Funny, he doesn't look Jewish

"George Bush, he's a Jew?" the felucca captain asks me.

He's just been telling me how Muslims and Christians get along in Egypt like brothers. Yes, there's some hyperbole in this, but by-and-large all that I have seen and read shows that Jews and Christian have been able to live safely and prosperously in Muslim countries like Syria and Egypt.

He's told me, his felucca captain, that his religion commands him to be kind to everyone, Jew and Christian.

Yet he assumes George W. Bush is a Jew because George W. Bush has waged war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I tell him that, no, George Bush is Christian, and he nods his head incredulously, maybe a little skeptically.

Luxor is scenic, but the aggressive expectation for bakteesh, tips, by the Egyptian peasants who "guard" the monuments is more trouble than its worth. On one hand, my heart goes out to them because these people are truly poor. But even an easy mark like me has his limits.

This felucca captain, for example, gives me a fair price for the trip, but then ingratiates himself with every flattery he can imagine, asking if I can help him find a good job in America (I tell him he will be competing with Mexican immigrants, but he ignores that), asks me to buy him a new cell phone, takes my jacket from my hand, puts it on, tells me he'd like something tangible to remember me by (because in these three hours to him I have become like a brother, he tells me) since money flies out of his hands so quickly.


This ruin, by the way, is from one of Ramses temples, the fallen monumental statue the inspiration for Shelley's "Ozymandias."

My guidebook doesn't even mention Mohandeseen, the Cairene district where I am staying during my five weeks in Cairo. In 1960, this district, like all of those on the west side of the Nile, did not exist. But the city grew from 2 million to the current 20, along with it the Egyptian middle class for whom this district was built. My apartment, which I share with two other students from the International Language Institute (where I'm distinguishing myself as a particularly inept student of Arabic), has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a pleasant kitchen, a comfy living room, floor space in all not much smaller than my home in California. The cable TV has a couple of English-speaking stations that broadcast CNN, Al Jazeera, "Grey's Anatomy" and "24." We have wireless Internet access. Nothing in the apartment comes to American middle-class standards--the bathtub is too narrow, the beds too hard, the heater too anemic. The picture on the left is of an apartment building just catty corner from my own. To avoid homework, I can watch "Law and Order" and putter around on my favorite car forum on the Internet (Lotustalk.com). Grab a couple of chocolate chip cookies from the story across the street. It feels just about like home.

But that's not why I came here.

My my first three weeks now, had not gotten much of a sense of the city, Cairo, El Kahira in their own language. Not much sense of the Egyptians, or any thing particularly Islamic, so, on Friday, I went into the old city to find some of the important old mosques. At one, a man with only one tooth began to talk to me in the way touts and tour guides do, and before long I had hired him, and he led me for two hours not so much to the the sights in the guidebook (though he did often stop to tell me about this madrassa and that harem and the Mamluk mosque) as through the alleys and workshop and food stands and shops. There was the shop where fez hats are handmade (they use chicken fat, right off the chicken bone, as an adhesive), and there where the coffee is roasts ("Here, eat just two beans. Two beans. You will feel like you had two cups of Turkish coffee), there where a man stands on a long-handled iron to press clothes, here where the artisan carves the bone of a camel into a scarab. Unshaven, a dark mark on his head (I see a lot of men with this) that I'm guess comes from the prayers when Muslim men bow there heads to the floor, wiry and quick, veteran of the 1973 Yom Kippur war and survivor of and accident in1998 that knocked out most of his teeth and left him in the hospital for three months (the driver was American), fluent in English, French, Italian, and German, with a smattering of Turkish, and of course the Arabic. With the missing teeth, he will never be a leading man, but one can see he could be handsome, but one can also see that he is poor.

Then on Saturday, he led me through the City of the Dead, the grave yard east of central Cairo where one million people are reported to live among the grand mausoleums of the Mamluk rulers and the most brick mausoleums of living families of Cairo. I ran into a friend from the language student who asked me what sites there were to see, but I could not give me an adequate answer, because the reward of the tour had not be sites but weaving in and out with this man among the gravestones as he teased me about being slower with the camera than the "National Geographic" photographers he'd toured through Egypt before his terrible accident.

I was invited to lunch the next day, this Sunday just passed. The apartment was very clean, perhaps 10 feet by 40 with roughly three rooms--one in front where people ate, watched TV and the parents slept, another on the opposite end where the three children slept, and a third area in between that housed the kitchen and bathroom, though it was hardly a kitchen and hardly a bathroom. For example, no bath or shower. The stove consisted of three burners, the antique in style, set on a rickety impromptu assembly of wood. Moshen (the tour guide's name) asked on behalf of his wife if she could have an American dollar--as a kind of keepsake--and after I gave it to her, I thought I'd give her a collection (I'd already slipped Mosen one of my few remaining 100s), so I gave her my last $5, a $10, a $20 and a $50. After she'd gone with the children to sit with his aging mother, he told me she had thanked Allah for providing the money through me (I"m not catching this right--it's the idea of asking a blessing upon me for being Allah's instrument in this instance) because now she had half the money to buy a new stove set with an oven. It will take her a month or two to save the rest of the money. She wants an oven. And the middle burner is a little wiggling and Mosen fears it is possible for it to leak gas and cause an explosion.

But the things to do for this family are endless. At one point, Moshen t over from a pain in his groin. He was in this condition for about 15 minutes, and would relieve the pain by pouring cold water on his groin, as advised by his doctor to relieve the pain. He tried to describe to me the condition. It sounds as if air/gas gets lodged in his groin area. The operation to relieve this condition is very simple and safe, and would cost, he says, about 2000 pounds, or maybe $500, but he says he has better things to spend it on like his rent and his children. There's no complaint when he says this, and once he feels better and after I relate to him my recent incident with a kidney stone, he said that when this happens to me, I should say "Ham du llah," something like "Thank God," because this is just a minor pain, a little twist of the ear from God for my sins when I really deserve to be slapped down. Thank God it is only a kidney stone and not a brain tumor. There's no guile nor preachiness when he says this, and I know it's pretty mainstream church talk, but he really says it ("hamdulah") when he's in this pain.

