Three Months Back

I returned from the Middle East at the beginning of January. Immediately was faced with the attentions, needs, problems, triumphs and tragedies of friends and family. A lot happened within the first few weeks.
Subsequently I have wanted to reflect back on "Al Kharif" (the autumn) but each time I began I felt unsure about my distance from the experience.
With everything that has happened with my life and the lives of those I love, Al Kharif now feels indeed a part of the past. And as spring seems to have truly and finally come to New York, I can hope to articulate what I've been thinking.

I miss...
...the sense of camaraderie I felt from other women. In some ways I think that casual relationships between men and women reverse dynamics in the Gulf and the United States. In the States I can talk fairly easily to most men, while with women (with New York women in particular), there seems to be more of a watchful aspect. In Oman I felt a common bond with women, while relationships with men lacked the sense of ease. They arise from different causes--I think that the source of the tension is competition among New York women, and societal constraint on male-female interactions in Oman--but both detract from easy-going interaction. I do not mean to apply this across the board to all experiences, but it represents one of the clearest differences in day-to-day existence.

...wearing abaya and hijab. I loved the simplicity of morning preparation and planning, and then the resulting easy elegance. Although at first I was thrilled and over-whelmed to have such a choice of clothing every day, it wore off quickly.

...drinking chai, hearing the muezzin, seeing my friends from SIT and my host family. I met such amazing people in Oman, Yemen and Egypt.

Oh, I learned that I did not receive the Fulbright, unfortunately. I am trying to find a job in the Gulf for next fall, but in the meantime I have to find something to cover rent and food this summer. And whatever I find may end up requiring me to stay longer than I originally hoped...but regardless, I'll go back eventually.

Desert Log Part 4: The Return

We spent our last night in the desert near the edge of another cliff; an earthquake had left the rim looking like a row of collapsing apartment buildings, complete with "alleys" 60 feet deep. The proximity (25 km) to the Dahla Oasis afforded our first contacts with other life forms in 7 days: pigeons roosted in the giant cracks, a crow cawed, and a weird hooting coo awoke me at dawn. We reached the edge of the plateau the next morning; in the photo with me and Bob it is possible to see the greeen stain of the oasis creeping onto the desert's anemic palor. We inched our way down the winding descent from the oasis, finally arrivng at an apparently deseerted military checkpoint. Uncle Bob begain to drive past, when it suddenly erupted with 18 yearold soldiers, one of whom brandished a large rifle with a serrated dagger at the end of its barrel. Apparently our descent had been illegal. However, after perhaps half on hour of shouting over the radio, the ranking officer had to let us go. In the meantime Bob had chatted with the boys cum soldiers. We suspected that they would have wanted to keep us longer, if only for a distraction. But we continued on, through the picturesque fields of Dahla, stopping at one town to look at the old architecture, and a temple from the Roman period done in imitation of Old Kingdom styles. We decided to break up the 10 hour trip back to Cairo by returning to the same lodge at Bahariyya Oasis. Returning to Cairo through Giza was a shock. The appreciation for other signs of humanity that I had felt in Dahla quickly evaporated in the hordes of aggressive vehicles and crowds of people living on top of each other.
We finally arrived and faced the staggering task of removing the dust from every surface that we'd carted with us. Now, countless loads of laundry and dishes and numerous hosings and air blastings later, the material goods are clean. As are the humans, though the week of sun and dry air left my fingernails brittle and face chapped. Am going now with Myriam to have "halawa": honey-wax to remove leg hair.

