Middle East & North Africa
Countries: Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Israel
Visits: One (2006)
Duration: 3 months
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 from Cairo. Through a small strip ‘of no man’s land’ we entered Israel, and left Egypt behind us.
The immigration office was small, with gleaming white tiles on the floor and large cardboard posters dangling on strings from the ceiling. Grinning people were pasted onto the almost life-size cut outs – comically posing: hands on their hips – with their names below in colourful bubble letters.
We came face to face with one of the poster pinups: a large, stern-faced woman in a khaki uniform. She bore no resemblance to the cheerful photo that hung above her scowling face. “Passports,” she growled, holding her hand out impatiently. She flicked through the pages. “What you have been doing in Syria?”
“Travelling,” I answered, matter of factly.
She glared at me. “What you have been doing there? Where you have been there?” Her voice demanded an answer. It was louder now.
“Petra…” I began.
“Where in Syria!” she bellowed. I had slipped up: Petra was the famous archaeological site we’d visited in Jordan, not Syria. Her voice, the speed of her questions, her scowl: they were all designed to make me nervous, to make me slip up. I had nothing to hide, but felt guilty.
“Palmyra, I mean…” I stammered. “We visited Palmyra. And Aleppo, Damascus, Crac de Chevaliers…” She cut me short.
“But why you have been there?” She spat the words out; her disgust with Syria, her nation’s enemy neighbour, was clear.
“We went to Syria to travel, to visit these places…” I offered, wondering what it was she wanted to hear, when all I could provide was the truth. She did not respond.
“And where in Israel you want to go?”
“To Jerusalem,” I answered confidently. “Just Jerusalem. We have very little time unfortunately… we fly to India on Friday.”
She cocked her head toward Iain. “Does he speak?” There was repulsion in her voice.
“I do indeed,” he answered brusquely, offended.
“Why you want to go to Jerusalem?” she continued, suspiciously.
“It is a very historical place,” I said flatly. Surely this was obvious.
“But what is there for you?” She was emotional now; she shouted the question. Beyond knowing what to say, I mumbled, shrugged, and gave up. We were admitted to the baggage scanning area. Continue reading Jerusalem»
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 in their fists. A large group of convicts had been transported in the train that had taken us overnight from Cairo.
“We must hurry now,” said Omar, who strode through the station lobby, looking back to see if we were keeping up. “The bus to Aswan Dam will be waiting for you.” We had somewhat reluctantly booked a week long trip from Aswan to Luxor, including a night in a felucca on the Nile and visits to various ancient sites. Police escorted convoys have become compulsory for tourists travelling between the two cities because of Egypt’s recent terrorist attacks. It is difficult and time consuming for independent travellers to join these convoys, and most surrender to a package tour. And so it was that we became two among a group to be shepherded along this over-trodden tourist trail. Already it felt against the grain.
We followed behind Omar closely, my backpack weighing down on a hungry, exhausted body. The ‘Tourist Breakfast’ on the train had been obscenely overpriced; we avoided it. Sleeping sitting up had only been as comfortable as, well, sleeping sitting up. A meal and a shower were foremost in my mind. And there would be enough time for both, Omar promised, even if lunch was a takeaway eaten on the bus. Continue reading Tout Like an Egyptian»
Cairo’s Small Courtesies
Ports are transitional: the places where countries merge, before coexisting on boats. Men had staggered clumsily through the pitching Ulysses, which took us from Rosslare to Cherbourg. They drank Guinness in the cabaret bar, and watched wide smiling dancers perform can cans or off balance jigs. On the less bumpy journey from Brindisi to Patras, men in fitted suits fingered worry beads, and the ship’s menu offered espressos and my first muddy Greek coffee.
At Aqaba, where we were to board a ferry for Nuweiba, two lazy lines and the Red Sea met: Claire and I could see four countries. To our south was Saudi Arabia. Egypt was visible across the water, pulling us west, away from Shanghai; next to it was Israel. And we were in Jordan, where shouting men moved household furniture and awkward, heavy sacks from the roof of a bus to the trailers behind a haggard tractor. The tractor belched greasy black smoke; it would later drag these trailers to the ferry’s hull, where they would be stacked behind trucks and a few out of place private cars. Continue reading Cairo’s Small Courtesies»
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 built,
The Nabataeans mastered carving, the heat did nought but wilt.