This is not worn on the sleeve, but it is worn.

I think he is really very, very sharp. But he is just a man. The boy, the woman, the two girls and he himself make up just a family. And so, from perhaps my first day in Turkey two months ago, on this journey to learn something of Islam, all that I can see is that these people practicing this other religion are about like anyone else I've ever met, and that the problems that divide them from us are much more deeply rooted in money than in religion.

When Jill, my step-daughter, graduated from Azusa Pacific University, I remember the APU president remarking at her commencement that when in a few years these graduates begin earning as little as $30,000 a year, they will have joined an elite consisting of seven percent of the world's population. I don't believe people like me have too much, but I know Moshen has too little.

The Kaffiyeh

I traveled in Turkey, toured in Syria and Jordan, and now, briefly, live in Egypt.

And that perhaps is why I found the Turks so sweet. In Turkey, I traveled mainly in the provinces and outside of Istanbul, did not find myself in places frequented by western tourists, and on the buses and vans that Turks of little and modest and moderate means use.

It was both practicalities and my fear of Syria which first caused this change in how I moved from place to place, but now having passed through those lands, I will do it differently when I return. In all these places I have found kind people, but the more I toured, the more I dealt with people who survived--sometimes poorly, sometimes handsomely--from their business with tourist. That's a love-hate relationship, and one can feel the envy and contempt some feel for the affluent guests upon whose business they depend and whose naivety they sometimes exploit.

The further south I've come, the more I have become an object to the touts and shop owners.

It was this way in Istanbul, as well, and that is one of the reasons, perhaps, why I felt such a sense of relief when the bus I had boarded in the outskirts of Istanbul had traveled north some half hour toward the provincial capital of Edirne.

Three weeks later, in Syria, I traveled by private car to Palmyra. It's in the southwestern desert, on an oasis, and for a while the route follows the same highway that takes you to Iraq. For several centuries in the Common Era (ie: AD) it was the most prosperous and influential city in region south of Anatolia and north of Egypt. Then, Syria had been one of the principle cultural and economic centers of the Hellenistic world, odd given its location in the desert and without any notable rivers nearby. But for reasons relating to forces of the time, its fortunes grew so great that at one time, its queen, Zenobia, challenged Rome for dominance of the empire. Well, Rome crushed it, and that's one reason why Palmyra is a ruin now.

Specifically, its interest to me was that Palmyra was an Arab kingdom, like the Nabateans famous for the widely visited ruins at Petra in Jordan, and so in some mainly indirect ways anticipate the consolidation of the Arab tribes under the prophet Muhammad.

Now, when your hotel in Syria or Jordan arranges a "tour," what this means is that you'll be provided a car and a driver who knows where all the sites are but doesn't speak much English.
My driver, Ahmed, was the first good driver I'd encountered in Turkey or Syria, and he was a decent, conscientious man, who, by the way, looked a lot more German than Arabic. The plan was for him to drop me at the ruins and then rendezvous two, three, fours hours later as I walked the site. He told me to meet him in the cafeteria. This was communicated mainly by hand gestures, nods, and the world "cafeteria." Well, I took cafeteria to mean the sort of cafes or restaurants museums and important archaeological places have on-site. It meant to him the place we stopped to have coffee in the town that had grown around the edge of the ruins.

What this meant was three hot hours later of walking through the ruins on a day that was unexpectedly hot, bag heavy on my back, drinking the last of my bottled water, out in the friggin' desert with nothing but lizards and, oh yeah, the bus load of Italian tourists, some of the women in high heels--well, they were out for fun but I was dying of heat stroke. I exaggerate. The point is three hours was long enough and I wanted to get back to the car and rest for a while and have something to eat and get out of the sun. But, guess what, I couldn't find the cafeteria. I walked to one edge of the ruins with a likely looking building, but it was a restaurant in construction. I headed to the other end. I asked someone where the cafeteria was, but he spoke no English and I spoke no Arabic. I passed a threesome of Italians, very stylishly dressed, and appropriately for the desert heat, but they were just interested in the dolce vida and weren't interested in panting, hatless American strewn in sweat and dressed without a hint of panache.

I headed, this was the second time, for the compound just the the left of the Temple of Ba'al when a Bedouin asked me if I wanted to ride a camel.

"No," I shook my head. "Not today."

His comeback was immediate: "When? Next lifetime?"

I laughed. "Yes. Next lifetime."

He persisted for a while, but I left him behind to go in search of the missing cafeteria. But then he was at my side again talking about the camel. I did not want to ride a camel, I said, but could he tell me where the cafeteria was?

"Cafeteria?" I think the word was not quite right for him, but, he was entreprenuerial, so it was close enough. "Yes. There is only one cafeteria. It's right here." And he led me on.

Yeah, led me on in every sense of the phrase. I knew right away this was not the spot. The driver was not to be seen, nor his car. Nor any other car. It didn't feel like the spot. I don't think, in those gestures and nods and the carefully chosen "cafeteria" he meant this place. Not such a bad place, set as it was in the edge of the oasis. Immediately, I felt the coolness, and though I knew this was not the place on rendezvous, I needed to take the pack off my back and sit for a while. Three others were in the "cafeteria," which was just a modest structure with a couple of rooms. One of these others got me a Coke, and I set, the only patron in a place with seating for 75, and they looked at me, sizing me up. The one who brought me here pulled out a clutch of necklaces. Oh crap. That crap again. Wouldn't my wife like this one, he asked. He'd give me a special price if I bought two. Only one caught my eye, and I was ready to let it pass until some of those Italians passed by. Apparently there was a more interior part of this cafeteria and they had been there eating. The Italian woman wanted the necklace that had caught my eye. She held it to her check, examined it in her hands. Her husband pulled out a wad of cash. She stroked the brown and white pieces of necklace. It was made of camel bone and something else, and now that she wanted it and her husband had pulled out the wad of cash, I wanted it. He offered them the same sort of deal, I gathered, and she lingered, but her husband walked away, and the necklace stayed at the table with the junk jewelry the Bedouin told me could not be found any where else (I'd seen dozens in Aleppo).