Desert Log Part 3: Ain Amur

At Ain Amur
Papa Noelle brought more than just goodies on Christmas: he gave us a passable route in the direction of Ain Amur and no flat tires or sand traps. We followed the Darb Taweel to within 2 kilometers of Ain Amur when we were stopped by a gulley. Trying to find away around, a cliff and wide valley suddenly apeared over the crest of a hill--the edge of the Abu Tartur Plateau. Coming up behind me, Uncle Bob said that the tiny smudge of green in the distance were the shrubs and palms surrounding the spring at Ain Amur. However, there was no visible way for us to get there. The Darb Taweel led into the gulley, where we could see it opening below us into a boulder-strewn canyon and finally the valley depression: a difficult path even for camels. We decided to set up camp and investigate possibile descents from the plateau the next day. (Delicious Christmas dinner of course: pate, beef stew, plums in wine, and champagne.)
The first photo shows the view of Ain Amur visible from our camp. The next shows Myriam and Bob trying to scope out a way down in one of the other wadis. The third shows Aunt Myriam investigating one of these wadis. Having reached the conclusion that the site was not accessible from the plateau by car, we spent our evening walk looking for a good walking path, (which we did not find). The whole terrian was cracked: walking along, a crevice would suddenly open in front of you, invisible from two steps back. We decided the best way would be to follow the camels, so the next morning we embarked, armed with cameras,a bottle of water, and our trusty Haribo licorice. Following the ancient paths of goats, donkeys, camels, and people, we descended below the rim of the plateau. After almost two hours of picking our way along various paths, some of which ended in thin air as erosion had washed away large chunks of it, we arrived at the site. First we came the gulley worn by the spring, crowded with shrubs, reeds, and palms, ringed with the tracks of foxes, gazelle, and desert vipers. The wind in the reeds sounded odd after days of hearing it hit only rock or our tents.
As we got closer the flies became peskier. Bob explained that anywhere inhabited by humans attracts them, even after the humans are long gone. Myriam and Bob climbed a hill to take photos of the site from above; I examined a "robber pit" left behind by people digging for artifacts and graves. I thought that this particular pit must have beena disappointment, as it seemed they'd only unearthed a dead camel. But according to Bob some of the bones were human, and upon looking closer I recognized a scapula that definteily did not belong to a camel. It appears the tomb raiders were successful. (fifth photo)
At the site we explored the temple built in Roman times in the style of Ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom, complete with hieroglyphs and gods. (sixth photo) Our guidebook described an unidentified winged figure, the torso of a man, and a god. Inside the third and only intact chamber of the temple I found more human bones. Graffiti in English, Arabic and other languages had been carved on many of the stones. Photo 7 shows that left by British exploere and Egyptologist Edmonstone, the first European to see the site, he even left the year, 1819. The guidebook told of an inscription in Arabic in which someone had written that they had been traveling alone and on foot and were nearly dead by the time they reached the spring. Sort of the like the scene in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" when the insriptio inside the monster's cave reads "Aaarrrhhh". We also found bits of Roman glass, a bead, pottery of course, and sneaker prints coming into the site fromthe opposite direction. We followed them up an easier path back onto the plateau. However, trekking back to our camp ultimately took more time, as we repeatedly had to retrace our steps as wadis opened up in our path. We finally reached camp and spent another night on the edge of the cliff. The next morning, assessing our supplies of time, food and fuel, we decided to head for the descent from the plateau at Dahla Oasis.

Desert Log Part 2: Christmas

Christmas
After three fairly easy days of driving we hit “Dragon Country” on Christmas Eve. We had been making such good time that we had decided to try to reach an isolated site called “Ain Amur”; rather than head towards the Kharga Oasis, we would stay in the desert, and if possible travel on to Kharga after Ain Amur. The first photo shows one of the hundreds of patches of crystal that grew in “Dragon Country”; it was a singular place. The dragons decided they didn't want us to come any closer, and so after hours of winding through the labyrinth of low crumbling hills, sometimes easing the cars with painful slowness over sharp rocks and brittle hilltops, we had to eventually turn back. According to the GPS we ended up camping that night only 8km from where we had left our camp on the darb the night before. However, this time we were at the edge of a canyon, (visible in the second photo). The third and fourth photos show our Christmas Eve camp, complete with tiny battery-powered Christmas tree, bottles of Egyptian wine, and the moon that rose behind our camp. The next morning Uncle Bob and I woke up at dawn (I guess old Christmas habits die-hard, even in such atypical Christmas conditions). We took photos of the mist over the canyon; the night before had been dewy and the rocks glistened. The fourth photo demonstrates that Papa Noelle had visited. Luckily Aunt Myriam’s French tradition requires no chimneys, only shoes. And Uncle Bob’s favorite Christmas breakfast, Italian panetonne, available at our local grocery store outside Cairo. (Aunt Myriam had laughed when she bought it, explaining how much had changed from when they had first arrived in Egypt under socialism. Rice had to be hand-picked for rocks, flour sifted for grubs, if a shipment of canned tomatoes came in it was gone by sunset. Aunt Myriam’s cooking is superb, so I am sure she coped. But I was grateful that her expert hand had more ingredients with which to concoct our suppers.)

