The Middle East and North Africa
Our archive of travel stories from Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Israel
Jerusalem
A predawn haze lit the kilometre of road before us. We trudged along it, still groggy from the half hearted slumber of our bus ride [...]
Tout Like an Egyptian
A train deposited Iain and I in Aswan four hours behind schedule. A crowd of soldiers in combat uniforms guarded the platform, torso sized shields [...]
Cairo’s Small Courtesies
It is in small courtesies that cultures first come together or clash, whether at the pyramids or in chance-meetings on medieval streets, aboard ferries or a badly driven minibus.
Petra
Deep in the desert of Jordan we roamed, In a rose tinted city named Petra, borne from stone. Three hundred years before Christ it was [...]
Amman and the Dead Sea
Heavy water rolled gently towards my toes, over thick layers of caked salt, like rock candy, which had sunk to the seafloor. I stepped gingerly [...]
Damascus
Sharia ath-Thawra was a jumble of shining yellow taxis, fearlessly zipping between moving metal. Their drivers rested weary elbows on horns, hooting, blind to all [...]
Mistaking Aleppo
I woke as we neared the Syrian border, my left cheek clammy and wrinkled. Saliva had collected on the headrest of my reclined bus seat [...]
Cappadocia
The bedroom was icy. Fresh breaths of arctic air sifted through unseen cracks, under the door, through the glass. My foot lay exposed. I snuck [...]
Gosh, Prayers and Broken Windows
My mother and William Turnbull, the author of this article, joined me for a week in Turkey while Claire was away, attending her mother’s wedding. [...]
Ankara
A man pressed my thumb down onto the greasy black ink pad, and into the space labelled ‘thumb’ on the page beside it. Forefinger, middle [...]
Ramazan in Istanbul
“Allaaahuu Akbaarr.” The muezzin paused, drew breath. I held out a public phone’s plastic receiver, stretching the wire, and hoped my father on the other [...]