But where was the driver. Oh, they'd find him for me. The one sneered at the idea of a driver who could speak no English and yet was touring them around Syria. He told me how cheaply he could take me into desert by camel back for one or two nights and eat authentic Bedouin food under the stars, and, anyway, wouldn't I like two or three of these necklaces, and wasn't I hungry.

But until I knew where my driver was, I didn't want to eat or buy anything. The Bedouin told one of the others to go on the motorcycle and track down my driver.

I felt better after the Coke and in the shade of the oasis and with the bag off my back. I looked at the camel-bone necklace and asked how much. He wanted to sell me several, but I was only interested in the one. He was asking high, and I was offering low, when one of his friends came to the table with a kaffiyeh and headband. I nodded "no," but could not suppress the smile. They insisted, just for fun, they said, try it on. They folded it just right and settled it on my head, placing the black band over it, the one saying that in the past the bands had been made of camel hair. They pulled one corner to the other side of the band, tucking it in just right, and other corner to the opposite side of the band, all the while, irresistibly, the theme from 'Lawrence of Arabia" filling my head. And my smile just grew and grew. I couldn't help it. The romance of the head scarf, the fantasy and romance were just to great. David of Arabia.

And then the one had an idea. I should get on a camel and he'd take a picture with my camera. I said no with the coyness of a prostitute, the camel was fetched, I mounted it, they trotted me around a few feet back and forth like a toddler at the fair given a pony ride. And I felt as thrilled as a toddler in a cowboy suit.

I reluctantly dismounted after a couple of minutes, alternating in my desires between the three-year-old and fifty-three year old David. That three-year-old wanted to wear the kaffiyeh forever, but the 53-year-old wouldn't have it. But, feeling better, I asked what it would be for the necklace and the kaffiyeh, yes, over paying somewhat. That settled, the Bedouin added, "And my friends wants 10 pounds."

"What for?"

"The camel ride. Ten pounds." That's about $20.

I was stunned. And I was angry. To my thinking, there had been no deal. The ride, I'd thought, had been a friendly gesture, like the tea they offered, saying it was a Bedouin custom of hospitality. But I ended up paying for the tea, as well.

But I had just been a mark, a bank, and they just needed to wiggle me right to make a few coins slip out of the slot on the back of the piggy bank.

I tossed the 10-note on the table. And the Bedouin and I talked a little more about a two-day trek into the desert. It's something I would have done. And I nodded when he complained that people the hotels in the cities that arrange the tours take business away from Bedouin like himself, whom, he said, have much more to offer. And yet, though $20 is only $20, and though the Bedouin have given life to some rich romance of the exotic, I knew I had been scalped, if only a little, but no one likes to be a mark, and that I would never let pass another coin between him and me.

Yet, having been scalped, at least I had a kaffiyeh to cover it.

At Petra, in Jordan, before the famous temple carved out of the canyons that everyone has seen pictures of, the camel watches the crowd skeptically.

The bedoins will let you mount her and take for a 10-minute ride. Only 10 dinars ($12). Dismounting, though, is another 20.

JUST FOR FUN, a guard thought a picture of me eating or vomiting (I can't really tell what I'm doing here) the Pyramids Khafre at Giza. I'd gone last weekend with a small group of students from the language school where I have learned, once again, just how inept I am at learning languages.

I had separated briefly from the other students to get a closer look at the much smaller (but still big) Pyramid of Menkaure and came upon four Tourism Police lounging at its base. They're very official-looking in blue uniforms and crisp berets, not to mentions they have assault rifles and pistols. In a friendly way, one of the four gestured for me to show him my camera. And it did. Well, he had a gun. And then had me pose in silly ways with the pyramid in the background. He smilingly took the pictures, handed back the camera, smiled amiably, then asked for the tip. Ah. Once again. They got me. I gave him a 10 pound note--about $2.25. And then through gestures I understood he was saying, "Yeah, that's good for me, but what about my friend?" I added a 5 note to the 10. Then it was, "What about my other friend?" I rolled my eyes and walked away.

The lion-headed woman is from the courtyard of the Egyptian Museum.

The guidebook said to beware of the touts greeting you as you leave the Egyptian international airport, and that is why I was gruff with the young man who asked me as I headed toward the exit, just as the guidebook said would happen.

"You need a taxi? You need a hotel."

"No, thanks," I said and walked by him toward the forming queue.

But he was at my elbow. "You have a taxi?"

"No," I said.

"No, no, no," I said. "La, la, la." ("La" is Arabic for "no.")

He looked at me incredulously. What I said made no sense. Lugging two bags and a knap sack, apparently not a member of an organized tour for which these things are prearrange, and also looking too old, and dare I say...debonair, to be a backpacking student who needs to pinch every penny, looking, in fact, like an affluent American, a stranger in a strange land, clearly I was a man in need of a taxi.

"Why not you don't need? You need a taxi." He was a young man, probably in his early thirties, wearing slacks, a tie, a jacket, his skin hue a little redder, a little lighter than many of the Arabs I had seen in Jordan. And his features, maybe with a hint of Sudanese or Ethiopian blood--I just mean that there was a mix, and in days in Egypt so far, I have seen that mix with varying formulations, some more predominately African, some more Arab, some more Caucasian but the other quality I think I was perceiving was the Egyptian itself. Not the others, Egyptian itself.

And, he looked OK to me.

But I said, "No, thank you. Shukhran, la. I'm fine." Which wasn't altogether true because I had no idea how I'd get to my hotel or whether the hotel even had room for me. But the book said to brush off the touts.

"It's not expensive."

"No."

"Where are you going?"

"Saunamek." I was trying to pronounce the name of the island neighborhood on the west side Cairo that briefly splits the Nile's flow. The airport is in the northeast suburbs. And, by the way, when people ask me questions like this, I don't know why I tell them the truth.