Desert Log Part 1

Returned yesterday from a nine day trip, seven nights of which were spent camping in Egypt’s western desert. I filled up my memory card with photos, so will present them and the “Desert Log” in four sections. Luckily, I was forced to erase a myriad of rock pictures as new sights demanded space on the card. So you’ll be spared my awe and wonder at the variations the deset rock: after days of staring at beige, beige, beige, you start to get really good at distinguishing rosy beige from golden beige from toasted beige. And you want to photograph it. But beige, of any shade, rarely shows up well in photos.

Going Out
In two four-by-fours Uncle Bob, Aunt Myriam and I drove from the outskirts of Cairo through the chaos of downtown Giza. The first photo shows our view as we crossed the Nile, approached and passed the pyramids.
We crossed the first few hours of desert and spent the night at a lodge at the Bahariyya Oasis. Uncle Bob and Aunt Myriam had brought Bob’s sister, my Aunt Terry to the same lodge; apparently in the five weeks since, the lodge had its grounds entirely redone to include an odd-looking fountain, flagstone walkways, etc. They commented on new or expanded tourist facilities in this and other oases we saw at the end of the trip. The Bahariyya Oasis is still fairly poor, though hopefully the increased money from tourism will benefit the community as a whole. The second photo shows a man and his son whom I asked for a photograph near our lodge. After I took their photo and boy asked me to take a photo of him, and then asked for money. (I told him, truthfully, that I didn’t have any.) As a whole, people in Egypt generally seemed more accustomed to tourists than people I met in Oman and Yemen. I had the sense that most people preferred that I not take photographs of them, (except those that wanted to be paid for it), while my experience in the Gulf had been indifference or excitement towards my camera.
We left the oasis and soon turned off the road into the sand—and immediately got stuck. After digging sand away and placing sand-plates in front of the tires, we were on our way. Uncle Bob and Aunt Myriam, seasoned desert drivers, were mortified to have gotten stuck so quickly and hoped that no one would pass. (Someone did.) But we soon made up for it, as the terrain our first two days consisted of hard flat sand, a “sand sheet” on which we could drive 80km an hour. Though we did get stuck twice more: once we had to replace the sandplates about seven times, inching the car forwards until the sand finally became firm enough to support it.
The third photo was taken when we stopped for lunch on the first day. I don’t know any of the minerals over which we rolled, but at that moment the sand held patches of extremely thin, brittle rock. The photo shows this rock, and my henna, which sadly disappeared quickly in the extreme dryness and sun.
We stopped to make camp every day at 3pm in order to have enough light to set up two tents and prepare dinner and a fire. And 3pm on our first day found us among buttes and football-sized rocks. The fourth photo shows our first desert sunset, and the fifth our second night’s camp. After a delicious dinner a la Myriam, we went to bed every night around 8:30, or the amount of time that our fire, lit at sunset, could keep us warm before the wind drove us into our tents. Temperatures at night approached freezing, and the wind blew almost constantly.
We woke every morning soon after sunrise, usually listening to the BBC’s world news on the little transistor radio over breakfast. After breaking camp sometimes we’d “shower”. Ok, I’ll admit; Aunt Myriam showered every day, Uncle Bob and I every other day. Showers were actually lovely though; taking a bottle of warm water, a cloth and fresh clothes, and finding a private dune or bluff. Being completely naked in a vast empty space, in the sun and standing on the sand, no sound but the wind and no sight but the sky, the sun, and the desert. Still, despite it’s charms, showering was time-consuming and tricky, (hard to keep the soap from getting sandy), and so I kept my showers to every other day.
The sixth photo shows our descent from the sand sheet plateau on the third day. I had been driving, but Aunt Myriam took over, as our car carried six jerry cans of fuel on the roof and an uneasy tap on the break pedal would have caused the car to roll. So I acted as photographer.
We spent our third night camped on a “darb” or an ancient trade route. Although I sometimes had trouble distinguishing the camel and donkey paths of the darb from erosion ruts, this, the Darb Taweel ("long darb") was a clear stretch of pathways littered with cairns, (piles of rocks, as in the seventh picture), pottery shards, and camel bones. The Darb Taweel was first used at the time of Egypt’s Old Kingdom, before camels were introduced, (they came around 0 AD). The eighth picture shows part of the skeleton of one these later traversers of the darb. The skeleton included the skull, something that they had not found intact before. We also found bits of blown glass, probably from Roman times. Also bits of pottery with glaze, pieces of handles, as well as the cylindrical tops of amphorae. A hand-smithed iron hook of unidentifiable use, maybe to hold a pot over a fire. And artifacts from later periods, such as an ancient can of fuel with Arabic script. After three days of seeing nothing but sand, rocks, the very rare stick and even rarer bug, these bits of humanity seemed true treasures. This was one of the most interesting aspects of being in the desert; for the first time in my life I welcomed the marks of humans upon nature rather than resented them. The cairns and traces of the Darb became our only guide across treacherous terrain, and the bits of remnants from another time were not only interesting in themselves, but a connection to humanity. I had never experienced such complete isolation. Walking away from camp to take a shower or to stretch my legs I would quickly be out of earshot of the others, and if I went too far in hilly country it was easy to become disoriented. A new feeling, exciting.

