Day 8 Istanbul

Yeah, yeah, I'm back in the USA now, but I'm trying to catch up.

My second day in Istanbul I hung out with Al and David, who were getting ready to take the train to Ankara that night (Monday) for their own CIEE experience. We strolled over to the Sultanahmet mosque (the Blue Mosque, though I saw little that was discernibly blue about it), and went inside. It's impressive, but like most big mosques apparently, it's pretty much an empty building with carpet and a place for a mullah to speak from (the minbar). The gravity of the place is in its sanctity, and the faith of the people praying in it. Just like a church or synagogue, the building isn't the thing, the belief is, though certainly buildings like Sultanahmet can emphasize that piety.

We wandered over to the Ayasofya as well, the former Byzantine Hagia Sofia church converted by Mehmet II, the conqueror of Constantinople in 1453, to a mosque, but now used for neither faith's services (at least, as far as I could tell). Impressive, too, especially the combination of Christian and Muslim images and decorations inside. Like Sultanahmet, it too has a massive presence, but more marred by the hordes of tourists in this case I think.

After wandering about through some shops in one of the bazaar sections of Sultanahmet (the district, not the mosque), Al and David spend some time with a carpet dealer at Harem 47, which despite the name is definitely not a bordello. No, it's a small carpet shop, with nice carpets. At one point I was thinking Al and David would get into a bidding war for a Kurdish piece (of carpet, you dirty minded people!), but they both left with promises to return. The prices seemed ok, but what do I know about carpet? The one I wanted, a smallish all-silk piece with a zodiac pattern, started at well over two thousand dollars, so I demurred.

Unfortunately that afternoon I had to part company with Al and David, who had a ferry then a train to catch. That left me to catch dinner at a restaurant up near the Grand Bazaar, where the food was decent and plentiful but the atmosphere was loud, with the street, the tram, and the crowds all rolled into one.

Shots:

1. Sultanahmet interior.

2. Al and David, shortly before being drowned in the Bosporus for philosophizing without a license from the Sublime Porte.

3. Mihrab in the Ayasofya

4. Detail of some arch work in the Ayasofya

Day 7 Istanbul

Istanbul What day is it? Hmm, I think I got here on Day 7, Sunday the 15th. I arrived on Royal Jordanian, a flight that miraculously left on time, as most RJ flights seem to do. I say "miraculously" because the airport in Amman is, um, interesting. You can't get in to the check-in counter until a set time before your flight, usually an hour and a half or two hours at the most. Then you go through a preliminary baggage screening, go to the counter, get your boarding pass, go through immigration, and go upstairs to lounge about indolently, strolling through the Duty Free Shop looking at overpriced gee-gaws or gnawing on a Cinnabon. Eventually, they let you into the actual gate area, where you go through the final baggage screening and metal detectors, and all that stuff. A little cumbersome, but it works. What's really weird is that every boarding call is the last and final boarding call. These last and final boarding calls go on for an hour or more sometimes. It's as if they decided that passengers would not pay attention to anything unless there was some urgency to it. So you sit there listening to last and final boarding calls over and over and over. But, the planes leave on time, so they must know something. I arrived in Istanbul (apparently, the city's official name didn't get changed until 1930; before that it was called whatever you wanted I guess) to find Ataturk International Airport spotless, modern, and mostly empty. Immigration was easy; the entry fee of $20 was one third what Canadians had to pay--what did they do to piss them off here? Customs consisted of a guy waving me through saying "welcome to Turkey." Which is fine as I had nothing to declare--one of the benefits of being unable to buy much. The Hotel Dersaadet had a driver for me, as promised, and though nearly completely silent he did a fine job getting me to my hotel. It's in the Sultanahmet district, where the historical stuff is, like the Blue Mosque, Ayasofya, the Topkapi Palace, that sort of thing, along with a bunch of museums. I can definitely recommend the hotel; it's nice, pretty, authentically Ottoman, comfortable, and friendly. The AC works well too, which you will be grateful for, as the temperature in June is largely near 90 and super humid every day. Clouds, occasionally; rain, not that I saw. The views from the hotel roof top cafe are nice; you can see the mosque and the Sea of Marmara very well. An endless parade of container ships chugs up the Bosporus towards the Black Sea and back again, which is kind of interesting. Also interesting is the contrast between this place and Amman. In addition to the water, this is definitely much, much more Western, even if it is sort of an Eastern European version of Western. Its a secular state, so the call to prayer overlays the bustle and thump of nightclubs and cafes, and you see very few people in full head and face coverings. Oh, the cars are nicer and the roads better too, as you'd expect from a wealthier nation. Pictures: 1. Flag and minarets. You can see the balance of Turkey here--nation first, religion second. 2. Ayasofya, or how to recycle a big Byzantine church. 3. Sultanahmet Mosque. 4. A ship sailing from Byzantium.