"Sau...what?"

By this point, I had shuffled to the end of the exiting queue. I tried to pronounce the word again: "k."

"Za...Za...Ah. ZAMelek!"

Yes. Zamelek."

"Zamelek is far. A taxi will be expensive, maybe forty dollars."

"No. I'm fine."

"Why..."

"No."

"Come take a look."

"No."

"A limousine."

"No."

"Fair price."

I ignored him.

"Just look."

I looked straight through him.

He sighed.

But how would I get to Zamalek? I couldn't even pronounce the name properly. On the map it was just a few inches away. And the Cairo airport was filled with hundreds of people, and somehow all the others looked like they knew where they were going. Some had drivers waiting form them with their names written on little signs. Others were part of tour groups and huddled happily and excitedly together in anticipation of their first night by the Nile. And, by the way, it was night, close to 8, and by the time I got to the hotel than my guidebook recommended, it would probably already be filled, and then I'd be lost in Zamalek trying to find a hotel in the middle of the night. Alone. Middle-aged. With two bags. And with a knapsack filled with camera gear heavier than anyone know. Debonair...but alone!

"Why you won't look?" He was back. "Twenty dollars. A taxi is expensive." And from the tone in his voice and the look on his face, he was authentically confused, and hurt. Ah, no, I had hurt his feelings. And then I began to empathize. Crap. A hurt tout.

"Twenty dollars?" I said suspiciously.

"Twenty dollars. You won't find better," he said in tones impaled by my suspicion.

He led me upstairs, I following still suspiciously, to an upstairs office where a confident woman settled with me on a fare of $18, and the tout led me down again, and then out to the loading zone, wanting to know why I had not trusted him.

Damascus, Syria.

Up 'till now, I've barely traveled in parts of the underdeveloped parts of the world, and seeing directly the economic despair so many are in has been startling and disturbing. Although I believe the U.S. and the rest of the wealthy nations should do much more, domestically and internationally, to help strengthen economies throughout the world, and while I have felt some sadness at seeing this impoverishment, I haven't felt personal guilt.

Until I met this man.

On my second day in Damascus, I had just passed the city's great mosque and was headed for the Christian quarter, as it is supposed to be the most beautiful and colorful in the city, when this man fell into stride with me and asked me how I was doing. Such things happened all the time: a friendly welcome, where are you from, come have a cup of tea, it's hospitality, and, by the way, maybe you would like to see my carpets which are the best you can find in Syria.

So I thought I knew what was coming. And I had learned to be friendly and courteous to the touts, but then refuse the offer for tea.

He asked me my name. I told him. He asked me if I was touring in Syria. I said yes. He asked me what my nationality was, and when I told him, he laughed quietly, ironic, and said he was from Iraq.

That's when the guilt hit.

Not many Americans visit Syria, so, struggling for the right word to express it, he called me a pioneer. We walked on. I mumbled some sort of apology. I guess not really a mumble. I think I was clear. I was sorry. I am sorry. But I didn't say more along that line since the words were so easy and hollow to a man who has seen his life destroyed, collateral damage. So what if I'm sorry. He asked if I wanted a tour of the old city, and I couldn't say no, though I did not want the tour. I asked how much? He said name a price. I said 5 lira, he said 10. In the end, I gave him 15.

He was only a fair guide, but this was all he could do as the Syrians allowed Iraqi refugees into the country, but not to work legally. He scrapped by. Before the war, he had been a merchant marine and had a particular affection for the Genoese, spoke fluent Italian, and felt a certain sympatico between the Italians and Arabs. If he'd lost family, he didn't tell me, though I did learn his wife and children were living some 10 kilometers outside of Damascus, where it was much cheaper (and Damascus is cheap).

I did not feel bitterness nor hatred from him. I think he saw the war for what it was, a foolish and murderous catastrophe wrought by one government upon a worse one, with the ordinary people paying the price. I did not feel bitterness or hatred from him, but fatigue, sorrow, and a despair beyond hope.

One problem with traveling is there a few of those chances to knock out another blog entry--I'm going to try to post an entry more often, though perhaps without the length of my first couple of entries. Once I'm in Egypt, I'll work on rounding out some of the stories and adding some that I meant to post weeks ago.

I'm writing from the Syrian city of Aleppo, about a hour's drive from the Turkish border.

The city is dominated by a citadal, and under it span out miles of the ancient bazaars. Beyond the old city, drab concrete apartment building circle the inner city, and beyond these another city of new apartment brilliantly faced in yellow granite.

From the top of the citadal, which I climbed yesterday, you can see the entire city filling the entire valley. I was sitting at the cafe with this overlook when amuezzain began the call for prayer from a nearby mosque. Then came another call from another mosque, and another, and another, and another, until the whole city swelled with a cacaphony of voices--not so much competing as each calling out to his own square.

Below, in the Umayyad mosque, a low, flat structure from early in Islamic history, I was struck by the quiet and serenity of the place. Children played in the large courtyard, and, as often happened, a child asked me to take his picture. Then the father came out with a baby in his arms and two other kids, and hand signed for me to take a picture of them. Sometimes, in Turkey, what would follow is a request that I mail then a copy of the picture when I returned. There was none of that. One of the children asked that another picture be taken. And the mother, sitting in the shade with her back against a column and wearing a chador, sent one of her children with a slice of apple for me. Then a second. Then a third. Then a forth. She touched her heart to me. I touched my heart to her.

Aleppo is a large and cosmopolitan city, and if you like the qualities of a large, loud, exciting city and the blight that comes with every large city I have ever visited, then you would like, maybe love Aleppo.

Many women dress in the chador, the black garment covering head to toe, some, a few, even with the veil covering even the eyes. Some dress in a very western way, albeit revealing less flesh than is splatters across American malls, but otherwise hard to disguish from young American woman. Many dress between these poles, and it all seems very natural. I've been to a few talks in which the chador was demonstrated for the American audience. How oppressive it all seemed. But, here, I don't sense these women feel oppressed. Yesterday, I saw a young couple crossing the street. The man had on jeans and a red shirt, the woman a black chador opened at her face. Her frame was long and graceful. Her arm wrapped around his, and they walked tightly. They looked happy, affectionate, in love.

