accomplished and respected man of impressive learning, formidable presence, and the graceful natural authority of true charisma. In analysis of some Aleppan folktales he grew curious and asked the class if they believed in the Abrahamic God. As proof of God’s existence, the professor went into the traditional argument about the complexity of humans, surely something this complex needed an intelligent and actively involved maker. Then he continued to the complexity of the solar system. He explained how God moves Earth closer to the sun to give us summer and farther from the sun to give us winter; this was solely the diligence of divine master, he explained, as when Earth got close to the sun, God would speed it up so the sun wouldn’t grab it. Likewise, when Earth would get too far away it should keep going but God would stop it and bring it back to the sun for another warm summer. I am not bringing this up to make fun of anyone, much less a charismatic literature professor, but I believe this example is incredibly instructive.

In all his long years of life this man had never been made to wonder why the Northern hemisphere has summer when the Southern has winter. He had never been forced to consider the equator, and realize a tilting of the planet caused the seasons. He had never learned about Newton’s Laws, the three wonderfully simple explanations of so much we see around us, and had never had an opportunity to apply them to the world around him. He had never been made to understand inertia or centripetal force or the very gravity that keeps him on the ground (gravity he prescribed to an active presence of God in keeping things in place). He had no understanding of what made the planets go around the sun, spinning in ellipses as their inertia and the sun’s gravity play the continuous game of tug of war, on the stalemate of which we all depend. For me, the beauty of this world, the God if you want to call it that, is that we are the probable outcome of an improbable equation, that of all the billions of billions of things that had to align for Earth and humanity to work out, they did. I explained my views to the Professor, prefaced by a quick run-through of physics and astronomy, that the mind must be used in all things to discover the true nature of the universe and of God.

How fundamentally different are the mentalities and attitudes of my society and upbringing, and my professor’s? If an educated man can live his life without a basic understanding of the world, are Syrian children growing up using scientific principles to judge their own world? I believe it is utterly devastating to the human desire of wonder and discovery to hand people a one size fits all explanation. Science cannot explain everything, and is in no danger of it coming close anytime soon, and that is the beauty of it. My point is the very nature of that mentality is detrimental to the progression of society. If everything is in God’s hand, what reason does someone have to try to figure it out, unravel it, and make it better? If all good is only for God, what obligation do we have to each other? What obligation do we have to our fragile planet that teeters precariously on the precipice that science and technology have brought it to, and certainly science and technology can only save it from? Truly, this is not a question which people here are asking them selves. I believe they must find a way to move past belief to their common human interests.

This same logic extends to many Syrian’s perceptions towards the other people. I had an interesting conversation this past weekend at Connaitre (a city in the Golan region of Syria which the Israelis destroyed as they retreated) at a “martyrs” graveyard. The program director, an educated man who taught in the States for a number of years, and I were discussing the use of the term martyr and martyrdom. A Syrian Palestinian himself, he, like most Syrians is pro-Palestinian and believes that the Palestinians have been wronged and the world community needed to recognize this.

To that claim I could provide no objection, but I argued that they do themselves a disservice when they use the word martyr so broadly: for the Gazan girl killed in her bedroom by Israeli white-phosphorus, for the stone throwing Palestinian teenager killed in a protest, and the Palestinian terrorist who explodes himself in a crowded public place in Israel to kill civilians. I acknowledged that I understood where the suicide bomber’s rage was coming from, but his frustration and victimization did not excuse his heinous crime. Indeed, terrorists like this are called martyrs and honored as heroes. By this point in the conversation, we had gathered a group of maybe a dozen Syrians, mostly of our party, who were defending this egregious act. I purposefully avoided the use of suicide tactics against military targets, and focused on its most heinous incarnation, its use against civilians. I argued that no matter how many innocent people the Israeli army kills, killing an Israeli civilian is murder, inexcusable and savage, and that until they acknowledged this and renounced it, their plight would be a hard sell to Americans, which we all agreed held most of the cards in this situation.

To this point I was shocked to find the majority of these Syrian, all upper class members of the intellectual elite, did not believe there was such a thing as an Israeli civilian. “Every Israeli where’s a military jacket” said my Professor with alarming conviction, to which the group nodded in affirmation. The Palestinians have to fight with what they can, said another, “they are victims of injustice and oppression,” he said, and the group surged with affirmation. I asked again, for clarity, if an Israeli child leaves his mother’s womb wearing a military uniform. “Every Israeli” they replied. They said it was a situation that I could never understand as I had never been the victim of such oppression.

Of course, neither had they. Ironically, of the group (though it would be unwise for me to point it out there) I was the only one who’d ever been to their beloved Palestine, and in my time in Gaza I got taste, a potent and foul introduction, to the absolute atrocities committed by the Israeli’s in the name of their false security, a lingering taste which sticks in the gut and brings home just how incontrovertible and intractable the chasm is between the ideas and beliefs of the two sides. I think about these Syrians bred for a lifetime with ideals of hate for their neighbors to the south, and at the same time I think of Israel, I think of the pointless desecration of holy places, Israel’s destruction of medical facilities and schools, I think of the tracks left by Israeli tanks in a playground making plain that the tank backed up and made a second pass to flatten both the jungle gym and the swing set. What were IDF soldiers trained to do that their minds and hearts could be so twisted? How could a Syrian consider the murder of civilians anything but a crime? Why do the Israelis? And how can anyone expect to bridge the gap between these two hatreds that have been seeded from youth and redoubled by fear and doubt?

And yet, somehow, even among the greatest ignorance and reckless hate, freed minds and immutable spirits will not be snuffed out. I returned to the bus and a group of the Syrians, like children embarrassed by an alcoholic parent begging society’s forgiveness for a crime that was never theirs, apologized to me and asked me to make sure the other Americans knew that not all Syrians thought this way. They wanted peace, they wanted to move on, and murdering civilians, they said, would make them no better than the Israeli army. I told them that I knew Israelis who felt the same way, outraged by their government’s expansionism and belligerence, and that there are many Americans who understand that we play a key role in allowing Israel to shun making peace in favor of expansion.

Connaitre’s martyrdom graveyard was a somber place, more so in that, in my mind, the death of all these men had only fermented and solidified a lingering hatred. In a way, it was much the same at the October War Panorama Museum in Damascus the next day. In 1973 Syria and Egypt had some success in forcing Israeli armies back. This is, in the shared cultural memory of these societies, a victory ranking with Saladin’s opening of Jerusalem from the Crusaders hundreds of years before. Syria’s North Korean allies donated a beautiful museum with a 360 panorama of the battle like a life-size donut shaped diorama extolling the bravery and courage of the Syrian army in pushing back the Israelis. A few friends and I were there, along with a few classes of 5^th graders. Through fuzzy speakers a recorded announcer narrated the battle and the history of the conflict from a dubious perspective. In truth, Lebanon’s Hezbollah museum takes the cake for expert propaganda, but I was disheartened to watch these innocent children being baptized in the hatreds of their parent’s generation. I am not discounting Syria’s situation. Part of Syria is occupied by a nuclear power that has in the past few years attacked Syrian soil as well as several of Syria’s close allies. From its position in the mountains south of Damascus it looks down on the Syrian capital, and for four decades the Syrians have tried to carry on their lives in the shadow of an enemy that watches them from within their own borders. Nevertheless, these kids were not on a field trip to learn about the complexities of international peacemaking, but to reinforce national sacrifice and the inhumanity of their enemies. Seeing how the IDF left Gaza, graffitiing walls and defecating in people’s beds, I can only imagine what young Israelis are being taught. It cannot be much different. In times like these I question the rationality and reason of our species.