Qat Culture

Once again, a quick entry (which like others of its kind will perhaps end up otherwise)--I should be trying to get some work done for the Fulbright or else sleeping, as tomorrow will head into the desert with Uncle Bob and Aunt Myriam.
And apparently I will be driving--wish me luck. We are supposed to be back on December 28th I think, but if i haven't been back on the blog to loads pictures by then, blame it on my driving. We'le probably be somewhere in Sudan by then, on our way to Darfur, insha'allah. Or we would if I had anything to say about it.
No, don't worry. I have to get back in time to see my parents and brother and go skiing in Canada. :)
Wanted to post photos of qat though, while the blisters are still fresh in my mouth.
Photo 1: This was taken outside of Sana'a when I went to the villages of Shibam, Thula and Kawkaban (from the entry of me with the falcon). Qat is cultivated everywhere, a problem because it is difficult to export. Not just because it is illegal in some places, but has to be really fresh. Yemen's second largest crop is grapes, which is like exporting water. Anyway, for better or for worse, qat is grown everywhere.
Photo 2: My last night in Sana'a I had qat again. Having it the first night was awesome, not just the experience but to understand a key part of Sana'a. But it had let blisters in my mouth and so had declined when offered again. But on the last night asked one of the guys at the YCMES to take me to buy some. These guys are in one of the qat merchants' stalls in the old city. We got bags for 400 Yemeni Rial, not bad. nd the qat turned out to be quite good: juicy stems, soft leaves, very little that had to be thrown away.
Photo 3: My first time chewing i couldn't manage to chew much--but here you can see I worked up a fairly good-sized wad. But I still can't sit with it for hours like some people. And most Yemeni guys, (and foreginers who have been in Yemen for a bit), look like they have baseballs in their cheeks. The first time I saw someone chewing qat i thought that they had cancer. It is kind of funny; usually people would be self -conscious, or at least elsewhere having a cheek bulging inches away from one's face would draw attention. But here it is completely normal.
Photo 4: This is qat in the little bag it is sold in. And the hands of my friend, a helper at the Merkez, and my hands with henna. The henna was done for me by a young woman in whose home i was invited to lunch. I had met her sister a few days earlier at the human rights group HOOD, and when another friend found out that I might not get in henna done in time for Eid, (celebrating the end of Hajj and Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac/Ishmael), she brought me to this house. She would not accept any money for it.
You can also see in the photo the bottle of Fifa, an intensely sweet apple soda that tastes delicious with qat. You usually drink water or something sweet with qat, because it helps you swallow more of the juice.
Merry Christmas and Happy Eid to everyone!