Day 6 Jerusalem to Amman

Day Six Back to Amman

Arrgh, if there's a better way to get photos to display on blogspot, I certainly haven't figure it out. Oh well, you can probably puzzle out which is which.

In any event, Saturday saw us back to Amman. Friday was interesting; despite everyone sane saying don't be in the Old City when Friday noon prayers let out, there we were, near the Damascus Gate, wading through a veritable river of humanity. It was all totally peaceful, of course, if you can call all those people jostling about peaceful. As one local woman shouted out to us, "push and go!" That's what everyone else was doing, so when in Rome, or Jerusalem....

One interesting thing about that crowd though was what wasn't there: young men. Apparently, young (as in, under 35, or unmarried, or maybe it's under 35 and unmarried) men are not allowed to attend Friday prayers (or maybe it's all prayers) at Al Aqsa mosque near the Dome of the Rock. Something about the Intifadas starting after Friday prayers, and the desire to keep the level of rabble-rousing down. So the flood of people we saw was older and middle-aged men, and women.

Where were the young men? Well, that night in East Jerusalem it seemed they were--cruising. That's when the BMWs came out, and the groups of young men walking about, talking animatedly. While the family types were at home having hummus and lamb, the young bucks were out doing whatever young bucks do anywhere. It was also the Jewish shabbat, but hey, in East Jerusalem that didn't mean much. West Jerusalem might as well be on the other side of the moon.

Saturday morning we visited a Palestinian academic think-tank, and then headed for the border. Crossing back to Jordan was painless, and relatively quick. We had a brief respite, then a de-briefing session at the Regional Human Security Center, our CIEE host, and then supposedly a big fancy dinner that night. As I had a 3AM flight to Istanbul, however, I declined the dinner, as it didn't start until like 9PM, and I really needed sleep. I'm sure it was good though--at the upper levels, Jordanians definitely know how to eat. Hell, they know how to eat at all levels it seems.

I like Jordan, and the Jordanians. They're not a simple people, though. The relationship between the Hashemite monarchy, the bedouin, the Palestinians, Islam, the West, the other Arabs, and the Israelis is a complex mix and often things aren't what they seem to be. Jordan's single biggest attraction is its stability--it is an island of calm and predictability in a sea of chaos. That stability though isn't necessarily natural, or easy to maintain. There are fault lines particularly between Jordanians and Palestinians in Jordan, as well as between different Jordanian interests. During the wars with Israel, the security of Jordan was often determined by how well it and its military could balance between Israel and the confrontation states; two wars with Israel and one with the PLO left Jordan in decent shape, actually. The new challenges, however, can't really be so easily countered. Demographics threatens the traditional make up of the state in ways that no army or military aid package can defend against. The lack of water, and the lack of a sustainable economic plan (beyond lining the pockets of foreign investors), are also things that have no easy answers.

Pictures:
1. A nifty mosque somewhere south of Irbid in northern Jordan.
2. At the Bristol, even the housekeeping staff are artists.
3. A tractor dealer/fixer in a small town near Irbid.
4. The rooftops of Amman. In the beginning, God said, let there be satellite dishes.