Are we insane or blind? I wonder this often as an American. We punish Syria with a harsh barrage of sanctions until they renounce their ties with Hezbollah and Hamas and so on, and we support Israeli belligerence with our most generous foreign aid package. I am not sure for whom we are doing a favor? It is certainly neither in the interest of Syria nor Israel nor the U.S. It was the impression of the new American Ambassador to Syria that Syria is ready to make a peace, assuming the full return of occupied land to Syria. We met with the new Ambassador Ford in the embassy in Damascus. He was appointed in January as part of the reestablishment of diplomatic ties to Syria after the lull of the Bush years. He spoke to our small group of Americans and was able to speak surprisingly openly and honestly about Syria. He appears an earnest man trying to serve his country and Syria, two nations who need each other, and whose interests really do not need to clash as they often do.

Anyone who doubts that the U.S. needs to work with Syria underestimates the actors over-which they exert strong influence in the region, actors which the United States has a vested interest in engaging diplomatically; among these are Hamas, Hezbollah, and groups in Iraq, not to mention Syria’s own diplomatic engagement with Israel. The U.S. needs to work on its policies here, to deal with this region with an even hand to finally stand for the principles it preaches. As the rest of the Middle East falls apart, the influential political hand of Syria will be crucial in securing peace, cooperation, economic development and stability. This will only be reached by working with a strong political leadership in Damascus that can make unpopular decisions for the achievement of an elusive goal. I am not commenting on what I think this government wants. I am only saying that little in my discussions with most Syrians has made me think that they desire or believe themselves to be ready for political empowerment, or that a democracy would bring a brilliant partner for peace.

Syrians have witnessed the U.S. play its hand here for over half a century. We buttress a uncompromising expansionist theocracy as it exerts its will on its neighbors, we make allies of the most corrupt with no thought of their people, and our experiment in bringing democracy to Iraq is utterly ruinous. What are we doing here?

A Flame in Parched Fields

I have been now in Aleppo for several weeks. Though in many ways I wish I were closer to the action, Syria is a pretty unique place from which to watch the rest of the neighborhood writhe and tremble.

Put simply, though Syria shares many similar problems to those which plague the rest of the Arab states, stability here has some key assets. First and foremost, people here love the President. Of course, not loving him would be unwise, but for most people here, he is a man trying to lead a country with many problems into a brighter future. For religious minorities, one of which he is a part, he is a savior and the vanguard of secularism and relative liberalism against the more unsavory incarnations of political Islam. For people all over the Arab world, he represents staunch loyalty to the Palestinian cause. Moreover, Syria has never given in to the West. While Egypt and Jordan made themselves puppets to U.S. demands by their dependence on U.S. aid, Syria forged its own path that it has successfully trumpeted as a noble stance against American domination. People recognize that there is a lot of corruption in the government, from the street police which make a good deal of their wages in bribes, right up to the business elite who run the country through party connections. It is true, of course, discontent won’t get much of a stage here, and potential protesters are dealt with decisively. Economic liberalization, though necessary, is a painful process for a lot of Syrians, and the country still has a long way to go. But my impression is that most people don’t want democracy here. They don’t want the chaos of Cairo or Manama, and though it is hard to decipher officially enforced public perception from free thought, as much of that as might be allowed, people have remarkable faith in Syria and unquestioning faith in its leadership. Syria will weather these next months and uncertainty far better than its neighbors.

This is not to say that what is happening next door isn’t on some people’s minds. Most people are disinterested, perhaps consciously distanced from what is going on. People here were happy to see the Egyptian government overthrown, feeling for the plight of a people ruled by a dictatorship that doesn’t have their best interests in mind, suffering from corruption, unemployment, lack of opportunity, and economic stagnation. People detach themselves from this situation by their remarkable faith in their leadership and also in key differences between Syria’s government and Egypt; for them, the government there didn’t represent the people’s collective aspirations, while here people are unified under core opposition to Israeli expansionism, American domination, and wistful remnants of Arab nationalism, and remarkable patriotic loyalty. In this way, people were happy to see Mubarak fall.

At the same time, the Syrian government opened up Facebook, YouTube, and even Blogspot, and many others, in a display of confidence in the people. My Syrian friends rejoiced in gratitude, like a child when his parents let him stay up an extra half-hour past bedtime to finish a movie. My teacher was happy that her government “thought its people were ready for these freedoms”. Though most Syrians my age already had Facebook accounts, it just got much easier to get on. Though some Facebook groups did try to organize protests in Syria, the membership was far higher in the pro-Government anti-protest groups. It is an odd dynamic, but through all this, Syrians seem to be more confident in Syria and in their society. Still, as anyone who has a lot of Syrian Facebook friends will tell you, it is annoying to try to tell people apart at a glance as two thirds of my Syrian friends use a portrait of the President as their Profile Picture, and the other third use some combination of the President and a Syrian flag. The percentages were hardly different before Facebook was legal here.

Public perception and sympathy with the protests extends to most countries. Syrians like their government so it is surprisingly permissible to side with people against dictatorships in other countries. This is not true, however, when it comes to state allies, namely Iran. Discussion of this situation is entirely off the table.

Life here has been carrying on well for these few weeks. The accommodations are comfortable, too comfortable perhaps, and the program does a good job seeing that most of our requests are met. I have four classes, Modern Standard Arabic, Syrian Colloquial, International Relations in the Arab World, and Arab Literature. All four are taught in Arabic, and in that way I am grateful to finally be using Arabic in a class for something other than improving Arabic. Arabic literature is especially fascinating with Arabic’s rich history in poetry; indeed, the language was largely conceived of and developed by poets and passed down in oral traditions of the ancient Arab nomads of the peninsula. Poetry here holds a dignified status, and with good reason. The structure of Arabic allows rhyming and rhythm in ways that would be impossible in English. The language is almost entirely composed of words based on three letter roots, which change into a series of different forms depending on their often related meanings, with a lot of comprehensive grammar rules which give the whole system a mathematical logic completely absent in English. On these words, particularly at their end, poets can play with the short vowels accorded to each word. Thus they can make lines flow not only through their sounds, and by the structure of the sentences, but also by the very structure of the words. Regardless, reading Arabic poetry in translation does not do it any justice, so this class is a great opportunity to have difficult metaphors and antiquated (think Shakespearian language) Arabic explained.