Last Day in Yemen

Really sad to be leaving tomorrow morning. Though of course excited about Cairo, seeing Uncle Bob and Aunt Myriam, and desert camping, it feels like I am ripping out a relationship I had started to form with the country. Or at least with Sana'a, with people at the organizations with whom I spoke, and the wonderful people at the YCMES (Yemen College of Middle Eastern Studies, where I have been staying).
And it seems that I just had to say goodbye to so many wonderful people in Oman. Am not ready to do it again, especially when I have only just met them.
Today...
like yesterday I began my day at HOOD in order to meet Samira, a volunteer there. She took me to the offices of The Yemen Times, the first English language newspaper in Yemen. Samira is wonderful; she had taken off time from work to be able to take me to Women Without Chains yesterday and Yemen Times today--she had even gone to the Yemen Times office yesterday to set up an appointment, (email contact had not been working). The Yemen Times is the organization listed as the official partner in my research, at least on the Fulbright application. Samira and I met with the Editor in Chief, Nadia Saqqaf. Nadia suggested we got to the organization "Meda" (in Arabic) or CDF (Civic Democratic Initiatives Support Foundation). They seem to be quite effective, with 17,000 volunteers. They manage to work with the government rather than against them, or at least the government is more open to cooperation with them.
Afterwards Samira took me to the home of her friend Ehad, whom I had met at HOOD the first day. Samira had asked if I would have henna done for Eid al-Adha (which starts on Wednesday, and is the reason why my trip to Yemen had to be so quick--I have to get to Cairo tomorrow, because traveling during Eid would be nuts). I had told her that I might try to have it done, either in Sana'a or Cairo, she told me that she had a friend who knew how to do henna. It turned out to be Ehad's older sister, Abeer. Her name means "perfume"...Samira means midnight...Ehad means brook or stream. I am always asked what Annelle means, and sometimes I try to tell the story of where it came from. But the punchline of that story is that as doctors my parents couldn't manage to use effective birth control. Although unlike the Bible the Quran says nothing against birth control, it is still not really material for a story. Oh well. Sometimes they call me "Amal" or hope.
Before henna they insisted on feeding me. It was so wonderful to get to see the inside of a Sanani home. Of course we sat in the majlis, sitting room, and ate from shared dishes of rice, potatoes and vegetables, soup with meat, and bread. Then Abeer did gorgeous henna for me. She refused to let me pay her, saying that when I come back, if she does it again, then I can pay her. But that this first time is establishing our relationship.
So many times I have said "Insha'allah, fi al mstakbal, ana s'aud ile Yemen. Ithe s'andi al minha." (Hopefully, in the future, I will return to Yemen. If I will have the scholarship.) If I don't get it, I'll find another way to come back.
The photos: I wanted to walk around old Sana'a at sunset to get the shots I missed yesterday, but unfortunately was too busy trying to get in touch with the director of the American Institute of Yemeni Studies, who would need to authorize my research. So went after sunset. The first shows the typical dress of women here, with the lady in full naqab (face cover). Of course everyone wears clothes, often wonderful clothes, underneath the baltu (abaya), as are visible behind here. The street was crazy, shoppers everywhere, hawkers crouched on the sidewalk with alarm clocks, clothing, shoes, sometimes more touristy things, but even scarves and such are worn by Yemenis as well as purchased by the foreigners.
In the next picture, I was trying to show the little boy selling peanuts and nuts, but the men holding hands passed at the same moment; a good thing, as it shows another big part of the culture. Far more than Oman, Yemeni men interact very closely, touch, hold hands, kiss. And women, when greeting a friend, rather than giving the kiss on each cheek as in Oman, kiss one cheek, press cheeks together, and kiss the cheek again. I really like that I was able to find this out; it feels more genuine than the air kiss on each.
The final photo is from the courtyard at the Merkez (YCMES); the man on the right with the jambia guards my building at night, and kindly lets me in when I get home late. The man next to him later shared qat with me, I don't know the man in front. Bradley sits to his right, an American student, and Philip, a new intern from Germany completes the tea-drinking ensemble.
Don't want to leave. Yemen is really the coolest place I think i've ever been.
Insha'allah, fi al mustakbal, ana s'aud hena.