Egypt

At the end of January, Amy and I headed down to Cairo, Egypt to check out the famed Pyramids of Giza. It was a short hour or so flight from Beirut, reminding us of how close everything in the Mediterranean part of the Middle East is. The majority of the flight was over water but when we finally passed over land, it was the delta of the Nile River and it appeared green and lush. This continued for a short while then was quickly followed by an almost hard line of desert. And from this line of desert, to as far as we could see to the south, was sand.
It was late afternoon by the time we landed, and got to our hotel. We were staying in the Zamalek neighborhood of Cairo, which is located on a long strip of land in the middle of the Nile. We picked this area because it’s a little quieter and less hustle and bustle than the center of the city. We checked into our room and then wandered around the neighborhood. Aesthetically speaking, Cairo isn’t the prettiest of cities. From the map, it appeared that there was only one large public park in the city and fortunately for us, it was right down the street. Since Beirut has no real public park space in the city we were looking forward to seeing it. But our hopes were dashed when we got to what we thought was the large, neighborhood park. As we tried to enter the park, we were informed that it was actually a large green area full of expensive private athletic and park clubs. If you didn’t have a membership, you couldn’t get in. Basically we felt like Snoopy when he runs into the ‘No Dogs Allowed’ sign. So to compensate, we just walked along the edge of the Nile River.
Civilization in this part of the world pre-dates 3000BC. For centuries before this, communities had been developing along the Nile River Valley and down into the Nile River Delta on the southeastern part of the Mediterranean Sea. Eventually, these communities developed into two separate states. One was the length of the Nile River Valley (Upper Egypt), while the other was the Delta itself (Lower Egypt). In 3100BC, a pharaoh named Menes unified Upper and Lower Egypt for the first time and around 2800BC what is believed to be the first Step Pyramid in the world was built. It still stands in Saqqara, about an hour’s drive south of the modern day city of Cairo. As the next 500 years rolled by, the ruling power of the pharaohs would be matched only by the size of their pyramids. Finally, around 2600BC, the largest pyramid in Egypt, the Great Pyramid of Khufu, was built in an area called Giza, now on the outskirts of Cairo. The pharaohs would build their pyramids just south of the Nile River Delta, where present day Cairo is, until about 2000BC when the center of power would shift south to the city of Thebes, now the modern day city of Luxor. Luxor and Giza are connected by the 4,160 mile long water highway known as the Nile River. The river’s headwaters start far to the south in Ethiopia and travel north to the Mediterranean Sea.
For now, Amy and I focused on just walking a mile or so of it without getting hit by a taxi or hassled by a tout. The Nile River cuts through the center of present day Cairo and has at least 7 major bridges crossing it. Its water is dark and murky with pollution. A section of the river in downtown is lined with permanently anchored ‘cruise’ type boats that are now bars, restaurants and nightclubs. On the river itself, smaller wooden tour boats called feluccas carried tourists up and down the river while blasting Egyptian pop music. Oh, the pharaohs would be proud.
The first thing the next morning, we set off in a taxi for the pyramids of Giza. It was about a half hour taxi ride from where we were staying. We thought we would be driving across open desert to get there, but instead the cab made its way through city street after city street and then suddenly, the pyramids popped up, right there at the edge of a neighborhood. The cab driver mentioned that in the last 20 years, the development in the city sprawled out and threatened to engulf the pyramids. Fortunately, when the buildings reached the pyramids, zoning laws were put in place keeping the development from going around them. But even with that, there are apartment buildings right at the foot of the hill that the pyramids are built on.
The pyramids at Giza are all that and a bag of chips. Incredibly impressive to look at and to imagine what it took to build them so long ago? You realize, standing there before them, that you’ve seen pictures of these things since you were a little kid and that over time your adult mind began to think of them as some imaginary thing that didn’t exist anymore and yet here you are looking up at them wondering when the aliens were coming back and whether Richard Dean Anderson would be able to save you.
There are three large pyramids at Giza. The first one I mentioned earlier, the Great Pyramid of Khufu, is the largest, followed by the Pyramid of Khafre. Although Khufu’s pyramid is bigger, it is more likely that you have seen a photo or painting of Khafre’s because of its unique limestone cap on top. When the pyramids were first built, they were covered with a smooth layer of limestone. Over the millennia, the limestone façade wore away leaving the rough edged pyramids we see today. Only on Khafre’s pyramid is the top portion of the limestone still intact.

The third, The Pyramid of Menkaure is much smaller than its two partners. It’s easy to see why the pyramids at Giza were considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Not to mention that they are the only remaining one of the seven. Down the hill from these three pyramids, right in front of a line of apartment buildings and store fronts is the Sphinx.

Somehow, I’d always imagined that the pyramids and the Sphinx were spread out over a vast expanse of desert, but here they were, jammed together at the edge of town just a short walk from the KFC. Nothing says ancient wonder of the world like fried chicken.
When we got to Giza, the air was cool and relatively speaking, there was hardly anybody there. We were actually able to get some photos of the pyramids without people in them. I was figuring that the place would be packed with thousands of people, like a Disneyland in the desert. But fortunately, it was empty enough that we were able to climb up into the inner chamber of the Great Pyramid with only a few other people around. The access to the inner chamber is through a long, steep and very small, claustrophobic shaft that brings you into the center of the pyramid. You are practically down on your knees climbing up this thing, it’s so narrow. Once inside, the chamber is a large room, about 30’ x 50’ with a high ceiling. Needless to say, the gold and jewels of the chamber have long since been emptied out by the locals who built the pyramids, their descendents and foreign archaeologists. You decide which is the worst. The only thing remaining inside was the three ton, four sided, stone box and a half a dozen new-age Norwegian freaks, all holding onto it, deep in a trance. I say freaks not so much to criticize their little séance but because they were all standing shoulder to shoulder encircling the box so that no one else could see it or get near it. I elbowed my way in and was able to see the stone, coffin like structure, complete with a balled up Norwegian inside of it, humming away.
After we had gotten our fill of pyramidal energy there in the chamber we headed back down the long, narrow tunnel. By now the morning rush of tourists had arrived and the tunnel was choked with people going in both directions. We felt like miners trying to make a run for it before the cave in. Finally, we reached the tunnel’s opening and gasped at the fresh air. We could now see the tour buses all lined up just a hundred yards from the pyramid.
