Odds and Ends

I must end this blog and re-enter my life here. Last night I was eating some of Jim's spicy spaghetti,yearning for a glass of the Turks' Ayran to quench the flames on my tongue. I'll track down some decent Eastern yoghurt and make it.

The name of that bakery on the Jerusalem-Hebron Road in Bethlehem is Fawanees. See my prior post for directions, and savor the delectably difficult challenge of choosing honey-drenched sweets from huge pans that continually emerge from the kitchen. Patrons buy by the box-full.

I feel like I am peering through a haze at US culture, trying to mesh lingering travel impressions with life on the ground here. I have teased and scoffed my Middle Eastern friends many times at their zealous conspiracy theories, and now I find myself wondering where the truth (?) does lie.

Gershon Baskin of IPCRI, http://www.ipcri.org/ talked about his hopes for peace in Israel and how the ingredients of a two-state solution are known, (like 22% of the land to Palestine, water agreements, right of return agreements, a shared Jerusalem, etc.). But also how the cake must be baked by some third party (the US) because neither side trusts standing in the kitchen with the other. I left thinking…US-backed Israel holds the power. What if they symbolized peace with generosity and gave the Palestinians 30% of the land?! There is plenty of land: they would never miss it. What if they defined and normalized the borders, and invited all of that vibrant Palestinian human capital to partake in a flourishing economy? What if they bent over backwards with munificence? I believe, after some hiccups, as protectors of the status quo fought back, both sides would self-eradicate violence. I can see how it could happen, or how it most easily might not.

To anyone planning a trip to Israel, do not miss Bethlehem or other towns in the West Bank. The Israeli government isn’t keen on foreigners seeing the other half of the situation, so they will inconvenience and intimidate. While Bethlehem has been given the “reputation” of being “dangerous”, we did not even slightly experience it that way. It is a beautiful, calm town, a lovely respite after crowded, chaotic, and stimulating Jerusalem. The people have easy smiles and big hearts, there is culture, a lot to do -- just check out This Week in Palestine, http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/ -- and the food is exquisite.

Dr. Maria Khoury of the Palestinian village Taybeh – where her husband founded the Taybeh micro brewery http://www.taybehbeer.com/, was instrumental in setting up the International Academy of Art, Palestine in Ramallah, in cooperation with the Norwegian Government and Oslo National Academy of the Arts. http://www.artacademy.ps/english/index.html It will graduate its first class in 2011. Addresses in Ramallah look like this: Aref Al-Aref Building, behind Arab Bank Al-Bireh, before the boys’ school. We drove in circles for an hour to find the place, but our guide Mahmoud wasn’t willing to give up because the directions were so specific. It was a Sunday, and it looked closed --- but banging on the doors yielded entry into artist’s studios and a tour of the whole place. One of the artists proudly posed in front of her painting of her own nude torso. She was wearing jeans, a long sleeved shirt and hijab, so I commented on the incongruity (mainly that she divulged the identity of the torso’s model) – of her real appearance and the disrobed subject of her painting. She laughed without irony. She gave me an empty sketch book with the school’s name on the cover. When Jim was leaving Ben Gurion airport, they sifted through his plastic shopping bag of travel guides, maps, receipts, and all the pocket trash I keep after a trip to remember where I’ve been. It was obvious that there was no threat in that bag when it went through the security x-ray, but they pulled the blank perfect-bound (adhesive binding, no metal) sketch book out and demanded to know why Jim had it. Intimidation. At least they didn’t confiscate it.

After a luscious lunch in Ramallah, Jim and I paused on the street, waiting for others in our group. I was casually holding my camera and two women approached, indicating they didn’t want their picture taken. They stopped and we chatted, animatedly, like long lost friends – and then Jim took my picture with them. The delightful level of engagement lingers...

Nike is in Ramallah, but are no Starbucks in the West Bank. (I read six stores closed elsewhere in Israel because they weren’t popular.) Ramallah and Bethlehem, though, have Stars and Bucks Cafés. I brought home a mug and a T-shirt– with their amusing logo and pun-ronic name.

Every morning I still wake up recalling snippets of the sensual delights of my trip. If I were a nargile smoker I could head over to Waterfront Pizza (and Mediterranean Restaurant)in Foster City for a falafel and puff.

My task now is to build the infrastructure to support making art in pursuit of cultural dialogue between the East and the West. I have some ideas; they will probably form a new blog, and will lead to more travels, insha’Allah.

Thanks for joining me on this ride.

Foodprints

My taste buds are still in the Middle East.  Many meals were simple meze.  My mind's-eye sees Hummous, presented wreath-like on a plate, its spoon-dredged circular moat drizzled with olive oil, and sprinkled with pine nuts.  I tear fresh pita bread – much thinner and lighter than the dense soggy bagged breads found at markets here – into a little triangle to scoop it, or its sisters, Baba Ghanoush,  Tahini and Tabouli, into my mouth.  On the corner of Manger Square in Bethlehem is a falafel stand, Efteem.  Eight shekels buys two sandwiches, which we load with yogurt sauce and crawl inside out of the blinding heat to dribblingly savor, along with a fresh squeezed orange juice.

For lunch, we wanted “sha-wherma” (the Arabic version of the Turkish doner kebab sandwich).  Up the street from our Bethlehem hosts, we were ushered upstairs to the family area (because I was one of the few women in the place at that hour) of their recommended shawarma spot.  We each tackled a huge “burrito” of chicken, various salads, French fries, and sauces crammed into lavash bread.  While we realized one would have suited the two of us, we both cleaned our plates.  While our waiter was away placing the order, the kitchen helper shook us down for a tip.  He kept polishing the frosted glass of the family enclosure and pestering us until we produced adequate baksheesh.  The waiter was surprised and delighted when we tipped him the same amount his colleague had demanded.  I didn't really begrudge the bus boy  that “price of admission”, although we thought the creativity of his request could use some work.