You'll see poking under the hem of the chador jeans and the most stylish high heels available. Before my trip, I would have thought such a sight a hint of decension. But here, the chador and heels harmonize.

So I'm left baffled why all my life our country as treated Syrians as the enemy.

Bashar and Oljay

The bus ride from Konya to Sivas had taken eight hours. It had left at 9 pm, and my unrealistic plan had been to sleep on the bus and get off to a start early in Sivas. I had slept, but uncomfortably and fitfully, as anyone could have predicted. It was still early in Sivas, and except for Turks sleeping on the terminal benches as they waited their connecting bus and the small crowd in the ubiquitous chai stall, and, oh yes, the man at the entrance to the bathroom whom you paid afterwards, there was no one. A fleet of taxis were parked outside, but not a driver in sight. Well, not in my sight. I was in his. He called out to me, 'Taxi,' and we were on our way.

(That's Bashar at the and Oljay below.)

The hotel door was locked, but the driver gave it a couple of good knocks, and soon I was admitted.

I slept until 10, already late, and hurried out to find the park where the old Seljuk madrassas lay. Oh, I felt crappy. When I'm awake, I'm disoriented, here in this unexpected land. And I wasn't fully awake. But on a mission--take pictures. Why'd I choose that as a mission for this trip. Damned heavy camera. The big kind, an slr and three different lenses in my backpack. And all the apparatus--batterıes, memory cards. All just because of that fantasy I'd had and never quite shaken off of being a photographer. Heavy. Tired. Late. Late for the best light, early morning.

And let me tell you, the citizens of Sivas looked none too friendly. This was a provincial town more accustomed to Japanese tourist with an interest in architecture than lone Americans with the big kind of camera swinging from their chests. The old men in their gray caps and raspy beards eyed me disapprovingly unless, as would happen when eye contact was made, I'd brush my heart--meaning salaam alekum--an nod in greeting. The dour eyes would look alarmed, and surprised, and then warm. Well, warmer. Anyway, not hostile. And you know, if I'm the one invoking God in the custom of their land ın that stroke of my heart, what can they do but welcome back?

So I turned left, turned right, touched my chest, carried the weight of the camera and apparatus, and finally came to the park with the old monuments.

Now, remember the touts--my many friends of Istanbul. Many people on this trip had walked up to me, offered their assistance, expressed a desire to just converse, to be friends, to share chai, to become friends. But until Oljay stopped me on the park sidewalk, after the chai or the conversation came the sell.

So when Oljay stopped me and asked if I would spend a few minutes with him and his friend at the chai cafe just there, perhaps to share some chai, I told him thanks but I didn't want to buy a carpet. No carpet, no carpet, he said. Yeah. I'd heard that before. And yet, this young man in the neat suit and tie, I believed.

His friend, Bashar, was similarly dressed. Oljay, a little shorter than myself, was tightly built. Later, I would learn that he has international standing in the martial arts. He had that shock of thick black hair many Turks are blessed with, and an olive complexion.

Bashar's features were European, about as pale as myself. Like me, as well, his hair was thinning, and he wore black, wire-rimmed glasses.

They showed every sign of being genuinely happy to have me at their table, not for the sale, but for the language. Both were English teachers in the nearby high school, but here in Sivas, they had very little opportunity to practice English. And because of economic constrainst, they'd never had the opportunity to practice abroad. How was their pronunciation? they wanted to know. It was, Bashar emphasized again and again, a rare opportunity to speak with an actual native speaker of English. The closest they usually got were the Japanese tourist (who often have some command of English). And that I was myself a teacher of English was an extra blessing. We were, again it was the more talkative Bashar who said it, colleagues.

And opportunity? I don't know if I ever convinced them what an opportunity this was for me, to come wandering into a city in central Anatolia and now have someone--two--to give me some glimpse into the lives of Turks.

And yet, I soon learned, they were frustrated by the limited resources the stogy school bureaucracy provided. Awful, state-mandated textbooks, a badly equipped language laboratory which even then had been a struggle to attained. They were young and wanted to teach their students in better ways. They wanted to innovated, but were stymied by the old school master who cared more about how you dressed and the level of your Turkish nationalism than in your class performance.

Meeting me, and my willingness to talk to them, was a real opportunity. And it would be such an opportunity for their students. Would I come to their classes.

Well, I still wasn't quite awake. But of course.

To be continued...

Sıvas

I take me seat at the Internet cafe on the maınstreet of Sıvas, my third tıme ın this particular place. As he has done on my other vısıts, the i-aged proprietor clicks on the ıcon bar on the bottom of the screen and pulls up a window for the 'Porn Block' applicatıon. I don't know whether he does for all the client or whether this ıs special for me, the foreigner.

Odd if it is special for me, because porn is what I was surprised by upon my return to my hotel room last night. I flicked on the TV and there was porn of the grossest kind (probably produced in 'the Valley,' the porn industry capital in the Los Angeles suburbs). The hotel is recommended by my guide book, and indeed the staff has been exceedingly helpful, but, as the guidebook explains, the hotel is used primarily by businessmen.

Boys will be boys, but don't let me give you the wrong impression, Sivas feels very wholesome.

The Seljuk buildings I've come to see are in a long park bordering the main boulevard. They both flow down a gentle hill, crested by a fountain. Four or five cafes inhabit the park. In each, the waiter fills a tray with a dozen cups of chai and walks from table to table distributing the tea and later collecting the lira for each. The customers are all men. Here's what I remember from a few minutes ago--

At the table in front, two men play backgammon. One is young, clean shaven, with thick locks of well-groomed, shiny black hair. He wears a sweater. His partner is much older, perhaps his father, hair cut short, military style. He wears the neat, trimmed mustache Turkish men of his age often favor, and he wears a suit. Behind me I hear the clackıng of backgammon pieces as another pair play.