The program has also provided us with language partners, who we are supposed to see a few times a week, who can help us with our Arabic studies. They are all graduate students in Arabic language studies, so their Modern Standard Arabic is good enough that they can answer complex grammar questions (average people have varying degrees of proficiency in MSA). My language partner is named Muhammad. For the amount of time I’ve spent in the Middle East, the amount of close Muslim friends I have is sad. I some how end up in minority religion social groups, and as there is very little mixing between these groups, I often remain in majority Sunni countries with a bunch of Catholic friends. Either way, it is cool to have someone well versed in Islam with whom to discuss the Quran and go to mosque. Muhammad is pious yet liberal and open-minded, with an excellent brain and many ideas that are as beautiful as they are rare in this part of the world. Exploring a Hittite temple outside of Aleppo this week we had a fascinating discussion about religion; his ideas about rationality and God were perfect, why had God given him a brain if he were not expected to use it? He embodies the type of liberalism and rationality, which by his own admittance is incredibly rare here, needed to counter tides of political Islam. Though devout in his own religion, the Sunni Islam of the majority, he lauded his government’s ability to defend everyone’s right to practice their own religion free from persecution and theocratic oppression.

I went back to Damascus last weekend to visit with some friends. By lucky coincidence one of my travel companions agreed to meet for lunch with an acquaintance in town, who turned out to the son of a wealthy and connected businessman and Consul, who took us to a posh restaurant he owned for a lot of amazing food. He and I had a long conversation about the future of this part of the world. We debated at length about the route causes of many of the world’s ills; some he knew all too well, he was in a Pakistani mosque belonging to a small sect of Islam considered by some Sunnis to be a sacrilegious abomination, when it was attacked by suicide bombers, leaving him visibly scarred yet redoubled in secular determination and ironically a profound optimism. He posited that the educated elite of my generation in the U.S. demanded explanations and proof of everything we were told. We are taught to question, to reason arguments against each other, to be skeptical, to demand more information. From my experience, Arab education is largely memorization. No one want students to ask why; they want them to know, as opposed to the body or critical thinking which American education demands. But for his part, he said that this was changing, that this next generation of Syrians would be demanding answers, demanding accountability, demanding change. It is true this was the perspective of someone thoroughly invested in and reliant on the system, but it was refreshing to enjoy the freedom of thought and inquiry accorded to the elite that is all too rare here. He was confident that Syrians would find their own way towards modernization, that liberal democracy here would be foolish and premature, that the realities of this country necessitate a more nuanced approach.

Sitting there enjoying one of the best meals, and certainly the largest, of my life, his iPhone buzzed with the news of Mubaraks flight. It was unreal. We soaked in the surreal fruition of Egypt’s struggle and the innumerable possibilities and challenges facing the Arab world in this new era, contented by the sublime which only a full stomach and a communal intellectual inquiry can afford; two luxuries which I fear may become rarer before they become more common in this area of the world.

Since I left Damascus a week ago, the Arab world has changed a lot. I heard word from some of my friends in Cairo, but the majority of them are beyond contact as telecommunications networks are snuffed out in Egypt. The wealth of “experts” who write that the whole Arab world is watching the events of the past weeks, yearning for change, certainly have not met the vast majority of Arabs that I’ve met, especially here in Syria. For most people, the Asian Cup is still the story of interest, and even as the heart of the Arab world ruptures, apathy, complacency, and regimented trepidation keep the whole concept conspicuously absent from public discourse, save for whispers in the murk of nebulous ideas ravaged into shadows of their former selves. These, like all shadows, will only endure as long as there is strength left to cast light upon their subjects.

Aleppo is really cool. As a city, I believe I prefer Aleppo to Damascus. From my window in the University of Aleppo dorms I have a fantastic cityscape, punctuated by the Aleppo citadel not two miles distant. The University is large and relatively modern. Our dorms have been fitted with wireless Internet (not working at the minute) and hot water, new pots and pans, and double rooms have been converted into singles, all for the advantage of the foreigners. I will not pretend that I don’t enjoy the special treatment, however embarrassing it general comfort we have to expect in all things. The study abroad program itself seems very well conceived and has more than capable leadership. We have a schedule of excursions, lectures and activities designed to give us a crash course in Syria and the Middle East. We have signed a pledge to use Arabic, even with each other, for the duration of the course, and I am taking an Arabic literature class and International Relations class in Arabic. I have never used Arabic as my language of learning and study, and am excited to see if I am capable. The international relations professor was gracious enough to offer to oversee my Honors College Thesis, and help me to compose it in Arabic (that will take a while), but these plans depend on finding someone at UMass who will approve this methodology and who can read it. It also depends on finding a permissible research topic in this political environment.

I will write more soon, I just thought I should post and let you all know that I am well!

Dinars with Birr and Lira

I am back in Damascus after over a month on the road and am feeling refreshed and rejuvenated and ready to complete the final leg of my undergraduate career. I had a month of travel with good friends and fascinating new people and have reaffirmed my genuine desire to be forced into early retirement and sail around the world. Until such a time, I have seen a few countries, each of which I am determined to return to explore in depth. A month isn't very long at all.

And now, with internet restrictions removed in this fine country, I can post pictures to my blog with newfound ease! I will update again soon- the Arab world is pretty exciting right now- but I thought I should add pictures to this entry first.

in Cairo for our last delicious dinner at Sequoia, then off!

We began in Ethiopia. Nicole, a capable and delightful travel companion, and I left Cairo and arrived before sunrise in Addis Ababa and were met in the airport by Sophia, my travel-wife from Sudan. We headed to our hotel room in the downtown and got a few hours of sleep. We awoke to a bustling city that reminded me of something between Nairobi and Dar es Salaam; Nairobi in its somewhat developed traffic and industrial infrastructure, yet reminiscent of Dar in its sprawling village feel outside of the small center in which modern urban planning was evident.

Our first morning we headed out to get some injera, the national staple, a bread with the consistency of a moist sponge. Injera is good, not great, and meal after meal without mercy, it grows tiresome, but for the first meal, Ethiopia was impressive. We’d wondered through a small alley down a staircase and into a house that seemed to double as a locals’ restaurant and hangout, and told them we wanted to try it all (it all costs less than a dollar each). It was delicious and spicy, and after we washed it down with some Italian macchiato, one of the many remnants of Italy's colonial enterprise in Ethiopia.

