I've been down and out in Calogira five days now; without money, without responsibilities, without plans. It's gotten to the point where I don't bother picking destinations anymore. I rarely look at maps. I pick a direction and I start walking. When I'm tired, I sit for a minute and read or write. Then I return the way I came.
On Saturday I walked North, on Sunday West, on Monday South and today I rest, since I've already been East and it leads to the airport where I will go tonight.
North
The industrial zone. Thick, dirty air. Four-lane roads and crumbling sidewalks; glass shards. The kind of big empty space that makes you feel closed in. I passed a complex obscured by high walls topped with razor wire and cameras. What could require such tight security? A prison? Military base? A sign read "Oxygene Maghreb"---Moroccan oxygen.
West
A happy walk that didn't make me tired. Carts piled with pomegranates and small sweet oranges; sidewalk cafes with cloth awnings. Broken-down old Benzes cruised, playing Arabic music with the bass turned up. Kids played soccer on dirt fields, stray dogs sleeping in the shade. I decided this was the most beautiful face of Morocco.
South
The ugliest face of Morocco: the shantytowns. I walked after dusk past huts made of scrap aluminum, plastic sheets for roofs. They looked like piles of trash scattered in fields which grew no crops. The only light came from the passing motorbikes sputtering through the fetid night. Emaciated livestock stood despondently in the cold mud, their waste flowing out into the street through a narrow ditch winding between the huts.
I came across a man lying on his face in the middle of the sidewalk, his clothes torn and his feet bare. Others were stepping around him, but something about the pale soles of his feet, exposed to the night air, gave me the thought that it could have been a corpse and I was horrified. I crouched down and nudged his shoulder. He awoke, craned his neck and looked at me calmly and without recognition.
"Are you OK?" I asked.
Before that moment, I had thought I knew what a stupid question was.
He rolled over and fell asleep.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Casablanca-Chicago Pt. 1
After 46 days of traveling, covering more than 10,000 kilometers, I've returned to the house where I spent my first night abroad, a guest of Khalid in the village of Calogira, outside Casablanca.
My shoe soles are worn thin as paper, every one of my socks has a hole in it and both pairs of pants I brought have lost their fly-buttons. Perhaps most significantly, I am down to my last $30. With five days until my flight home, and no means for visiting anywhere else, I find myself with time to reflect.
So, what the fuck did I do here?
I walked a lot, rode in a ton of buses and taxis, flew some; hitched rides on trucks, cars, scooters, donkey carts and one wheel barrow. I photographed rocks and seas, people and holy places. I drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and read and wrote. I met loads of people, had a bunch of conversations and a few really worthwhile ones. I distributed the entirety of my savings between the economies of six different countries.
That's an accurate description, but it's not an adequate one. The best way I can describe it is "wandering with purpose." When I began the trip I was under the impression that I would plan a series of destinations, and my travel would revolve around achieving those destinations, like collecting items in a scavenger hunt. In fact my itinerary was more like a pub crawl, staggering around on indirect routes to destinations chosen on a whim. An important thing I'm starting to realize is that the destinations were less important than the routes taken.
On one muggy afternoon in Ajloun, Jordan, I visited a forest preserve. After a couple hours I realized I had lost the trail completely. I had left all my belongings in the park's field house. I was carrying only a camera and water: no phone and no money. I found myself in a village and asked a minibus driver for directions. He insisted on giving me a ride and dropped me off on an unfamiliar back road and pointed in a vague direction, leaving me much more lost than before. I walked for hours seeing no one. Eventually I found myself among rows of olive trees. I startled a donkey and, dreading an encounter with the owner of the olives and the donkey, I decided to exit the grove by climbing a thorny tree and hopping over a barbed-wire fence.
I landed on a small village road, to the wonderment of a group of children playing. It's a good thing I like kids. I picked a random heading and set out, seeking someone I could ask for directions. The children, giggling, fell into step behind me. That gave me renewed energy. A commander should never show fatigue in front of the ranks---it's bad for morale.
Eventually I came upon a woman hanging up laundry to dry. I greeted her and began to ask for directions, but she interrupted and urged me to sit on a chair on her porch. She ran inside and reappeared wearing a chador and asked if I would like water or coffee. I had been hiking through desert scrub for hours and the wind-blown dust had settled in thick layers on the back of my throat. Water was good, but coffee was Manna from heaven. She served me cold water and strong coffee flavored with cardamom and introduced me to her children: my loyal troops. We sat and talked, or rather she talked and I did my best to understand her, offering observations in broken Arabic when I could. She gave me directions to the field house which was only a kilometer away.
I realized I had never been lost at all but had only found a more interesting trail. I shouldered my bag and thanked that woman who, though desperately poor, gave kindness to strangers as easily and impulsively as some people bite their fingernails.
My shoe soles are worn thin as paper, every one of my socks has a hole in it and both pairs of pants I brought have lost their fly-buttons. Perhaps most significantly, I am down to my last $30. With five days until my flight home, and no means for visiting anywhere else, I find myself with time to reflect.
So, what the fuck did I do here?
I walked a lot, rode in a ton of buses and taxis, flew some; hitched rides on trucks, cars, scooters, donkey carts and one wheel barrow. I photographed rocks and seas, people and holy places. I drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and read and wrote. I met loads of people, had a bunch of conversations and a few really worthwhile ones. I distributed the entirety of my savings between the economies of six different countries.
That's an accurate description, but it's not an adequate one. The best way I can describe it is "wandering with purpose." When I began the trip I was under the impression that I would plan a series of destinations, and my travel would revolve around achieving those destinations, like collecting items in a scavenger hunt. In fact my itinerary was more like a pub crawl, staggering around on indirect routes to destinations chosen on a whim. An important thing I'm starting to realize is that the destinations were less important than the routes taken.