Spice and silk passed through Petra to the East,
Trade was commanded by the Nabataeans, long deceased.
Earthquakes shook the city, and people fled
But stone refused surrender, and the city remained unbent. Continue reading Petra»
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 forward, avoiding the sharp edges of broken salt, and the water got quickly deeper, along a slip-sliding slope. Soon, I was in disorienting suspension, legs kicking the air, laughing at my own attempts to swim.
Israel was across the water; its dry, sinuous hills rose quickly past brown gravel beaches, identical to the small, Jordanian owned stretch of equally course sand behind me, where Claire lazed beneath a hexagonal wooden umbrella, with only her legs extending into the weak winter sun. The Dead Sea was Yam ha-Mavet there and al-Bahr al-Mayyit here; the Hebrew and Arabic words for death also resembled each other closely. Continue reading Amman and the Dead Sea»
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 but their destination. A pedestrian flyover was visible in the distance, beyond a mammoth neon Sony sign, about a ten minute walk away. But Iain and I had slept too late; we had things to see, a city to explore, and so stood, peering onto the street, waiting for a gap. A truck chugged along further down – at a safe speed, it seemed. We took the chance, darted across the road, and began a sprint as one of the faceless yellow vehicles sped toward us, its horn hooting profanities. A leap forward and we were out of its path, balancing on a white line. Cars swished behind and in front of us, displacing bulks of air that slapped you in the face; ‘idiot’ they screamed. I exhaled, stood jelly legged in between the two rows of speeding traffic, and clutched Iain’s hand in terrified futility.
Across the road, vegetables were laid out on pieces of sacking, spread over the bare tarmac. Women sat in front of a few shrivelled vegetables, headscarves hanging over their foreheads as they stared at me, blank. Hundreds of people manned a makeshift market place that curved along the pavements and led to a wider avenue of street sellers. Arranged before them, on tables or the street, were bundles of shoelaces, polyester socks, flimsy plastic toys or seed bars: a handful of meagre items formed their livelihood. Men squeezed lemon juice into yellowed glasses and water was doused onto tired cucumber slices, refreshing their chance of purchase. All around me, people stood or sat, hoping to make a sale, and a living.
Rows of tiny workshops with busy men inside, welding metal, made sparks fly. Then began the rows of butchers, their wares hung outside on hooks: cow carcasses, whole chickens, ballooned intestines, ready to pop. Trades clustered together, juice bars with juice bars, pastry shops with pastry shops, shoe shops with shoe shop; why, I couldn’t fathom. Surely spreading themselves out would lessen competition?
We continued through the market, further from the skyscrapers of modern Damascus, feeling more and more conspicuous. My trousers, long Turkish tunic, and modestly tied up hair were not enough to keep the scrutinising looks at bay. I smiled meekly, walking through the sea of Arab faces, and wondered what compelled them to stare, what they were thinking, and what made me so different in their eyes.
Iain fancied that his relatively dark looks – tanned skin, brown hair and eyes – allowed him to pass as a Syrian, despite his height and tattered jeans. But it wasn’t racial characteristics that separated us from the hundreds that we passed: many Syrians’ eyes were as blue as mine. But mine was the only uncovered female head in sight, gliding through a rainbow of headscarves, speckled with black burqa-ed faces. Perhaps the way I walked; self confident, independent – regardless of my sex – oozed immodesty in the eyes of these market people.
Beside the citadel, we found the entrance to the Souq al-Hamidiyya, the city’s main bazaar. Built in the 19th century, the souq’s curved metal ceiling soared sky high, punctuated by bullet holes which let in streams of dusty light. The bullet holes were left by the French, who occupied Syria – with League of Nations approval – from 1920 until 1946.
Strolling with scores of shoppers, I snatched glances at brightly coloured tunics and dresses, sparkling in glittery excess. I passed jeans, knit wear and Lycra – the clothes of home – handmade perfume stores and shoe shops, chock full with ‘Nika’ and ‘Rebok’, two pounds sterling a pair.
