"Winging it" in the Middle East: three countries, 24 hours, one meal, 4 hours of sleep

I wouldn't recommend this.

But I wouldn't completely discourage it either.

It makes for quite the adventure with some interesting encounters with some unscrupulous characters as well as many decent folks who remind you that humanity is universal, and it does exist. Really the only downside to our absence of preparation on details like oh, you know, visas, was spending a little extra cash here and there.

Also, we went during the last week of Ramadan, which was the most unique and wonderful time I think to go. Although we did as the Muslim Egyptians did and "fasted" during the day more out of necessity than respect because restaurants were closed for the fasting, the festive atmosphere of Ramadan manifested best by the bustling streets at night until 3 in the morning and the holiday cheer of blinking Ramadan lights was well worth surviving daily off of peanuts, apple soda and cookies until the nightly break fast.

I'm trying to think of the best way to describe my week-long frolicking around Cairo, Alexandria, and Petra. I can bore you with daily itineraries, but I think I'll just describe each city as I remember them and tell a few anecdotes, lessons learned, and pictures of course (!) from our daily romps discovering each city. I'll also include a few tips and suggestions if ever you find yourself in these cities in the future.

First, however, I must recount for you the tale of our entry into Egypt...

Finally, Ulpan was over! We'd taken our final Hebrew exams, our bags were packed, the sandwiches for the long ride ahead were prepared, and we arrived bright-eyed to the central bus station ready to buy bus tickets down to Eilat where we would cross the border.

Here was our first obstacle: there were apparently no tickets left for the 2:00 pm bus, and the next one would not leave until 5:00 pm. Total traveling time would be approximately 11 hours. We had to get on the 2:00 pm bus because we were already paying for the hostel that night. Of all the obstacles, I never expected a shortage of bus tickets, and I never expected an obstacle to hit us so soon.

Lesson: Don't ever take no for an answer. Don't be afraid to be persistent and ask lots of people lots of questions. Like the Israelis say, there's never a "can't" only a "don't want to".

We did end up getting on that 2:00 pm bus; we just had to wait by the terminal and wait patiently.

So, as we were driving along, out of curiosity, I flipped open my trusty Lonely Planet guide book and read up on how to obtain visas to Egypt. The book said that visas could be obtained in Eilat (good), but only at the Egyptian consulate (okay...), and the Egyptian consulate was only open from Monday-Thursday from 9:00am-12:00pm (shit.). Here I was driving to Eilat at 5:30pm on a Thursday.

I turned to my friend and told her, "I'm sleeping in Cairo tonight if it means I have to sneak across the border in the trunk of a car." (I hope my mom isn't reading this.)

We got to Eilat at around 6:00pm and proceeded to the Israeli-Egyptian border where we planned on futilely staring the guards down until they just let us on through. Instead, we got lucky! We met a "Mr. Salaam" through a "Mr. Shimon Levy" who was lurking around the border. After a few calls in Hebrew and Arabic, we shuffled through the Israeli border into Egypt with freshly stamped Egyptian visas in our passports and a little less cash in our pockets.

Lessons learned: like famous Professor Randy Pausch said, obstacles "give us a chance to show how badly we want something". Though this is particular example is most probably not what he had in mind, I think it still fits. In the end, we took a risk with a little extra cash and a little underhand dealing, but we figured it out, and we were bouncing our way across the Sinai into Cairo.

NOTE: there is a time difference of one hour backwards from Israel to Cairo.


CAIRO
The loudest and most crowded and most congested and hectic city I've ever experienced.

Literally, people were spilling out into the streets because the sidewalks were too crowded.

Walking around downtown Cairo at night was quite the work-out. It's like a giant obstacle course as one is constantly dodging popcorn carts, pushing through the crowds walking the opposite way, maneuvering around street sellers and rogue children, breathing in car fumes and shisha smoke, being deafened by the incessant honking and marketing of wares, barely avoiding getting hit by cars or motorcycles zooming by, being momentarily blinded by a mass of bubbles blown into the air, stepping over puddles of mysterious, dark, smelly liquid.