On one muggy afternoon in Ajloun, Jordan, I visited a forest preserve. After a couple hours I realized I had lost the trail completely. I had left all my belongings in the park's field house. I was carrying only a camera and water: no phone and no money. I found myself in a village and asked a minibus driver for directions. He insisted on giving me a ride and dropped me off on an unfamiliar back road and pointed in a vague direction, leaving me much more lost than before. I walked for hours seeing no one. Eventually I found myself among rows of olive trees. I startled a donkey and, dreading an encounter with the owner of the olives and the donkey, I decided to exit the grove by climbing a thorny tree and hopping over a barbed-wire fence.
I landed on a small village road, to the wonderment of a group of children playing. It's a good thing I like kids. I picked a random heading and set out, seeking someone I could ask for directions. The children, giggling, fell into step behind me. That gave me renewed energy. A commander should never show fatigue in front of the ranks---it's bad for morale.
Eventually I came upon a woman hanging up laundry to dry. I greeted her and began to ask for directions, but she interrupted and urged me to sit on a chair on her porch. She ran inside and reappeared wearing a chador and asked if I would like water or coffee. I had been hiking through desert scrub for hours and the wind-blown dust had settled in thick layers on the back of my throat. Water was good, but coffee was Manna from heaven. She served me cold water and strong coffee flavored with cardamom and introduced me to her children: my loyal troops. We sat and talked, or rather she talked and I did my best to understand her, offering observations in broken Arabic when I could. She gave me directions to the field house which was only a kilometer away.
I realized I had never been lost at all but had only found a more interesting trail. I shouldered my bag and thanked that woman who, though desperately poor, gave kindness to strangers as easily and impulsively as some people bite their fingernails.
Friday, October 29, 2010
There's a unique tranquility which is only achieved on an overnight bus. The leather on the headrests of the East Delta Express, Taba - Cairo, is peeling and I can feel the knees of the person behind me through the thin seatback. It's alright because I won't recline until I'm truly exhausted, which means I won't do it on purpose but instead let it happen with headphones singing softly and some murky, well-worn thought stumbling through my mind.
Out the dirt- spotted window, I watch the sun set behind the mountains of the Sinai and as the last reds and yellows bleed out of the horizon we dive into an inky blue and the spines of the peaks look like great black whales swimming besides us, oblivious to our passing. Eventually even the whales deliquesce into darkness and all we can see out the window is our own dim reflection, mirthless and smooth. Watching the pavement pass below us one feels like a manufactured product on a conveyor belt, not quite finished yet but waiting for another screw and coat of paint, a final inspection and then a welcome to frigid pre-dawn Cairo.
Then we'll all stumble into the wide world and our bags will feel heavy and our necks stiff. And very few will remember anything at all about the half a day we spent together in stygian silence as we embark on the next leg of our journey.
Remarkable events on long bus rides are studiously ignored but privately relished by all passengers. An overloud phone conversation. An exceptionally pretty girl across the aisle. A near-crash by a reckless driver.
Once my 14-hour bus along the southern coast of Turkey broke down after 13 and a half hours, outside the tiny village of Cizre in the southeast. First the AC started blowing hot air and suddenly we were all bus technicians, each one of us opening and closing the vents above our seats, testing the air with the backs of our hands every few minutes and muttering in consternation. When the engine finally quit we were only a couple kilometers from my stop; I hopped on the back of a passing donkey cart and I was at the station in a minute, the drivers and me laughing our asses off the whole way. It was the best bus ride I've ever taken.
Out the dirt- spotted window, I watch the sun set behind the mountains of the Sinai and as the last reds and yellows bleed out of the horizon we dive into an inky blue and the spines of the peaks look like great black whales swimming besides us, oblivious to our passing. Eventually even the whales deliquesce into darkness and all we can see out the window is our own dim reflection, mirthless and smooth. Watching the pavement pass below us one feels like a manufactured product on a conveyor belt, not quite finished yet but waiting for another screw and coat of paint, a final inspection and then a welcome to frigid pre-dawn Cairo.
Then we'll all stumble into the wide world and our bags will feel heavy and our necks stiff. And very few will remember anything at all about the half a day we spent together in stygian silence as we embark on the next leg of our journey.
Remarkable events on long bus rides are studiously ignored but privately relished by all passengers. An overloud phone conversation. An exceptionally pretty girl across the aisle. A near-crash by a reckless driver.
Once my 14-hour bus along the southern coast of Turkey broke down after 13 and a half hours, outside the tiny village of Cizre in the southeast. First the AC started blowing hot air and suddenly we were all bus technicians, each one of us opening and closing the vents above our seats, testing the air with the backs of our hands every few minutes and muttering in consternation. When the engine finally quit we were only a couple kilometers from my stop; I hopped on the back of a passing donkey cart and I was at the station in a minute, the drivers and me laughing our asses off the whole way. It was the best bus ride I've ever taken.
Monday, October 25, 2010
"What do you think about the peace talks?"
"I don't care," Ahmar told me, curling his grin around the end of a nargileh pipe. "I don't pay any attention."
Egyptian music videos sang out from a large plasma-screen TV on the wall opposite our table loud enough to block out the calls to prayer from the mosque downtown. Another screen below it was playing a Richard Gere movie set to mute. This was the sort of upscale Palestinian cafe where you could order New York cheesecake and Amstel Light. It was easy to forget we were in Ramallah.
Ahmar's friend Hamid had not forgotten. He told me how the streets had once sparkled with the bullet casings embedded in the asphalt by Israeli tank treads. Paved with gold. He seemed like he might laugh.
