Grey Skies and Treachery over the Bosporus

I've been in Istanbul for 24 hours and already we have seen a lot - and had some interesting adventures. This is absolutely the quintessential East-West city, that feels as European as it does Eastern. It's quite a mix, with a really laid-back vibe and lots of astoundingly cool architecture.Of course, the Haga Sophia/Ayasofia and the Blue Mosque are the focal points, but there are beautiful little touches tucked in everywhere, from Byzantine forums to tiny Ottoman cemeteries, all with a view of the glittering Bosporus.

We arrived yesterday, and checked in to the cramped but comfortable Paris Hotel and Hostel, and then headed out to just look around at the sites. We ate at a nice little restaurant, but I think travel fatigue and and hunger made it hard for me to eat too much, so I headed back to the hotel and slept for 3 hours! Anyways, after getting up Joe and I headed down to the Istiklal Cadesi, the sort of Newbury St. or 5th Ave. of Istanbul, where all the young and hip people hang out. It was pretty neat, a very lively, happening street vibe. Unfortunately, it was also the site of one of our more alarming experiences so far.

Our first stop was a bazaar/cafe where we drank tea and Joe had the local Turkish beer, Efes. This young, sharply-dressed and hair-slicked guy in a seersucker blazer sat down next to us and started speaking Turkish to me. When I explained to him I wasn't Turkish, he switched into English and we started chatting. His "Iranian" friend joined us at the table - which didn't seem weird, since it was the only space in the cafe. They said they had an import-export business and told some jokes, which was kind of fun. Then they asked if we had tried raki, the traditional Turkish beverage. When we said no, they offered to show us a bar which had been recommended to them.

Thinking why not, we followed them to a place a few blocks away. We sat down in this bar with a dance floor and a lot of sketchy-looking mafioso tyes sitting around. They brought us raki, and then, as soon as they had, these four Russian hookers showed up, with a couple more on the dance floor. At this point we were getting nervous, and we started trying to bail out. Finally, we managed to get them to stop putting more liquor in our glasses and get the check - which was over 1000 lira!

Obviously, we were being scammed. If they couldn't get us to go with the whores they were just going to try and rob us outright. After some spirited argument we convinced them we only had 70 lira and they threw us out, shouting at us to never come back again. Not bloody likely, but at least we're fore-warned now. Turns out this is a pretty common scam in Turkey and the Balkans, and we were lucky to only ge taken for that much. All things considered, we handled it pretty well - but the guys who tricked us in the first place were Grade-A operators. We had no idea we were being conned until we walked into the bar, at which point it was just a matter of trying to weasel our way out fast enough.

This reminded me of another weird experience I had, this one in Luxor. For some stupid reason, I had only bought a one-way ticket. When I tried to get the return ticket the first day, they told me "come back tomorrow." The next day, they told me 'No tickets for FOUR days!" Alarming, to say the least. So I walked out of the train station, angry and worried, wondering how the hell I was going to get back to Cairo. Walking down the street, a man on a bicycle shouted to me "You need train ticket?" My first thought was "SKETCHY" but I really did, so I reluctantly replied, "Yes..."

His leather-jacketed, hair-gelled friend materialized and led me to a hotel on a narrow side street. Sitting me down in a dimly-lit waiting room, he told me he could get me a ticket for that night. "Black market, of course. 75 pounds." I thought about it and decided that it was at least worth a look. I told him the time and place I needed, and he sent his friend out. We chatted for a while, and he kept hitting on Emily, the girl I was with, and offering to buy my boots - I guess he really liked them...

Finally, his friend comes back and tells me to give him the moeny and I would have it in a hour. Obviously, this was bald-faced robbery, and we went back and forth for 10 minutes until he relented and walked next door and got the ticket, no shame at all that he had just tried to steal my money. It was a damn-convincing forgery, and so I decided to go for it. He warned me not to tell anyone how much I had paid, and so I joked and said 40 pounds, of course(the price on the ticket). This alarmed him, and he kept insisting that I pay him 75, the price he wanted, before he realized I was just kidding around saying that if anyone asked, I would tell them the marked price. Then he laughed and kissed me on the cheek - very mafioso indeed.

And it worked! The police officer and the conductor didn't take a second look at it, and the forgers were really clever about it. There were 60 seats in each car, marked like an airplane. But in the last ten, the markings had fallen off, so you couldn't tell which one was which, so that when the guy with my ticket showed up, he just sat next to me. There was no way of knowing the exact seat! I'm not sure how it worked out, because the train was full, but somehow it did.

