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.

Turkish Delight

Istanbul is hard to sum up in words. It acts one way and then, without warning, surprises you with hidden delights. The tiny alleyways with children playing soccer, the cluttered houses and gleaming boutiques, the bars, cafes and restaurants tucked into side streets and lining broad avenues - you could wander this city for a year and see a new mosque and eat in a new place each day.

Yesterday, we saw both the Blue Mosque and the Haga Sofia, and the contrast could not be more apparent - as was intended. It was a grey, rainy day, and the Sofia was a cold, almost brutal marble structure with a soaring dome - unfortunately somewhat obscured by scaffolding. There are massive pillars and the remnants of old, gilt Byzantine mosaics. Even the remains of the Islamicization that took place after the conquest are massive wooden wheels with the names of Allah, the Prophet, and the first four Caliphs.

By contrast, the Blue Mosque is an almost weightless structure of thin, gold-topped minarets with an airy, lofty interior. Carpeting and careful lighting make it seem far more delicate and open, and from the exterior it appears to be made of porcelain or glass next to the heavy brick and stone of its Christian counterpart.

Today, on the other hand, was sunny and gorgeous. We wandered the streets of Sultanahmet, visiting a number of other major and minor mosques. Ottoman architecture is very regular and elegant on the outside, so we began to get a sense of deja vu as we approached each, but the interiors differed wildly. The lovely weather meant we had some great views of Istanbul.

The greatest sight I have seen was last night as I walked back to the hotel by the Blue Mosque. Fireworks went off over the Golden Horn, glittering in the rainy night sky. They startled the flocks of seagulls that nest around the Mosque, which took off simultaneously, and were lit up by the Mosque's floodlights so that it looked like hundreds of golden arrows soaring over the spires.

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.