Pyramids

It is the most passive and most aggressive of passive aggressive behaviour.

"Want to ride a camel?"
"I'm not fat and lazy like you. I'm walking."

"Where you come from?"
"Your sister's house."

The line between exterior and interior threatens to break. But no, I keep my spite inside my head. How satisfying to walk by someone offering a welcoming handshake as if they don't exist! Mouth shut. Eyes ahead. I don't look at every piece of dirt I pass on the ground, why should I treat these any differently?

The act of ignoring is extremely effective. The minute you open your mouth, you give them a response to play off of. Draw out the irritating sales pitch. Try to fool you into paying more than you should for something you never wanted in the first place. The bastards.

Outside the heat of the moment and the midday sun and the sand and the light that makes my eyes squint and the sweat dripping down my face and soaking my shirt, these are not hated enemies. They are not inferior. They are people making a living. They are not even half as persistant as those in some other places I've been. It's obvious that I need to step back, take a break. A decision: no more sightseeing. When the enjoyment is sucked out to this extent, it's time to stop. The ancient pyramids around Cairo marked the end.

It's liberating in a way. Here's a place I've never been. Now I have no obligation to tour landmarks and monuments. I'm here to enjoy the company of people.

Last of the Dives

I was detained on the way to Cairo. I stopped for a day in Dahab, on the Sinai peninsula. Then the tentacles of scuba diving grabbed hold and pulled me underwater again and again. The stunning scenery wouldn't release me. It was a full week before I managed to tear myself away and get to the big city. These are some of the images from that week I don't want to forget.

Canyon at Night

Watching a body floating downwards, chest down, legs bent at the knees, parachutist-style. Light from my torch illuminates him, then disappears into a black crevis. Darkness surrounding. Outer space.

Sitting at the bottom. Looking straight up. Watching green sparkles follow the commotion of my air bubbles as they float skywards. Long, slow inhalation. The water clears. Peace. Only the sound of my breathing, the canyon walls rising up around me, the night sky visible in the crack above, a faint grey glow through 25 metres of water. And fish swimming nearby, eyes blinking green, on off, on off, like aquatic fireflies.

The Bells

Turning, pointing my body straight down, and diving, diving, through a narrow rock chimney. I maneuver myself like an airplane in slow motion. My oxygen tank grazes a wall in the narrow space. Clang. The name rings out.

Through an archway to find the vast terrifying blue of the ocean open up. A coral wall on my right, stretching vertically down out of sight. 1,600 metres I am told. Don't lose focus, just keep swimming at the same level. Don't be intimidated. Don't let the ocean swallow you.

Blue Hole

Swimming across, the walls fade from view. The hole is effectively bottomless. Nothing but blue all around. All I can make out below me, the strange patterns the sun makes through the water. Rays of light constantly shifting. Sky. Flying. Where am I?

Lighthouse at Night

Ahmed swims ahead. I turn off my light and follow the specks of glowing plankton he leaves in his wake. Strange impression I am in a Peter Pan movie on the trail of Tinkerbell.

The Islands

Moving from one lagoon to the next. Everything teems with life. I am caught in a school of fish and mesmerised by the synchronised movement.

Thistlegorm

Around and through the wreck. World War II-vintage motorbikes and trucks are lined up. Tires still full of air. Airplane wings. Unexploded munitions.

Exhale. Air bubbles rise and are trapped on the ceiling, silver like mercury, gravity gone haywire.

Outside, fish swarm round and round. Predators dart in. The pack scatters, regroups, scatters, regroups. Trying to avoid becoming the next meal.

Ras Mohammed

Barracudas lurk in the murky blue limits of visibility. A huge green Napoleonfish — 1.5 metres long? 2? — arrives and forages for food on the coral. I swim close by. What makes me so confident about my surroundings? I feel relaxed in the presence of the giant. A parting gift before surfacing — I spot a large sea turtle swimming 15m away.

Driver, Turn South

The dashboard is covered with a faded pink shag carpet. Tassels are hanging around the sides of the roof. The speedometer is stuck at 0. In the back are a young boy and a man in his late 30s. Behind them, next to two tires, is my backpack, full of clothes and a bottle of cologne I bought at one of the many perfumeries in Amman just so I could see how they mix the scented oil with alcohol and water. The man on my left has greying hair and a jolly smile. He drives the pickup with the steering wheel almost resting on his large belly, coaxing it as it struggles up slight inclines and accelerating on the downsides. In about 4 hours we should make it south to Petra.

How I came to retrace my steps through Jordan is a hard tale of rejection. I returned to Amman on the 24th after passing 4 weeks in Israel. Despite 3 previous setbacks in my attempt to visit Syria, I wanted to try once more. I had heard more positive stories about the friendliness of Syrians and the beauty of the city of Damascus than anywhere else.