We came across a shop dedicated to the sale of women’s headscarves. Rows of mannequin heads modelled all number of colours and fabrics, and each headscarf was displayed with its matching counterpart: a wide headband of the same colour to be worn underneath, lest a strand of disobedient hair reveal itself.
A girl about my age strutted up to the shop to browse. She wore skin tight jeans, a figure hugging sweater and maroon leather boots, knee-high. A black headscarf was stylishly draped over her head and chestnut wisps floated about her face. I wondered: would a token headscarf redeem me too?
Daylight shone onto an archway, glowing white at the end of the souq. We exited, into a square, and were confronted by several ornate columns, standing independently, supporting nothing but a decorated lintel: the remains of the 3rd century Roman Temple of Jupiter’s western gate. Beach umbrellas in primary colours shaded parts of the square, and tinsel-decorated stalls sold books and mother of pearl treasure chests. Men’s vests and sesame bread rings were stacked up on wagons, balanced between people and palm trees. A pomegranate juice vendor served us a chilled glass, freshly squeezed; a deep burgundy colour that stained my fingers. We sat sipping liquid health, beneath the columns of ancient ancestors, watching the bustle, mesmerised.
Umayyad Mosque stood across the square, behind a high wall, amongst the Temple of Jupiter’s ruins. The temple had become a Byzantine cathedral, and then a mosque. It had a rather staid appearance from where we stood, outside the wall. No graceful domes rose skyward and, at first glance, only the minarets that had been added to the original architecture signified a Muslim place of worship.
We had inadvertently entered the old city through the souq and now weaved our way into the narrows of old Damascus. A few random turns and we were in a maze of impossibly interlaced homes, their doorways hidden amongst dim alleys. We stooped under an archway, layered with black basalt and white limestone stripes: typically Damascene. Continuing beneath gothic arches we crept through the peaceful quietude, as lost as in Venice’s winding streets. This city within a city had the pleasant isolation of an island: beyond the souq, its pulse was unhurried; these residential streets were free of cars, and the web of alleys was left alone to float in the centre of traffic-crazed modern Damascus.
Wading through the muted light, we followed the brisk steps of a slight woman, down an anonymous lane. She wore a brown trench coat, a black headscarf tight around her bowed head, and clutched the shoulder strap of a handbag closely. Daylight streamed towards us as we were spat out into a busy shopping street, leaving the shadowy afternoon behind us. The lady disappeared into the flocks of shoppers, many wearing the ubiquitous trench coats: an autumn solution to the figure disguising that Islam dictates – for women.
Plastic containers of all shapes and sizes were stacked high, spilling onto the pavement outside a shop, scattered with other locally made cheap odds and ends. A million potions and lotions lined the shelves of a shop clucking with cloaked ladies. We retreated into the quainter depths of the city’s old part, and found our way back to Umayyad Mosque, which we intended to visit.
The stone paved streets returned and a distant melody wafted towards us, plucked nimbly from a guitar we could not see. We followed the mosque’s eastern wall, where in its shadow, a group of young men sat smoking a bubbling nargileh and drinking chai with a pony-tailed guitarist.
Across from the group was a teashop with a few outdoor stools, from where we could savour the music. The pony-tailed man played Spanish guitar beautifully, and for a minute my mind drifted back to Santiago, where a midnight musician had played Iain and I an impromptu tune. Our chai arrived, tannic and strong. The tea leaves merged with fresh mint; the ultimate refreshment.
“Ek-skews me,” said a strange voice; gruff, yet somehow shrill. “My name…” The man drew breath. “…is Hussein. Professor Hussein… Mohaaammed. I am… a teacher.” He spoke with a long drawl, which flavoured his words with the tinge of an American accent. We introduced ourselves and repositioned our stools closer to his. He obviously fancied a chat.
“Thees cafay… its name… it is Khabini. It meens… hide me… where nobody… can find me.” He wheezed and brought a cigarette closer to his lips. “Hide me… where nobody… can find me.” The café had apparently sheltered several Syrians when the French, in 1925, reacted to nationalist agitation with violence – hence its name.