We were working our way to the second largest pyramid, the one with the limestone cap, when a young man approached us and asked us for our tickets. We just said no and kept on walking because we could tell he was a tout. He came up to us again and asked a second time but when we said no again to him, he said we had to because he was with the government. I got pissed. I went up to him and told him that if he was with the government than he wouldn’t mind coming with me to talk to the uniformed police officer standing by the entrance gate. He immediately backed down and I offered him a few colorfully descriptive words that aren’t fit to print here. A few minutes later he would come back up and apologize to us, saying that as a token he would tell us where the best place to take a photo of the pyramid was and then pointed to it. I told him not to worry about it and thanked him for the advice on photo positioning. He then asked for a tip. Amy and I laughed as we walked away. I’ve got to hand it to him, he’s persistent. The thing is, though, out of all the touts I ran into in India, and there were far more in India than here, none of the Indian touts would attempt some sort of lie to steal our tickets. The India touts just wanted to overcharge you for their products or services. No, these Egyptian touts were much more devious and shifty. We would run into a few more that tried to get our tickets before leaving Egypt.
From the last pyramid, we worked our way down the hill to the Sphinx, the God of Terror, sitting there in front of all three pyramids, protecting them from grave robbers, or at least trying. The Sphinx was really cool and as big as you imagined. Entry to the immediate area around it is restricted so you can’t actually touch it, but you can get within about 30 yards of it.
After spending the morning poking around the pyramids, we headed back into Cairo to check out some old Coptic Christian churches. The history of the Coptic Church begins around the year 42AD when Saint Mark (one of Jesus’ Apostles) travels to Egypt and starts spreading the word. In about the year 451AD, the Coptic Church of Alexandria (Egypt) split from what was then the Western and Eastern Orthodox Churches (the western and eastern hadn’t split yet). The Coptic Church has its own hierarchy including its own pope and is the belief of most Christians in this part of Africa. One of the churches we visited was supposedly the place where Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus (8 pounds, 6 ounces) hid from Herod the Great until Herod’s death. A church was built on the hiding spot years later. There was also a massive gift shop down the alleyway next to this church that was packed with shiny brass Egyptian pharaoh memorabilia. I’m assuming the gift shop was a lot smaller when the Holy Family hid out.
One of the other Coptic churches had a large museum attached to it with some pretty old religious paintings in it. Many, of course, were of Jesus. The thing I found most interesting about the paintings of Jesus is that the ethnic look of Jesus in the painting changed depending on where the painter was from. Meaning that if the painting was done by a Roman painter, then Jesus had very distinctive Roman features including the classic Roman nose. If the painter was Greek, then Jesus looked Greek. If the painter was Middle Eastern, Jesus had olive skin (probably closest to accuracy) and if the painter was from Egypt, Jesus had darker skin. It reminded me of a giant painting I saw of Jesus in a Latter Day Saints’ church I visited several times while in San Francisco a few years back. It was a modern rendition and Jesus had sun-bleached blonde hair, pale white skin and sharp blue eyes. These paintings here in this Egyptian museum just reconfirmed to me that throughout history people want to believe that their god looked just like them and that they looked just like their god, no matter how improbable it might be.
After the churches, we headed to the very large Mosque of Ibn Tulun, the oldest Mosque in Cairo. Unfortunately, Amy and I couldn’t go in together since there is a women’s entrance that is separate from the men’s. Amy had to don her head scarf and we both took off our shoes as we entered, as is customary. Inside it was peaceful and dimly lit with men praying or reading one of the many holy books shelved in there. Amy’s experience was much more limited than mine, since women are only allowed to jam into this small room in the back with no view of anything.
We finished up our day with a subway ride back towards the hotel. The subway stopped at one of the stations and an announcement came over the address speaker in Arabic. Since we didn’t speak Arabic, we had no idea what it was saying. Several different passengers on the subway car made a point of telling us what it said, even though many of them didn’t speak English, and let us know that everyone had to exit this train and wait for the next one. It was nice to see how helpful and nice people are once you get away from the touristy areas.
The next day we headed to the Cairo Museum. This museum is famous for holding many of the artifacts and mummies taken from the various tombs and pyramids around Egypt. On our walk there from the hotel, a man who was walking behind us came up and started chatting with us. We were immediately suspicious of what he wanted. He asked us where we were going and I told him, ‘nowhere’. He explained that he worked at the Marriot hotel and was on his way home from working the night shift and if we needed any advice he would try to help. I told him that we didn’t and that we were just heading to the museum, which was a short distance away. He told us that the downtown area around the museum was closed until 2pm (it was currently about 9:00am) because of a big political meeting of various Arabian ministers. He said that the museum would open up again at 2pm. This sounded reasonable to us, since this frequently occurs in Beirut, so we told him “thanks” for the advice. The man then told us if we wanted, there was a particular market on the other side of the river that was nice to see. We said no thanks. He said, “I’m not going to take you there, I just wanted to let you know that the market runs free shuttle car rides from around the city to the market. The free shuttle cars are blue, that’s all, now I’m going home.” And with that he walked on ahead of us. Then suddenly he turned and said, “Look, there’s one of the blue taxis.” And there on the side of the road was a blue car. He went up to it and spoke to the driver. He turned to us and said, “Yes, this is one of them.” We in return paused and then said no thanks. The guy then said, “Not all Egyptians are the same and want to rip you off.” Then he walked off and we didn’t see him again. Amy and I started talking about whether to go to this market, when the blue taxi driver said, “If you have any questions, you can ask me.” I said, “Why is the museum closed today?” The driver said, “I don’t think it’s closed.” We said, OK and walked away. We decided to walk to the museum and see whether we were being scammed or not. On the way to the museum we kept debating whether it was or not. If it was, why did the guy walk away? Was it a coincidence that the blue taxi was right there? When we got to the museum we saw that sure enough, it was open. We then noticed in our guide book a section warning about scammers who hang around the museum telling people that the museum is closed and that they can visit a market across town by taking a special cab. The scammer then gets a commission from the cab driver and the market. Wow! We were shocked that the scam would be that elaborate to involve the guy walking and a guy in a car. The worst part about it all was the guy trying to make us feel guilty for not trusting us by saying all Egyptians aren’t the same in trying to rip us off, when in fact he was. It was an all time low on the on the lowly scammers snake scale. We knew not to trust anyone before, this just sealed it.
The Cairo Museum was definitely worth the visit. We started out, of course, in the “mummy room.” This room is full of about 11 temperature controlled glass cases that contain the mummies of various pharaohs, queens and servants. It was pretty wild, especially since some of the mummies were over 3,500 years old. On some, you could still see the fingernails, teeth and hair along with the leathery looking skin. If those pharaohs only knew that instead of going to the other side peacefully on a golden chariot they were going to end up on display, almost as a circus freak show, I’m sure they would have opted for cremation. It was a combination of having a bothersome feeling thinking about someone robbing their graves and putting them on display, mixed with the awe of seeing their ancient bodies there under glass. The star of the mummy show was Ramses II, one of the great pharaohs of ancient Egypt who Percy Shelley’s poem, “Ozymandias” speaks of. Other things of interest in the museum were the many golden statues and furniture that were stuffed into the various pharaohs’ tomb chambers. I guess I always thought that the furniture and supplies in the chamber were laid out like a bedroom setting, all neat an organized so that when the pharaoh made it to the other side, he could have a comfortable place to stay. Not so. There were large photographs up on the museum wall showing what the chambers looked like when first opened by archeologists. There was nothing organized about it. Things were just jammed in and stacked on top of each other, without an open inch of walking space in the place. Kind of like my sister’s basement.