So I found a taxi going north from Amman and shared the space inside with 3 others. It took an hour and a half to reach the border. I paid the Jordanian departure fee, changed my money to Syrian pounds, and continued to the Syrian border.

I made it close enough to feel the presence of the Axis of Evil, but the immigration checkpoint stood in the way of my entering and actually seeing the greasy cogwheels turning slowly, spreading badness across the globe.

The passport control hall was slightly chaotic — the type of setup where 10 people crowded around each window trying to find a space to put a hand through and wave their passport around, hoping it would be taken next by an immigration official. The man who took mine was short and grumpy. I had given him my second passport, the one without at Israeli border stamp in it. Unfortunately it also lacked a Jordanian entry stamp. It didn't take him long to figure out what was going on.

"You've been to Isra-eel! You — back to Jordan. No Syria."

I protested but to no avail. I considered trying to bribe him with the $10 I had in my pocket for that exact purpose, but there were too many people around. I preferred that my first attempt at bribing an immigration officer be in a more inconspicuous setting. Lack of courage got the better of me. In short order, the official gave my passport to a lackey who motioned me to follow him outside. There, he waved down a taxi, waited while I collected my bag from the car that brought me to the border, gave me back my passport and waved me off. And so my hopes of visiting Syria were dashed for the fourth and final time.

The next day, back in Amman, I decided to go south to Egypt, following the same route through Jordan I had travelled with Eppu a month prior. I timed my arrival at the bus station precisely — when I got there the last bus south had left long ago. I decided to wait and see what turned up, and as I sat on the curb, an old white pickup truck with faded pink shag carpet on the dash slowed to a stop next to me...

Outcast

"Fuckin' mother Arab countries."

This was not a happy story.

"14 years I worked in Libya. 14 years. Then they took my money and kicked me out."

The man was in his late 40s and dead sober.

"They tell me I'm a spy. They take my money. $300,000. They take my apartment. They take my business."

I risk giving the appearance that I take pleasure in other people's pain in admitting this: this is what makes travel fascinating.

"They put me in prison. Jail. You understand, my friend? For 250 days."

I was on my way to find a late dinner when I met him at the hostel.

"They fly me back to Jordan, my country, in a special jet. With security all around. Like I am... Osama bin Laden or something."

In my normal day-to-day life, where would I ever meet someone like him? Where would I ever hear a story like his?

"I used to live like a king in Libya. 2 cars. A driver special for my wife. Large apartment. And now here I am. In a hostel."

Possibly nowhere. In a house, I feel like eating and I walk to the fridge. On my own in Amman, I get a story to fill my head while my stomach stays empty.

"What I have to do here? I sit in my room. I come out and watch TV. I smoke cigarettes, I use the internet. And wait. This is no life. Everday I wait to get out of this fuckin' country. I go to America. Or Israel."

Israel?! I checked I was awake to hear this coming from a non-Israeli middle eastern man.

"Those places, a citizen is holy I think. The government doesn't allow this to happen. They help. I go to see the foreign minister here. He tells me, 'What can we do?' Meanwhile King Abdullah is making millions in business with Libya. What is $300,000 to the government? That fucking King Abdullah. Money is all these Arab countries care about. They all should burn."

His tale was too fantastic. But he looked, acted, and talked sincerely. What to make of him? What was the other side of the story?

"Be careful of life my friend. She is like a bitch. While you have money she is fun. But one day she will take everything you have and leave you."

All I could do was take in the experience. And remember it. Because one day soon, an encounter like that won't be a normal part of my life.

As with the last post, the quotes here are reproduced to the best of my memory but are not word-for-word accurate. Next time I'll have to travel with a tape recorder. On the payroll of a newspaper.

Of People and Walls

Jerusalem skyline at night

"Jerusalem... Zion... It's the place where God will create peace on Earth."

I had bumped into the man on a street corner in Tel Aviv at night. He was moving his things and I asked if he needed help. As we walked, I started wondering what sort of life he lived that his possessions seemed to include only the guitar slung over his back, a plastic bag full of unknown items, and a flat-screen monitor. But our walk was brief and didn't allow me to ask more than where he was moving and why.

"I will go there. It's... it's... a city in conflict. Jerusalem... She needs help."

The funny thing about the "city in conflict" is that it would be easy to visit and not realise the tension that exists. When I went up to the roof of my hostel in Jerusalem to set out my mattress in preparation for a sleep under the stars at night, I was surrounded by the solemn sound of calls to prayer issuing from mosques on all sides. There were 7 or 8 of them, each with their own plaintive melody. The music of Islam was traded for the churchbells of Christianity the next morning, slightly less welcome if only for waking me up at the crack of dawn following a late night out in bars and clubs.