I cannot remember the name of the bakery on the Hebron Road in Bethlehem.  It was something like Swannees, or Fawnees – some American-South sounding Arabic transliteration, but Google isn’t any help.  I had to grip sugar-addicted Jim’s wrist to keep him from floating straight up into sucrose heaven.  We went there twice, with the excuse of bringing our hosts a gift.  If you are looking for it – there is a known bakery called Dana along Hebron Road. This one is a little further on the road traveling towards Jerusalem, across, on the left side of the street.  All over the Middle East the baklava is to die for. 

Breakfast was included at each of our lodgings.  With the exception of the hotel in Suleymaniyah, Iraq, each repast was more than adequate, and some were exceptional.  The standouts:  fresh warm pita bread, za’taar and olive oil or feta cheese, with fresh cucumbers and tomatoes in Bethlehem; watermelon at many of them; an exquisite French pastry I can still taste at the Art + Hotel in Tel Aviv; the sour cherry (visne) preserves in Turkey; and even… Nescafe. Over the years, I have come to associate Nescafe with vacation – especially boat trips.  The blue cruise we took in 2004 down the Mediterranean coast of Turkey proffered exceptional Nescafe.  The way to make it great is:  put 4 spoons of those freeze-dried crystals in a small coffee cup, add hot water, milk, and honey.  Remember you are in a location you want to be in, and the coffee tastes just perfect.  I do draw the line at powdered creamer – not even Santa Margarita Ligure can make that taste OK.  The luscious cup of home-brewed Peet’s I’ve been drinking while sitting outside under a blanket in this August-masquerading-as-early May California summer, so far hasn’t tasted better than the Nescafe in Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Mint.  I may adopt the Arabian habit of adding fresh leaves to everything. It makes tea exotic, and lemonade, crushed mint leaves and ice muddled together in the middle of the afternoon, renews the day.

Reviewing our gastronomical footprints, we ate in few real, formal restaurants.  Partly it was too hot to eat much, and the meze and other casual and street food was highly satisfying.  Two restaurants in Tel Aviv stand out.  Sweet potato latkes are a specialty at the neighborhood restaurant of Orna and Ella  Here’s the recipe offered by another blogger: http://savvysavorer.blogspot.com/2007/08/orna-and-ella-pancakes.html .  At Alma Beach heading back from Jaffa we ate at Manta Ray, which -- including the armed guard at the door – might just be quintessential Tel Aviv.  Friday, pre-Sabbath,  at about 2pm, the dining room and sand-side terrace included families, lovers, dogs, BFFs revitalizing themselves from shopping expeditions, and a wry waitress with a great sense of humor.  The place did seem a bit full of itself, but I loved how the traces of the onetime beach-shack jibed with its edgily contemporary vibe.

On the Turkish side of dessert – I miss traditional dondurma – a thick, chewy ice cream that the fez-topped handler keeps churning with a long paddle.  I don’t think the intent of this video is to mock the tourist -- and I enjoyed a similar aesthetically striped result of chocolate and pistachio while taking a break from roaming the Grand Bazaar. http://www.safeshare.tv/v/fvUQQF5S4Dg

Bon Appetit,   Afiyet olsun!,     (bil hana wish shifa'!)  بالهنا و الشفاء!   ,(b'tayavon) בתיאב

Hungry?

This blog is not complete -- I will keep writing it until I've purged my need to relive the memories of the trip.  I will label the last post -- whenever it occurs.

Also, please forgive me for not laboriously searching for the appropriate letters of the Turkish alphabet for all of the names I am including here.  I've included links, so if you want to see actually spellings, please click there.

I’ve been home a few days, and need to discuss food.  At this moment, in foggy cold mid-afternoon weather (the Bay Area forgot to have summer), I am missing the steamily cloying thundershowers of Istanbul, where like domed jelly fish under transparent umbrellas we streamed along the Istiklal Caddesi…Please put a Gül böreği ("rose börek")  and a glass of Ayran in front of me, now!   

Here’s how you make Ayran:

1 1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 1/2 cup water
1 tsp salt

I don’t know if Dannon will be an acceptable substitute for Turkish yogurt. 

In Istanbul, don’t be offended by the bright plastic McDonaldesque signage – many fast-food-looking restaurants offer a limited menu of real and good food.  A borek franchise will offer many variations of this fried or baked stuffed pastry staple– both sweet and savory.  Originally invented by Central Asian Nomadic Turks, it retains the popularity it gained in Ottoman times.  Stuffed with cheese, meat, spinach, etc. the pastry may resemble phyllo or lasagna noodles.  Look critically at a shop selling borek – you may see comfortable seating and wait service, even though its menu garishly pictures the items it offers.  This, by the way, is very helpful to a mute tourist peering up at a hovering Turkish waiter.

For a wonderful terrace overlooking the Bosphorus, next to the picturesque Galata Tower, climb to the fifth floor of the Galata Konak Café, http://www.galatakonakcafe.com/about.html .  Ottoman-style multi-story residences are called konaks.  We were there in the middle of the afternoon, so although Istanbul was crawling with tourists, it was calm and quiet. 

For luscious food, and a stimulating trek to reach it, from the Taksim Square end of Istiklal, walk a few blocks and turn left in front of the McDonald’s onto Kucukparmakkapi Sok.  If you don’t get distracted by beer and backgammon at the bottom of the hill, or linger under the cooling mist in the middle, at the top, on the right, you will find Medi Sark Sofrasi (No. 46A). Yum.  They don’t serve alcohol, so eat there and then drink on the way back down. Do order Ayran, they serve it foamy,  in a small copper bowl with a ladle.