Day 5 in Jerusalem

It's odd, trying to reconstruct stuff from a few days ago, but oh well. There simply was no time to do anything then. Now, as I sit in Istanbul overlooking the Bosporus, I'm hoping my recollections aren't too far off target.

Our second day in Jerusalem was a very full one. Though we had some time the first day to roam about, in general it was on day two that we really focused on the Old City. Jerusalem, Al Quds, Yerushalayim, whatever you want to call it, is not just a city, it's a time machine (this, I cribbed from one of our speakers, Daniel Rossing, a former Ministry of Religious Affairs official for the Israeli government). That is, there are not only different faiths and ethnicities and physical sections in the city, but different times too. The Greek Orthodox live in 6th century Byzantium. The ultra-Orthodox Jews live in 17th-century Poland. The Catholics seem rooted somewhere in the genteel 19th, and Muslims run the gamut from the time of Saladin to the era of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader in Lebanon.

We spent this day largely on a walking tour of some of the areas in the Old City where conflict has occurred, mostly between rival Christian groups. One of the oddities of Jerusalem is that often the most fervent defenders of their rights to certain sites and places are neither Muslims nor Jews, but Christians--and usually Eastern Christians. While you find a lot of Protestant pilgrims here, and a few Protestant churches (the Lutherans with their 19th century bell tower that deafen you at noon, for instance), generally the people here are Greek, Syrian, or Armenian Orthodox, with some Copts, Ethiopians, and of course Roman Catholics thrown in for good measure. While tensions between Jews and Muslims, particularly between ultra-Orthodox Jews and their neighbors, are not uncommon, actual clashes between various Christian sects are far more common it seems.

We visited the Muslim quarter, the Jewish quarter, the Christian areas, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, though naturally in three or four hours we couldn't do that much. The Armenian quarter, for instance, is a closed ghetto, and the ultra-Orthodox Jews who inhabit much of the Jewish section don't like people poking around too much either. But we saw a lot. We saw incredibly narrow streets, with millennia-old paving stones, flanked by shops (usually holes in the wall, literally) selling everything from kitsch to kitchenware.

In the Muslim areas, this is their Wal*Mart--it's where they buy food, clothing, hardware, whatever. The volume is loud, the press of people intense, and the smells, well, they're interesting, to say the least. Sweaty bodies, sewage, trash, food, spices, foam rubber, tobacco, incense--it's all here, all at once. It's overwhelming, but its very very alive.

People are generally friendly, the kids play soccer, and everyone dives out of the way of the green tractors that, with their narrow prows and rumbling carts, plow through the narrow streets hauling God knows what to God knows where. What separates the experience from other places though is that, every few feet, you see three or four types of clerics in different garb, a station of the Cross, and a reminder that, oh yeah, three major religions call this place sacred.

The Western Wall is the center of the Jewish quarter, really, and I've described some of that. There really aren't that many Jews in the Old City right now; the Christians have had a lot more time to stake out claims it seems. The center of

the Christian presence in the city is the Sepulcher, a battleground of rights and responsibilities where religious and ethnic identities are sorted out. With six sects--Greek, Armenian, Roman Catholic, Coptic, Syrian, and Ethiopian--sharing control of parts of the shrine, and with no one responsible for other parts because no one can agree on anything, it's pretty amazing. The shrine includes Golgotha, where Christ was crucified, the slab of the Last Unction, where His body was laid out, and the tomb from which He was resurrected. Or so Christians believe; none of the locations is necessarily right, or necessarily wrong. It's immaterial; people believe. The place is filled to overflowing with pilgrims, and stuffed to the gills with mosaics, chandeliers, icons, and gilding. It's a riot of sensation, with candles and incense and the press of bodies, but there is definitely a feel of something there--the faith is real, whether one believes it themselves or not.