Like any other city, there was a wide spectrum of characters we met of the Cairene population. Most of the people (men) in Cairo were very helpful and curious, although some were too overtly aggressive. But once you respond to their "welcome!"s or continue a conversation that was intended to end after receiving directions, everyone wants to stop and have coffee with you.

One facet of Cairo I will never forget is trying to cross a six-lane street where no one will stop and wait for you; and once you cross, there's no turning back even if you have to lose a leg.

We visited the great souk Khan el-Khalili, got some marriage proposals, trekked up the pyramids, explored the Egyptian museum, strolled along the Nile, and smoked shisha by Al-Azhar.

TIPS: Stay in the Lialy Hostel-good deal, great location, and wonderful host: Moustafa. Don't take a Nile River dinner boat cruise-it was trashy and touristy in the worst sense, and the food was awful. Don't miss out on dinner and the Turkish coffee at Abou Shakra. 5 Egyptian pounds is usually sufficient to take you almost anywhere around Cairo even if it seems very far away. That's about a dollar.














ALEXANDRIA

I really love this city. It's like Cairo-light. Alexandria is really a jewel. It's known by name and by history but not really as a tourist destination. It's charming and beautiful and by the Mediterranean. I couldn't ask for a more relaxing destination.

Our nights were characterized by perching on the harbor walls overlooking the bay for hours and talking to locals, late-night $2 dinners of "fool" and fried eggs with crunchy falafels at Mohamed Ahmed, haggling alongside the nightly Ramadan crowds in downtown Alexandria, listening to readings of the Qur'an blasting on loudspeakers while sipping sweet tea, and Arabic coffee and shisha in crowded street cafes in narrow alleys until 3am.

We were only supposed to stay in Alexandria for a night, but our plans to head south to Luxor via a sleeping train were altered by the crowds heading down for Eid al-Fitr. But I'm glad we got to stay and relax another day in beloved Alex.

TIPS: The Union Hotel has a great location but never has change. And credit cards are rarely accepted by most places around Egypt, so cash is a must. A late bite at Mohamed Ahmed around midnight is also a must. Pompey's Pillar is not really worth seeing or paying to see-at all. Get a free tour of the Alexandria Library at the front desk.









PETRA
Egypt and Jordan, though both Muslim countries close to each other, have totally different societies and Arabic accents. I was surprised by how patriarchal Jordanian society is. It's very much more "Islamic" in tradition than Egypt.

For instance, on the van ride to Petra from the border, I was sitting alone on a two seater, and I had to switch with another man for a single seater in the back seat so two men could sit in my two seater as women and men who aren't familiar are not supposed to sit with each other. Then, when I was asking my friend something from the back seat, I had to raise my voice slightly and the man sitting next to me shushed me because it's improper for women to raise their voices especially in the presence of so many men.

Most of me just thought, well, when in Rome, do as the Romans do; but later it made me upset that although this may be culture, it doesn't make it okay. But truly, as T pointed out to me, there is no right or wrong no matter which cultural perspective one sees through. And one could say Jordanian soceity is not "modern" enough, but we surely can't equate modernity with Westernization.

Petra itself was beautiful and unbelievable. Just check out the pictures!

TIPS: Although a cab ride from the Israeli-Jordan border to Petra of 60 Jordanian dinars sounds like a lot, it may very well be worth it. Start your day in Petra early to avoid the midday crowds. Take up an offer of tea by the Bedouin jewelry sellers. Befriend the young donkey ride sales-boys; their proficiency in sweet-talking in several languages will impress you. Make sure to have at least 5 dinars with you when leaving the border back into Israel as you will have to pay an exit fee.












It was really a wonderful trip. I think it was the least convenient traveling I've ever experienced, but it was also the most surprising and fun way to explore these countries in the Middle East. And now, I'm glad to be back.

And I'm off!

FINALLY!

Tomorrow, I have my final exam in Ulpan, and so tonight is going to be a long night of studying and packing. Neither of which I have started and it's already 10 pm. But it's okay!

Because I'm off to the land of the pharaohs!

I'll be gone for about a week before classes begin.


I'll try to find some random internet cafes while I'm there and keep you updated.

yeeeees!!!