About 3 or 4 hours later, Amy and I had thought that we had covered pretty much all of the museum exhibits when we realized there was no King Tut display. The guide book showed which rooms it should have been in, but there was no sign of it there. Disheartened about not seeing it, we just figured it was out on tour somewhere and headed for the door. Just as we were about to leave, we noticed a doorway that had “Tutankhamun” over it. We peeked inside and there it was. It was completely marked wrong on our guide book map and we almost left without seeing it. The good thing is that we saved the best for last. It was really impressive, especially that gold death mask that seemed so familiar when we finally saw it. It’s the one that we’ve all been seeing for years on every TV show about ancient Egypt. The detail is incredible.
From the museum we headed south of Cairo by taxi to see the Step Pyramid of Zoser in Saqqara, the oldest pyramid in Egypt.

It is a step pyramid, meaning it looks like it has large steps going all the way up it, and it looks really weather worn. It’s considered the oldest standing manmade structure in the world at about 5,000 years old. In that same area is the “Bent Pyramid” which actually narrows more quickly at the top than the other symmetrical pyramids, giving it a ‘bent’ look.

And the Red Pyramid, which we were able to go into via yet another narrow, claustrophobic tunnel. The difference with the Red Pyramid’s tunnel is that it goes down into the base of the pyramid as opposed to Khufu’s which went up into the center of the pyramid. The Red Pyramid also had a little added attraction to it: it wasn’t lit all the way in so the last stretch of it is the pitch black AND it’s got bats. So you get to listen to the little guys chirping at you as you pass by. And the smell of bat guano is so acidic and strong it even keeps the Norwegians away. Needless to say, it was a quick visit.
The next day in Cairo, we went to the old Islamic part of town. We started off by visiting the Al-Azhar Mosque which is not only one of Cairo’s oldest mosques, but also one of the world’s oldest Universities. Both Amy and I were able to go into this one (after paying a tout to guide us in there).

While the mosque was very nice inside, one notices that it is not that elaborate, which is part of the Islamic culture. There is a huge difference between the plainness of a mosque and the exuberance of many of the Christian churches: mosques are meant to be much more humble and much less ornate. From the mosque we headed into the famous Khan al-Khalili, the Great Bazaar. Everyone spoke of needing to go see this bazaar as part of any trip to Cairo. We figured it was going to be where the local people of Cairo bought their produce, goods and textiles. Instead we found touristy, gift shop central with every tout in Cairo trying to jump on you. After a quick swing through and the purchase of a knick-knack pyramid, we were out of there. (Since we’ve been back in Beirut, a bomb, targeting foreign tourists, went off in a café in this bazaar, killing one person and injuring twenty others). We checked out some of the neat old architecture of the surrounding buildings and then headed south of the bazaar into the neighborhood. This turned out to be the area where the locals came to shop for vegetables, goat, chickens, rabbits and cloth. No one hassled us or tried to sell us anything. Some just looked at us confused that we might be lost. It was pretty cool. We continued south until we came upon the southern gate of the old city of Cairo. The gate is framed by two minarets. We climbed to the top of one these minarets via a very narrow spiral staircase which eventually turns into a rickety metal fire escape type ladder. The ledge at the top is about two feet wide with a knee high railing. The view was great and we could see Cairo in all directions, as well as down onto the apartments below.
Walking around the city, I noticed an interesting thing about the way parking meters are enforced. If your car is parked in a spot with a meter at it and you leave your car there past the time that your meter runs out, a big yellow metal post will pop up out of the ground on the street side of your car. The post pops up just about at the left front wheel, preventing you from driving away (because there’s always a car in the spot in front of you and in back). Once you pay the meter, the post retracts into its hole in the road and you can drive away.
One of the negative things about Cairo, especially for women, is that many of the men are really, really rude towards women in a sexual way, especially if they are foreigners. As a woman, you will constantly get hissed at and have kissing noises made at you. Men will say rude things in Arabic right in front of you. Even if you don’t speak Arabic, you know what they are saying is rude. It’s the Egyptian version of the old construction worker whistling and shouting lewd comments, but it comes from all different types of men: young, old, business suits, police in uniform, you name it. Initially you want to say something or lash out but think better of it. I ended up making hissing noises back at them, which I think only confused them and didn’t really bother them. We were told before coming that it happened to foreign women who walked alone in Egypt, but we got it when we walked together and we even saw it happening to men and women who were walking arm in arm and the woman was dressed in a full head scarf. The men just don’t care. It made us realize just how safe and unthreatening the streets of Beirut really are, if you can believe it. There’s none of that that goes on in Lebanon. We came up with a theory about the relationship between how safe a city is compared to the health of its feral cats. Beirut’s feral cats are all shiny, happy and at times plump. Egypt’s cats were all wet, mangy and nasty.
Traveling back to Beirut, we had to show our passports at both the Cairo and Beirut airport 12 different times, literally. When departing, you have to show your passport just to get into the airport along with going through an X-ray machine. You then show it at the ticket counter, followed by a guy who allows you to leave the ticket area and go to immigration. You then show it at immigration and then again at the actual security check, which entails another X-ray machine. You then show it again before going through the door to board the plane, but the doorway actually leads you down to a bus that you get on and it drives you out to the plane. Once there, you have to show your passport again to go up the stairs to get onto the plane. Upon arriving in Beirut, you show it to get into the airport itself and then you show it to the Lebanese customs officer, followed by the guy who x-rays your luggage upon arrival. After this is the customs check. After customs, literally 10 feet past the customs guy you just showed your passport to and got it stamped, you have to show it to this one last guy with a bad attitude. This guy flips through your passport until he finds your visa and then after seeing that it’s valid hands you back your passport with this look of disgust on his face that says, “The only reason I’m letting the likes of you in is because I have to.” Ah, yes, it’s good to be home.