One interesting thing we can learn from how all of this gets managed is that in the Middle East, ambiguity and vagueness are often necessary. Because everyone takes things so seriously, and no one can afford to compromise on vital issues, circumlocutions and evasions are needed to allow anything at all to get done. Sometimes this is accompanied by arbitrary division--the slab at the bottom of the Catholic stairs but above the Greek courtyard is Greek half the week, Catholic the other half--that makes things run but seems rather, well, arbitrary to us. Getting the various sects to get along is tough, and in many ways just as tough as getting Muslims and Jews to get along. There, of course, there is the added political dimension to worry about too.

More later.

Pictures:

1. Damascus Gate, on the north side of the Old City.
2. Outside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, this quaint bomb disposal unit--for "small bombs," our guide said dismissively.
3. A mound of spices in the Old City.
4. Golgotha, or what has become of it.
5. A "redeemed" house in the Muslim quarter, purchased by Israelis.

Day 4 Amman to Jerusalem

A whole hunk o'stuff today, as I can finally catch up a bit now that I'm in Istanbul. Yes, yes, it's lagging behind a bit but the CIEE seminars flog you like a dog. In a good way.

I'll have more reflection later but I wanted to get up some pictures. The  view from the van on our way from Amman was pretty sere and dry. As for the Allenby Crossing--the actual Allenby bridge, um, got blowed up real good it seems in 1967, so the new King Hussein Bridge is what you use to actually cross the Jordan. Which, by the way, is about three feet wide and an inch deep. As the esteemed commentator Dr. Hunt said, "they must have had to roll Jesus in it to baptize him." Indeed. Oh, and no pictures of that because it's all within a military controlled area, and really, you don't want to antagonize people who, on the Jordanian side, have trucks with heavy machineguns roaming about, and on the Israeli side--oops, I mean Palestinian side--have young IDF, police, and contract security people toting rifles and grenade launchers with youthful abandon. 

It's interesting to note that the Allenby crossing is not considered, by Jordan, an international border. After all, it links Jordan with the West Bank, which until 1967 was part of Jordan, essentially. Amman considers you to be going into Palestine, no matter what flag is flying there or who looks at your passport. The Israelis don't seem to care what you call it as long as you pay your 105 shekel exit fee when you leave.

Ok, pictures! From top to bottom (insha'allah):

1. A bedouin encampment, on the West Bank, from the Van. I didn't get a shot of it, but yes, you can see shipping containers used as housing--with satellite dishes.

2. Hebrew University: On Mt. Scopus, this was one of the enclaves after 1948 that the Israelis supplied with weekly convoys. Great views from up there.

3. The Wall: The (in)famous wall/fence the Israelis are construction around Palestinian settlements is ubiquitous on the West Bank. This one is in the area around Jerusalem.

4. View from Mt. Scopus

5. Cemetery on the Mount of Olives: I think; once you've seen one Mount, and attendant grave yard, you've...never mind. Anyhow, this impressive cemetery is chock full of people waiting for (mostly) the first coming--the Judgement is supposed to happen just across the way at the Temple Mount area so getting first in line is a good thing. Muslims and Christians follow a similar tradition, and they are represented as well, but the majority of the graves are Jewish. It's actually quite moving, a testament to a faith that would have people send their remains from all over the world to be interred here.

More later. 

Day 2 June 10

This is brief because I'm tired and it takes forever to upload images. On day two we hit the Jordan Investment Board, went to a Qualified Industrial Zone, and visited a garment factory. We also visited a bee research unit with a really neat director and some very interesting ideas. When will you hear about these things, and the dinner that night at the Israeli Ambassador's house? When I get back from Jerusalem, because apparently there's no Internet access from their and we have to leave our computers behind.....

Day 1 June 9 Part 2

The views from Wild Jordan are expansive, and offer vistas of the ancient Citadel overlooking the city (photo 1). You can also see the humongous Jordanian flag flying over the capital (photo 2).