Being "the other" and understanding the other "other"

edit: My computer froze last night (per usual) as I was writing this post:

What a strange day.

I'm so tired right now, but if I don't write this out tonight, I'll regret it come tomorrow morning.

So much has happened since the last time I've written...where do I even begin to begin?

For starters, I've just posted an article from Reuters about tonight's "attack" in Jerusalem-I'm trying to figure out why they've put quotes around the word, and I guess it's because no terrorist group was behind the act, and no civilians or victims were killed (yet). Only one casualty, and it was the driver of the vehicle.

The police claim it was indeed an act of terrorism, and I believe this is because terrorism is defined as an act of desperation to incite fear amongst civilians. I was driving back from an Ulpan graduation party at my teacher's house, and we were downtown right next to the Old City when this happened. All of a sudden we heard police and ambulance sirens closing in on the city, and we saw people running towards the scene. There were several different accounts of what had just happened; when we asked the people on the street, they said there were gunshots, while the radio announcer said it was another tractor/bulldozer incident by the Damascus Gate.

I was taken aback by how casually Israelis seemed to react to this incident. One Israeli I met simply said, "Welcome to Israel" and when I asked my Israeli friend if he'd heard what happened, he just sighed and said that things like this were a fact of life in Israel. And that was it. The "attack" hasn't been mentioned again since.

Last night, I went to a concert put on by an MTV-Fulbright scholar who brought together Palestinian and Israeli musicians along with a Palestinian and Israeli youth music group Heart of Jerusalem to perform at the Jerusalem YMCA. The first artists were from the group White Flag; the group is made up of 3 Palestinians from Gaza and 3 Israelis. Because sometimes (like last night) half the group from Gaza can't get through the checkpoints on time or ever, the group's self-proclaimed motto is, "the show must go on". They sang in both Hebrew and Arabic.

The hip-hop group G-Town that my internship researcher is focusing on also performed last night. They were good live, although I think they felt a little awkward at first because the crowd was quiet and seated-really not your typical hip-hop concert with a loud, excited crowd, arm waving, and head bobbing.

The crowd was mixed with mostly older parents there to watch their children perform in the youth group, younger Israeli groupie types of the band, the Sulhita project, and the G-Town posse dressed in western hip-hop gear with printed NY and LA wide-brimmed hats, baggy jeans, stylish Kanye hoodies and kicks.

After the concert, the other intern, the researcher and I went to go meet the members of G-Town, and I felt like such a groupie waiting for the group after the show! We hung out and talked with two of the members of G-Town in a nearby playground until late into the night.

It was a really interesting experience to hear first-hand a Palestinian's experience in Jerusalem. The members of the group live in the Shuafat Refugee Camp, which is actually just north of French Hill.

One of the members told us that he is studying film and television in a school in a nearby settlement. I asked him if that meant that most of his classmates were Israeli Jews, and he immediately responded that he didn't have a problem with Israelis or Jews, but he definitely affirmed that he did not like Israeli settlers. He told us how in class the Israelis never spoke with the Palestinians even though the classes are very small. He said that he doesn't even get acknowledged so much with a greeting or a smile.

I found out that there are separate schools for Jewish students and Palestinians students although there are a few schools like Hand-in-Hand that have both Israeli and Palestinian students and teach in both Hebrew and Arabic. Unfortunately, from the get-go, there is no intermixing. The children are segregated by the education system, and it seems that the approach to a peaceful coexistence is set up to fail.

Even in local Jerusalem parks, both Israeli Jews and Palestinian parents bring their children to play although the parents never talk to each other and the kids don't play with each other; they just share the same space.

This is when I realized that most of the people here cohabitate without coexisting.
There is only a feeble coexistence because in each own struggle to affirm the right to live, each must ignore "the other"'s right to live. The system is understood by many as a zero-sum game, and unfortunately someone has to lose.

We talked about the checkpoints and how tedious and humiliating they can be. Then he told us a story from his childhood when he was stuck with his family in the car at a checkpoint for several hours. When they finally got through, someone shot at the car, and the car with his whole family flipped over. They were all in the hospital for days. He doesn't know why the soldiers shot at his car. The bizarre thing is, he told us that until the age of fifteen, he had never met an Israeli who was not an IDF soldier with a gun. For most of his childhood, he confessed that he was afraid of Israelis, and this fear generates resentment, and that leads to hate.