Hussein looked about sixty, wore a tired navy blue blazer, black trousers and a peaked cap. Stark black eyebrows framed his hooded eyelids and a thin black moustache was streaked onto his pulpy tan coloured skin.
“I am an Eengleesh teacher,” he told us proudly. “An’ Arabic… French, Spaneesh… an’ geetar. I teach the geetar… but I am retired now,” he continued. “You have good hands for the geetar,” Hussein told Iain. “Good long fingers…good for reeching the chords… the notes… the harmonies.”
Hussein’s own left hand had two badly damaged fingers. One had a gnarled stump of a nail, the other was amputated at the first joint.
We chatted for a while, and he suggested we go for tea at his house the next day. “But my seester… she has not cleaned my house… my house is vary dirty now…”
Instead, we agreed to meet him at Khabini at the same time the following day, and left.
Back in our hotel’s pedestrianed street, the barber was shutting his doors and the tailor kept on sewing. Chickpea balls were being dunked into hot oil at a regular, unhurried pace at the falafel stall, and further down, a few street-side tables and chairs seated hungry men. We sat down beside an urn of chai, its tap waiting to be turned, and I ordered the meal on offer: fatta, it was called. Within minutes, a bowl arrived, filled with pita bread that had been baked into layers of chickpeas and hummus with olive oil drizzled on top. I ate with relish, scooping the hot creamy hummus up with bread, served on the side. Curious as to how tasty such a sloppy vegetarian dish could be tasty, Iain sceptically dipped a piece of bread into the bowl. A virtual carnivore who had recently discovered the joys of falafel – turning up his snout at any vegetable that wasn’t a potato – Iain began dunking the bread into my bowl until I was forced to restrain him, and order another.
Dusk was creeping up on what is debatably the world’s oldest continually inhabited city; this vibrant gem of frozen tradition that simultaneously sprouts emblems of modernity. The city’s multiple identities stare each other in the face and warped mirror images are reflected back, to look at one another with curiosity.
It was a crisp, cool morning, and Star Crossed Lovers café – where we had drunk our last chai the night before – was already awake. Wooden tree stumps were laid out in the spreading sunlight and the café’s dwarfish owner, wild curls on his balding head, noticed us immediately.
“Good morning!” he called, bustling about the café’s matchbox sized kitchen. “You take chai?” he offered, smiling at us.
“Well…” I looked at Iain. “We’re on our way to see Umayyad mosque,” I told the man, with purpose. He didn’t consider this an answer.
“No charge!” he said, his grin growing.
To refuse an offer of tea in Syria is considered strange, and decidedly antisocial.
“Well… we’ve got time for some chai Iain, don’t we?” Continue reading Damascus»
Aleppo, Syria
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 and gone cold. I rubbed life back into rubbery skin, and looked outside. The land was drier than yesterday, when I had watched the sun set over central Turkey through the same window. Olive trees clung to brittle soil, their roots shabbily exposed. Adding theirs to other muted greens, they pushed a withered face above the ground’s gradual undulations.
At immigration, Claire and I – the only tourists on our Syrian owned bus – were treated with suspicion. A man sporting dirty fatigues and an oily black moustache examined my passport, close to his nose at first, and then, after slowly extending his arms, from a great distance. He punched something into the computer before him, eyelids narrowing over already strained eyeballs, and hailed a superior.
“France?” the superior asked.
“No,” I replied, “South Africa.” The superior gestured dismissively to his underling. The underling, his still narrowing eyes now almost completely shut, started to type, hitting the keys with undisguised frustration.
“Germany?” the superior pleaded, when this fresh attempt to persuade the computer of my nationality failed.
“No, South Africa,” I repeated slowly, exaggerating the syllables.
The underling bashed more keys.
“Where place of issue?” the superior barked, now angry.
“The Department of Home Affairs.” My voice was tinged with irritation, which disguised the beginnings of concern.
“No! Where place of issue?”
“The Department of Home Affairs.” South African passports do not actually mention a place of issue. They refer, instead, to an Authority, and mine, as my passport clearly stated, was issued under the authority of the Department of Home Affairs. But this answer was obviously unacceptable. “In Pretoria!” I added, guessing the bureaucratic difficulty.