A man comes passing between the tables, about a hundred leather belts slung over one shoulder, and in the other hand is a box of about as many leather wallets. He's dressed in loose pants and a flannel shirt and a dark sport coat, and the lines is face call out the effects of a hard life. But his calls of belts and wallets for sale go unheeded.

Just outside the cafe, five shoe shiners had set out their elaborate boxes. They fan open like my wife's sewing basket, squat brass 'v's. One, taking a gamble, calls out hello to me in English, and I stop because my black hiking shoes are covered in beige smudge from the mud and rain of a few days back. I sit, and he motions for me to put my shoe on the stand. He rolls up the cuff of my pants and with a brush sweeps off the loose dirt. He's probably thirty-five, a handsome face, deeply yellowed teeth. He loosens the shoe laces. This is his life. Looking up, he asks, 'English?' By this time, he is smearing black paste on my shoe. He is careful to get every bit of the surface.

'Amerıcan,' I say. He nods with a little surprise. In Sivas, I am exotic.

After the black paste comes something white, and then some wax. He brushes the shoes, buffs them out. They look superb. He hesitates just a moment when I ask him how much because he must realize that I would not know if one dollar or five is fair in Sivas. He goes high. And I pay. What the hell. I can walk away.

Turkısh Dress

1. Dısclaımer: If a 'ö' symbol slıps ınto the post, I'm not meanıng to ınsert an emotıcon, but have forgotten that the key where we usually fınd the comma has the Ö ınstead.
   
   
   What do the Turks look lıke? There's a wıde range of ethnıc features. A few are faır and lıght complected, ın others you can see some trace of the Mongols. But the majorıty are dark haıred and dark eyed, theır skın has some of the tones of Latın Amerıcans, and theır features are more causasıan than anythıng else. I don't thınk there'd be obvıous dıfference ın the ways younger men dress from, say, Italıans. They lıke to dress well. The men often wear stylısh, poınted shoes of a type you mıght fınd ın Nordstrom. Older men of a more tradıtıonal bend--and there are many--wear loose pants, a vest, a button-down shırt, and a grey or beıge cap.
   
   None of thıs, though, gıves a full sense of how men dress, because economıcs have a role, too. Two men mıght be dressed ın otherwıse ıdentıcal ways, but one looks a lıttle more fresh, another more worn. But both are tryıng to look good.
   
   And then there are the professıonals who dress ın what we'd consıder normal busıness attıre--slacks, tıe, jacket.
   
   But, of course, how women dress ıs more ınterestıng--and here the blend of old and new, eastern and western, ıs more apparent.
   
   Many women dress ın a tradıtıonal way--althugh there seems to be several varıetıes of that. Many women dress ın a way we'd fınd dıffıcult to see as very dıfferent from how Amerıcan women dress, wıth one bıg dıfference when ıt comes to younger women--there ısn't much flesh showıng. No bosoms overflowıng from tıght bustıerres or bottom-brushıng hemlınes.
   
   Among the more tradıtıonal, there's great range, wıth a few women ın the black head-to-toe coverıng (I forget the name of the garment). More wıth scarfs, often, but not always, accompanıed by knee-length overcoats. But under the overcoats she mıght be wearıng somethıng drab, or a skırt, or jeans. She mıght wear no make-up, she mıght be fully made up.
   
   In the Istanbul fruıt bazaar, one pretty young woman caught my eye as she darted across my path. She wore the scarf, and the overcoat, thıs one black, and dark blue, tıght-fıttıng jeans, and poınted-toed black boots wıth three or four ınch hılls. Now, the overcoat was worn tıght and fell to mıd-thıgh rather than the knee, so that the affect, along wıth the tıght jeans, was lıke that of a woman ın a short dress. And yet of her flesh, I could see nothıng more than her hands and pretty paınted face.
   
   It ıs not an uncommon sıght to see paırs of frıends or groups of frıends or famılıes wıth thıs whole range of dress. Two frıends walkıng down the boulevard, one ın fully western dress, the other ın a scarf. A famıly, two women ın scarves, three wıthout.
   
   What strıkes me most ın thıs ıs how comfortable they all seem wıth these varıous styles. From the outsıde at least, there seems no conflıct among the more tradıtıonal and the more western.

Same mosque ın the rock concert pıcture.

School gırl. All the kıds seem to wear unıforms lıke thıs one, all the gırls wıth the whıte tıghts. She saw wıth wıth the camera and my long lens and ınsısted I take her pıcture.

Festıve lıghts ın the cıty of Edırne.

Thıs ıs ın Edırne, a vıbrant town on the border of Greece and Bulgary, and for about 100 the capıtol of the Ottoman empıre. Thıs was a rock concert markıng the end of Ramadan, held ın the square of the maın mosque. That mosque ıs consıdered the fınest of the Ottoman perıodç

Cruısıng along the Bosporus.

Calıgraphy ın the Hagıa Sophıa--stunnıng ın theır own rıght. I thınk thıs names one of the fırst calıphsç

The Blue Mosque. It faces the Hagıa Sophıa across a long park. It has sıx mınarets, at the tıme ıt was buılt controversıal sınce the great mosque ın Mecca had only fıve mınarets. I thınk the Ottoman sultan wanted to make a poıntç

The Hagıa Sophıa.

Trınkets at the Grand Bazaar ın Istanbulç

Turkish Keyboard

Posts will be coming out more slowly as İ fıgure out how to surmount the challenges of the Turkish keyboard. Some photos should be postıng soon.

My ıtınerary has changed consıderably--havıng to abandon plans to vısıt the Aegan coast, ınstead travelıng to Edırne on the Greece-Bulgarıan border. A great town, vıbrant, sophıstıcated, beautıful, fılled wıth parks and outdoor cafes. (Lıke the best of my frıend Jack Swanson's old stompıng ground). I'm now ın Safranbolu, ın the mountaın area ınland from the Black Sea, wıth all the charm of a Swıss vıllage.