It's interesting that from both sides, there are mutual constructs of "the other" that start from childhood. While Israeli Jewish children, especially those who grew up during the second intifada, imagine Palestinians as terrorists, Palestinian children imagine Israelis as intimidating soldiers with guns.

Both imagine the other as a violent oppressor.

Then, in another interesting turn of events, I went to the settlement of Efrat tonight to my Ulpan teacher's house with the rest of my Ulpan class to celebrate the end of summer Ulpan. I was in the Muslim quarter all afternoon buying Turkish delight and trying Knafeh while trying to find a way into al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock (unsuccessful).

I ended up walking to the central bus station with two friends, when I was stopped by a plainclothes policeman just between the Damascus gate and the Jaffa gate. He only stopped me. He aggressively told me to show him my passport. I was skeptical at first as to his identity as a policeman, but a nearby police vehicle with another policeman nodding along convinced me.

Obviously I don't carry such an important document with me everywhere, so I told him that I didn't have my passport in English. He started getting angry and told me that I was a tourist so therefore I must have a passport. I was flustered and so angry, but I managed to tell him in Hebrew that I was a student at the Hebrew University. As soon as he heard the Hebrew, he broke out into a smile and let me go as my friends watched. I was so humiliated again that I was the only one stopped because I was clearly not Jewish. I was so angry by his blatant discrimination. It made me so upset, and I couldn't understand how Palestinians could deal with this treatment on a daily basis. I thought, fuck this place. I would never send my children here.

The bus ride to Efrat was interesting. I saw the separation barrier up close, and the bus was built like a tank with small bulletproof windows to shield against snipers. I also noticed that the walls were not continuous, and a friend explained that this was so that if a driver is shot at while on the highway, he/she could stop behind the walled sections as protection from the sniper. What a life, huh?

Then, on the way back from dinner, the "attack" happened. And it made me re-evaluate my reaction earlier about discrimination. While nothing justifies rude treatment, I realize that here, discrimination equals survival. It certainly doesn't justify discrimination, but it is understandable.

How can they distinguish between the terrorist and the non-terrorist?

They have to do these random checks as humiliating and rude as they may seem to the person being checked. The checkpoints too are horrible, but an Israeli friend of mine who worked at a checkpoint in Gaza told me how they found bombs daily. How could they not have these tedious checkpoints when innocent people's lives were at stake?

I talked to my roommate after I got home, and I was pretty shaken up. I could still hear and see the sirens for a while outside my window. She told me that she had no sympathy for terrorists. She said that attacks on civilians were not justified by anything. If it were up to those individuals, they probably would change the system if they could.













I agree that most people would not condone maltreatment of others without just cause; however, the problem is, is defending against terrorism by a few radical individuals just cause for humiliation and discrimination against the whole group of people?

September 22, 2008

Jerusalem Driver Wounds 19 In "Attack": Police

By REUTERS

Filed at 5:43 p.m. ET

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A car slammed into a crowd in central Jerusalem late on Monday, injuring 19 people, nearly all of them Israeli soldiers, in what police described as a "terrorist" attack.

An Israeli soldier and then a policeman fired at the Arab driver, killing him, a police spokesman said.

The driver was still lying in the road an hour after being shot.

The incident came just three hours after Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was handed the daunting task of forming a new government and revived memories of two previous attacks by Palestinians in vehicles in the city in the past few months.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said a number of soldiers had been standing on a pavement and were struck by the car as it careered into them -- deliberately in the view of witnesses.

Jerusalem police chief Aharon Franco said almost all the injured were soldiers. Two were seriously hurt, medics said.

The black car, its windows shattered, halted when it slammed into a Roman Catholic religious building opposite the walls of Jerusalem's Old City on a road that marks the dividing line between Arab East Jerusalem and the Jewish west.

Two of 19 people struck by the car were seriously injured, a spokesman for the Magen David Adom ambulance service said of the incident at Kikar Tzahal -- Israel Defence Forces Square.

