The Holy Land, Pt. 1

Recently, Sathi, Nick, and I took a trip through the Middle East to celebrate the nuptials of our good friends Joe and Hilla. Aside from the strangeness of people starting to get married (what next, bloody kids?) the trip was a smash hit from beginning to end. I'm not sure if the happy couple want me to put their wedding photos up here, so I'll just focus on a few of the other highlights of our voyage through Israel and then Egypt.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre - as nice as it is, one has to wonder whether Jesus really wants the place where he was crucified to be quite so...blinged-out. I'm fairly sure that this is an Orthodox shrine, although the 'INRI' makes me wonder if it could be Catholic. The Sepulchre is a site with a number of different faiths laying claim to various areas and sections, but the Eastern Orthodox seem to be winning out. It is basically their headquarters/secret lair/hidden castle, after all.

More Sepulchrous(sic.) Church - the tricky thing here is that some clever monk ran up there and opened that door to let in the godly shaft of light. Apparently one of the holiest sites in Christianity isn't above a few cheap parlor tricks...


The Dome of the Rock - Closed, unfortunately, because of some religious observance/protest/just general annoyance. The entire Dome/Al-Aqsa/Temple Mount complex is somewhat tricky to get into and an area of some controversy, and since it was both Friday and Shevuot, we had to content ourselves with taking photos from afar. A pity, since the Dome is probably the most recognizable landmark in all of Jerusalem. I'm pretty sure kaffir like me are completely banned from entering it, however.



Sand Witches - a major concern in desert climes. One minute you're sitting, enjoying a nice falafel, and the next you're a newt. And you don't get better, because it's a desert. You frakking bake to death and die.

BUT

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

I couldn't resist posting a picture of the stunning greenhouse/garden paradise where Joe and Hilla were wed. Perhaps they will let me post more shots of the festivities.



Most pictures credit of Shahrin Ahsan.

Ghosts in the Cedars

Perhaps it was inevitable that Lebanon would be more affecting in many ways than Istanbul. The Turkish city is much more European in its nature. It is more happily - even smugly - contemplative of its glorious Ottoman past and its modernizing present, and both the relics and the cutting-edge seem smoothly integrated into the city's life. In Lebanon the feelings of both historical and modern tension are much closer to the surface. You can see them in the almost frenetic pace of Beirut's nightlife, the beautiful girl in the drop-top Porsche racing by Hizbollah protests, the bored shopgirls smoking outside their stores in the abandoned downtown, and even the grandeur of Baalbeck's ruins. It whispers through the mountains and curls like fog around the bombed-out bridges of the Israel war.

Baalbeck was particularly affecting to me. All the antiquities I have seen in the East are either settled in cities or turned into massive tourist attractions. The Pyramids, Luxor, the mosques of Istanbul - all of them are in one way or another streamlined and modernized for tourist audiences. Baalbeck is different. It is the best-preserved Roman temple in the world, yet its remote location means that few tourists venture there these days. For 2000 years, it has been the greatest structure as far as the eye can see down the Bekaa valley, and it may well stay so for the next 2000. Surrounded by acres of farmland and snow-covered peaks, it must have seemed one of the wonders of the world, and yet it was no more than a backwater of an Empire that stretched from Arabia to Scotland.

The temples' stones and pillars were used by Justinian to build the Haga Sofia, by the Arabs to fortify the temple and the Crusaders to bolster the walls, by the Ottomans to build a castle and now they lie shattered in green moss. The broken colossus of Ramses inspired Shelley's Ozymandias but I find the cyclical destruction and rebuilding of this vast complex much more affecting.
I can't help but reflect, as I stare at the six pillars which are all that remain of Jupiter's temple, on the futility of human ambition. And yet I return to Beirut where people are stubbornly, urgently erecting new towers of steel and glass and concrete to replace the buildings shattered in fifteen years of war. Lebanon and the Levant are littered with the wreckage of human civilization and the scars of man's cruelty, yet they struggle on. The Lebanese are sick to death of war and it is hard to blame them. There are so many bullet-scarred buildings on the former Green Line that 20 years later, they still haven't finished replacing them. But you can still go to one of the hundred best restaurants in the world, visit the regions chicest clubs and bars, and talk for hours with strangers on the bus. They want to live and they want to be great, in spite of their troubles, and even Hassan Nasrallah says that 3 more years of stalemate are preferable to anymore civil war.

The irony is that I thought Lebanon would be the most dangerous leg of my trip, yet it was in Istanbul that I found myself in danger, while I know people who were on the Greek ferry that sunk this week, and a Turkish plane was hi-jacked today. The world is un-predictable and you never know what will come each day it turns. Whether the answer is silent prayer or joyful partying, one way or another we all have to find an answer.

...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...