Jordan

Two days after Christmas Amy and I hopped on a plane for Jordan. If a commercial plane were to fly direct as the crow, the flight would probably take about 30 minutes, but since we had to make a wide arc around Israeli air space it took about an hour. We flew over the snow peaked mountains of central Lebanon, heading east and then turned south. We landed in Amman, Jordan’s capitol, rented a car and then off we went. Since we knew that the city of Amman was going to be choked with traffic, we immediately headed south to the city of Madaba and tried to find a place to stay for the night. Strangely enough, though, every place we went to was booked up, but we never found out why. Finally we came across a guesthouse called the Queen Ayhola. This place looked like your usual hostel that was a bit run down but fine to stay at. That is until we turned down the bed and saw that we had to share it with more bed bugs than I saw in my whole time in India. Since we knew there was nowhere else in town to stay and the rental car was far too small to sleep in, we decided to figure out a way to remedy the situation. When I went down to the front desk to ask for a new, clean set of sheets, the night manager told me that he didn’t have any more. When I pressed him about it, he told me that the place only had one set of sheets per room and since we had taken the last room, there were no more sheets available. Right. I decided against ringing his chicken neck and headed back up to the room. It’s a sad thing when you realize it would be cleaner to be camping on the ground without a tent than staying in a hotel room. We decided to pull all the blankets off of the bed and throw them in a corner, then shake out the sheet the best we could. After that, we put the sheet back on the bed but not the blankets. Then we, leaving all our clothes on, put on all the Gore-Tex raingear we had brought with us, including putting the hood up and then hopped into bed. This way, should the sprinkler system go off we’d be ready, short of the fact that there was no sprinkler system. Needless to say our dreams were filled with images of a waking to a Gulliver’s Travels type of capture by a tribe of angry bed bugs. In the morning the desk manager couldn’t understand why we wanted no part of the breakfast he was offering there at the Queen Ayhola. For censorship reasons I’ll let you use your imagination to think of the nickname we gave this place, but it sounds like…” We got out of there as quickly as we could, but not before checking out some Byzantine Mosaic tile work at an old church in town. One large map mosaic was from AD 560 and had places named in Greek.
Once I figured out how to get out of the city (we were using a really vague map provided by the rental car company and there’s a good chance that it was actually a map of Saudi Arabia) our first stop was Mount Nebo. Mount Nebo is the mountain top that Moses, at age 120 looked out and saw “The Promised Land” then died. And who could blame the old boy, he was 120. There’s a small museum and a view point up there now. The mountain top Moses was looking out from is actually a high point on a cliff ridge that stands over the giant Jordan River Valley below. The Jordan River is now the boundary between Jordan , which is on the East bank of the Jordan River and the Palestinian Territory of the West Bank, which is, of course, on the west bank of the Jordan River. Stop me if I’m going too fast.
While the very bottom of the Jordan River valley is green with agriculture, everything else in the 360 degree panorama is dry desert. I believe that back in Moses’ time, this area was all a lot wetter and more fertile but that a few thousand years ago the climate of this area changed making it more arid now than it used to be. Either that or Moses was so delirious from the climb that he was seeing a mirage. All in all, it’s a pretty spectacular view from up there as the wind howls across the ridge. To the south we could see the Dead Sea.
Another interesting thing about the landscape up there on Mount Nebo is that it looks, well, for lack of a better word, really “Biblical”. I guess what I mean is that it looks like the terrain you’ve seen for years in any movie that involves a story from the Bible: dry, scrub brushy hillsides covered with random light tan boulders. It makes you feel like that at any moment Charlton Heston could jump out from behind one of those boulders. Or at the very least Mel Brooks.
From Mount Nebo, we headed south on the King’s Highway, crossing a vast and beautiful canyon called the Wadi Mujib. A river runs from the eastern Jordanian desert, through the Wadi Mujib and out to the Dead Sea. We crossed the river on the top of a huge dam there at the bottom of the massive canyon. Traveling across the Jordanian desert I had to keep reminding myself where I was because it looks remarkably like the desert of Baja California in Mexico, sans the tacos.
South of the Wadi Mujib, we stopped to see an ancient, 12th Century Crusader castle in the town of Karak. Again, on our departure, with the help of our trusty map, we made a few wrong turns and ended up in the middle of a rally protesting Israel’s bombing of Gaza (the bombing had started the day before). After a few zigzags we were back on the road south just as the sun was setting.
We still had a couple of hours of driving to go before we would make it to our destination for the night in southern Jordan and to help lighten the mood of the ride, I decided to give a Jordanian soldier who was hitchhiking a ride. He was a nice enough man who spoke a tiny bit of English and told us he grew up in the area and was heading home. Amy told me I needed to mention to you in this blog that he was also armed, with a holstered gun on his hip. Details, details. After dropping him off, I felt that there wasn’t enough excitement going on during the drive so I decided to give a ride to another man who appeared to pop out of nowhere along the dark road. He didn’t speak any English, so our conversation was limited to him telling us that he used to be in the Army. After dropping this second hitcher off, Amy informed me that I had met and exceeded my quota of Jordanian hitch hikers for the remainder of the trip.
Finally we arrived in the town of Wadi Musa (Valley of Moses) which is just outside the gates of Petra, one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. There’s even a pizza place right outside the gates called “Seven Wonder’s Pizza” just to prove it. Petra is a giant cluster of temples and tombs that were cut right out of the stone cliffs of the desert. They were carved by the Nabataeans, Arabs who controlled the frankincense trade routes of the region in pre-Roman times. They built these tombs, temples and their city in a hidden valley in the south Jordanian desert. You enter the site by walking down a very narrow, 50 foot wide slot canyon for about a mile or two and then all of a sudden it opens up to the front of a massive stone carved tomb called the Treasury. The carved facades of the temples and tombs are incredible and enormous. The number of people trying to sell you a ride on a camel is more impressive. We spent two full days wandering around Petra, climbing rock ridges and dodging touts. It is for sure a touristy area but definitely worth seeing.
From Petra we drove even further south through the desert to an area called Wadi Rum. This is the area that T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) helped fight the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire in the early part of the 20th Century. We shared a jeep tour of this desert area with a couple who was living in Cairo, Egypt. The woman worked for the Filipino consulate in Cairo working on abused domestic worker cases (sound familiar?) and her boyfriend was from Germany and just hanging out vacationing for the winter (sound even more familiar?). The desert landscape was striking. The desert was a mix of rock, scrub brush and big sand dunes, some tan, some red. Big rock arches would pop up every once in a while. Amy and I scurried barefoot up some of the rock formations and walked in the dunes as the cool sand worked its way between our toes. We’d spend most of the day out there before hitting the road again and heading south, our new friends from Cairo in tow.
We headed to Aqaba, in the southwest corner of Jordan where the desert meets the Red Sea. Somewhere around here would be the spot where Moses parted the waters in the old biblical story. We dipped our toes in the sea and bid our friends farewell, as they were catching a ferry back to Egypt. It was amazing to think that from where we stood, on the shores of the Red Sea, we could see four different countries: Egypt, Israel, Jordan and to our left, Saudi Arabia. Amy and I found a place to stay a few miles from the Saudi border; it was now New Year’s Eve.
That night, Amy and I would toast in the New Year with a glass of Arak, an eastern Mediterranean distilled liquor made from grapes and mixed with aniseed. It is served over ice with cold water and has a strong licorice flavor. I’m holding back my gag reflex just describing it to you, it’s utterly disgusting.