He tapped an unlit cigarette against the table and popped bar nuts into his mouth.
"They tell us to forget, to go on with our lives. It's like they fucked our mother and our sister, and then told us to forget about it, do our own thing."
"This subject gives me a headache," Ahmar said from his reclined position. "Change it."
I had been in Ramallah three days and this was the first I'd heard a Palestinian mention the elephant in the room. Hamid continued at my encouragement.
"Many of my friends have left. Now they live in Egypt, America, Germany, Switzerland. I don't want to go though."
"Home is where the heart is," I offered lamely. I thought I'd have to explain the idiom, but Hamid understood me immediately.
"Yes, what you love: your girlfriend, your land."
"How can there be peace? The conflict can't continue forever, can it?"
For this question Hamid had no answer, nor did Ahmar, nor the farming family living on land being steadily encroached upon by settlers, nor the Muslim peace worker living on the Mount of Olives in Israel---none of the Arabs I talked to wanted to venture a hope, as if hope were something they didn't dare express for fear of exposing it to failure.
But those thoughts must exist, and they're too big to hold inside. Sometimes they're held so tightly that they slip out in their ugliest form, like rotten grapes crushed underfoot. They're seen in the swastikas spray-painted on walls in Ramallah, the rocks thrown at IDF soldiers in Ni'ilin.
Children, who have not learned to control their confused emotions, unleash them wantonly. They fight anything in their path. As I walked through the market in Hebron little boys kicked me and shouted, "Hello!" in the most menacing voice they could muster. I do not know if they thought I was Israeli; probably not. In eight days in Palestine and Israel I've witnessed five brawls, all of them Arab youths fighting each other.
On a hot and listless day in Ramallah I visited Yasser Arafat's tomb, in the old headquarters of the PLO. A concrete obelisk marked its spot, the tallest thing for miles around, challenging the sky like a minaret. Except that where minarets are beacons for the faithful, the tomb was a monument for the hopeless. A stark white stone courtyard, wide enough for hundreds but that morning accepting only me, led to the small room containing his coffin.
Two guards in dress uniform stood silently over the marble entombment, watching my approach with interest. A single wreath adorned the coffin which was inlaid with flowing Arabic calligraphy. A rectangular pool of crystal-clear placid water edged two sides of the room, its surface smooth and inscrutable as the sentries. I nodded my head slowly, carefully, whispering a greeting which was not returned. The wind had stopped blowing and also the birds and insects, I'm sure, were momentarily holding their breath.
In such situations it's important to act slowly and with great severity, and so I stood for a moment and pretended to read the Arabic in front of me, conscious of the soldiers' steely gaze which I didn't dare meet. Then an about-face and I was out. In the corner of the courtyard I saw toilets, but when I walked over a guard stopped me.
"No toilets?"
"Yeah."
"I don't care," Ahmar told me, curling his grin around the end of a nargileh pipe. "I don't pay any attention."
Egyptian music videos sang out from a large plasma-screen TV on the wall opposite our table loud enough to block out the calls to prayer from the mosque downtown. Another screen below it was playing a Richard Gere movie set to mute. This was the sort of upscale Palestinian cafe where you could order New York cheesecake and Amstel Light. It was easy to forget we were in Ramallah.
Ahmar's friend Hamid had not forgotten. He told me how the streets had once sparkled with the bullet casings embedded in the asphalt by Israeli tank treads. Paved with gold. He seemed like he might laugh.
He tapped an unlit cigarette against the table and popped bar nuts into his mouth.
"They tell us to forget, to go on with our lives. It's like they fucked our mother and our sister, and then told us to forget about it, do our own thing."
"This subject gives me a headache," Ahmar said from his reclined position. "Change it."
I had been in Ramallah three days and this was the first I'd heard a Palestinian mention the elephant in the room. Hamid continued at my encouragement.
"Many of my friends have left. Now they live in Egypt, America, Germany, Switzerland. I don't want to go though."
"Home is where the heart is," I offered lamely. I thought I'd have to explain the idiom, but Hamid understood me immediately.
"Yes, what you love: your girlfriend, your land."
"How can there be peace? The conflict can't continue forever, can it?"
For this question Hamid had no answer, nor did Ahmar, nor the farming family living on land being steadily encroached upon by settlers, nor the Muslim peace worker living on the Mount of Olives in Israel---none of the Arabs I talked to wanted to venture a hope, as if hope were something they didn't dare express for fear of exposing it to failure.
But those thoughts must exist, and they're too big to hold inside. Sometimes they're held so tightly that they slip out in their ugliest form, like rotten grapes crushed underfoot. They're seen in the swastikas spray-painted on walls in Ramallah, the rocks thrown at IDF soldiers in Ni'ilin.
Children, who have not learned to control their confused emotions, unleash them wantonly. They fight anything in their path. As I walked through the market in Hebron little boys kicked me and shouted, "Hello!" in the most menacing voice they could muster. I do not know if they thought I was Israeli; probably not. In eight days in Palestine and Israel I've witnessed five brawls, all of them Arab youths fighting each other.
On a hot and listless day in Ramallah I visited Yasser Arafat's tomb, in the old headquarters of the PLO. A concrete obelisk marked its spot, the tallest thing for miles around, challenging the sky like a minaret. Except that where minarets are beacons for the faithful, the tomb was a monument for the hopeless. A stark white stone courtyard, wide enough for hundreds but that morning accepting only me, led to the small room containing his coffin.