On the Anatolian side of Istanbul, two wonderful restaurants…Ciya  Sofrasi http://www.ciya.com.tr/index_en.php in Kadikoy specializes in home-cooked traditional foods.  We were a big group with many non-Turkish speakers, so to preserve their waiter’s sanity, they noted our choices as we looked and pointed at the food as it was being prepared,   I had sour cherry kebab among other things.  

A tall glass of visne suyu set in front of me right now would make me so grateful. Visne--the sour cherry, suyu--the juice, is ubiquitous in Turkey.  Frequently a glass would suffice for my dessert – not that there weren’t boatloads of other exquisite options.   Visne will always remind me of Turkey.  During our meetings in Ankara, juice boxes were placed twice a day at each of our seats in the conference room.  Their hospitality was such that it took one day to notice that all of us drank the visne, and left the mango alone.  The next morning and afternoon, two juice boxes, of you guessed it, were at each seat.  The conference room table was about twice as big as we needed, so at the end of each day, we raced to collect the left-over visne suyu for overnight consumption.

Looking at the brightly changing multi-colored hues of the lights on the Bosphorus Bridge, a suspension bridge with a resemblance to the Golden Gate, I was treated to dinner by Burcu and her parents Aysa and Baha at Deniz Yildizi. http://www.villadenizyildizi.com/  The seafood was delicious, the service was impeccable, and the setting was unforgettable.  The sloping shores of the Bosphorus remind me of the Italian Lake district north of Milan, with its romantic old world timelessness.  To get to either of these Asian continent restaurants you have to cross the Bosphorus – and I recommend doing it by ferry – don’t get lazy and drive over.

Security, a State of Mind

I’m wondering if the tracks in my passport are tripping alarms.  When I head home on Friday, I will leave ample time to get through airport security.  My suspicion that US airport security since the fall of the towers has been a means of controlling us by fear, rather than actually protecting us has been confirmed when I see what real security is. Israel, which knows something about security only required that my computer go through separately -- belts, shoes, all else were no issue.  No surprise there.  To allow me to board a flight from Slemani (Suleymaniye) in Iraqi Kurdistan to Istanbul, every single item in each of my bags was checked at least 3 times.  I had to dismiss my dismay at the mauling of my carefully folded clothing, the upending of my system for keeping track of things to easily move into the next hotel, the loss of my camera batteries.  Had I known that my “pharmacia”, full of remedies for every malady I could imagine might occur over 5 weeks, would have to be approved by a doctor, I would not have had it in hand luggage.  The “doctor” (whom I didn’t see, because I was in a closet being intimately frisked for the 3rd time) decided he didn’t like my chewable Vitamin C and the Pepto Bismol tablets.  I think it was because they were not in their original packaging.  The worst part, besides the worry of missing my plane, was that in order to check the pharmacia after I’d already checked my bag earlier,  I had to go backwards through passport control.  That really caused a flurry.  They let me go, but kept my passport -- violating my preeminent rule of umbilical attachment to that document.

I can see how maybe my passport is a little suspicious -- they minutely inspected it with a loupe-- distrusting their computer's approval of me… and being a lone traveler is also a check in the wrong box.  Last year in Lebanon and Egypt, this year in Israel, Turkey and then Kurdistan, and traveling to Istanbul.  Turkey has a big Kurdish issue…yup -- I need to give myself a lot of time on Friday.  Since I am an American, returning on an American carrier, maybe I’ll sail through.  It might be time to get a new passport.  If I go to Syria next year as I hope, they won’t let me in with an Israeli stamp anyway.

This is not to discourage those of you who are thinking of traveling.  These kind of experiences are illuminating -- they give that snow globe a shake and  I wouldn’t trade them.  Like trying to leave Bethlehem.  It seems that it is pretty easy to get in controversial places, but you run a gauntlet getting out.  We hired an Israeli driver to take us from Bethlehem to Akko, with the intention of making a 10am meeting at a think tank maybe five miles from our lodging in Bethlehem.  Checkpoint 300 -- an ugly maze that crosses the “security” wall -- lay in the middle. Everyone has to walk across, with the taxi doing a long loop around to pick us up on the other side.  Our driver, with our comfort in mind, took us 15 minutes in the other direction to Beit Sahour, where he hoped we could just drive through.  Because we are Americans, they turned us back, and we walked through 300.  It was a great lesson in the irrational and politicized challenges the Palestinians face everyday.  It had nothing to do with security -- at 300 they smiled as they waved us through -- and it had nothing to do with the credentials of our driver who is an Israeli citizen…it had to do with the government’s desire to challenge foreigners’ travel in the West Bank.  It worked in our favor, we gained a first hand experience, and were 40 minutes late to our meeting with Gershon Baskin.  If you are interested in a pro Israel, pro peace perspective on Israel, you can Google and read his blogs.

I’m back in Istanbul. I am happy to be gradually heading west, and visiting Iraq was worth it.  I never felt in danger, but there were ten minutes on the drive between Erbil and Suly, where we were in Iraq proper -- on the outskirts of Kirkuk.  I have a photo of the open flames still burning from the 1st Gulf War. Americans are not safe in Iraq, they get kidnapped for ransom.  Iraqi Kurdistan is safe enough to visit, but it is still a conflict zone, or close to it.