Sıgniıng outö

Mr. Too Cheap-to-Buy-a-Laptopç

Scrambled omelet, or David and the Turkish Bath

At most Sunday brunches in fancy hotels or restaurants, you can find the omelet chief. He (or she, though I've never seen a woman omelet chief). He will make an omelet to your specific order and you watch and wait. He cooks with real elegance, but not because his motions are particularly graceful or showy, but because they are so precise, efficient, fast. He flashes some butter in the pan, in quick pecks grabs or pinches the onions, mushrooms, ham, whatever you have request, in exact quantity. Eggs are quickly cracked, whipped, and poured into the pan only when the other ingredients are at the right point. He stirs, flips, folds, and finally pours the omelet into your plate.

That's how I was handled at the Turkish bath.

When I have time to revise this, I'll put in here the name of the Turkish bath (I forget in now and don't have my guide book), but I can tell you it's about 500 years old and was designed by the architect of Suleiman the Magnificent, Sinan (whose masterworks, btw, are Mosques that rival the great European cathedrals in their artistic splendor and the way they feel you with a sense of the sublime). Anyway, the bath is really logically designed, but I didn't know it at the time. There is a foyer area where you pay the fee, and on the second and third level of the foyer area are changing rooms. The entrance and exit to the bath itself is the same, which makes sense if you think about it, but I hadn't. Now, this particular bath is in the midst of the tourist areas, so the employees are used to befuddled idiots like me and have developed a series of grunts, nods, grimaces and shrugs to communicate with us. I was shrugged upstairs. A man there grunted at a door. I entered my room. Except for the glass of the door and window, it was completely private--I could take off my clothes and my nudity not be seen by the people on the first level of the foyer if I squatted low. Wrapped in a towel, I stood looking stupidly at the man who'd grunted me into the changing room until he finally shrugged downward.

I bumbled down to the steam room. About four men in towels and nothing else milled around the entrance to some door. How could I know they were the employees. One betoweled man nodded me over to another betoweled man who scowled at me to follow him. This Turk grunted me in, a man, probably my age but looking like how 55 looked in my parents' time. He was about 5'6", round bellied, hair cropped short and the trim moustache that a lot of Turkish men wear.

We entered the main room of the bath, a domed chamber filled with steam and a great, marble slab in the center and alcoves along the side where men sat steaming. I followed my guide around the slab until he finally grunted at me. He nodded on the slab. I sat on the slab. He grunted a no. I stood. He grunted. I sat, he grunted, I stood. He nodded toward the center of the slab and I understood I was supposed to lie on it. I lay feet towards center. He grunted impatiently. I lay feet toward from. A yet more impatient grunt. Finally I lay head to center, and he was content, and then ignored me to work on another client.

It feels very, very pleasant, that slab, warm and damp. The slab was about the same diameter as the dome and right under it. The dome was shot with about 100 round glass covered holes arranged in an ever expanding circular pattern, letting in light. And opening your eyes, it's like looking at the star-lit sky.

After I'd lain on the slab for those five minutes, my guide shook my foot and pointed for me to lie on the edge of the slab. I lay. He grunted impatiently. I lay in the other direction. He grunted with deep exasperation. Not knowing what else to do, having lain in every direction I could thing of, I oonched to the edge of the slab. He sighed relief.

All his actions were like that omelet chief: neat, precise, efficient, unemotional. First he scrubbed me down with a rough scouring pad, the kind used to exfoliate skin, rough just on the verge of being painful. I flip and he does the same to the front. He did a few chiropractic-type things to my back, which nearly broke, and then lathered me all over--well, not what's under the towel. After I was well lathered, he took a bucket of cold water and more or less and without a hint of ceremony dumped it on me. I'm next grunted into another room and motioned to sit on a low slab. He washed my hair, my face, my neck.

He grunts at me. I am done with that phase. He nods towards a door in front of which are five men. I open the door and am yells at in a thick Australian accent that there are no cuts and to get into the bloody cue. I cue.

When my turn comes, my wet towel is exchanged for a dry one--the only moments when I'm completely naked--and the young masseuse has me lie face down on a thin, platformed mat with a half circle for my face. He uses oil, applied light so it's not at all slippery. His procedure otherwise is a lot like those used by a Chinese masseuse who works for in an acupuncture shot back home. Were the Turks were influenced by Chinese medicine (the Ottoman empire stretch from Hungary to the reaches of China, and the Ottomans traded with China, so it seems possible there could have been this trade of information)? The Turks borrowed the baths from the Romans, and I wondered if these massage techniques developed in the west or were imported from China.

It was, in short, marvelous.

The next step was to shower and try to soap off the oil from the massage, which, of course, was not possible.

But now what? Was I done? Where was the exist. No one was grunted at me; I didn't know what to do. I went back to the room with the slab, but no one grunted at me there, either. I went back to out again. I went through another door, and there was was, sopping wet in a skin clinging towel, in the middle of the foyer where the wives were waiting for their husbands. Someone grunted, at me I thought, so I followed him back into the slab room. But then he disappeared. I went back out and into a foyer. A thin Pakistani in a dry towel nodded at me. I nodded at him. I followed him, he followed me, back into the room with the slab. Then, he sat on the slab as if I was supposed to wash him! Oh no, he was a customer who mistook me for a Turkish masseuse. He retreated. I went back out the door I'd come through, and there, a heavy set Turk grunted out, "You finished? Good.' He exchanged my towel for a fresh one (you removed the wet one, toss it in a basket, and they wrap the dry one around you, during this process holding the dry towel near to you to afford some modesty). He threw a towel on my shoulder at patted me down rough, and then threw a third towel on my head and gave it a good rub. Then he grunted me out the door and back to my dressing room.

I wonder how long it took the Pakistani to get his bath.

Only $54,000

I have made many friends in Istanbul. They all sell carpets.