The muscles around the underling’s eyes relaxed after a few brutal keystrokes. He wrote six cryptic letters on page one of my passport, above the president’s request that I be allowed to “pass freely without let or hindrance”, and grudgingly welcomed us into Syria. Continue reading Aleppo, Syria»
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 it back under the weight of blankets piled on top of me: three of them, thick and soft.
A steel cylinder stood in the corner of the room, stuffed with newspaper. A fire, waiting to be lit. It would have to wait. Behind the curtains lay another land: a land of eerie undulations in the earth, pointed stone chambers, forgotten homes. Giant cones of volcanic tuff congregated in clusters, watching over this frozen village, Göreme.
Waking up amidst this landscape had the surreal quality of a dream, or a nightmare. The view from our window was alien. I felt elated, but disengaged from recognised reality. Our rented room was barren and old fashioned. It could have existed in any era, anywhere.
Bluish mountains lined the landscape out of our window. These alone were familiar. No modernisation or signs of life were evident. Sand dune shapes flowed into the distance, shrubbery growing atop them. Soft and sandy looking, these dunes were solid, composed of solidified volcanic ash, or tuff. Giant cones of the same brittle substance, some topped with basalt caps, protruded from the terrain, silent. After the eruptions of nearby Mt Erciyes and Mt Hasan about three million years ago, centuries of rain and erosion have weathered this soft volcanic landscape into the mysterious stone folds and outcrops that are Cappadocia. Continue reading Cappadocia»
Gosh, Prayers and Broken Windows
My mother and Willie Turnbull, the author of this article, joined me for a week in Turkey while Claire was away, attending her mother’s wedding. I forced our swift schedule on them; they forced relief from The Budget on me. Willie offered to write this article. I gleefully accepted, but insisted that the title be “Gosh, Prayers and Broken Windows.” “Gosh” because Willie – who hadn’t, like me, been travelling for months – used the word (perhaps too often) to express his newfound wonder. The “Prayers and Broken Windows” had more to do with Willie being Scottish, and await his explanation.
Lying in bed, awakened by the familiar 6am call to prayer, I enjoyed the sun shining through the gap in the curtain and the fresh breeze coming in through the front window. It eased the rather tight feeling in my head and gave relief to a mouth that felt like a drain. Continue reading Gosh, Prayers and Broken Windows»
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 finger, ring finger, baby finger, one at a time, were all smeared in the black ink and pressed firmly onto the page. The man had an American twang, but looked like a Turk, dark hair and sallow skin. I shifted in my chair, it squeaked.
I sat opposite five smiling black politicians, framed on the wall. A beaded tribal doll was behind glass on a shelf, beside a Springbok jersey and a bottle of Cape wine, tilted to one side. Piles of brochures about investing in South Africa were fanned out on the glass table top. A broad-shouldered blonde strode into the room.
“Afrikaans of Engels?” she said quickly. Iain stumbled for his answer, taken aback by the address, comprehensible though it was.
“Uh…English, we speak English,” he replied.
“Welcome to Ankara,” she said warmly, extending a hand. “My name is Marieke, I’m the Consular Attaché.”
Sitting in our embassy in Turkey’s capital, we were back in a little South Africa, part of somewhere again. I had assumed Irish citizenship for the past four months, utilising my second passport’s advantages to travel freely within the EU. But now, I was South African again. We had come to receive ‘letters of recommendation’, required by the Syrian embassy for our visa applications. Continue reading Ankara»
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 end could hear Istanbul being called to prayer. “Allaaahuu Akbaarr. Allaaahuu Akbaarr, Ash-hadu alla ilaha illallah.” The muezzin stopped, inhaled. Traffic snarled and casual banter dominated the city again. I bent my knees, bowed my head, and squeezed back into the small phone booth.
“And the beds? Do you fit into the beds?” asked Dad, also six foot eight, laughing at the image I had just conjured: me hunched awkwardly over a telephone, head touching the roof.
“I curl up, or stretch diagonally, like anywhere. The beds aren’t any different.” But so much was different. I felt amidst the truly exotic for the first time and, because his reactions were so animated, enjoyed describing this unfamiliar land to my father. Continue reading Istanbul»