Today, to initiate the reverse culture shock I face over the next couple of weeks, I am getting ready to hit the Grand Bazaar --  a good dose of consumerism should start the process.   Then I'll visit the Cistern, the subject of  my painting in 2006 (from someone else’s photo) which now hangs on the wall at The Garden Court Hotel in Palo Alto. http://www.virginiauhl.com/paintings/overshoulder13.html

Hotel Room Philosophy

The more I know, the less I know. I can also see this is just a reconnaissance trip.  I would love to be able to tell peoples' stories from this side of the world.  I have collected a few, but they only scratch the surface.  I can see that I need to spend some concentrated time in one of these locations.

I am also guilty of being an Orientalist, although hopefully in the pre-Edward Said sense of the word.  The artists of the 19th and early 20th century -- Delacroix and Matisse for example, were seduced by the exotic beauty and tantalizing sensations of Morocco, Algiers and other places.  They understood themselves through contact with these cultures.  Of course they were outsiders, imposing the Western gaze on the East -- but I think they were genuinely transmitting their curiosity and delight in the treasures of texture, color, costume, smells of the marketplace, and mellifluous languages that flowed around their ears, through the art they produced. In that sense, I’m willing to accept that label.  Edward Said might call me naïve, and maybe I am…but I truly mean no harm, my desire is to celebrate what I see to my American audience.

One of the things I love about Sulymaniye in Iraqi Kurdistan is the collapse of cultures.  It was less evident in Istanbul or Israel or Palestine -- they were, in spite of themselves, much more Westernized, hijab notwithstanding.  Here, the traditional dress of the men, desert neutral in color,  very baggy trousers, fitted jacket over shirt, with a patterned cummerbund, and fitted hat or wrapped scarf is worn by every 4th man.   Sulymaniye is surrounded by mountains, with lovely green parks in the center of the city.  This time of year, like in California, the hills are brown.  They tell me that in March and April, the green hills are exquisite.  So the centuries conflate here -- there is a lot of 21st century building -- of first world quality, satellite dishes abound, and of course everyone is carrying a at least one cell phone.  Then,  some of the traditionally clad men are carrying prayer beads.  You want espresso coffee?  Check.  Skin tight jeans and tank tops?  Check.  Hijabs? Check. Niqabs?  Check.  Pushcarts? Check.  Mercedes?  Check.

I am visiting with my Baghdadi friend Sarwa and her friends here.  Here in the north we have water and power.  In Baghdad, municipal power is available one hour out of every 5, and the temperature ranges between 50-55 C this time of year -- you can do the math.  So, each neighborhood has its own generator, but citizens are hijacked into paying inflated rates or sitting in the stifling dark.

Many of Sarwa’s professional class friends have fled.  Here in Suly sits a mechanical engineer and his well-known Baghdadi attorney wife.  It is safer here, but they have to remake their lives in their mid-40s, and while this area is booming -- it has decades to go before it approaches the 21st century sophistication they left in Baghdad.  They see the US as the land of opportunity -- Turks do too.  They don’t want to come to the US, they love their countries, but they wish they had the level of personal opportunity they see Americans as having.  This is also true for the Palestinians.

I joke with them that my work is to show Americans that these people - Arabs, Turks, etc, do not have the same nature as the violent extremists (I neglect to use the “t“ word -- it blocks the blog from people‘s access) -- that they don’t mean Americans harm.  Quite the contrary, they say, (Iraqis and Palestinians alike) they hate the t-rists more than we do.  It’s too bad CNN and Fox, even MSNBC and NPR don’t make that fact clear.  Everyone I’ve ever met or spoken to, and indeed the vast majority of everyone in all of these cultures just wants to live in peace, raise their families, enjoy their lives.  Their blood is red, their tears wet, their stomachs hurt, their teeth are unfriendly, there hearts are broken--- just like mine.

Being a minority English speaker with only one language, I frequently sit in a swirl of words I don’t understand - Arabic, Turkish…  I enjoy it -- I relax into the cadences, watch the speakers’ faces, gesticulating hands, moving mouths…and I wish I could understand them.  In Istanbul the Turkish speakers asked me what their language sounded like to me.  Did it sound like Arabic?  No, I told them -- angry Arabic sounds like a long series of hash-marks (this is mainly the Arabic shown on Western television)…regularly spoken, conversational Arabic sounds like a flowing, bubbling river, and Turkish sounds like a mix between Japanese and Eastern European -- it is syncopated, lyrical, and complexly layered.

I also frequently sit in a swirl of cigarette smoke.  Back to the memory soup -- it reminds me of when I used to travel on business in the 70s.  My boss (and my first husband) were smokers so I had to sit in ""smoking" on the plane.  I carried stale smoke into my home from any evening out, and there was no such thing as a non-smoking hotel room-- so every room, like most of them here, was encrusted with layers of nicotine.  Last night, deja vu,  I had to drape my clothes over the chairs to air them out.  And, in my 20s I didn’t have the allergies I do now.  The smoke isn’t so fun for me -- but the lives of the people here are so stressful, I actually empathize with their habit.

So, yes, my heart is cracked, because I see the problems here (and at home)  in terms of the brokenness of the human being.  We can’t seem to prevent ourselves from allowing corrupt, greedy, arrogant power from taking us into war.  Even on an individual level, it is hard to prevent ourselves from dehumanizing some group of “others”, from acting out our prejudices in order to make ourselves feel safer or less afraid.  Some of the Turks I met speak disparagingly of Arabs, some of the Christian Palestinians I met, criticize the Palestinian Muslims....and so it goes.

As I repeated at each meeting in the Istanbul/Ankara Exchange...my interest and work is in cultural dialogue between the East and the West.  I guess I'd better get used to the heartbreak.