So those are my sketchy adventures in the Middle East...hopefully I'll avoid more like them in the future. Still, live and learn!

...My Name Is Ozymandias, King of Kings...

Saturday was given over to the "West Bank" of Luxor, referring to the Western side of the Nile which holds The Valley of the Kings, Madinat Habu, the Colossi of Memnon, the Temple of Hatshepsut, and a whole host of other relics and ruins. We hit the Valley first, which was both an entertaining and frustrating experience. We were part of a 13-person guided tour, one of those where a local guide with a strong accent and peculiar command of English explains the historical significance of every damn lump of stone along the route.

So it wasn't that bad - nevertheless, it could still get pretty annoying, and the Egyptian "th" to "zz" lisp started to drive me insane: "ze Pharaoz zat are buried in ze valley zought zey might be zafe from zieves...." Despite that, the tombs and the valley itself were pretty cool, and the different configurations and evolutions were really interesting. Unfortunately, photography is forbidden in the tombs; on the flip-side, so are tour guides, so they are pretty peaceful places. Disgustingly hot and humid, though - emerging into 90 heat with beating sun never felt so good!

One of the funny things about the tombs was the big pit-traps in the entry shaft of every one, which really reminded me of Prince of Persia or something - I half expected to have to jump over a lattice of extending spikes. Actually, that might have helped impale some of the hordes of loud, obnoxious, and inappropriately dressed tourists that were swarming the place.

Thoroughly tombed-out, we headed towards the Temple of Hatshepsut, the only female ruler of Egypt. It was a fairly imposing but also substantially dull structure, with a breathtaking view of the West Bank valley. The only problem was the haze that hung over the city, making it hard to see beyond the Nile - I don't know whether it comes from pollution, river-fog or some combination. In any event, guide- and temple-fatigue made this sight less than stunning. It also had the world's stupidest tram ride - literally a hundred metres towed behind a forklift. Seriously, what's the point????

After that we visited Madinat Habu, the Pharaonic name of which I don't recall. It was built by Ramses III to commemorate some of his military accomplishment. The sheer scale of the columns and pylons made it pretty damn impressive. Once again, you couldn't help but be awed by the hubris of these men. They were larger-than-life in every sense. I particularly liked some of the details of the carvings - cartouches etched a foot into solid stone, a somewhat ghastly frieze of the Battle of Armageddon/Meggido, the depiction of Ramses's slaves severing the hands and penises of captured soldiers and the giant image of him offering sacrifices to Osiris.

Finally, we visited the Colossi of Memnon. There's a funny story behind these - they're two huge statues of seated men, fractured and broken all over. They were the guardians of the massive Temple of Amenhotep, a complex which once covered 350,000 sq. metres(for comparison the Mall of America covers 230,000 sq. metres). It was destroyed in an earthquake and raided for quarrying purposes - many of Egypt's greatest monuments have been cannibalized by other pharaohs. The Colossi remained broken and were reputed to cause a weeping, moaning sound every morning - some strange effect of the wind and the dew. A Roman emperor re-assembled them on an oracle's instructions and the sound stopped. (N.B. The name Memnon is from the King of Ethiopia in the Iliad - the Greeks assumed that it was to this mythical person the statues were dedicated).

Anyway, a good story for two impressive monuments. I'll tell the last part of my adventure - getting home - tomorrow.

On The Pedestal These Words Appear...

Took a trip to Luxor this weekend, and it was really a hell of a trip. There was lots of everything: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Luxor is quite a place, but it's been overrun by the modern world in ways both interesting and frustrating. (N.B. Luxor is actually an anglicization of the Arabic word "Al-Uqsur", the palaces. The Greeks called the place Thebes, and the Pharaohs had some name that sounded like "Niwt.")

We left Thursday night on a train to Luxor. The five girls I was with(Emily, Lindsay, Kim, Tara, and Victoria) were in the 2nd-class car but I somehow ended up in one of those traditional "compartments", with the two facing rows of seats and three middle-aged Egyptian men. They were talkative and friendly, like most Egyptians, and we had some interesting discussions about football and education. I thought it was amusing when, as the sun rose, they had to take turns praying because there wasn't enough space in the center of the compartment.