Perhaps, something on Ethiopia itself is necessary before continuing. The land of Ethiopia is among the oldest known sites of human existence, a landlocked chunk of the horn of Africa, bordered on the East and North by Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea, and borders to its South, Kenya, and to the West, Sudan. Its history of empires and conquest in fascinating and its kingdoms left behind archeological wonders and historical narratives which tie in with Middle Eastern and Abrahamic religious histories. The Ethiopians successfully (to some extent) repelled colonialism from the Italians, who had their colonial enterprises concentrated in the Horn of Africa as Ethiopia struggled for independence; alongside Liberia, Ethiopia is one of the only two African countries not to be divided up as colonial possessions in the Berlin Conference. Traveling around the country, it was easy to see how, though the Italians could hold cities here and there, they could never conquer such a wild and variegated terrain. Though their conquests didn't hold up, Ethiopian society is an amalgamation of amalgamations; Ethiopia is a combination of several major tribal and ethnic groups, with the cultures and languages distinct to each, and with Afro-asiatic cultures evident in a somewhat familiar looking script and a language spotted with recognizable words.

The society was generally religious, and besides a mixing of Christianity and Judaism apparent in some social customs, their Abrahamic faiths also seem to have combined with local beliefs so that Christianity was spiced up with a lot of animist legends and tales that Western Christians and certainly the Middle Eastern ones seem to dismiss as primitive perversions of their faith. I thought many of them were charming editions and parables; it is perhaps problematic for Christians to take issue with animism or exorcism when the foundation of Christian faith is that the son of God was born to a virgin women so that by his death he could absolve the sins of man. I do not mean to demean this belief. Nor am I convinced the rocks have souls. I just don't see any inherent quality that makes one supposition more valid than the other. If one accepts the existence of an all-powerful being, he or she is painfully presumptuous to assume his or her understanding of the nature this deity is any greater than anyone else’s. But here I digress.

After sipping coffee at a cafe we made our way to one of the many tour companies in down town Addis. More than book a tour we were curious just to look at a map and talk with the people there; they were very helpful but, as we suspected, ridiculously overpriced. We left and walked to the bus station and purchased tickets for the 12 hour bus ride the next day to Gonder. The bus ride was long and the roads terrible. Throughout our time in Ethiopia we saw far more than a proportionate amount of traffic accidents, or the remnants of them. We saw the aftermaths of several crashes and rolled trucks, some of which looked so charred by flame that I am quite certain no one made it out. The reason for these accidents was obvious in the design of the winding roads, necessitated by a constantly rising and falling terrain, and the multiple uneven and narrow switchbacks on the road. Fortunately, our driver was competent and we made it safely to Gonder, the old imperial capital of one of the Ethiopian kingdom of Begemder. The ancient city had ruins that we would have time to explore after we'd completed the hiking portion of the journey. The next morning at the bus station while looking for a bus to the Simien Mountains we ran into another foreigner, a solo Canadien traveler named Sean. He turned out to be a great guy and invaluable addition to our group, and we spent 4 days backpacking with him in the Simien Mountains. In the last four-hour bus ride up to Debark, the launching point for hikes into the mountains, Sean recounted his 2 and half years on the road since he quit his job as a Microsoft programmer and set out on a journey around the world that will end later this year in Timbuktu. His story was as impressive as it was inspiring, and his adventures made us all yearn for a longer vacation.

Our bus ride continued the general trend it had from Addis. Winding roads constantly moving uphill towards the Ethiopian plateau, one of the highest areas in Africa. Addis itself is above 7,000 feet and we just continued up from there, so at least we had time to grow accustomed to the altitude, if not to the thin air.

buses in Africa are an experience in themselves

We reached Debark and hired a scout to take us into the mountains. We declined to hire a pack-mule on principle and thought that a guide and cook were overkill, but a scout is obligatory by law for protection against wild animals. A few minutes after paying camping fees and renting tents, sleeping bags, and cook wear, Neggahr showed up at the office carrying nothing but a thin blanket slung over his shoulder and an old British bolt-action rifle that was somehow older than he was. Neggahr was a figure of stoic admiration. He wore two layers of thick clothes during the day in the unforgiving sun straight into the night when the temperatures dropped to near freezing. Neggahr spoke no English whatsoever, but he knew the word for Baboon, which he'd point out whenever we saw them for the next four days. The rest of the time he was contented to speak in Amharic to us as if we could comprehend his meaning, though I feel that by the end he and I had reached some level of mutual understanding.

starting out overburdened

We bought some food and were off up the mountain. When we refused the pack mule we were envisioning lightweight tents and sleeping bags, only to find out we couldn't be farther from the truth. Sean and I both had proper bags for this sort of thing, and this picture illustrates how over-laden we were- but we'd refused their sincere recommendations that we take a mule, so we couldn't backpedal now. Nicole's bag ended up to be somewhere near her own body weight with food but didn't complain at all. Truly, none of us could really complain as Neggahr trudged up mountain with a torn up pair of shoes, far too small for his feet, with at least four of his toes on either foot protruding out. Shoes were, for him, merely a decoration, as most of the other Amhara we passed on the paths wore no shoes at all. Neggahr ate scraps of our food and drank only when we offered, though to him this seemed a luxury. Sophia, a first time hiker, provided a perfect foil to Neggahr's austere stoniness; a fun juxtaposition to be sure, but I would find it more amusing were we not all stuck together for the next week. Needless to say it was a long first day. Soon into the hike, the points of weakness in our company had become plain and Neggahr through a series of nods and gestures that evening had indicated that she'd not make it a second.

no one messes with Neggahr

We ate a dinner of Pasta and tomato paste and went to sleep early, but not too early to witness an impressive celestial sphere of stars wrapping around us and enveloping our view. There were more stars that night than have been seen in Cairo in the past century, combined. We'd come a long way in 3 days.

The next morning I talked to a guide who spoke some English and contracted a mule for our last three days of hiking. In that way we could spread out our weight and have a better shot of proving Neggahr wrong. The chaos that ensued was unpleasant prelude to the scum and villainy of which Ethiopians are capable. I paid 400Birr (24USD) for a mule and mule driver to take our tents, sleeping bags and cooking stuff up to our next camp. The guide I negotiated with had left and as we made to leave the mule-man demanded another 60Birr if he was going to take our stuff. At this time all of the men at the camp, maybe a dozen total, had gathered to tell us we should pay more. Amharic numbers are similar to Arabic numbers, but none of them spoke English, Arabic or French, so we were at a linguistic loss. I asked for our money back (I had a travel-guides useful phrase section which I soon exhausted before it had proved to be of any use whatsoever). We knew we were being screwed over, and even Neggahr, to his great discredit in my eyes, actively participated in extorting a little extra. We didn't have a choice, they wouldn’t give the money back but wouldn't take our stuff without the added price.