Calling Constantinople

I know, I know, I’ve lost my audience for not feeding this bloggy content monster. Also, sorry for no photos, maybe later.  Since joining the Istanbul/Ankara Exchange, it has been non stop movement. I am with an eclectic group of students and academics in international relations coming from Russia, Mexico City, Pakistan, Italy, Australia, Lebanon, US, Switzerland and Turkey. I am the slacker of the group, the artist who lacks their field’s foundation. Regardless, it is interesting, fun and exhausting.

I was the only foreigner on an all day bus from Istanbul to Ankara. It was a luxury coach, and the bus personnel spoke enough English that I successfully made my transfers. Eventually my seatmate Burcu joined me. She’s part of the Exchange, from Anatolian Istanbul and is a PhD student in Gainesville, FL. I was happy for the company.  We stopped on the road for lunch and she introduced me to Ayran -- a liquid yogurt drink that I now have at most meals. It perfectly balances the Turkish flavors, especially when they spicily scald my tongue.(Our Palestinian hosts also served us a thicker version of it). By the end of the trip I was trying to convince her skip a few days of school and to divert her parent’s upcoming itinerary in the US to include San Francisco. She invited me to stay with her family for a few nights, so I left our group hotel and commuted with her to Üsküdar - an area of the city on the Asian side.. Her family lives in a peaceful, lovely large garden apartment, yet stepping out the front gate plunges you into energetic big city living. It took us an hour to reach Taksim Square, by group taxi and ferry. The city is choked, but not gasping. Traffic is thick but moves viscously, and spending ½ of the commute crossing the gorgeous Bosphorus was divine. I loved momentarily stepping into the rhythm of the locals and I made headway in my quest to get Burcu and her family to our home this fall, I’m hoping…

The last few days have brought short vigorous thundershowers. I was shopping on crowded Istiklal Street -- a pedestrian mall with a charming streetcar running down the middle -- when it began to pour, and purchased a “saran wrap” umbrella for 5 Turkish lira (about $3.25) It had a crooked handle, opened automatically and formed a transparent purple dome around me. The street was full of pastel plastic bubbles bobbing and floating in the rainy night. Turkey has a vibrant consumer economy, and many of the cobble stoned streets restrict vehicles, so evenings after work everyone is out, shopping, dining, being seen…The promenading throng is as thick as Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue at noon.

Istanbul is more magical than I remember.. I would vote it more beautiful than San Francisco -- and it certainly has better summer weather.

Memory Soup

I remember a story about porters on an African safari who balked and refused to continue after a few days of frenetic transport at their European client’s bidding.  They said their souls had to catch up with their bodies.  I can relate.

I’m in Istanbul, eating breakfast on the terrace overlooking the Bosphorus, and staring straight at the Blue Mosque up the hill.  A few clouds cutting the sun (so I can see the screen), tone the breeze from hot to balmy.  It is heaven.  I’m at the Sari Konak Oteli.in Sultanahmet.  We stayed here for 9 days in 2004.  It was delightful then, and has since added a new wing and spiffed itself into a lovely boutique hotel.. Seagulls’ raucous shrieking chatter dominates conversations on the gentrified rooftops of old Stambol, except when freight ships plodding up the strait bellow a bass blast of the horn.  If I’m still up here at about 9:30, the discourse will be added to by the adhan from the Blue Mosque.  At the 5 daily prayer times, competing (or orchestrated?) adhans reverberate off the water and hills of the city, as if in call and response to each other. I have not heard such a symphony in other Muslim cities.  Istanbul seems more polished than six years ago, probably a combination of Turkey’s strong economy, the sparkling weather, and the contrast with where I’ve been.  I will enjoy both the new metro and new contemporary art museum today.  I could live in Istanbul.  

The visit to Israel is hard to write about, partly because I was traveling with Jim and didn’t have solitude and space, but also because it is a tense and conflicted place.  Visiting Bethlehem and the West Bank was the most moving part of the trip, but I haven’t sorted out how to write about it yet.  From Akko, we took the 1 ½ hour train along the sea to Tel Aviv.  We stayed in Art + Hotel on Ben Yehuda at Bograshov in Center City. I’d found it on Trip Advisor..a small, wonderfully located hotel, that celebrates about 8 young artists of Tel Aviv.  Each floor features one of them, from the hallways to works inside the room.  The place is very hip and minimalist.  Text on the wall in the room says “sweet dreams”, “looking good” is etched into the bathroom mirror.  The rooms are small, but very functional and attractive.  A sumptuous breakfast and day’s end happy hour are laid out on the community table in the Library, whose shelves are loaded with art books.  It is an amusing place to stay, organized around engaging with each other -- a great lodging concept.

I find that traveling warps and conflates time and memory.  Tel Aviv was hot, but we walked a lot.  In a city of unique neighborhoods…a huge curving corniche of Mediterranean beach is just another one or six.  Neve Tsedek reminded us of Miraflores in Lima, various parts of the center city reminded us of Prenzlr'berg in Berlin, Greenwich Village in New York, and a Bauhaus vs Art Deco South Beach…  Jaffa was charming, and we caught its Saturday flea market -- which is impressive and popular with locals, but full of other peoples’ junk. I'd love to have access to it as a source of found materials for projects. Jaffa is an active artist community, and its public infrastructure -- plazas, sidewalks, etc. are beautifully done.  It didn’t have the ancient, everyday charm of old Akko -- too reconstructed, with many visitors and their busses, but it didn’t feel like a tourist trap. It's port was colorfully picturesque -- no luxury craft a la Larry Ellison, just old fishing and working boats. I had some robust conversations with artists manning their coop shops in the limestone structures climbing the hills from the water.