The next morning we brushed our teeth twice and headed up the Dead Sea highway, which parallels the Jordanian/Israeli border. There were soldiers and watch towers spread out along the way watching over the border which was a couple miles to the west of the highway. As we approached the Dead Sea we saw that its southern end was consumed by salt mining. The sea itself had been divided up into square sections and was being dried and harvested for its minerals. We finally reached the Dead Sea itself and drove along its eastern edge, our ears popping as we approached its minus 1,385 foot below sea level shore. The shoreline was all rocky with no sign of a beach. The sea is about 30 miles long and about 10 miles wide. Across the water you could see the Palestinian Territory of the West Bank. Since there were no cheap, budget or midrange accommodations, Amy and I were forced to stay at the Dead Sea Marriott, a 5 star, high end luxury resort. Oh well, the sacrifices one makes for travel. This place was pretty decadent with 3 pool areas, 5 restaurants, 4 bars and a spa, all right there on the shore of the Dead Sea. It was also quite pricy even by US standards.
The first thing we did there was head down to the waters of the Dead Sea. There were vats of Dead Sea mud set up on the water’s edge that had been farmed out of the sea. The mud was chock full of minerals that were supposedly good for your skin. The idea was to rub the mud all over your body, let it dry and then rinse it off in the sea. Amy went right for it and smeared up until she looked like Al Jolson. I wasn’t touching the stuff. We then worked our way into the water which was a little chilly. It’s recommended that you slowly back into the water, sitting down and going in butt first. I think the reason for this is to reduce the risk of tweaking yourself by diving into water this buoyant. And buoyant it was. You did not need to tread water at any point; you just laid there and bobbed. You could literally go into a sitting position in the water and your torso would be high enough out of the water that you could hold a book and read it. It was really cool. We just sat there, bobbing like corks on the sea. Needless to say, the water had a really strong salty taste to it, being that it was 8.6 times saltier than the ocean, putting it at almost 34% salinity.
From the Dead Sea we would travel a little ways north to an area called Bethany-Beyond-Jordan. It was the spot where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and is on the eastern bank of the Jordan River, which flows south into the Dead Sea. From this point, if we looked way up to the east, we could see Mount Nebo, where we started our trip from. Due to the shifting river and the massive amounts of water taken out for irrigation now, the baptism site is no longer at the river’s edge and the river itself is only about 25 feet across, dark and muddy. There was, however, some nice vegetation and birds along its banks. I dunked my pigfoot into the water hoping for a healing miracle to no avail and immediately abandoned my faith knowing that I would have to make a sacrifice to the pagan foot gods if I wanted results, but that’s another story.
The area around the baptism site is a military zone and there were plenty of Jordanian soldiers and lookout towers around, with the Israeli flag flying right on the other side of the river. There was also no shortage of tourists crowding down at the river’s edge, filling up used plastic water bottles with the murky, pesticide tainted slurry that was the Jordan River.
From there we headed north through the Jordan River Valley, passing vegetable stands and farmland. The fields were lush and green and the roadsides were lined with people selling the produce they’d grown a few yards away. Also lining the road were large canvas tents that served as the homes to the farm workers and their families. It had a very “Grapes of Wrath” feeling to it.
From the river valley, we headed up the steep winding road that leads us back towards Amman, ears popping all the way. We passed through Amman and headed into north western Jordan to an area called Jerash. The northern part of Jordan looks a lot like the terrain in Lebanon, very hilly and covered with scrub brush and trees. It was a lot cooler up there as well. Jerash is a well preserved Roman city that was excavated over the past 80 some odd years. We spent the day walking around the temples, plazas and theaters, some of which are over 1,800 years old and in very good preserved condition. There is even a renovated hippodrome where re-enactments of chariot races take place. A bit corny, but pretty cool to see giving you a bit of that “Ben Hur” feeling.
After Jerash, our time was running short, so off to the airport we went. We timed it to try and spend as little time in the airport as possible and so were cutting it close that morning. Things were going well until we were passing through the security check. In Jordan, women go through a different metal detector than men, so Amy got through quickly and was waiting on the other side while I stood in line with a bunch of other men. When I got up to the metal detector I was wearing a fleece sweater, thin polyester hiking pants and hiking shirt and was standing in my socks. I had no metal on me whatsoever. The metal detector, of course, went off and the guard gestured for me to step back. In the meantime, as is custom, 5 other men tried to get through the metal detector, all setting if off as well. As they, too, retreated to take off shoes and watches, I took off my fleece and tried again. No doing, the metal detector went off again. The guard, again, gestured for me to step back and the 5 men who had failed previously were back up trying again, and again they set the detector off. I said to the guard, “I have nothing else on me”, forgetting that he did not speak English. He just gestured me back again and I, out of frustration, stripped down to my boxers and socks then walked through the metal detector which, unbelievable, went off again. Everyone around the security point was now laughing, including me, when I realized I was wearing a pair of boxers that had Hawaiian hula girls on them and my dirty white gym socks. The guard laughed and just waved me through. Amy watched from the other side and handed me my clothes that had gone through the X-ray machine. I felt like Foghorn Leghorn after he gets run through the hay bailing machine and loses all of his feathers, then carries them off in a bundle. I quickly dressed and we made it to the gate just as they were boarding our plane. The funny part about it is that I don’t even have any metal in my foot anymore since it was all taken out in December. Must have been my fillings, right?

Christmas, Inc.

Christmas in Beirut was definitely interesting. Before I go any further, I should tell you that there are just as many Christian churches in Lebanon as there are Mosques. 60% of the population identifies itself with team Islam, falling under the sects of Sunni, Shia and Druze and about 35% to 40% identify with team Jesus, falling under the denominations of Maronite, Greek Orthodox and Catholic. The Catholic churches, however, resemble Greek Orthodox more than they do what we are used to seeing in the US. The rest of the population identifies itself with one of the other dozen or so official religions that are registered here in Lebanon.
While there was snow way off on the distant mountains, there was none here in Beirut for the holidays. And I say holidays, plural, because during the week or two around Christmas there are also several other holidays being celebrated here including Hijri (Islamic) New Year, Western Christmas, Ashoura (which commemorates the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson), New Years (western), Eastern Orthodox Christmas and Armenian Christmas. I felt compelled to celebrate each and every one of them and my liver hasn’t been the same since.