Jews praying at the Western Wall, Jerusalem

The view from the roof was beautiful — it was possible to take in a panorama of the old city, rooftops interspersed with minarets, church steeples, and the Dome of the Rock. What I didn't see were the views people hold inside that cause conflict. I didn't see the walls people build around themselves to stop opposing opinions entering their space. I didn't see the wall dividing Israel from Palestine, over a hill and out of sight. These were the surprises hidden amongst the beautiful visuals of Jerusalem. They revealed themselves only after the city had bared its ancient white stone buildings and Roman ruins to my eyes.

"Jerusalem is the most international and least cosmopolitan city in the world," said an Israeli I met at a party there. People from all over the world come but nobody mixes, he explained.

I told a young woman who had come on a Birthright trip to Israel that I was planning to take a guided tour to Hebron, in the West Bank. It was clear from her reaction just how worthless an endeavour she considered it to be.

Filming what is presumably Sesame Street Israel on the streets of the Old City in Jerusalem

"What's the name of the guide?" she asked.

"Abu Hassam."

"Right," she said, revealing what she thought of the fact that he was Arab with her expression. "They like to make up facts, you know."

The comment was a brilliantly easy way of disregarding anything that didn't fit her worldview: anyone with a different perspective was a liar. Not only did this stop any potential exchange of ideas, her attitude frustrated me so much it stopped me from telling her about my previous visit to Ramallah, also in the West Bank, with a Palestinian journalist.

Men playing dominoes in the Jewish Quarter, Old City in Jerusalem

On that excursion, crossing into Palestine and looking back over my shoulder at the tall concrete barrier dividing the land, I found it was no longer referred to as a "security fence" but a "separation wall." I also learnt a slew of facts, no doubt all products of an overactive Palestinian imagination. I had not previously known, for example, that if you are an Israeli-born Palestinian, the state confiscates your property if you don't live in Israel for 7 years. Nor that Palestinians in Jerusalem are isolated economically — the Wall acts as a trade barrier to other Palestinians, and guided tours within Jerusalem eschew the Muslim quarter for the Jewish quarter.

Two IDF soldiers in a cafe, Old City in Jerusalem

In the end, on my second trip to the West Bank I went solo, foregoing the guide services of Mr. Abu Hassam. I wanted to see the Wall near Bethlehem, where British graffiti artist Banksy had painted some good pieces. After taking my time exploring the wall, I walked to a security checkpoint to cross back into Israel.

Beep beep beep be—

"Step back. Come here." The woman's voice commanded over the loudspeaker. I looked around, trying to figure out where "here" was.

"Step back through the metal detector." I saw the small bulletproof glass window the border security guard was sitting behind.

"Put your camera through the x-ray machine." I had tried to carry it through with me.

"The film will get destroyed in the x-ray. It's special high speed film. Can I have it checked by hand?" I asked.

"It will be fine. Put it through the machine." I could tell by the tone of her voice she didn't want to hear someone talk back. Her role was to command. My role was to obey.

"X-rays ruin this type of film. Even 'film safe' x-rays."

"I said it will be fine. Put it through."

I didn't want to lose the pictures of graffiti I had just taken, nor a few shots of Jerusalem from earlier.

"Can I take the camera outside? I don't need to cross back into Israel right now. I'll go back to Bethlehem."

"No. Why don't you want the camera to be x-rayed?" Maybe she was hoping I would admit it contained a bomb.

"Because it will ruin the film."

"I said put it through the x-ray," she ordered.

"It's high speed film. The x-ray machine will destroy it."

"Put it through."

"The pictures will be ruined. Can someone check the camera manually?"

"Put it through."

Street in the Old City, Jerusalem

She had left me no choice. I put the camera through the x-ray machine, walked through the metal detector, and collected it. In 10 short seconds she had erased my pictures.

"Stop," the voice came over the loudspeaker again. "Pick up the camera. Bring it back."

Despising her attitude, I obeyed.

"Put it through the x-ray again."

Was this a show of power just to be spiteful? I stared at the woman through the glass as I grabbed a tray, put the camera on it, and rolled it onto the conveyor belt. Back through the metal detector, I watched it emerge from the black box of the x-ray. I collected it along with my backpack and waited to be let out of the gated security area. 6 or 7 others were waiting too. The woman behind the glass was now talking on the phone. It looked like an enjoyable conversation, maybe to a friend. We stood there waiting for her to push the button which would open the gate for us to pass through and continue with our lives.

"That woman, she's a bitch," said a Palestinian student in front of me. He lived in Jerusalem and studied in Bethlehem, passing through this checkpoint almost every day. "Most of the others are OK. But her, always with the attitude."