I learned later through the translations of a passing guide that the mule driver decided to charge extra for the rope to tie bags on our mule. Such was the way with negotiating with Ethiopians, they gathered around and watched, as if watching the extortion of foreigners was like a circus spectacle; they chuckled at our indignity as one would be charmed at a seal able to balance a ball on its nose. We hadn't seen the last of this cultural trait. Not to worry of course, my wonderfully useful and fully enlightened liberal education has, from grades K-12 right up to the last latte-sipping professor pontificating that no culture is any better or worse than any other, informed me that I must not be a cultural or moral absolutist, and must look at every culture relative to itself, and must appreciate its uniqueness and beauty. I continue to strain to comprehend the cultural worth in, for example, the 70-something percent of Ethiopian women who's vaginas are either hacked or burned in the savage, or rather, culturally unique process of female genital mutilation--- but maybe I am burdened by my Western cultural view, but a society based on engrained dishonesty, where honor is garnered by the chastity of women rather than by the interpersonal dignity, where corruption and deceit are standard and generosity based on tribe and creed rather than by common fellowship on Earth isn't going anywhere fast. Again, I digress.

The next day brought us farther up the Ethiopian plateau and to the first of a long series of astounding views. We reached a plateau and looked out over a landscape of wild carved rocks jutting out at right angles from lower jungles, continuing to the utter end of the horizon in all directions. We shared the road with farmers, herders, villages, and Bleeding-Heart Baboons, a species unique to the Simien Mountains. When startled, the baboons, their young clinging on with visible ease, would leap over the side of the cliffs in what at first appeared to be mass-suicide. A minute later, cautiously, they would claw their way back up from their fortuitous hiding places hanging off the side of the cliff. It was impressive the confidence they had when making their leap that their hands would find sturdy hold on the side of the rocks. Surely, no predator without opposable thumbs would do well to jump after them. The baboons were everywhere for the next few days, but I never got tired of watching them. It is an impressive wonder of nature our evolution from a relation to these wonderful creatures, and clear in their interactions together are our familial ties; for myself, I find quiet comfort in watching the baboon frollic about and remembering that we are in nearly all respects, identical. But which of us has the better end of the deal? I only know that I am paying to go on vacation and hike around for 4 days in the playground where the baboons get to hang out their whole lives, and though I am sure there are downsides to their existence, they spend at least most of their time eating, playing, socializing and mating, and all that doesn't sound too bad.

We carried on, up footpaths and goat-paths that carved their way between the lesser peaks on the way up the spine of the mountains. The views went from amazing to astounding, but this, our longest day, began to take its toll on those fainter of body and spirit in our group, and as they faded, Neggahr expressed his concern to me as to whether or not we'd make it to camp before sunset. As we passed by wild horses (which roamed freely and majestically in these places), he was able to explain that it is possible for us to link up with a horseman, and they could carry us the rest of the way. Fortunately we didn't have to resort to this, but we arrived late at camp, at the tail end of an ice-cold dusk, and crammed some food in our mouths before falling asleep.

The third day we got up early, and fortunately the day's hike was not obligatory, and those who wished to remain could do so. Nicole, Sean and I continued to Imat Gogo, a peak surrounded by two large gorges that trace either side of the spine of the mountain chain all the way back to Debark. From there we had a 360-degree view of the mountains on all sides, the culmination of our hike. By noon we had made it back to the camp from the previous night and the four of us made the hike halfway back to Debark, arriving at good hour to our final night's camp. The camps consisted of flat grasslands above mountain villages, which themselves were built around mountain springs with delicious and potable water bubbling from the rocks. Interestingly, the villages used the water further downstream, and shared it with herds of cattle, sheep and goats; I cannot understand how they did not get sick, as the water a little further downstream from the source ran through algae and dung-ridden pools and rocks. Human waste was not reserved to areas far from water sources, but seemed to fall as soon as the urge hit. Their immune systems here were astounding.

Our last day brought us back to Debark just before sunset, and we stayed in Debark to wait for the morning bus (the road from Debark to Gonder is unpaved and hazardous, and buses will not traverse it after nightfall). The next day back in Gonder we got a some rooms at the hotel, and went to explore the ancient ruins of the castle complex of the emperors who ruled from here a 400 hundred years ago. The castles were an interesting mix of several architectural styles, and were good for a few hours of wondering. That night we had our celebratory dinner to make up for all the eating we hadn't been doing, and even enjoyed a decent pizza and burger and Ethiopian beer.

part of the castle complex at Gonder

more of that same complex

Ethiopian beer is very good. It is possible that I say this as I have been away from good beer in the Middle East for too long and thus my ability to judge is wasted, but I think it tasted great. On our first full night in Addis we enjoyed Ethiopia's most famous alcohol product, tejj, or honey-wine. Tejj looks a lot like orange juice but tasted something like sweet honey flavored juice with a kick. Local men gather in tejj houses (barren rooms with long wooden benches where the tejj is sloshed out of huge vats into vase-shaped flasks) to socialize and imbibe on the plentiful and cheap honey wine. Our night in the tejj house was interesting; being with two girls in a room fool of drunken Ethiopians was uncomfortable. Still, Ethiopian tejj and beer are both highly enjoyable.

After our great feast in Gonder we headed back to the hotel, only to find bed bugs hopping around our beds as if on trampolines. The owner refused to refund our money, and we had no leverage, but we convinced him that his proposed solution, to change the sheets and spray the bed with bug spray was insufficient, we were forced to settle for a different room which looked alright. Hoping to catch an early bus in the morning, we bid Sean farewell and got a few hours of sleep. By six we were on our way to Bahir Dar, a city on the way back to Addis.

Arriving at the bus station was another one of those charming cultural experiences. We got out of our tuktuk to a swarm of Ethiopians all grabbing at us yelling at us to use their mini bus. They fought with each other over who'd get our fare, but at least agreed with each other on the inflated price they'd cite us. They grabbed and pulled and I had to shove several of them back just to stay on my feat. One would grab our bag and start carrying it off to his preferred minibus and try to shove us in there, then the next would grab our hand or shirt. Without Sean, it was just two light-haired light-skinned American girls, and I, and they both appreciated their manhandling even less than I did. We made it to a minibus and got in, more seeking refuge than making a selection, and then allowed the drivers to start fighting over us, while the touts tried to claim a portion of the commission for bringing us there.

It reminded me of when Matt and I were in Kisitown, Kenya, trying to find transport to Uganda; he was suffering from heatstroke and we were surrounded by a group of locals half harassing and half mugging us, but not in a full effort, rather in perverse half-measures, like savannah wolves working in tandem, each nipping slightly at an creature to finally bring it down, none going all the way, each just making small motions more than the last, but hesitant to make the kill without full commitment of the group. We were frazzled, but we still hadn't seen the last of this portion of the Ethiopian hospitality regime.