I had a 6:15am flight from Ben Gurion airport, so saw evidence of Tel Aviv’s 24/7 character when I walked outside at 3:15am.  I couldn’t believe how full the streets were!  It was Friday night Shabbat, and at 7pm, we’d roamed the area for a restaurant open for dinner-- about ¾ of all establishments were closed.  People were drifting home from the beach, the city was shutting down.  Jerusalem had been tomb-like on the Friday night we arrived (although we weren’t out at 3am), and I assumed Tel Aviv would be the same.  Who would have considered planning for a sobriety check and traffic jam on an airport run in the middle of the night?

I was delighted by the non-amplified nature of the beach.  Walking by 70 yards away, one could hear the slaps of paddle tennis from the water’s edge.  I appreciated, too, the plastic recycle cages - wire cubes the size of a minivan for the chucking of empty bottles.  On the surface, Tel Aviv has a fun young, lively, vibe, but I was disappointed by the brusque rudeness of the locals.  We took a short city bus ride to Jaffa, and the middle aged man behind us just pushed ahead of us to get off.  I reminded me of the old ladies in Manhattan -- I learned early to be wary of their elbows entering and leaving public transport and grocery stores.  I did not find the soul of Jerusalem or the West Bank in Tel Aviv.  Bicycles and electric scooters compete for sidewalk space -- strolling is not peaceful.  Jim called it a narcissistic place -  I saw it as a glorified shopping mall, mirroring the consumerist, self-absorbed ills of our US culture.

I was underwhelmed with the Tel Aviv Contemporary Art Museum. Visiting the art galleries in center city was enjoyable, although there was a lot of poor art -- we all make a lot of it in search of the good stuff, and some of my favorite pieces were from an exhibition of young New York artists.  Tel Aviv and I didn't get under each other's skin.  I would need to dig deeper to feel I knew it.

Arabian Nights

Jim is collecting spices to bring home.  Marina (our Bethlehem hostess) gave Jim some Palestinian spice blends for  meat and chicken.  Today we picked up some saffron, za’taar and sumac from the Turkish souq in old Akko.

We are staying at the Akkotel B&B, an exquisitely gracious small family hotel in a former Ottoman police station that has been lovingly restored with lavish attention to detail and using top quality materials.  Old Akko is picturesque, looking a lot like a movie set in Casablanca.  Rick and Ilsa would feel right at home on these romantic streets - especially at sunset on the sea.

While we are in northern Israel, not near the Palestinian areas, the city appears quite Muslim, many women are covered -- in the contemporary way of using the hijab as a colorful fashion accessory, and mosques prominently define the skyline.  Akko is also home to dark African-descended Israeli Arabs who were made citizens in 1948.

Tourists are prevalent during the day, but crawl onto huge white whales of buses and pull out of town in the afternoon.  Old Akko is a contemporary working city, not a tourist museum, although it is a UNESCO Heritage site, and restoration and archeological work continues.  It is very Arabic in feel, and its inhabitants live closely together in tight, twisting alleyways created by the stonework labyrinth of buildings behind the city walls. After dark, when it cools down,  the jumbled and narrow stone streets worn smooth become outdoor living rooms and playgrounds.  Everyone’s door is open, toddlers to teenagers are playing on the cobblestones.  We felt intrusive as we walked along,  like strangers inappropriately venturing into private inner sanctums. I kept my camera in my bag, but would have loved to capture the rich exotic details of domestic life for future paintings. Out on the sea quay, 8-10 year-olds climb the huge stones of the fortress walls, and parents supervise their wading offspring in the Mediterranean.  Acre (Akko) was a Crusader fortress in the 12th century.  Its city walls are so thick (6 feet or more) that Napoleon couldn’t conquer it.

There is a quality of life here that embraces the family, with neighbors engaging closely with each other.  I noticed a similar cultural character in Egypt last year…there is something about these Arab cities that is so deeply civilized.  First off, the cities are very young -- and while the young people all have cell phones, and young drivers love loud music, at the same time they are very family oriented…which seems to tone down the excesses of continuous entertainment and sensory stimulation, of individual exhibitionism,  of public consumption of substances, of general noise…that pervades the public areas of American cities -- from beach towns to ball parks.

Regarding cacophony, Jim and I have been noise magnets on this trip.   If you want to know where in the world there will be construction, just join us -- at EVERY stop there has been roadwork outside our window -- and they start early -- like 6am.  In this beautiful Akkohotel, the road was quiet yesterday when we arrived.  This morning a bulldozer began ripping up the cobblestones.  The newly laid  street of pavers seems nearly finished at 5:30 pm,  so the next person in our room will have a quiet stay.

Holy Trifecta and a Homestay

A touristic trifecta of holy sites:  While Jim and I participate in a specific spiritual community, we embrace and respect the spiritual traditions of all.  Typically, victorious religions choose the holy spots of those they vanquish, so Jerusalem’s 3 big ones are in close proximity.  Visiting them, we noticed that a palpable and vulnerable humility emanates from a group of people when they acknowledge the power of, and seek communion with, that which is larger than themselves.

We had a minor drama visiting the Western Wall.  We passed through the security gate just before a visitor left a backpack unattended and they shut the place down.  Entering the vast plaza, we were ushered to its edges.  From the shaded top of a staircase we watched the bomb squad swiftly determine a lack of threat.  Jim had watched The Foot Locker on the flight to Tel Aviv and was disgusted with its lack of authenticity -- so was giving me a play-by-play of the Israeli operation.  All clear, we proceeded to our separate sections of the Wall, (2/3 of the length for men who were comfortably spaced and seated along the Wall and 1/3 for women who were stacked, mostly standing,  3-deep).  Standing at a speakers podium out in the sizzling and glaring sun, I wrote my two deepest wishes on small scraps of paper which I folded into tiny tablets and stuffed into divots and crevices the Wall. Watching women tentatively walking backwards, I then backed 30 paces out of the sacred area.  The government respects the devotions of the pilgrims, so clears the papers crammed into the cracks several times a year and buries them in a Jewish cemetery.