"A man in a vehicle struck a number of people in Kikar Tzahal," police spokesman Rosenfeld said. "We can confirm it was a terror attack. The man was shot and killed."

The attack bore similarities to two previous incidents in Jerusalem this summer when Palestinians driving construction vehicles attacked Israelis. In July, a digger driver killed three people and wounded dozens, while more than a dozen people were wounded in a similar incident three weeks later.

(Editing by Tim Pearce)

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-israel-palestinians-attack.html

View from the top

If you know me well enough, you knew from my last post that I was going to be back at the Muslim quarter of the Old City the very next day. This time though, a friend and I walked to it from the dorms. It was a pretty long walk, but Jerusalem is cooling down a bit, and so even though the sun was still beating down ferociously from above, there was also an occasional cool breeze to mollify the heat.

I bought myself one of the three things I vowed to buy in the Middle East. I bought a 20 shekel Azan alarm clock!!

When I was in Morocco, I loved waking up, yes even at five in the morning, to the muezzin's call to prayer resonating from all corners of the city. After going back to the states, I realized that hearing the call to prayer was something that I really loved and really missed. I read somewhere later on that in all the brick-a-brack type stores in any Middle Eastern souk, one can find alarm clocks that wake you up with the call to prayer-I knew I would have to get AT LEAST one. I'll probably end up buying up a collection before I return home.

And there, in the souk of the Old City, I found several! There were Azan clocks that rang five times a day, and multi-colored Azan clocks, small ones, big ones, and all wonderful. I bought one that only rings once since I figure I won't be home enough to enjoy the other four.

(You can see my new Azan clock as the crowning photo of this blog. By the way, do you like the new layout?)

After some intense roaming around, gobbling down sticky honeyed Arabic desserts, drinking pomegranate juice, and haggling for random unnecessary purchases, we took a breather by the entrance to Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock. We weren't allowed in because it's disrespectful to enter after a certain time especially during Ramadan, so we watched as huge crowds filed in. I have yet to visit the mosque and the dome, but I'd never found the entrance before-I'll get to them some day.


































Also, today as I was taking my jog, I realized why I put myself through this painful run almost every day. To be honest, I really dislike running-I would much rather be taking a nap. But as I gazed out at the view overlooking Jerusalem, I realized this view reminded me everyday how lucky I am to be here. As much as I complain about things around here, I would not rather be anywhere else right now in my life.

And I'm sorry to be cliche, but it also made me realize just how unique Jerusalem is. On the one hand, it is unfortunate that Jerusalem is still a divided city; half the city is festooned in colorful blinking Ramadan lights and is less "modern", and the other half is dominated by architectural giants and a lighted menorah. There are some Jewish Israelis who have never ventured into the Muslim quarter of the Old City or even to East Jerusalem, I'm sure it's the same vice versa, although more Palestinians/ Arab Israelis probably go to West Jerusalem for jobs than Israeli Jews go to East Jerusalem.

The longer I'm here, the more I feel the subtle and sometimes not so subtle tensions between Jews and Muslims. This city is full of unspoken rules and muffled discrimination. I'm starting to understand that both sides have valid points, both sides are marred by fundamentalism, both sides are misunderstood, both sides are just trying to exist, and ultimately, both sides are fighting for peace.

On the other hand, above the clamor of the city and the politics and the religion, the view from the top shows a tentative coexistence if only because of proximity of sacred sites, but it is a coexistence nonetheless.


(picture from www. jerusalemshots.com)

Damascus Gate

How appropriate from yesterday's post!

I finally made it to the Arab Quarter in the Old City today.

It's actually incredibly close to the University, and if you'll remember one of my earlier posts, I talked about taking a walk and ending up in an Arab neighborhood. If we had walked maybe 10 minutes further that day instead of turning around, we would have found ourselves right to the entrance of the Damascus Gate to the Old City.

I was only there for two hours today, but it is already my favorite place in Jerusalem.
Nargeelah pipes and Arabic music and sweets and almond drinks galore!!!

Also, since it's Ramadan, there are beautiful colored lights strung everywhere :)

Enjoy these pictures!!