We got to Bahir Dar which was in my opinion the most beautiful city we'd seen in Ethiopia. It is built on Lake Tana, Ethiopia's largest lake and the headwaters of the Blue Nile, the largest tributary to the great river. We arrived and arranged a tuktuk to take us to Blue Nile Falls, the waterfalls at the downsteam end of the lake. Off we went, and an hour later (tuktuks, or "Indian taxis", like a motorized tricycle taxi, are painfully slow). We arrived to the town built around the waterfall, and hiked in to the spot. It was exhilarating to see where this part of the Nile is born (I got to kayak in Jinja, Uganda, where the other branch is born). We hiked down off the trail until we sat below the falls, blanketed by its rejuvenating mist, and there enjoyed Twix bars and a refreshing rest. No matter where I go in the world, a Twix is always delicious; but this was an especially enjoyable spot for a Twix.

Blue Nile Falls

unfortunately a weakened flow from the hydroelectric projects upstream

We followed up a lesser branch of the river that met with the main artery just below the falls, eventually coming to a place where it could be crossed by taking off shoes and rolling up pant legs. From there the path wound back around, but continued on to wonder through beautiful fields of rich farm land which the Nile had made rich and green. Ethiopia was truly beautiful land.

here a herd crosses this lesser tributary to the Nile

We arrived bath in Bahir Dar, and the next day wondered a little around the lake and the city, and around 2 o’clock, made our way to the bus station to be sure we'd get back in time for our flight at four AM the next morning. We'd asked about buses back when we were at the hotel, and the guy at the hotel had told us we should take his inflated-priced minibus. Unfortunately, we'd told him our time schedule based on our flight, and thus he knew we needed to get back to Addis. We didn't want his overpriced share-bus, so we went to the bus station. We showed up there and the touts were on us in a second. The guy knew what hotel we'd come from; they'd already all be in contact. They told us there was no public transport that would get us there in time. We'd go to ask other locals, and they'd begin to answer, before the guys (who were now following us incessantly) would discuss the situation with them, at which point they'd agree that we'd have to hire one of their special buses, that is, to buy all the seats of the bus at full price (they actually started at a higher than full price until they learned we knew what it should be per seat) for the entirety of the distance to Addis. We couldn't lose the guys following us, and on our walk back to the hotel we had 5 or 6 total followers, each wanting their payout for our extortion. The guy at the hotel told us we should have taken his special bus, we'd now have to rent one ourselves. I asked another driver, but they followed and yelled to him in Amharic and he simply said that no one would go to Addis save for our group of ravenous touts. Their price went up, but they lowered it back down to the previously stated price if we'd agree to allow them 5 passengers they could pick up or drop off to make the whole thing more profitable. We had no choice, and by now had realized we were absolutely powerless to do anything but bight the bullet and take it.

We watched them dole out payments to each of the fetid parasites, each of them fighting over us like hyenas over a carcass, but then they dropped us off with another driver who, it would turn out, had no idea of any of these agreements, and had been paid only a portion of our total sum. The rest was dispersed amongst the crowd for their complicity. Our driver proceeded to drive us as if it were an ordinary minibus, picking up and discharging passengers as we went, despite the fact we'd paid for the whole thing. We pre-paid half, and when we arrived in Addis 9 hours later, refused to pay the other half. I don't think the driver knew everything that had happened, he seemed like a decent enough guy, but he'd not been paid what was promised him, and he wanted it made up for by us, having been screwed over by the guy at the hotel. As no one but the guy at the hotel could speak English, we couldn't explain to him what happened, and when the police came over, they provided impartial (ha) judgment and decided we owed the full amount. I argued for over a half an hour, we tried to leave but they wouldn't let us walk away; I demanded they call the tourist police, the officers said that there weren't any (though they didn't speak English either), and were laughing and chuckling and the whole thing. I am not sure what each did with their cut of the loot, but I know there was plenty to go around.

It is amazing how much dishonesty and treachery can sour even the finest of vacations. I am vexed that my first thought when people ask me about Ethiopia is so utterly negative even though the vast majority of time there was positive, but I left the country more disheartened by a place than I have been since I left Lusaka. Nicole and bid farewell to Sophia and boarded a plane and were happy to see the country disappear behind the clouds as we took off.

Fortunately, our next destination could not disappoint. We had a painless layover in Cairo, and by nighttime, were eating a schwarma-chicken sandwich walking between the Aya Sophia and Blue Mosque in downtown Istanbul. Life was good. In the morning, we enjoyed an absurdly cheap (comparable to the price of the equidistant bus) flight to Diyarbakir, a town in the heart of Kurdish Anatolia (the Turkish landmass in Asia). From the plane window we saw spine after spine of rugged and foreboding snow-covered mountains. It is hard to imagine that Alexander the Great had to cross all of this to face off against Darius at the height of Persian glory and was still victorious. We covered his long march by Airbus in less than 2 hours and arrived in South-East Anatolia, exploring what was once a great walled city. Diyarbakir has the second longest contiguous wall in the world built and rebuilt over thousands of years, leaving it the most impressive of the ruins in town.

Kurds are an ethnic group from Eurasia that has lived in this area as long as anyone else. They have a unique culture and language (from the Persian language family) yet have no country of their own (a sore subject for them). There are large Turkish populations in Iraq (semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan), Syria, Turkey and Iran, concentrated in an area resembling a country that does not exist, but which many Kurds wish did. The subject of Kurdish independence is somewhat awkward in their host countries for obvious reasons, and many Syrians are skeptical of the Kurds for their nationalist aspirations that undermine Syrian unity. The same seemed true of Turkey and certainly was true of Iraq. Most people know the Kurds foremost for their systematic persecution and slaughter by Sadam Hussein; indeed, Coalition forces found ready-made allies in the Kurds when they entered Iraq. I had heard that the Kurdish region of Iraq was in these short years after the war a remarkable success story at least in the aspects of security and development, so we went to explore for ourselves.

A few hours wandering the ruins of Diyarbakir and we bused to Siloki, a border town to Iraq, where we found a Turkish taxi who'd take us into Kurdistan, taking care of all the paperwork, for 50 dollars, the going rate. The closer we got to Iraq, the more pervasive Arabic was, and thus the easier it was for us to get around. We could usually find someone to translate into Turkish or Kurdish from Arabic, and so we felt much more in control.

Kurdistan was an experience. I don't really know where to begin, so I guess I will just start with showing up there. After the Turkish border posts we arrived at a post crowned by Kurdistan's, not Iraq's, flag. Signs were in Kurdish first (written in a Arabic script with some adjustments), then in Arabic, then in English. We entered the passport control office. It was warm and had several rows of sharp looking couches and chairs with glass tables, arranged around several large flat-screen TVs playing various soccer matches. We walked to the window and handed in our passports. The man smiled at us, "American? Welcome!!! Please sit down, it will be just a minute". We sat on nearby couch, and a man brought us each a cup of strong tea. We thanked him in Kurdish, which he replied to with a big grin.