After a minute she finished chatting, reached over, and pressed the button to release us. I walked out pissed off. Not so much at my destroyed film — I had previously taken pictures at another section of the wall on a different roll — as at the demeaning attitude the woman used with me. While many of the border security may be fine as the student had said, mine was a mild experience compared to some of the stories I had heard.

Muslim women at the Dome of the Rock, Old City in Jerusalem

Alisdair, a friend I travelled with in Israel, took a trip to the West Bank and found Ahdam, a taxi driver, who gave him a tour of several areas. Ahdam had studied and lived in Germany for many years before returning to Palestine due to the ailing health of his father. This is one of the stories Alisdair heard during the time they spent together:

Ahdam arrived at a security checkpoint one morning in his taxi. A man from border security walked up to his car and asked him what he did and where he was going.

"I'm a taxi driver, I'm going to pick up a fare," replied Ahdam.

"Ah, a taxi driver," said the border patrolman. "Then your time must be valuable."

"Yes it is. My time is very valuable," said Ahdam.

"OK. Just wait here a moment," said the patrolman and walked off.

Ahdam waited in his car. An hour later the patrolman returned.

"So is your time valuable?"

"Yes, my time is valuable. If I don't drive I don't make money," said Ahdam.

"Very good. Wait here," said the patrolman and walked off again.

Ahdam sat in his car. And waited. The patrolman returned once more after an hour.

"Your time — is it still valuable?" he asked.

"I told you it is. I'm a taxi driver."

"OK. Wait here please."

Again the patrolman walked away, leaving Ahdam in his car, unable to go anywhere. An hour passed by. The patrolman returned a third time, having made Ahdam wait 3 hours at the checkpoint.

"Now," said the patrolman, "do you still think your time is valuable?"

A pause. "No," replied Ahdam.

"Your time isn't valuable."

"My time isn't valuable."

"Your time is shit, isn't it?" said the patrolman.

"My time is shit," said Ahdam.

"OK, you can go," said the patrolman and waved him off with his hand.



Despite all of the above, I actually agree with those that argue the wall is necessary. People living in Israel have every right to stop themselves from being attacked and to lead a normal life. I have heard stories about working at a popular bar and losing a co-worker to a man who blew himself up at the entrance. About seeing a bus full of passengers explode, leaving a bloody wreckage but no survivors. The wall has stopped these attacks. It will be taken down when it's no longer needed, but today is not that day.

This is not to justify the way it is being built. Michel, the Palestinian journalist, claimed it is taking over 10% of Palestine's land (as defined by the Green Line) and 45% of its water supply. And those unlucky enough to have a shop or house lying in the path of the Wall not only have to stand aside as their buildings are demolished, they have to pay 20,000-30,000 shekels (US$4,700-7,000) towards the cost of the bulldozing. In these ways the wall cannot be considered purely defensive. It is adding fuel to a fire that doesn't need fanning.

These were some of my thoughts when I departed back to Amman. Which is another important point — I went to Israel and Palestine, I learnt a bit, and I was able to leave. Those who are born there have no choice. They start their lives on one side or the other and they are unavoidably bound to the conflict. If I want, I can choose to never think about it again. I have sympathy for those who can't.

Church, Jerusalem

Disclaimer: Most quotes in this post are paraphrased. They capture the spirit of what was said, if not the exact words.

A Parade

From Gay Pride Par...

What do you get when you mix a gay pride parade with ultra-orthodox religions? Two years ago there were stabbings and Jerusalem had a disaster for an event. This year, the city added a liberal number of police and military forces. 7,000 to be precise. And the parade went off smoothly.



It was certainly controversial — two gay friends living in Tel Aviv thought it was too provocative an issue to push on Jerusalem. Despite an anti-gay demonstration organised the day before, there was no serious opposition and no trace of violent rioting on the day.

Woman debating gay rights issues with a group of young jewish men. No consensus was reached, but the civil discussion was the best thing I saw first-hand to come from the event.

In fact, I was very encouraged to come across a woman discussing whether or not being gay was wrong with 3 young jewish men. Despite having strongly opposing views, they managed to have an open debate, listening to each others' points without letting anger and righteousness edge into the conversation. It was the type of debate I wish occurred more often in the world.

Here's Something I Should Have Done Months Ago

Why I didn't install statistics software on my blog at the outset, I don't know. I would have loved to know more about who's reading. (Although it is a pleasant surprise to get the occasional email and find someone has been following my travels. This is as much a personal journal as a public record for the rest of you to see where I am, and it does inspire me to write when I know someone out there is taking a look at my ramblings.)

In any case, now I've "done the needful" as they say in India, I can start taking names and kicking asses. Those of you in Delhi — yes I'm talking to you two. I see you. I know where you live. And I know when you're ignoring your son. You've only looked at my blog twice. I don't want to hear any excuses about a typhoid diagnosis and time in the hospital. Shape up!