Two guards in dress uniform stood silently over the marble entombment, watching my approach with interest. A single wreath adorned the coffin which was inlaid with flowing Arabic calligraphy. A rectangular pool of crystal-clear placid water edged two sides of the room, its surface smooth and inscrutable as the sentries. I nodded my head slowly, carefully, whispering a greeting which was not returned. The wind had stopped blowing and also the birds and insects, I'm sure, were momentarily holding their breath.
In such situations it's important to act slowly and with great severity, and so I stood for a moment and pretended to read the Arabic in front of me, conscious of the soldiers' steely gaze which I didn't dare meet. Then an about-face and I was out. In the corner of the courtyard I saw toilets, but when I walked over a guard stopped me.
"No toilets?"
"Yeah."
Friday, October 15, 2010
Umm al-Jimal
A place of lack. No roofs to shelter from the cloudless, birdless sky. I've never seen anything so desolate. Empty desert would be less so. Alone, I wander aimlessly through the ruins. The bleating of a goat somewhere sounds like a warning. My mouth dries up. Black basalt stones smell sweet and musky in the midday sun. A pencil sketch of a city rubbed out with damp eraser. The stones absorb time like a dry sponge does water. Looking at the time I sprint to the entrance to catch the next bus back to town; I realize I'm terrified of being left here.
Petra
I'll always remember this Wonder of the World as the place where I realized I had contracted traveler's diarrhea only after hiking up a mountain, five kilometers from the nearest toilet. An old beggar woman stopped me to play her flute; I gave her more money than I should have to avoid being rude as I shouldered past her, intestines roiling. My steely resolve as I marched through that desert canyon was an homage to the rock-face fortresses of the Nebataeans.
Marmure Castle
I rode a rented bicycle along the beach, majestic Mediterranean lapping at my feet, to the Armenian castle. I climbed the stone ramparts, worn smooth by millenia of salty exhalations from the sea, to the highest lookout. I could see the whole town of Anamur and beyond, lush mountains to the north evaporating mist into the sky. The sea reflected the sun so violently it looked like molten chrome frothing against the rocky shore. I felt more than ever like turning and saying to someone, "Are you seeing this?" But there was no one there, only a rusty pole carrying the Turkish flag. I'd never felt so lonely.
Olympos
I set out with a conviction to be awed by the history of the ruins, a place that Cicero had called "ancient." Clambered over the stones of the necropolis and rested under an olive tree to write. Then I saw an incongruous object jammed into a crack in the wall. "The hell is that? Ram's horn? Snake skin?" No. The mysterious artifact was a dildo. Not an ancient one either, very modern.
The discovery precipitated something of a revelation for me. Rocks are just rocks. These rocks may have been a kingdom millenia ago, but now they're little more than the private refuge of some orange farmer's wife. The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was a church, then a mosque, and now a playground for bovine tourists to be herded through by guides whose tinny voices ring over the chatter to say, "This way please! Keep moving!"
A place of lack. No roofs to shelter from the cloudless, birdless sky. I've never seen anything so desolate. Empty desert would be less so. Alone, I wander aimlessly through the ruins. The bleating of a goat somewhere sounds like a warning. My mouth dries up. Black basalt stones smell sweet and musky in the midday sun. A pencil sketch of a city rubbed out with damp eraser. The stones absorb time like a dry sponge does water. Looking at the time I sprint to the entrance to catch the next bus back to town; I realize I'm terrified of being left here.
Petra
I'll always remember this Wonder of the World as the place where I realized I had contracted traveler's diarrhea only after hiking up a mountain, five kilometers from the nearest toilet. An old beggar woman stopped me to play her flute; I gave her more money than I should have to avoid being rude as I shouldered past her, intestines roiling. My steely resolve as I marched through that desert canyon was an homage to the rock-face fortresses of the Nebataeans.
Marmure Castle
I rode a rented bicycle along the beach, majestic Mediterranean lapping at my feet, to the Armenian castle. I climbed the stone ramparts, worn smooth by millenia of salty exhalations from the sea, to the highest lookout. I could see the whole town of Anamur and beyond, lush mountains to the north evaporating mist into the sky. The sea reflected the sun so violently it looked like molten chrome frothing against the rocky shore. I felt more than ever like turning and saying to someone, "Are you seeing this?" But there was no one there, only a rusty pole carrying the Turkish flag. I'd never felt so lonely.
Olympos
I set out with a conviction to be awed by the history of the ruins, a place that Cicero had called "ancient." Clambered over the stones of the necropolis and rested under an olive tree to write. Then I saw an incongruous object jammed into a crack in the wall. "The hell is that? Ram's horn? Snake skin?" No. The mysterious artifact was a dildo. Not an ancient one either, very modern.
The discovery precipitated something of a revelation for me. Rocks are just rocks. These rocks may have been a kingdom millenia ago, but now they're little more than the private refuge of some orange farmer's wife. The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was a church, then a mosque, and now a playground for bovine tourists to be herded through by guides whose tinny voices ring over the chatter to say, "This way please! Keep moving!"
Sunday, October 10, 2010
I had to laugh out loud as my fart broke the silence of the immaculately clean hotel bathroom. Last night my lodging came with access to a squat toilet shared with a dozen other rooms: an inch of foul standing water and of course no TP. The contrast was simply hilarious. I had slept with my clothes on because the sheets were so filthy and bedbugs such a likely concern. Now my king-sized bed came with five or six totally superfluous satin pillows and a box of chocolate-covered almonds perched atop. It was decadence totally beyond my budget, a choice I never would have made. But fate, I was forced to admit, has a great sense of humor.
If events had occurred according to plan, I would have been sleeping in a budget hostel in Aleppo, Syria. Instead I was refused access at the Turkey-Syria border for lack of the proper visa. Distraught, I went back to the main road and resolved to get to Mardin, some 70 kilometers away, where I was told there was an airport, from which I could fly to Jordan. Should have been simple enough.