Starting a few weeks before Christmas, every store, restaurant and business packs on the Christmas decorations. Christmas has become a strange phenomenon, not just here, but around the world, I think. When I was in China for Christmas a few years ago, people went nuts there, too, with the decorations and piped in music. But somewhere along the way, things got lost in translation and Christmas really had no religious significance, it was just a reason to have a sale or more advertisement. Chinese salespeople would be dressed up like Santa in the stores as they tried to get you to buy cookware and “All I want for Christmas are my two front teeth” played over the public address system in maddening repetition. Beirut wasn’t too far off of this. People in traditional Islamic wardrobe were sporting Santa hats and buying musical Christmas trees. Men in full on Santa suits, minus the jolly belly, were standing side by side with men in rainbow wigged clown costumes, selling cotton candy on the road side. A nearby hotel had what appeared to be a manger scene in front of it, but when you finally came up to the front of it you realized that there was a Santa sitting on a rocking chair in the manger and instead of wise men, he was surrounded by lawn gnomes. Some of the lawn gnomes where posed in the act of pushing wheelbarrows, others were sitting on toad stools. I thought someone had dropped peyote in my eggnog and I was in the throes of a bad trip, but no, it was just Christmas. I guess we only have ourselves to blame. In the US we took Christmas and turned it into a mass consumerism binge fest and then exported it to the rest of the world.
Amy and I went out for dinner on Christmas Eve and had a traditional Lebanese Christmas dish. It was a bed of a risotto like rice covered with pieces of turkey, crumbled flatbread and a spinachy-leek type sauce. Then a quick drizzle of diced onions and vinegar. Mmm, Mmm, just like mom used to make. I have no idea what it was called. After that it was a night on the town in the Beirut neighborhood of Gemmayzeh, where most of Beirut’s hipsters hang out. Most of the bars were high end and expensive but we managed to find a cheap hole in the wall that was playing bad ‘80s music. As we walked through the streets that night, several people made a concerted effort to come up to us and wish us a “Merry Christmas” as if they had been waiting all year long to see a westerner to say that to.
On Christmas morning, I saw in one Beirut store window, a giant stuffed toy moose with a Santa hat on that had the words, “Santa Dude” written across it. I’m pretty sure that regardless of what their religious affiliation is, people in Lebanon have no idea what a moose is. But you can guarantee that it was made in China.

Beirut

First, some vitals on Beirut: It’s the capitol of Lebanon and has about 1.3 million people in it, so it’s about the size of Philadelphia or Phoenix. Beirut is on Lebanon’s west coast which puts it on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. The city is built on a point of land that sticks out into the sea and is surrounded by water on two sides. The city is mainly urban with hardly any green spaces or parks. The sea front in Beirut is nice with a road that runs right along the water, appropriately named The Corniche. The Corniche has a wide tiled sidewalk that is on top of a sea wall and overlooks the rocky shore below. It’s more like San Francisco’s water front than Los Angeles’ beaches. The road is lined with expensive hotels, restaurants, beach clubs and a dusty little amusement park called Luna Park. Amy and I took our lives into our own hands one afternoon and rode the old rickety Ferris wheel. Up top it was a great view if you could stop looking at the loose hanging wires and the twist ties that held mechanical parts together. As you travel inland from the coast, the terrain rises into a hilly landscape which eventually gives way to a mountain range with 6,000+ peaks. You can see these snow capped peaks from the city on a clear day.
Amy’s apartment is about a quarter mile from the water, though the view is blocked by larger buildings. The apartment is also about 200 yards from the campus of the American University of Beirut (AUB). The campus of AUB is beautiful and when you’re on it you could easily think you are at some lush New England college campus. It’s probably the only place in Beirut where there is grass and a park-like setting. Just for clarification, AUB is not affiliated with the American University in Washington, DC, nor is it affiliated with the American government in any way. It’s a private college that was started by an American missionary who was here in the late 1800s. It has an office in New York City but most of the faculty is Lebanese. There are a handful of Americans and Europeans that teach there as well. 50% of the students are Lebanese, 25% are from elsewhere in the Middle East and the rest are from other places in the world. There are a few American and Canadian students floating around in there, too. AUB is considered one of the best schools in the Middle East and its medical school and hospital are considered the top in the Middle East. The apartment Amy lives in is about 100 yards from the emergency room which may seem comforting in case I cut my finger on a can of hummus but the ongoing sound of ambulances coming and going wipes out any of the novelty of it. More on the apartment later.
Beirut used to be known as “the Paris of the Middle East”. Many Europeans would come here to vacation in the middle part of the 20th century. Then in 1975, as you may or may not know, Lebanon had a civil war that lasted 15 years until about 1990. During that time Israel invaded the southern part of Lebanon, Syria invaded the north and in 1983 a truck bomb blew up and killed a few hundred American soldiers that were stationed over here. Also, many of the University’s professors and their president were dragged out and assassinated. Meanwhile the war raged on and destroyed most of the buildings in downtown Beirut. My buddy Rob was stationed on a US Navy ship off of Beirut’s coast in the mid 80s and watched the sky light up every night as the shelling and bombing crushed the city. Ask Rob to tell you a story about why he was always running out of socks on that ship.
Since the end of the civil war, much construction and rebuilding has gone on and is still taking place. The greater downtown area has been completely rebuilt and new high rises are popping up every year. In the Beirut airport there’s a large photographic exhibit that juxtaposes photos of what the city looked like after the civil war compared with photos of what it looks like now. The comparison is shocking. I’m told that Beirutis don’t like to talk about the war and I don’t blame them. While the downtown area is all shiny and new, there are still buildings around Beirut with bullet holes in them. Predominantly in the skyline near downtown still stands the Holiday Inn, a 20 something story husk of a hotel that has 2 foot in diameter holes punched through its walls. So much for “Staying Smart”. Since the war, tourists and business has returned to Beirut. A lot of them are wealthy business people from the Gulf States that come to Lebanon in the summer to escape the heat by heading up into Beirut’s mountains. They also come here so they can vacation and drink booze which is prohibited in some areas of the Middle East.
While the reconstruction of the downtown area is remarkable, it also has received a lot of criticism about its design. The new buildings in the heart of downtown are now all high end, super expensive, fashion based stores for things like clothing, shoes and jewelry. There are no theaters or opera or any large venue meeting spaces, just high end consumerism and expensive restaurants. Also, this newly built commercial zone has the parliament building right in the middle of it, so, all the roads are closed to car traffic, which is nice if you’re a pedestrian, which I am, but there are tons of soldiers and guards all over the place and anytime parliament does anything, the whole of downtown gets shut down for the day. Obviously someone wasn’t thinking when they laid this one out. That being said, it is a nice open area that is a relief from the traffic-choked, narrow-one way streets of the rest of the city.
While there’s a lot of construction going on around town (it’s really noisy here) there is a lot of Beirut that looks like time stopped that afternoon back in 1975 when the war broke out. Many of the store fronts and apartment buildings are old and worn and in desperate need of a fix up.