Making friends is very easy. You don't have to do anything, just walk. The friends come up to you, like "Charlie." I met him on the first day in Istanbul at the Grand Bazaar. I was just walking along, looking at the steams of gold bangles and rows of leather jackets when an elderly gentleman, not Charlie, started to walk along with me and asked how my wife was and how the kids were and whether I wanted to look at a carpet in his son's shop, which as just 10 meters up ahead. No thanks.

That's when I met Charlie, who started to walk along with me and confided that it was good I'd sent the old man away because he wasn't anybody's father and was paid a percentage of sales for any person he brought to the carpet shop. But Charlie owned his shop himself so there was no commission, and he was a wholesaler, and I should take a look. And I, thinking what could a carpet cost and maybe Jordan would like one, agreed.

It's basically the same pitch used by a car salesman. You're offered something to drink, in this case apple tea, which of course at once makes you feel like you're making a new friend and like you're incurring a little debt. Then came the carpet. "They call me Crazy Charlie," he told me, "because, believe me, David, these prices are like you'll find no where.

Then comes the carpet. Now, Crazy Charlie, who'd become Reasonable Charlie when I ran into him a few days later, didn't actually roll out the carpet himself, but had a staff of three unfurling carpets at a furious pace. "Do you like this one, David? Of these three, what is for favorite?"

"Well, that's my favorite, but I'm not in the market."

"I know, I know, but just for fun. Wouldn't you like it. Your wife would love you to bring this home."

Now, one thing I've got to say about Charlie was that he didn't have the look or the feel of a sleazy saleman--and I'm not saying this to set up an ironic turn around in which he is revealed to be a sleazy saleman. But, in old Istanbul, the whole city is in a desperate hustle. Charlie was just one of them.

That little carpet, the one I liked, he gave a price of $1,800. It was a crazy low price, he said. I thought I'd be crazy insane to buy a Persian rug an hour after leaving my hotel room on my first day in Turkey. But when I set down the tea and said I really would buy a carpet that day, he looked genuinely crushed, and escorted me like a dejected lover back to the main walkway.

But he was just my first friend. Now I am quite educated about Persian rugs made in Turkey. For example, I know that $1,800 is a really low asking price for these things. The next pitchman began at $5000. The last one really worked me over, and for almost a full quarter of an hour, I had become even crazier than Crazy Charlie as I began to imagine what that carpet would look like in my livingroom. If I paid part on this credit card, part on that credit card. It was only $54,000, and the color to die for.

Pew Study on Attitudes Towards Islam

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has recently completed a study on American attitudes towards Muslims and Islam, Mormons and Mormonism and Pope Benedict XVI. (See http://pewforum.org/surveys/religionviews07/).

Most of the findings about how Americans view Muslims and Islam are not surprising: since 9/11, Americans view Muslims and Islam less and less favorably. Conservatives view Islam less favorably than liberals. High school graduates have less favorably opinions than do college graduates. Those of us who know Muslims view them more favorably than those who do not know Muslims.

Most Americans admit that they know little about Islam, but I found it surprising that 41% of the survey respondents claim to know a great deal or some about Islam. I'd stay more like 4% have anything more than a superficial knowledge of Islam. Among the faculty, staff and administration at Cerritos College (where I teach), I've met only three people who in my opinion have actual knowledge of Islam, and two of them are Muslim. Among my non-Muslim students, those who seem most knowledgeable about Islam seem to know little beyond the fact that Islam can roughly be divided into the Sunni and the Shi'a.

The naive overestimation of knowledge of Islam suggests to me that Americans believe they have some grounds upon which to make informed decisions in matters involving Islam, like, say, accessing the prudence of a US policy that seeks to remold Iraq into a Western-style democracy.

All of this underscores the purpose behind my sabbatical and eventually offering a course in Islam literature--to spread actual knowledge about Islam.

Why Mozarab?

When I was a kid, my favorite movie was El Cid. During its run at the old Belmont Theater, now a health club, on Second Street in Long Beach, I sat through double matinee showings of the movie three weekends in a row. All that mail and the steel, the swords and chivalry, the clash of the knight against the inchoate mob of the Moorish invaders, driven back by the austere and noble hero even after his death.

Just a little punk of a Jewish kid, all I really cared about was the glory of war, the glamour and swagger of steel, the Cid’s confident defiance of death. But like any unselfconscious entertainment, embedded in the movie were deep mythologies of our culture.

Like, for instance, the story of Christ, embedded in El Cid sacrifice of his life for the salvation of his people, which comes to pass as a result of his death. Another myth was that of the great swarming threat of Islam, the horde, the cruel and powerful face of avarice, rapaciousness, and cruelty.

I didn’t notice any of that back then.

The reality is that El Cid was not a crusading knight at all. He was a mozarab, a Christian assimilated into Moorish Spain, though not himself a Muslim. He was also a mercenary, and willing to fight for any prince, Christian or Muslim, as long as the pay was good. Yes, there were always the exchanges of territories among the various principalities, and Christians like the sainted king of France Louis IX stirred up crusades against Muslims and anyone else who deviated from orthodox ideas of proper Christianity. But in the everyday life in those parts of the Iberian peninsula under Islamic rule, Christians, Jews and Muslims were able to leave in relative peace and prosperity. These were still the brutal Middle Ages, but in Moorish Spain it was also a time of stunning and extraordinary artistic, intellectual and economic achievement.

A thousand years later and we live in a time in which the Christian west and Muslim east seem entwined in a life and death struggle. If that comes to pass, it is only because we make it so. If that comes to pass, it will only be because we have all of us—Muslim and non-Muslim—given in to the lazy reassurance of our deep and comfortable mythologies.

Like many, I believe Islam must undergo its own renaissance and reformation, the house of Islam needs to be put in order; it needs to come to grips with what its jinns have whispered darkly to its own weak and disoriented and foolish and bereaved. But the West has its own jinns. And they’ve been whispering delusions into our ears for a long, long time. This blog is mainly for the non-Muslim, like myself, who want to learn about Islam neither to attack it, nor to join it, but to understand it so that, like the mozarabs of medieval Spain, we can all live.