I hitched a ride to Mardin. Then the litany of misfortunes began. I took a taxi to the airport outside of town only to find it completely closed. Soldiers at the entrance told us there were no more flights that day. I was forced to take a bus to Istanbul airport, which didn't leave until the following day. The taxi to the airport and then a hotel cost an excruciating 75 lira (~$60), and the hotel was completely full. Asking at another place down the street garnered the same result. It was a small city and I couldn't find any other hotels, full or otherwise. I had been traveling all day and was becoming truly exhausted.
I passed a police station and asked an officer standing outside if there were any hotels nearby, in terrible Turkish. He led me inside the station by the arm, and I began to feel very on edge. I've never been comfortable around law enforcement, and I had no idea what Turkish cops were like.
When I entered there were four officers lounging around who immediately flocked around me like curious schoolchildren. One grabbed me in a firm handshake and didn't let go, squeezing my hand occasionally as he introduced me, in broken English, to all the other officers. I had no idea what was going on or what they intended for me. I repeated my simple query, finger circling the air above my head to indicate proximity.
Ignoring me, the one who spoke the most English led me to a small, neat office and had me sit in a chair in front of an officer who, judging from the tiered chart over his desk, was the head honcho. In one corner of the sparsely decorated room was an aquarium containing many small fish and a single turtle. It was poking its head above the water, gulping for air. I knew how he felt.
The chief had headphones on and was unconcerned with me. The other officer sat down and regarded me with amicable but piercing blue eyes. We were served tea and he asked me about my travels. Then he asked for my passport. My heart sank. The friendly character of his voice changed when he saw my entry and exit stamps from when I traveled to Cizre, a Kurdish town close to the Iraq border.
Kurds have been petitioning for a sovereign state which includes part of southeastern Turkey for decades. The PKK is a Kurdish militia that, for Turks, is like al-Qaeda for Americans. Of course he wanted to know what the hell I was doing in Kurdistan, far from the typical tourist track.
I tried to explain that I wanted to learn, to study various cultures.
"Do you know PKK?"
"Yes," I responded carefully, "I know PKK."
"Did you see any PKK?"
"I don't know. I saw peshmerga [Kurdistan's legitimate military], but I don't know if I saw PKK."
"Do you mind if I photocopy this?"
Asking my permission was merely a polite gesture. "Of course not."
He left me to my tea and the silent chief. The turtle, still gasping for air, was pretty tough but that didn't change the fact that he was only amphibious.
"Well, if they lock me up at least I'll have a place to stay tonight," I thought.
The cop returned after an interminable moment, returned my passport and said, "Okay, we will help you."
I was escorted into a van, lights flashing, where two officers drove me some distance outside of town and up a steep hill to the nicest hotel I'd seen in Turkey: "Yay Grand Otel."
I have no idea what meaning "Yay" has for a Turkish speaker but I know what it meant for me at that moment.
Everyone in the massive marble lobby stopped what they were doing to stare at me as my heavily armed escort led me to reception, where I was given a 20-lira discount on a luxury suite. Kisses on the cheeks from both cops, dinner delivered to my room, and a private jacuzzi.
The complimentary breakfast in the morning was one of the finer meals I've enjoyed in my life. Stuffing what fruits and bread I could into my bag, I headed out into the desert sun, waving away the taxis ready to take me into town, walking down the highway with my thumb out.
"It's best to live simply," I thought, "but sometimes you just can't help but live a little."
If events had occurred according to plan, I would have been sleeping in a budget hostel in Aleppo, Syria. Instead I was refused access at the Turkey-Syria border for lack of the proper visa. Distraught, I went back to the main road and resolved to get to Mardin, some 70 kilometers away, where I was told there was an airport, from which I could fly to Jordan. Should have been simple enough.
I hitched a ride to Mardin. Then the litany of misfortunes began. I took a taxi to the airport outside of town only to find it completely closed. Soldiers at the entrance told us there were no more flights that day. I was forced to take a bus to Istanbul airport, which didn't leave until the following day. The taxi to the airport and then a hotel cost an excruciating 75 lira (~$60), and the hotel was completely full. Asking at another place down the street garnered the same result. It was a small city and I couldn't find any other hotels, full or otherwise. I had been traveling all day and was becoming truly exhausted.
I passed a police station and asked an officer standing outside if there were any hotels nearby, in terrible Turkish. He led me inside the station by the arm, and I began to feel very on edge. I've never been comfortable around law enforcement, and I had no idea what Turkish cops were like.
When I entered there were four officers lounging around who immediately flocked around me like curious schoolchildren. One grabbed me in a firm handshake and didn't let go, squeezing my hand occasionally as he introduced me, in broken English, to all the other officers. I had no idea what was going on or what they intended for me. I repeated my simple query, finger circling the air above my head to indicate proximity.
Ignoring me, the one who spoke the most English led me to a small, neat office and had me sit in a chair in front of an officer who, judging from the tiered chart over his desk, was the head honcho. In one corner of the sparsely decorated room was an aquarium containing many small fish and a single turtle. It was poking its head above the water, gulping for air. I knew how he felt.
The chief had headphones on and was unconcerned with me. The other officer sat down and regarded me with amicable but piercing blue eyes. We were served tea and he asked me about my travels. Then he asked for my passport. My heart sank. The friendly character of his voice changed when he saw my entry and exit stamps from when I traveled to Cizre, a Kurdish town close to the Iraq border.