We hadn’t finished our tea and they called us to the desk. They asked what we were doing in Kurdistan, but more out of curiosity than protocol. “Tourism” we said. Each officer welcomed us with genuine smiles and then they gave us our free Kurdish tourist visas. They said we’d have to pay if we wanted to stay more than 10 days. We said we didn’t have that long. “Have a nice visit, then”. And off we were into Iraq.

There are no public buses around Kurdistan; a fleet of taxis operates it all with fixed prices per seat to go places. Fixed prices were really the oddest thing here, we weren’t once given an inflated price and ripping people off wasn’t a cultural necessity as it is in Arab countries. We got a hotel the first night in Dohuk, and the next day explored the small city. It was unremarkable save for the colors of the buildings. Arranged on the steep hillsides that resembled Sinai foothills, the houses were painted in bright pastels, like little square Easter eggs spilling down into the valleys from the upper reaches where the mountains became to sheer, arranged in no particular order but taken together making a delightful colored specticle. People were exceedingly friendly and we began to realize that this was a pretty great place to be an American. It was odd, though, people spoke much less Arabic than you’d expect for people living in a nominally Arabic speaking country. We could always find someone to translate from Arabic to Kurdish if we asked around, but truly these people had much more in common with the Kurds in Diyarbakir than with their Arab countrymen (though I am in no way fomenting the secession of Kurds from their respective countries nor the creation of a Kurdish state). The other thing that we immediately noticed was odd was that an American speaking Arabic was not a novelty. They were completely comfortable with the notion and when we’d begin in Arabic with people, they’d rarely ask how we came to speak the language. I cannot draw any conclusions as to what this meant, but it was fascinating; they were accustomed to working with Americans, and maybe enough of our people there spoke Arabic so as to make such a thing commonplace.

not a very good picture, but the Kurds love colorful houses

People’s attitudes towards Americans and U.S. foreign policy were also in stark contrast to the prevailing beliefs in every place I have ever been. They certainly loved the U.S. for what it did for their people, and how it helped them. Moreover, Bush was better than Obama (Nicole and I did a double-take when we heard that one the first time). However, these were not mindless partisans of American policy. They had nuanced views of the good and negative of our actions; necessitated as the fate of the few million Kurds here rest in the balance of sweeping U.S. policy decisions. Though I spoke to multiple people at some length about these issues, I will, at risk of oversimplification, amalgamate these views in a generalized Kurdish view, as best as I can understand it from my short time there.

First of all, and perhaps most important, they recognize that the U.S. does not and did not come to Iraq just to liberate them from Hussein; they are not idiots. They understand how unrealistic that is and that is not how U.S. foreign policy functions. At the same time, it seemed to be universally felt that Americans were good people, and the Americans working in Iraq confirmed that for them in word and deed. They thought that once we were there we genuinely had the best intentions for the Kurds and Iraqis in general, and that our incompetence in many fields was only that, incompetence, not malice. Many we had a chance to speak to were collaborators in one form or another, on Coalition payroll for at least a little while (to some extent this trend is because we spoke to people in English or Arabic, the two languages the coalition forces would find useful in Kurdish residents). Some felt like the U.S. used everyone around to get their own goals accomplished, and often had little regard for the people who risked their lives and families to help out. But their experience with individual Americans often seemed to counter this attitude, and they attribute our reckless abandon which has cost many Kurdish and Iraqi lives and trust as an error of the size, bureaucracy, and complexity of our enterprises, not the moral depravity of our people.

The Kurds admired America and the West in greater depth than the Arabs I’ve met. The Arabs begrudgingly imitate western consumerist culture while criticizing its moral depravity; consider an old Egyptian man I once met who, between sips of his Coke, grumbled about how America brought the world nothing but woe and suffering. For the Arabs, it’s all about embracing Western culture while claiming victimhood under its overwhelming yoke. The Kurds defined themselves as not being Arabs, and made a point of being different. Moreover they were overwhelmingly secular. It is strange, and certainly has been fortuitous for the U.S. in the past, that people have only so much capacity for fanaticism, and that many fanaticisms run counter to each other; one must in some ways chose their preferred brand of crazy. The Kurds’ choice “ism” was nationalism, and they were all about it. Religiosity took a back seat. Kurdish Christian and Muslim communities were Kurds first, and seemed in relative harmony. Non-Kurdish Christians were migrating from the rest of Iraq to Kurdistan as here, sectarianism wasn’t causing any bloodshed. Mosul seemed an exception, and people didn’t seem to know why a city so close but was still having so many problems. The Kurds were defining themselves as non-Arab, non-Iraqi, and so the problems that haunted the rest of the country were things the Kurds prided themselves in not doing. Conveniently, this extended from everything from ripping people off on prices to enforcing religiosity on people. However, interestingly enough, they recognized how incredibly secular Sadam’s regime was, and that there has been a universal rise in religiosity in the wake of his imposed secular austerity. Whatever the reason, the Kurdish nationalist aspirations were perfectly suited for U.S. aspirations in the area, and we were, for the first time in my experience, welcomed as liberators rather than occupiers.


The night of our first day we left by taxi from Dohuk to Erbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. The roads are dotted by security checkpoints, and our car got more attention than most, more for curiosity than security. On seeing our faces they'd ask for our passports and usually try out a few English words, and wish us good travels. Also in our car was a geology professor from a university in Erbil who invited us to his house for dinner. We accepted his hospitality, as his Arabic was fluent so we could communicate; Dr. Ali turned out to be the coolest guy in Kurdistan, self-dubbed our “Kurdish father”. He had his son pick us up at the city limits in a beautiful new Ford Mustang. I never fully appreciated American muscle cars with our stringent traffic laws with reasonable speed limits and rules, but if I ever move to the Iraq, getting one will be first on my list. We got home in good time and met Dr. Ali’s family while his Nepalese servant girl (who spoke Arabic from her last posting in Oman) prepared us Kurdish cuisine. Kurdish food was wonderful, and though filled to the brim, we headed out that night with Dr. Ali to see the town.

an ancient minaret, impressive even at half its original height

The parks and fountains were impressive, with well-lit and clean boulevards and shopping malls. It certainly wasn’ what one expects to find in Iraq.

fountains in front of the citadel. yes, this is what Iraq looks like

Nicole and I stayed with Dr. Ali in a spare room and in the morning headed out to walk around the town. Saladin, the famous Arab conqueror who was actually Kurdish himself, was from this area, and many things bore his name. There was also a ruler-philosopher commemorated by statue at the citidel overlooking the central square of the city. The citadel stood on top of a hill in the absolute center and was the highest thing around. Inside was in the middle of a restoration project, but we ended up getting a tour of it all by the project manager. Using UN money they were creating a digital model of the place to shore up the walls and structures as a cultural heritage cite. It wasn’t, in its current state, very impressive, but it will be interesting to see when they are finished. The rest of the city felt like other Arab cities with winding market streets and souks. We ate dinner again with Dr. Ali and finally met his wife, a professor as well and a former Kurdish parliamentarian, back from a meeting in the south. She spoke Arabic as well and had fascinating anecdotes and stories about her term in Baghdad, trying to reassemble Iraq from inside of the Green Zone. She was tired from her travels and we didn’t want to overstay our welcome, so Dr. Ali drove us to a hotel owned by a friend of his, not letting us pay of course as our self-appointed caretaker. We spent that last night in Iraq eating Lebanese takeout and watching the Sister Act (there really wasn’t much on), the whole surreal experience not really setting in. In the morning we awoke to make our way back towards Turkey.

mosques here were far more eastern looking

Getting back into Turkey isn’t as simple as getting out. Crossing the border took well over 2 hours, and it was not without its quirks.