In the Church of the Holy Sepulcher we climbed the steep stone steps of Golgotha, to the ornately Byzantine-style Greek Orthodox chapel of the Calvary, the place of Jesus’ death on the cross.  This time I sent those prayers on the wings of wisping smoke from the candles we bought from the attending monk.  Those candles have a name, but recovering-Catholic Jim doesn't remember it.

While the building exteriors of the Haram esh Sharif (aka The Temple Mount) are exquisite, I was sad to be excluded, as a non-Muslim, from the masterfully beautiful interiors of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

A homestay:  We stayed with a Palestinian family in Bethlehem for 3 nights.  Marina and Omer (not their real names) are a couple about our age, with 3 grown sons.  Their Arab style stone house is over 100 years old, with walls two feet thick.  Though the temperature during the day is in the 90s, inside it is in the low 70s without air conditioning. While we paid for our stay, we felt like invited guests.  I kept forgetting that maybe we should get out of their hair so they could live their lives,  and instead,  hung out like I was there just to visit with them.  Marina cooked splendidly for us, and stoked Jim's sweet tooth to a fine fury.  We tried to bring a gift representative of California and settled on a box of See's lollipops--wrapped in its 4th of July sleeve, the last of which she is hoarding for her Greek grandchildren's visit to their cousin's baptism later this month.  We had a lot in common and great fun swapping life stories at the dinner and breakfast tables.

Living with them was painfully illuminating.  They are well educated middle class Christian Arabs, with extended family that lives all over the world, and at least one of their sons has a graduate degree from the US.  Their, and all Palestinian’s, lives since the separation wall have become wracked with emotional and economic insecurity.

Marina and Omer are religious, and one of their treasured rituals was to walk the Via Dolorosa (the stations of the cross) in Jerusalem at Christmas.  It is so difficult to get a permit from the Israeli government to go to Jerusalem, and so challenging and utterly humiliating to cross the checkpoints that they no longer live the familiar rhythms of their lives.  Fundamentally disrupted also, are their work lives..  Tourists are disinclined to visit Bethlehem -- they are told it is dangerous, so arrive in tour buses, descend on the limited tourist shops in Manger Square and then re-board to be sanitarily whisked back to their hotels in Jerusalem.  Many shops are shuttered, and Omer no longer has work.  He now does day labor when the olive wood factories need extra help.  We have walked all over the beautiful, vibrant, yet challenged, city of Bethlehem.  It does not feel dangerous, although we did get tagged for $10 for a kilo of fresh cherries.  Caveat emptor.

Through the course of our stay, Marina and Omer’s extended family passed through the house.  Their eldest son’s baby had the biggest smile I've ever seen on an infant, and he amused and exercised himself by pumping his legs to vigorously rock his portable cradle.  Their adult niece guided us through the Nativity Church complex.  The next day as we finished the shawerma we had to pantomine to order, she joined us to walk along the  Israeli (so-called) security wall.  When I was in New York in April, I viewed South African born Marlene Dumas’ exhibition entitled Against the Wall, http://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/206/ which she had painted from news photos. Seeing the actual wall and then looking again at her paintings on the web, it is my guess that if she had visited here, she probably would have painted them differently.

Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, who have earned the right to define an apartheid state, have deemed Israel one.  We visited the family whose Bethlehem (central within the West Bank, not along the UN’s legally recognized 1967 borders) lands were illegally confiscated by Israel to build the wall, and which locks in their home on 3 sides.  This concrete wall is more than 50 feet high, so the family that lives in that home sees nothing but concrete outside all of their windows.  They are backed into a resulting cul de sac and their children’s friends will not visit because they do not trust that the Israeli military will not arrive to harass them. They owned five hectares of land which the wall split in half.  An uncle lives on their land on the other side of the wall, and they cannot visit each other without hard-to-come-by permits to get through the checkpoints.  They stay because it is their land, and if they leave they will lose it to Israel.  This part of the wall was built in 2004.  The family still visibly shakes when they recount the terror of its building and what it did to their lives and family.

Israel’s confiscation of Palestinian land under the pretense-of-the-moment is like our law of imminent domain run amuck.  It would be like San Francisco unilaterally, arbitrarily and illegally deciding to annex Foster City (25 miles to the south), and to surround it with a wall.  Just accidentally-on-purpose all land and local municipalities from South San Francisco to Foster City would now be controlled by San Francisco too.  Then, because I’m tenacious and refuse to let them have my house, the wall surrounds it and my view has become like an airshaft in Manhattan.  Accessing my house now requires driving ten times further to get to the land across the canal, where I then must load my Costco shopping into a dinghy and cross the water to my backyard.  This is the new “normal”, assumes no arbitrary (but frequent) random road blocks or closures -- and also assumes I haven’t dropped my identification papers in the water as I off-load my Kirkland bulk paper towels and toilet paper.  I'm not joking.

Surreality and Peace Bracelets

On July 4th, we walked into the souq from our B&B in a Christian guest house on the hill in the Armenian Quarter of Old Jerusalem.  Our bedroom is in a stone building with 15’ ceilings, and we eat in one of the compound’s leafy courtyards, on Sunday, listening to the musicians practice for the upcoming church service.  It is like a private village, sheltered from the dusty construction-ravaged, teeming street outside.  Down the hill and around the corner the Middle Ages lingers in the 4 quarters of Old Jerusalem, the gateway, or gauntlet?,  to the holy sites of the 3 Abrahamic religions.  By now, I’ve been in a bunch of these souqs and other marketplaces around the world…but the combination of the phantasmagoria of colorful things glittering at all levels, the smells of spices, food, incense…the uneven deeply worn stones of the street…the crooked views of steep stone staircases to residential warrens up the hill… I looked at Jim and just said, “I LOVE this.”