Kurds have been petitioning for a sovereign state which includes part of southeastern Turkey for decades. The PKK is a Kurdish militia that, for Turks, is like al-Qaeda for Americans. Of course he wanted to know what the hell I was doing in Kurdistan, far from the typical tourist track.
I tried to explain that I wanted to learn, to study various cultures.
"Do you know PKK?"
"Yes," I responded carefully, "I know PKK."
"Did you see any PKK?"
"I don't know. I saw peshmerga [Kurdistan's legitimate military], but I don't know if I saw PKK."
"Do you mind if I photocopy this?"
Asking my permission was merely a polite gesture. "Of course not."
He left me to my tea and the silent chief. The turtle, still gasping for air, was pretty tough but that didn't change the fact that he was only amphibious.
"Well, if they lock me up at least I'll have a place to stay tonight," I thought.
The cop returned after an interminable moment, returned my passport and said, "Okay, we will help you."
I was escorted into a van, lights flashing, where two officers drove me some distance outside of town and up a steep hill to the nicest hotel I'd seen in Turkey: "Yay Grand Otel."
I have no idea what meaning "Yay" has for a Turkish speaker but I know what it meant for me at that moment.
Everyone in the massive marble lobby stopped what they were doing to stare at me as my heavily armed escort led me to reception, where I was given a 20-lira discount on a luxury suite. Kisses on the cheeks from both cops, dinner delivered to my room, and a private jacuzzi.
The complimentary breakfast in the morning was one of the finer meals I've enjoyed in my life. Stuffing what fruits and bread I could into my bag, I headed out into the desert sun, waving away the taxis ready to take me into town, walking down the highway with my thumb out.
"It's best to live simply," I thought, "but sometimes you just can't help but live a little."
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Eyeballs
My host in Bursa, Turkey, held a sheaf of papers, pointing to one sentence in particular, imploring me to explain its meaning.
The pages were hundreds of Albert Einstein quotations he had found online and printed out. The one he couldn't understand read
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18."
It was no surprise Emre couldn't understand this obtuse passage. A jovial, friendly guy, within five minutes of meeting him I had learned his opinions on a variety of ethnicities: Germans (no good), Indians (dirty), Arabs (crazy and dirty), and Russians (no good, but slightly better than Germans). I didn't fully understand Einstein's words either, but I am beginning to agree with them.
Traveling southward through Turkey I've encountered a steady gradation of prejudices. Turks deride the Arabs, Arabs detest the Kurds, and Kurds can't tolerate the Yazidis. Yazidis practice an obscure branch of Islam that deifies a peacock angel, which I think is pretty cool.
Everywhere I go, I'm fed variations on the same line: "Listen, you're not from around here, so let me clue you in: those X's are all Y's."
Actually, as I'm realizing, it's precisely my detachment which grants me a clear perspective. I'm not free of bias, but I have no basis for prejudice in this foreign land. I had never met a Kurd or a Yazidi until I came to Turkey. Hate is learned through prolonged contact. Alienation and xenophobia are only distant cousins, a belief confirmed, in view, by the extreme alienation inherent in my current situation.
I haven't seen another foreigner, much less another American, in more than a week. Everywhere I am pursued by the eyeball and the double-take. At times it's infuriating and I feel like grabbing the next gawker and screaming, "What are you looking at!?"
But then I remind myself that I am far from innocent, that in fact my primary vocation these days is gawking.
But sometimes it's so severe that I just have to laugh. Like the time in Nusaybin I paid a couple of kids 10 lira to take me to the bus station in their pedal-driven fruit cart. They rode me five kilometers through their town like a big fish they'd just caught, whistling to all their friends and shouting, "Look! An American tourist!"
They probably would have taken me for just that privilege.
Behind the gawker's gaze, in my experience, exists only congeniality, even empathy for a traveler obviously ill at ease. It's a strange and detestable quality of human beings that they can only learn to hate those with which they have something in common.
The pages were hundreds of Albert Einstein quotations he had found online and printed out. The one he couldn't understand read
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18."
It was no surprise Emre couldn't understand this obtuse passage. A jovial, friendly guy, within five minutes of meeting him I had learned his opinions on a variety of ethnicities: Germans (no good), Indians (dirty), Arabs (crazy and dirty), and Russians (no good, but slightly better than Germans). I didn't fully understand Einstein's words either, but I am beginning to agree with them.
Traveling southward through Turkey I've encountered a steady gradation of prejudices. Turks deride the Arabs, Arabs detest the Kurds, and Kurds can't tolerate the Yazidis. Yazidis practice an obscure branch of Islam that deifies a peacock angel, which I think is pretty cool.
Everywhere I go, I'm fed variations on the same line: "Listen, you're not from around here, so let me clue you in: those X's are all Y's."
Actually, as I'm realizing, it's precisely my detachment which grants me a clear perspective. I'm not free of bias, but I have no basis for prejudice in this foreign land. I had never met a Kurd or a Yazidi until I came to Turkey. Hate is learned through prolonged contact. Alienation and xenophobia are only distant cousins, a belief confirmed, in view, by the extreme alienation inherent in my current situation.
I haven't seen another foreigner, much less another American, in more than a week. Everywhere I am pursued by the eyeball and the double-take. At times it's infuriating and I feel like grabbing the next gawker and screaming, "What are you looking at!?"
But then I remind myself that I am far from innocent, that in fact my primary vocation these days is gawking.
But sometimes it's so severe that I just have to laugh. Like the time in Nusaybin I paid a couple of kids 10 lira to take me to the bus station in their pedal-driven fruit cart. They rode me five kilometers through their town like a big fish they'd just caught, whistling to all their friends and shouting, "Look! An American tourist!"
They probably would have taken me for just that privilege.