Turkish border

Cigarettes are cheaper in Kurdistan than in Turkey, and there is a six box (each with a bunch of cartons) limit to how many a person can bring into Turkey. The Kurdish-Turkish drivers who will take people back across have a set price, but that price rests on the assumption that you will aid them in their cigarette smuggling enterprise. We didn’t have want to use our allocation on our own of course, and our driver (through a translator with limited Arabic) told us that we’d have to pretend six boxes were ours for him to take us. I refused on instinct but everyone there said that we’d not find a driver willing to take us without paying much more or subsidizing by bringing cigarettes. Indeed, everyone else was taking his or her share over from the conveniently located cigarette store on the border. I said we’d take six boxes between the two of us, but we weren’t hiding anything in our bag (he wanted to shove more in there). I figured if we were declaring them and not hiding them it wasn’t so bad. He grudgingly agreed, and we made our way through checkpoint after checkpoint, each more in depth than the next. Our driver had some pretty nifty Millennium Falcon style smuggling compartments, and Nicole crossed the border on a hollow seat cushion full of cigarettes. The other passengers loaded their jacket pockets and about everywhere else, and everyone had their six legal boxes. I looked around while our cars stood idle in line, and every driver and passenger in the long line of cars was doing the same. The Turkish authorities were scouring everything, and there were several trash bags of cigarette boxes that didn’t make the journey undetected, caught in cigarette-purgatory on the sides of the checkpoints. Turkish police tore our car apart but didn’t find any. The man went through each bag, but on seeing where we were from he didn’t open ours. The driver looked wistfully at my large backpacking bag , half empty, completely un-scrutinized; I am sure he was imagining how many boxes he could have Tetris-packed in there. Our scrutiny came at one of the security posts when we were questioned on the reasons for our travel in Kurdistan. I am not really sure what these officials were getting at, I think they just didn’t want journalists sympathetic to pan-Kurdish nationalism, but they proved quite friendly and gave us recommendations on what to do while still in Eastern Turkey. We finally made in back to Siloki and waited for a bus to Diyarbakir.

This bus ride was two hours longer than scheduled because of an excessively thorough security check en route. I don’t know what prompted it, but every bag was taken off the bus, every man patted down and every inch of the bus scoured. Outside the window we saw they had found three handguns and a few trash bags of cigarettes. They looked at my large bag that Nicole and I were sharing but which sat in front of her, and didn’t ask to open it. Though they went up and down the bus even looking in women’s purses and people’s jacket pockets, the official didn’t even peer at ours. I was in disbelief. We could have fit an RPG, and enough small arms to start a small war in there, but being a foreigner has its perks. The next morning we were on a flight back in Diyarbakir, and that afternoon, were enjoying a real Chinese buffet in downtown Istanbul (yes, life is great).

one of the bridges across the strait

looking from the European to the Asian side of the Bosporus

just another one of the city's grand mosques

We spent the rest of our time in the Istanbul, ancient Constantinople, the city straddling Europe on the Western bank and Asia on the Eastern bank of the Bosporus Strait. The archeological wonders are astounding. Justinian’s Aya Sophia, famous for its revolutionary hollow-brick dome which is supported by no column but rather by a series of lower semi-domes-making it a gigantic completely open space- was at one point the largest church in the world. At the conquest of Constantinople by Suleiman the Magnificent the Aya Sophia was converted to a mosque by the addition of minarets and some traditional Islamic bling, but the original Christian motifs remained, making it a fascinating relic of the two religions. The Blue Mosque was an imposing and impressive structure as well, on the opposite side of some beautiful parks and fountains between the great structures.

inside the Aya Sophia

pictures cannot capture the immensity of this place

Nearby, ancient cisterns of the palaces of Constantinople have been reopened as museums after they were forgotten for hundreds of years. They were vast and majestic, like a Tolkien underground dwarf city, even though they were only intended as freshwater storage. Unfortunately we did have time to visit Topkapi Palace complex, where the Sultans of the Ottoman dynasties wasted away in total seclusion from their societies, enjoying unimaginable wealth and splendor, and of course, their harems, while their empire deteriorated. Having lived and traveled all around the Middle East, I have seen the Ottoman cultural and archeological heritage that was spread throughout the lands of their dominion. Ottoman mosques, citadels, and public works are commonly among the most impressive in their respective cities. Despite this, I can safely say that the sum of their colonial relics do match the total wonder and grandeur of what they were created in their imperial capital.

Justinian's cisterns

Our travels ended well, enjoying a delicious dinner on a balcony over looking two of the world’s most famous structures, and beyond the Bosporus and the storied hillsides, which stretch out towards Asia. Istanbul, and the rest of Turkey, are now, more than ever, on my list of places to visit. We only scratched the surface for lack of time; I have never been to a city that appeared to have so much to offer, and such interesting blends of culture. The infrastructure, society, and atmosphere were palpably European in the city, or at least we found them that way in the sharp contrast to our countries of residence. I will travel back to Istanbul.

Aya Sophia at night

I wandered the city solo for the day Nicole returned to Cairo, and that night caught a bus back to Damascus. The bus ride dragged on, but it was amazing to watch the geography change as we cut Southward across Anatolia, then along the coast as the snowcapped peaks fell away to flatlands and eventually grew more arid, becoming suddenly bleaker and rockier as the border approached. As if matching the geography, the Turkish hospitality gave away to Syrian border officials. Not to worry, a month of travel renews the sprit and even the Syrian border welcoming committee couldn’t get me down.

The following night I was home with my family in Damascus, and friends had all gathered for our Thursday night partying tradition. It was good to be back with Arabs, I had missed being able to understand what conversations were going on around me. I had missed my friends and my family here in Damascus; it always astounds me how good they are to me. Since I’ve returned I’ve hardly been alone long enough to write this--- but I wanted to get it down when it was fresh. All in all, an amazing trip to a fascinating and variegated roster of places with some incredible people, both as companions and those we met on the road.

Despite some low points in people and in places I have seen in all of my traveling, the societies I’ve explored and the common humanity of people give me the greatest degree of faith in the wonderful and universal decency of people everywhere, and equal wonder at the impossible majesty that is Earth, our little speck in the universe.