After lunch, we headed to ACOR, the American Center for Oriental Research (yeah, the name is outdated but the facility is not). Founded in 1968, ACOR has been a home to visiting scholars and other interested people, particularly archaeologists; I stayed there with the infamous Gary Scudder and Rob Williams last year, and it was amazing. Barbara Potter and Chris Tuttle, the Americans who run the place, are fantastic, and Barbara gave us a great tour of the library and the archaeological work rooms they have there. A fine Nabatean bowl (photo 3) and a Byzantine oil lamp (photo 4) are examples of the sort of restoration work they do there, though their papyri from Petra are their crown jewels.

The day moved on to a great lecture by Dr. Yusuf Mansur, a Jordanian business and economics expert, political commentator, and columnist. In the evening, we had an amazing meal at a downtown Lebanese restaurant, outside, where we were stuffed to within inches of our lives.....

Day 1 June 9 part 1

Yesterday, Monday June 9, was the first full day of our CIEE seminar. Here I am standing on the terrace at Wild Jordan, a facility built with US aid money and which supports Jordanian natural conservation efforts. We had a lovely meal here, all organic and locally grown, in a beautiful setting overlooking the city. With us was the Public Affairs officer from the US Embassy, who was quite interesting and informative, as well as witty.

The day itself, however, began much earlier. After breakfast at the Bristol Hotel (a lovely place with great service), which features an array of pastries to make a French chef swoon, we headed to the Royal Council for Science and Technology (second photo). There, in an elegant meeting room with yet another spread of pastries and coffee, we heard from Dr. Mohammed Al-Momani, Director of the Regional Human Security Center, who discussed the general background of relations in the region. Dr. Momani is upbeat, charming, and persuasive, and very optimistic about possibilities for peace; he represents in some ways the newer generation in Jordan. The next speaker, Munther Haddadin, a former Minister of Water for the Jordanian government, and long-time expert on regional water issues, was a bit different. Erudite and dignified, Mr. Haddadin has been a negotiator at peace conferences with Israel and is somewhat older than Dr. Momani. His take was a bit more traditional, and somewhat more pessimistic, though he too saw room for hope. My favorite line from him was that in dealings concerning water, the "Israelis are tougher, but more generous, while the Syrians are sweeter, but stingy."

Continued....

Here's a view from a pedestrian overpass near my hotel (that's the Sheraton on the right down the road, with the pointy roof, which is not my hotel!)

The flight on Delta was not quite as good as the Royal Jordanian flight I took last year, though face it, 11-12 hours in a plane is fairly wretched no matter which airline you take. The food on Delta was definitely less appetizing, though again, for those of us in steerage when is the food ever good?

That aside, it was pretty amazing that not only was everything on time, my luggage arrived as well. Queen Aliyah Airport in Amman sometimes seems chaotic but generally things work pretty well. Better than some US airports I've been in, indeed. The CIEE folks, the hosts for our seminar, picked us up at the airport, a nice surprise as we had thought that only the lucky few coming in at the prescribed late afternoon early evening time would actually get that luxury. 

I didn't get a picture, but every time I pass the water park (the name escapes me) on the highway into the city I shake my head. Here's a place where most folks get their water delivered by water truck every few days or so, and they have a freakin' water park? I guess everyone likes a water slide. Probably more interesting is the sheer variety of produce and stuff people sell, from vegetables vended from roadside stands to people hawking flowers at intersections. All very polite and by no means disruptive, just interesting. As are the occasional enclosures with camels you can see from the highway. I have no idea what the camels are for, actually, but they do lend a sort of T.E. Lawrence vibe to things.

Begin at the beginning...

With luck, this will be a blog of my Middle Eastern trip this summer. Thanks to the good auspices of Champlain College, and the Faculty Internationalization Initiative, a bunch of us get to travel, and not just to Rock City! Erm, ok. Anyhow, I'll try and update this as I go. And no, that's not me. That's Beowulf. He is, no doubt, up to no good at the moment.