Behind the gawker's gaze, in my experience, exists only congeniality, even empathy for a traveler obviously ill at ease. It's a strange and detestable quality of human beings that they can only learn to hate those with which they have something in common.
Monday, October 4, 2010
The Rain Has A Million Voices
"Softly sounded the river, singing in many voices." ---- Herman Hesse, "Siddhartha"
In high school I read that book and it had an effect on me. I remember skipping lunch to sit alone under a bridge next to the Chicago river and listening, eyes closed, to its bubbling passage, pigeons cooing overhead. Today I remember nothing of the story except for the passage above. It's not just rivers, I realized. Water everywhere sings in many voices.
This was perhaps the only cogent message I was able to communicate to Mohammed, the owner of a hotel I stayed at in Tetouan, Morocco. I couldn't sleep that night, a greasy chicken dinner roiling undigested in my stomach, so I went to the lobby to write. Walking past, he saw I was having trouble getting ink to flow from my overused pen, and invited me upstairs to the tea room to get another. There was a heavy thunderstorm, a rare event for Tetouan, and together we sat, drinking tea, listening to rain fall against the plaster and stone of the ancient medinah.
"La pluie a une million voix," I said hesitatingly, and he nodded sagely, smoke from his pipe curling in the mildewed air.
I think of all the voices I've heard water speak with during the course of my life.
One winter night, home from my freshman year of college, I biked to the shore of Lake Michigan and walked to the end of the pier and stared out and had an immense sense of potentiality; like the horizon was a pair of massive arms and me at the center, and all I had to do was close my arms and I could embrace the whole world.
Or the time I visited a hammam in Assileh, ensconced in a delirious humid heat, the fires under the tile floor heating the water which flowed over me like rainfall in a desert arroyo as I lay on the ground breathing shallowly. I'll never forget the obese Spanish man I met there, wearing only a loincloth, holding his ankles and rocking back and forth on the ground while chuckling like a baby. His laugh sounded like someone turning a rusty crank in an empty concert hall and all I could think was how I wished we could all be as happy as him.
Or after swimming in the Mediterranean off the coast of Turkey, my sinuses so clear that when I bent over to tie my shoes saltwater flowed from my nostrils in a steady stream like a broken tap. I had the sensation that if I waited long enough with my head down all the water in my body would drain and leave me a fleshy sack in a puddle of crystal clear fluid. Ecstasy.
These are the moments I return to when times are toughest; prayer beads I carry with me everywhere which can never be lost, a softly singing river in my mind.
In high school I read that book and it had an effect on me. I remember skipping lunch to sit alone under a bridge next to the Chicago river and listening, eyes closed, to its bubbling passage, pigeons cooing overhead. Today I remember nothing of the story except for the passage above. It's not just rivers, I realized. Water everywhere sings in many voices.
This was perhaps the only cogent message I was able to communicate to Mohammed, the owner of a hotel I stayed at in Tetouan, Morocco. I couldn't sleep that night, a greasy chicken dinner roiling undigested in my stomach, so I went to the lobby to write. Walking past, he saw I was having trouble getting ink to flow from my overused pen, and invited me upstairs to the tea room to get another. There was a heavy thunderstorm, a rare event for Tetouan, and together we sat, drinking tea, listening to rain fall against the plaster and stone of the ancient medinah.
"La pluie a une million voix," I said hesitatingly, and he nodded sagely, smoke from his pipe curling in the mildewed air.
I think of all the voices I've heard water speak with during the course of my life.
One winter night, home from my freshman year of college, I biked to the shore of Lake Michigan and walked to the end of the pier and stared out and had an immense sense of potentiality; like the horizon was a pair of massive arms and me at the center, and all I had to do was close my arms and I could embrace the whole world.
Or the time I visited a hammam in Assileh, ensconced in a delirious humid heat, the fires under the tile floor heating the water which flowed over me like rainfall in a desert arroyo as I lay on the ground breathing shallowly. I'll never forget the obese Spanish man I met there, wearing only a loincloth, holding his ankles and rocking back and forth on the ground while chuckling like a baby. His laugh sounded like someone turning a rusty crank in an empty concert hall and all I could think was how I wished we could all be as happy as him.
Or after swimming in the Mediterranean off the coast of Turkey, my sinuses so clear that when I bent over to tie my shoes saltwater flowed from my nostrils in a steady stream like a broken tap. I had the sensation that if I waited long enough with my head down all the water in my body would drain and leave me a fleshy sack in a puddle of crystal clear fluid. Ecstasy.
These are the moments I return to when times are toughest; prayer beads I carry with me everywhere which can never be lost, a softly singing river in my mind.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Strange Impact
It was warm enough for a t-shirt but in my memory that day was always colder. My yellow handlebars familiar with the grime of my palms, grooves of my shoes comfortably on my pedals. I don't remember hitting the car door, but I do recall the slanted perspective I gained as I lay on the ground, my torso above my head. The horizon had been ratcheted loose from its usual place and crossed my vision at an angle; momentarily I felt like all my body parts had been disconnected and dropped in a jumbled pile on the pavement along with my bicycle, rejected pieces from a toy factory.
This voyage was borne of a strange impact and that's the best way I can describe most of my experiences since. What I'm wondering now is, how many bizarre events can occur before they cease to be bizarre?
Before I left I had so many people asking me why I was going and I never once gave an answer that satisfied anyone, including myself. Except once when I told my friend Alyssa that I had forgotten but didn't care.
"Have you ever told a story so many times that you can't even remember the actual event, just what you've been telling people?"