Beirut is similar in many ways to a lot of cities in the US and Europe now. It is a modern, cosmopolitan city with more people wearing designer clothing and high heel shoes, than head scarves and robes. Like New York City, every neighborhood has pretty much what most US cities have: restaurants, grocery stores, pharmacies and video rental stores. There’s a big mall on the other side of town but for the most part all the shops in town are small businesses and deal in one specific thing, like the US used to have before the Supermarket and Wal-Mart’s came into being. For instance, when I walk to the Laundromat, I pass a shop that sells only cheese, another which sells only bread, another that sells only flowers and another that is a butcher. There is a grocery store in the neighborhood, but it’s like a local market in New York City, not a big, get everything you want type of store. You can get meat, vegetables, canned goods and cleaning supplies there but you can’t get aspirin or spray paint or toys. Beirut, sadly, also has the American fast food chains: KFC, McDonald’s and even Hardees’s. I hadn’t seen a Hardees’s in years. I think the last time was in West Virginia about 15 years ago and their burgers tasted like saw dust and coal. There are also some other chains here like TGI Fridays and Starbucks.
The cost of living is close to that in the US. A one bedroom apartment could run you $1,000 and a meal at a restaurant will run you about $20-$30. There is an organic food market that takes place every Saturday in downtown with loads of vegetables, honey and breads, all from the local area. There’s still a lot of farming that takes place right outside the city limits.
A really interesting thing about Beirut is that there is not really any petty crime here. The streets are, for the most part, safe, even for woman to walk alone and even at night. Oh, civil war could break out at any minute but you can rest easy knowing no ones gonna pinch the wallet out of your cold dead fingers.
Most of the streets in Beirut are narrow, one way streets. This, of course doesn’t mean that anybody’s going to go in one direction. You really have to look both ways because at any minute someone could be traveling the wrong way down a one way street. Another interesting thing is that there are a lot of really expensive cars in Beirut, like brand new Mercedes, Porches, BMWs and Jaguars. You would have to be in LA or NYC to see this many new, high end cars. Also, because traffic is so bad here, a lot of people have installed custom horns in their cars, including police sirens. You’ll hear a police siren going off nearby and look to see that it’s coming from a brand new Ford SUV with a businessman in it.
While there are restaurants that serve food from other parts of the world, like sushi or pasta, the majority of the restaurants serve what we usually think of as Middle Eastern food. A large variety of shish-kebabs are at most restaurants and there’s always hummus around. The grocery store has about 8 different types of fresh olives. I’ve been eating hummus and olives like a goat. One drawback about the restaurants here is that smoking is allowed everywhere, so many is the time you’re half way through your meal when the woman with the $500 purse at the next table lights up. Another popular smoking thing here is the nargileh, or hookah pipe. It’s not uncommon to see people sitting at sidewalk cafés puffing on a hookah. The tobacco they use is mixed with fruit and gives off an interestingly pleasant smell. I haven’t tried one yet for fear of waking up in Alice’s Wonderland.
More about the apartment now. Amy’s place is really nice, though it has some draw backs. It’s a good sized one bedroom with a full kitchen. It’s fully furnished and comes with internet and cable. The water is supposed to be filtered but my intestines ain’t buyin’ it. The bugs from India don’t want any more competition. I’m not taking any chances and drink bottled water. Amy has one of those big office bubbler tanks. There’s a little nasty back patio area that gets no use because there’s construction taking place right next to it and the workers like to stare. Amy gets stared at quite a bit in Beirut. Fortunately, I look like Klinger from MASH and fit in a little better. The apartment is on the ground floor of an office building so during the day there’s a lot of foot traffic from people going to and from work. Also, anytime anyone wants to get into the building’s security gate they ring Amy’s buzzer. Another huge draw back about the apartment is that she’s not supposed to have any guests and it’s against Lebanese law for men and woman to cohabitate out of wedlock. So I have to kind of sneak in and out. I think most of the maintenance guys and residents that live upstairs in the building probably think we’re married, but anytime anyone from the housing department comes by I’m either hiding in the bathroom or sneaking out the back door. It’s really exciting…for about a day.
A sad aspect of life in Beirut is that almost everyone has a house maid from Sri Lanka or the Philippines. These maids are nearly all woman and a lot of them are abused. Some of the abuses range from physical beatings to being locked in a room. There’s a case that was recently settled where the husband and wife who hired a maid to live with them and clean their apartment did not let the maid leave the apartment for over 8 years. When they would leave for work, they’d lock the maid inside. Also, they barely fed her and did not pay her for 8 years. Hmm, sounds like slavery to me. Lebanon does have labor laws but none of them apply to foreign workers even if they are here legally. The case was settled in court by having the hiring couple pay the maid what they owed her and that was it. No penalty, no jail time. It’s strange because only about 25% of Lebanese women work, and everyone lives in an apartment, not houses. Makes you wonder why they need a maid in the first place. Anytime you see a Lebanese mother with little kids out on the street they’re accompanied by a Sri Lankan or Pilipino maid. There are tons of agencies in Beirut that set up these arrangements. Amy has her own maid and cook now but they’re not from Sri Lanka, he’s actually a white guy from Alaska.

Rough Start

A dark cloud hangs over me as I begin my travels. It’s December 14, 2008 and Ma and I are driving from Ma’s house in the small hamlet of Watertown to the airport shuttle bus stop in the bustling metropolis of nearby Waterbury. This should be pretty routine since I’ve caught this shuttle bus in Waterbury, heading to JFK airport in New York City, at least a dozen times over the past 20 years. Ma and I pull up to the bus stop and wait; we’re about 15 minutes early. Once at JFK, I’ll be catching a quick 12 hour flight to Beirut, Lebanon with a couple hours layover in Milan, Italy. I’m heading to Beirut to spend the winter with my girlfriend, Amy, who’s working in Beirut. We’re both looking forward to a few months of fun, sun and civil unrest. But first, I need to focus on catching the airport shuttle bus. It’s now about 5 minutes past when the bus was supposed to leave and there’s been no sign of it. No big deal, it usually runs a few minutes late, so we wait. To pass the time, I start reminiscing about all the good times I’ve had at this bus stop over the years. When I was in high school I used to walk past this bus stop and watch all the old, drunk men lined up outside the OTB (off track betting) office, waiting to lose their money on the ponies or the puppies. Then there was the time, just last year, that Amy dropped me off here in the icy, single degree weather to catch a flight to India for the winter and I mistakenly got on a Peter Pan bus heading for Pittsburgh. Fortunately, I realized I was on the wrong bus by the end of the block. And, of course, who could forget the time that Ma, more than 20 years ago now, dropped me off at this very bus stop a few days after I had graduated college and was on my way, bags in hand, moving to Los Angeles. I remember my mom taking that opportunity to talk to me about staying away from drugs and dirty girls. Unfortunately, I had to tell her that she was about 8 years too late with the talk.