We stumbled out into the hazy, blinding Luxor sun and sorted ourselves out. I had somehow failed to get a round-trip ticket so I was forced to try and get another. They told me to return the following day. So we headed to drop our luggage off at our hotel, the "HappyLand Hostel." It's actually a very nice, charming little place in the center of town, and after a satisfying breakfast we set out to see the East Bank of Luxor.

The hustle in Luxor is intense. The town survives on tourism, and every corner sells papyrus scrolls, alabaster statues, kitschy souvenirs and overpriced water and food. It makes Cairo feel positively calm and contained despite being a fraction of the size. Sales pitches, catcalls and utterly baffling comments are the norm. Emily got so sick of being asked where she was from that she took to replying "CHINA!" despite her blonde, Nordic complexion. Got some funny looks from that one...

A microbus took us through the chaotic streets to the Karnak Temple complex, the largest and most impressive Pharaonic relics in Egypt after the Pyramids. The pictures will probably look oddly familiar to most of you, since these ruins are the iconic images of "Ancient Egypt." The part that throw you is the hordes of tourists. Even in the off-season, which we are well into, the ruins are swarmed with European, American, and Asian tour groups, and it takes some creative framing and a bit of flexibility to get pictures that don't incorporate fat women in denim cutoffs and Japanese with 4-ft. sun hats and germ masks.

The ruins themselves are really spectacular, but of course it's almost impossible to capture their majesty. Sometimes the small things are what really catch your eye, and give the whole thing that touch of nostalgic verisimilitude. The problem of course, is that the whole thing is desperately cliche. Everything is unsettlingly like walking through the soundstage of a movie you've seen many times. But sheer awe-inspiring ambition - and hubris - of the men who built these temples leaves one breathless. In hidden corners I glimpsed the original paint that once coated the pillars and walls from floor to ceiling. In their time, these structures would have been blinding, vari-colored spectacles probably visible from hundreds of kilometers away, just as the pyramids were once pure white alabaster from foundation to capstone. One can only imagine...

We then took another bus to Luxor Temple, which is situated literally in the middle of the town next to the main midan, or square. It's the same idea as Luxor, but generally smaller and less breathtaking. At this point, we were falling over from hunger and so we split up - half of us ate at a local fast-food chain and the other half had McD's...needless to say I was in the local contingent.

After retiring to the inn to rest up, we headed out once more for a Felucca ride down the Nile. Basically, it's just a lateen-rigged sailboat, and since there was no wind, we moved under a combination of rowing, towing and drifting. Our destination was Banana Island, a quaint little island village with, well, bananas. It was interesting to see village life up close and personal, but still felt a little bit like a show was being put on. Since bananas don't particularly interest me...

Anyways, our captain was an amusing man whose name escapes me. Mahmoud I believe - but in any event, he had these stacks of notes and postcards from his previous tourist clients dating all the way back to the 1980s, and a long repertoire of confusing riddles. We were pretty stumped by most of them, partly because of the lazy-vacation attitude and partly because of his thick accent. He managed to get me and Tara thoroughly entangled in that string-handcuff puzzle that I have done so many times and can never remember the solution to!

By the time we got back, I was falling over with exhaustion, and so I feel asleep before and after dinner, which was a tasty, albeit pricey tourist restaurant overlooking the Nile. I read a bit of Plutarch and then fell dead to sleep, not knowing how much more tiring the next day would be...

City of a Thousand Alleys

It never ceases to amaze me how Cairo is a city entirely turned in on itself. Almost everything here, and especially those things worth seeing, are tucked into alleys and hidden corners, and there is barely an inch of real estate that has not been multiplied into a whole constellation of uses: three-room hotels crammed into the same floor as a cleaner and a two-bit travel agency. Three or four cafes in the bottom floor of a crumbling apartment block, no less than a foot apart. God - or Allah - only knows how they don't compete each other out of business.

At the same time half of Cairo seems to be non-gainfully employed. I don't know how so many people just chill on the streets drinking tea and smoking. They must do something. Perhaps it's just the good old Third World "I'm being paid to watch this building...yep, building ain't going anywhere." Certainly there are a lot of bawabs, doormen, around, and a lot of them run little side business running errands and selling liquor or hash.

I'm leaving for Luxor tonight, so there will be pictures and stories when I return on Sunday. I was at the train station today, which was quite an experience. The Cairo train station is...something else.

On a weirder note, I got propositioned or hit on by no less than three men today. Very peculiar.

...Soldier, Spy

Well, I got my suit, and I'm pretty happy with it. It's not 100% perfect, but then for only $100 dollars, it's pretty damn good.