Actual doubt in my convictions hadn't set in until my second night overseas. It wasn't my fault, either, it was my host's. I was staying at the home of a native Casablancan in Calogira, a village just outside that city. What I had expected when traveling in the Arab world was resentment, perhaps an identification between me and the foreign policy of my home country. Adil harbored none of that sentiment. Neither did he resent my wealth and the ease of life I enjoyed in the States.
Actually Khalid had the worst case of travellust I've ever seen. The Arab George Bailey, working for the benefit of his family while internally wanderlusting. The greatest injustice for him is the extreme difficulty Moroccans have in obtaining visas to almost any non-Arab country. His dream is the European holiday, larks to places like Paris and Bangkok. After a night on the town, zipping through traffic on his motorbike awash in violent aromas of spices, roasting meat, stale urine and shesha smoke, we retired to his living room to watch YouTube videos.
We watched one horrifying video titled "Backpacking in Thailand === Brilliant!!!!" which depicted a crew of young and beautiful Brits romping around that country doing nothing but eating, drinking and sunbathing from what I could tell. Set to the tune of Lit's "My Own Worst Enemy." "Can we forget about the things I said when I was drunk?" goes the refrain. Not if you say, "Care to blithely frolic in a desperately poor country, playing the part of nutrients for a tiny section of the population which grows rich on tourists in the way an algae bloom grows on the surface of a polluted lagoon?"
My vitriol is always as its best when it's raised in my own self-defense. It was the first time I thought, "Really, what the fuck am I doing here? Collecting seashells on the beach?"
A week later, I was collecting seashells on the beach, a little after dawn. I was approached by a guy looking about my age, he had been watching the tide come in. He asked for money, but in Morocco refusing that request is no serious snub and we sat together on the rocks sharing my bottled water. He played us Eminem on his cell phone. I taught him how to count to 10 in English and he taught me how to say "prostitute" and "blow job" in Arabic. Eventually I realized it was late enough to start looking for a hotel, and he gave me his number, insisting that I call him later and invite him to share some dinner. "Maybe," I said in broken French. "I am sleep 12 hours, I think." I was tired, but we both knew it was a blow-off.
Why shouldn't I have bought him dinner? Was it my innate stinginess? My cynical Chicago attitude of not giving anything to those who don't seem to truly need it? An Algerian man told me "Never give money to the young ones; if they are healthy they can work in the fields." If I had called him, he might have continued to petition me for handouts, but would it have been any harder to refuse them?
I ate that evening humbly, fish from a street vendor rolled up burrito-style in thin pita bread. It tasted tough and I felt lonely as I sat outside my hotel watching the touts pursue the tourists.
"Really, what the fuck am I doing here?"
This voyage was borne of a strange impact and that's the best way I can describe most of my experiences since. What I'm wondering now is, how many bizarre events can occur before they cease to be bizarre?
Before I left I had so many people asking me why I was going and I never once gave an answer that satisfied anyone, including myself. Except once when I told my friend Alyssa that I had forgotten but didn't care.
"Have you ever told a story so many times that you can't even remember the actual event, just what you've been telling people?"
Actual doubt in my convictions hadn't set in until my second night overseas. It wasn't my fault, either, it was my host's. I was staying at the home of a native Casablancan in Calogira, a village just outside that city. What I had expected when traveling in the Arab world was resentment, perhaps an identification between me and the foreign policy of my home country. Adil harbored none of that sentiment. Neither did he resent my wealth and the ease of life I enjoyed in the States.
Actually Khalid had the worst case of travellust I've ever seen. The Arab George Bailey, working for the benefit of his family while internally wanderlusting. The greatest injustice for him is the extreme difficulty Moroccans have in obtaining visas to almost any non-Arab country. His dream is the European holiday, larks to places like Paris and Bangkok. After a night on the town, zipping through traffic on his motorbike awash in violent aromas of spices, roasting meat, stale urine and shesha smoke, we retired to his living room to watch YouTube videos.
We watched one horrifying video titled "Backpacking in Thailand === Brilliant!!!!" which depicted a crew of young and beautiful Brits romping around that country doing nothing but eating, drinking and sunbathing from what I could tell. Set to the tune of Lit's "My Own Worst Enemy." "Can we forget about the things I said when I was drunk?" goes the refrain. Not if you say, "Care to blithely frolic in a desperately poor country, playing the part of nutrients for a tiny section of the population which grows rich on tourists in the way an algae bloom grows on the surface of a polluted lagoon?"
My vitriol is always as its best when it's raised in my own self-defense. It was the first time I thought, "Really, what the fuck am I doing here? Collecting seashells on the beach?"
A week later, I was collecting seashells on the beach, a little after dawn. I was approached by a guy looking about my age, he had been watching the tide come in. He asked for money, but in Morocco refusing that request is no serious snub and we sat together on the rocks sharing my bottled water. He played us Eminem on his cell phone. I taught him how to count to 10 in English and he taught me how to say "prostitute" and "blow job" in Arabic. Eventually I realized it was late enough to start looking for a hotel, and he gave me his number, insisting that I call him later and invite him to share some dinner. "Maybe," I said in broken French. "I am sleep 12 hours, I think." I was tired, but we both knew it was a blow-off.
Why shouldn't I have bought him dinner? Was it my innate stinginess? My cynical Chicago attitude of not giving anything to those who don't seem to truly need it? An Algerian man told me "Never give money to the young ones; if they are healthy they can work in the fields." If I had called him, he might have continued to petition me for handouts, but would it have been any harder to refuse them?
I ate that evening humbly, fish from a street vendor rolled up burrito-style in thin pita bread. It tasted tough and I felt lonely as I sat outside my hotel watching the touts pursue the tourists.
"Really, what the fuck am I doing here?"
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