And then the chase begins…a street-corner tour guide promotes the home where Mary (Jesus’ mom) lived and died.  Jim said, “I already visited that in Turkey” (Mary’s home near Ephesus).  “Oh, that’s the Ottoman Turk’s version…”  Yup.

We were fighting jet lag and the cool, dusky labyrinth of the Old City ejected us out into the bright reflective limestone heat of summer at the Damascus Gate.  We headed over to the New City to the modern cousin of the old souk, the blocks-long market, Makane Yehuda.  The spice guy with the two foot high cones of ground coffee that he scrapes off for customers doled seasoned “salad pistachios” into my hand to taste. Yum.   It made me wish for a kitchen in our convent.

Today we took a Jerusalem Reality Tour  www.jerusalemtours.blogspot.com  led by a young Jewish man who grew up not too far from Jerusalem.  His grandfather survived the Holocaust by being shipped to Siberia.  His family did not make it, and at the end of the war he met his second wife, emigrated to Israel and raised a  new family.  When we asked their grandson what he saw 20 years out, he posed two possibilities… are the Jews and Palestinians willing to live as equals, or will they live in two uniform societies?  He believes the first possibility could be achieved, but he doesn’t see it taking that shape on the ground today.

My affluent, cosseted American bubble of a reality gets shaken up like a snow globe when I travel… especially to places where I notice stark realities of my country’s role in the world.  I remember when Jim and I traveled to El Salvador in 2006, how shocked and appalled I was at the local impact of US proxy wars, and how completely surreal it felt to be a witness to that.  At the end of that week-long trip I was mute for 3 days.  Well, this region bears its fair share of similar scars, and we saw some of them today.  And those stories are for another post…

Then in a jarring transition, we ate lunch on the lush patio of  the American Colony Hotel, a special and beautiful place in E. Jerusalem.  It had a strange vibe though, with the graciousness of the Palestinian wait staff in crude contrast with the unfriendliness of the guests.  I’m used to catching people’s eyes and smiling, certainly as I hold the door open to the ladies room.  I don’t know who these women were, but they wouldn’t even look at me.  And, I doubt my dress gave me away as either an American or someone who wasn’t staying at the hotel.  Weird.

So, walking back through the souk a shopkeeper sitting on a stool asked us how to spell “clearance”.  I wrote that, and some other punchy promotional going-out-of-business sayings for him, for which he made me a pair of earrings. Looking around his shop, I completed the Peace Bracelet!  http://beirut2cairo.blogspot.com/2009/07/peace-bracelets-and-grab-bags.html.  I  may have been taken.  It is hard to resist being charmed…once they have you talking to them you’ve lost your objectivity.  A jewelry store in the Christian quarter of the souq.  He’s turning the place into a restaurant, because people need jewelry only during Christmas and Easter.  We told him to display his left-over merchandise in the restaurant, that we’d been in the Armenian Tavern next to our hotel and it was more shop than food.  He said he was Armenian too, and knew the guy, and would ask him for pointers.  He spoke the Queen’s English, having spent 2 years in Campton.  We were his first (accidental) customers in 3 days (?), and his first child is about 3 days away from being born by his Russian wife.  Her name will be Tamara, inshallah, --  a very good gambit, no?  Truthfully, I wouldn’t be surprised if he owned all 5 shops adjacent to him.  Then he sold us 2 charms to complete Ute and my peace bracelets.

Shalom and Salam

Continuing the Journey

The Middle East had me from “hello”. Photographs of the Alhambra and the Great Mosque of Córdoba catapulted Al-Andalus (Andalusia) to the top of our 2005 travel list. My Iranian-American friends feed me food that rivals the cafes of Paris and trattorias of Roma. The melodic sounds of Persian, Turkish and Arabic sentences nibble at my ears like waves lap a shore. When I first heard the evocative call to prayer (adhan) in Istanbul in 2004, its soothing and exotic beauty sparked a nostalgia I couldn’t place. If I missed hearing one of the five calls a day, I felt like I had lost something. Turks, Lebanese and Egyptians are beautiful in face and heart. Family salons yield forth sweet delicacies, and shopkeepers, though with mercenary intentions pause to offer tea before plying their trade.

For years now, our country has been at war with, and Western media has sullied our compatriots’ minds to, that part of the world. We traveling Americans slink circumspectly and apologetically, until we are lavishly reassured by our hosts that they understand the difference between a nation’s individual citizens and its foreign policies. They, of course, have the same problem.

This year, I will again blog about my Middle Eastern adventures. (last year’s trip blog is www.beirut2cairo.blogspot.com). The discipline of blog-writing is a gift, incenting me to pay closer attention to daily sensations and encounters, preparing for my date with the keyboard before bed.

Our plan is to land in Tel Aviv, and immediately travel to Jerusalem. After two weeks in Israel and Palestine, Jim will fly home, and I will return to Turkey for the Istanbul/Ankara Exchange – the Turkish counterpart to last year’s Beirut Exchange. Turkey is a vibrant country, positioned squarely between the West and the East. I will understand it so much better at the end of July. Then, inshallah, I will meet up and travel in Iraqi Kurdistan with my Baghdadi friend Sarwa.

So, wish us traveling mercies, and stay tuned…