Now, 20 years later, here we sit, waiting on that same shuttle. Only this time, it’s about 20 minutes late and I start to worry. So I use Ma’s cell phone to give the company a call. The woman at the shuttle company informs me that the bus left about 20 minutes ago and is wondering where I was.
Wondering where I was? “What do you mean?” I asked, “I’m sitting here at the bus stop in front of the OTB, just like I’ve done for the past 20 years!”
“Oh,” she replied, “we don’t pick up from in front of the OTB anymore.”
“Since when?” I inquired, as if that mattered now.
“Since about 2 months ago.” She let me know.
“Perfect!” I exclaim, “I made my reservation 2 ½ months ago and it would have been nice to get a heads up! Where’s the bus now?!”
“It will be picking up and leaving Danbury in 25 minutes, can you make it there in time?” she asked.
“Tell them to keep an eye out for me.” I said as I dropped the phone. I now had 25 minutes to drive 37 miles to Danbury. “Sorry, Ma” I said as I kicked her to the passenger seat, “there’s only three guys who could make this drive in time and two of them are in prison.” And with that I hit the highway.
I’m pretty sure whatever hair my mother had in her head fell out that day as I made it to Danbury, literally, about 60 seconds before the bus pulled away. Ma and I said our goodbyes and off I went towards JFK.
For those of you who don’t know about it, I tweaked my back at work this past summer and had to spend part of this past fall doing doctor’s visits and physical therapy. I’m still fighting with Worker’s Comp over it, but that’ll be another blog. Anyway, for the past few months I’ve been using this lumbar pillow when I sit that saves my life every time I’ve got to sit for long periods of time, like being on a 12 hour flight. I’ve got that pillow with me on the airport shuttle ride to JFK and am looking forward to the many relaxing hours the pillow and I will be spending together over the next few months of traveling.
As we arrive at JFK, I realize that my airline will be the last one the driver drops off at. No worries though, I’ve got plenty of time. The problem, though, is that since I was the last one on the shuttle van, I’m the guy who’s stuck sitting in the seat by the van doors and has to get up and out for anyone to exit. After about 6 times of doing this, we finally get to my terminal and the guy sitting in the seat next to me tells me that he’s in a hurry and running late and asks if he can hop out quickly. No problem, I say and I get out and let the guy past. By this time the driver has tossed my backpack onto the dirty sidewalk like a sack of laundry and is looking for a tip for doing so. I slip him a couple bucks and off he goes. The van’s not more than 100 yards away when I realize that I left that lumbar pillow on the seat. I felt like I just lost a child. I drop to my knees and raise my hands and shout, “Aloi, aloi, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?!!” OK, maybe I just said, “shit” under my breath, but I was pissed just the same. The day is not going as smoothly as planned and it’s a long way from over. I grab my bag and head to the Alitalia Airlines counter.
After issuing me my boarding pass, the woman at the Alitalia counter informed me that my bags would only be checked to Milan, Italy and that in Milan, I would have to get my pack from baggage claim and recheck them in at the Middle Eastern Airlines counter, since they were a different carrier. This made absolutely no sense but there was not much else I could do but stew. I had had enough trouble with this flight reservation over the past couple of months that I thought it best not to say anything for fear I might snap like an autumn twig. I had made the reservation through Orbitz online about 2 months prior and about a month and a half later I received an email from Orbitz telling me that my flight from Milan to Beirut had been cancelled and that I needed to call them. I called and was put on hold while Orbitz called Alitalia, who then put Orbitz on hold and called Middle Eastern Airlines, who were too busy making people recheck in their luggage to answer the phone. I sat on hold for over an hour before giving up and hanging up. The next day I called Middle Eastern Airlines direct and was told that it was actually Orbitz who failed to confirm my ticket so the reservation expired and was cancelled. You can imagine the pleasure in my voice when I got back on the phone with Orbitz. After another hour’s wait on the phone with Orbitz, my ticket was confirmed and I vowed never to use them again. So now you’ve been warned too.
So now, with thoughts of how nice it was going to be to waste time at the Milan Airport baggage claim area, I wandered around JFK looking for a lumbar pillow to replace the poor little one I had lost, that was now comfortably tucked behind the beaded seat cover of the airport shuttle bus driver. JFK’s a big airport and they have stores that sell all sorts of crap that you don’t need in your home, let alone to have to carry on to a plane, but nowhere in sight was a lumbar pillow. I had to make a choice between buying and rolling up a $50 Hanna Montana sweatshirt, a $20 Spa towel or a $30 stuffed bear that said ‘I love NY’ on it. I opted for the towel and not because I’m cheap, I like the color, really.
Fortunately, we boarded our plane on time and headed out to the runway. We sat there for a while before the pilot came on to tell us that we had, no lie, “40-45 planes in front of us” and that it took about a minute or so for each plane to take off. You do the math. We sat there for about an hour before finally taking off. On the overnight flight across the Atlantic, I noticed something that also happened on my flight to India the year before. There is a huge wave of turbulence in the morning when the sun rises. Must be the changing air temperature. This time though, it wasn’t as bad as last year’s, just enough to make it so you can’t sleep and maybe start thinking about whether you’re supposed to inflate your vest inside or outside the cabin. Not that I was worried. My biggest fear in flying on Alitalia, Italy’s official air carrier, wasn’t that something mechanical would go wrong. It was that those Italians could go on strike at any minute and the pilots would walk off the job. Luckily, we made it to Milan without going to arbitration and I got my luggage re-checked in.
I had a few hours layover in Milan and sat watching the massive big screen TVs they have all over the terminal. They showed non-stop high fashion programming, with an endless line of models parading down the fashion runways of Europe. Not that I’m complaining, it was just surreal because every 15 minutes they would interrupt the programming with a news update that showed US president Bush getting that shoe thrown at him. There was no sound on any of the TVs so I had no idea what was going on or where it took place and just when I thought I’d get more footage or some sort of explanation, we’d jump right back to the models strutting their stuff on the catwalk. It would not be until about a month later in Beirut that I would meet an American journalist who lived in Baghdad and he would tell me that the reporter who threw the shoe at Bush was immediately dragged out and beaten, in his socks, of course.
Before I knew it, though, I was on my flight to see Amy. It had been about 3 and a half months since we had seen each other and I was anxious to finally get there. It was night as the plane landed and I could see nothing but the darkness over the sea that ran right along the western edge of the runway. I wondered what Amy’s apartment was like and how we’d get there from the airport as the plane taxied to the gate. I wondered where we would travel this winter and what we would see as I passed through customs and immigration. And then there was Amy, waiting for me on the other side of security! We made our way through the crowd of people and haggling taxi drivers and headed for the door. When we walked out of the airport together, it finally hit me that I wasn’t just coming to see her, I was in Beirut!