Other than that, there hasn't been much happening. I did go to see Al-Azhar mosque, which is one of the oldest mosques in the world and the site of what might well be the worldest oldest continuously open university, founded by the Fatimids in the 10th century.

Pictures on Facebook.

New and Improved

So after submitting my story The Finn to the Dimensions newspaper here, one of their editors/cartoonists decided he really, really wanted to turn it into a "graphic novel" serialized across several issues. While this means that I don't do as much writing per week, it came out pretty damn cool.

So props to Marwan Imam for turning my work into something really kind of unique. He did a pretty good job drawing Boston for someone who has never seen it before in his life!!!



Here's the text, since it's kind of unreadable from the scan:

I worked but I didn’t manage to find satisfaction. That was Boston’s fault. This town had dulled me with its persistent winds, and I was slowly wearing away in the rain, the snow, the battered sidewalks and cracking roads. In this city, every thing was a defense against the elements, every day was a task. And the people, clannish and irritable, could become as cutting as shards of glass. Every one shuffled around in coats and scarves, each a castle, a fortress, with layers of battlements and almost never visible. Boston wore at my soul and I could not escape.

A vast melancholy swept over me as I sat on the embankment, waiting for the train to take me home. It was one of those cold New England nights where your breath comes in freezing clouds that glow in the stainless steel moonlight. I could see the train coming half a mile away along the tracks, its running lights reflected in long beams down the rails. The track ran straight and then curved at the last minute before the station, so as it approached all I saw a was three flashing lights bearing down on me with an increasing roar. The cars blew by in a blast of hot air and roaring diesel that splashed through my mind like an ocean wave.

On the train, I sat facing the wrong direction, watching Belmont and then Waltham slide silently by. Staring through the scratched glass of the windows, I watched the tattered remnants of New England's industrial past slide by – battered redbrick buildings covered in cracking paintwork and dying ivy, junkyards filled with rusting trucks and stripped tires, men standing around in flannel shirts and dirty workboots the color of old wheat, smoking cigarettes. I looked down at my own shoes, chestnut boots polished to a waxy sheen, and then at the shoes I wear at work, scuffed and filthy with cheap leather. Why did I feel the need to change them every day before I left?

Also, I'm went to Zaghloul today to make sure the trousers fit and to get the final measurements for the coat. He's such an awesome old guy:






It's raining today...in Cairo! Blech on that.

Tinker, Tailor...

I went on a long hunt through the streets of Downtown Cairo a few days ago, trying to find a tailor. Although it wasn't just finding a tailor that was hard - it was finding the right one. Cairo has districts that are full to overflowing with tailors and shops that sell cloth. But most of them look absolutely awful, and they sell really cheap stuff. I was looking for somewhere with real craftsmanship but Egyptian prices...a daunting task.
Following a recommendation and a vague set of directions from a classmate, I set out trying to find the right place. I quickly began to realize that in many ways, Cairo is like a giant village. I spent an hour wandering around a two block area trying to find a specific set of alleys, and then another 30 minutes in those alleys trying to find the right building. Get more than 100 metres away from your destination, and no one can tell you where it is. Everything is intensely localized.
Finally, wandering through the bottom story of a dilapidated apartment building, I asked a man who looked half blind and about 150 years old. His answer? "Zaghloul's not here." Not even the name of the store or anything, just the man's name and his absence. He pointed to a shuttered door with a sign over it. The sign had faded, illegible Arabic and the words: "Zaghloul Fayek: Taileur."
When I returned the next day, the shutter was up and I could poke my head into the shop. It was like an explosion in a very small textile mill. Bits of cloth lay everywhere: in cupboards, in the windows, over dummies, on the chairs and sofa. An wizened little man stood behind the desk, conversing with another, equally ancient man.
Success!
Zaghloul took me aside and tried futilely to communicate with me in French. That, combined with the sign on his shop, made me realize he was really pretty ancient, dating to the time when French as, well, the lingua franca of the Middle East. I took a look at his work-room and the stuff he was working on. I was pretty impressed - as far as I could tell, he really knows his stuff.
After a bit of haggling, discussion, fabric sampling, picture exchanging and lots and lots of broken Arabic, I commissioned a handmade made-to-measure charcoal pinstripe 2-button double-vented suit with a ticket pocket and peak lapels. All this for just about $100. If everything works out as planned, I'll have it for next Wednesday.
I can't wait.