EGYPT FOR RAMDAN'S WEDDING SEPTEMBER 8, 20230 TO OCTOBER 30, 2020

2020-10-08 FAYOUM, EGYPT We lean, then bang hard thirty degrees to the right as the dune grabs the left wheels of the car and wrenches us up off the flat. It has been 4 hours since Ramdan wrapped us in Egyptian welcome at Cairo Airport Arrivals, one hour after we finally left the sprawling lights of Cairo behind us. We are in the desert, off-road, deep into the tunnel of our headlights through night. Then we tilt, level. And stop. Below is sand, above, only stars. The dark in between is all around us. A headscarf, dark face, white smile, lead us across the sand, through a small door. The sand floor and reed walls are covered with rag rugs. The bed is narrow, but big enough to carry fatigue. 2020-10-09 FAYOUM TO MARSA MATROUH We wake in Egypt. Our hut is high above the desert on the edge of a worn escarpment. Behind us is a wall of rock. In front there is sky, then a drop straight down to sand and rocks, pebbles from this height. Towards the sun is a lake, fresh water, and largest in Egypt, trivialized by distance. The air is cool, not yet wrenched from the night by the rising sun. We are in Egypt for Ramdan's three-day ‘wedding party' in two weeks. Until then we spend most of the time in the desert before we turn east and south to his village on the Nile. Ramdan has arranged it all with his best friend, Abdul. “Egyptian price. You not worry anything, car, hotel, food, nothing. You don't need any money.” The ‘Egyptian price' is a fraction of what we would pay, even at our ‘bottom of the food chain' travel style. There are a dozen other huts and cabins here, of reeds, like ours, or stone, or adobe, and holding onto this ledge. Our neighbors are friendly refugees from the noise and light of Cairo. Some are camping, and invite us to share breakfast. Our driver and Ramdan are calling from across the sand, so we thank our would be hosts and join two international families in the shade over low tables, pillows and rugs. The husbands are Egyptian, the wives European, and Bangladeshi, the kids, just kids, precocious, and fluent in unaccented English. We haven't seen any face masks since Cairo airport, and there are none here. Corona comes up, then, as usual “What has happened to your country?” We have no answer. The talk turns to the Nile. We talk up Ramdan’s felucca trips then pull out our first surprise gift for our friend. “Here, these will help.” And drop 250 business cards that match the 4x6 foot banner he knows we have for him. The grin is as wide as the stretch of arms he wraps around us. Then we pull out the banner and matching tee shirt. Abdu is a genius on the road. We fly north and west. By nightfall we have travelled hundreds of kilometers and break the long drive in Marsa Matrouh, Egypt's ‘riviera’, miles of beach and condos along the Mediterranean. My memory of Matrouh from our first pass through in 2011 doesn't include any of this. I remember dust, and grilled fish, a small shop where I replaced my dust-destroyed sedate black camera for a cheap tarty one in lurid pink. There's not much here in this 2020 Matrouh for us desert-seekers, but we thank the hot shower profusely, and the many-colored waters of the bay are beautiful. At night, Abdu takes us to visit a friend---he and Ramdan know, or are ‘cousin' to, everyone in Egypt. Friend’s Waterfall Park, actually has one, falling over an ambitious mural, and a cage with ostriches and gazelles. ‘Nuff said. 2020-10-10 MARSA MATROUH TO SIWA We've been laughing for two days. Old friends, Abdul and Ramdan are a comic duo. Abdul is a Bedouin, desert man, from Bahariyah (“two palm trees and one goat", says Ramdam.) Ramdan is a Nubian from the Nile (“one crocodile, some water” is Abdul's dismissal) and they laugh, slap palms, and hug. And us, when Box Number Two of business cards arrives. Not much gets between Egyptians and a good time. Not even hours of driving across this uninspired landscape. This part of Egypt is not pretty. The coast road is too far from the Mediterranean to catch any of that blue. The landscape is bleached grey by the sun, and flat. We drive for hours, but don’t seem to move. The view is the same. Inside, Ramdan reminds Abdu that even just two palm trees would be welcome relief, and we drink water. We turn southwest towards the oasis of Siwa and the Great Sand Sea, into the Egypt and desert of imagination and memory. Its dark when we bump over baby dunes into Hassan's camp outside of Siwa. He has a spring, so water, and dates, comfortable adobe houses that will thwart tomorrow’s sun. Hassan welcomes us with tea. He is a warm, smiling, articulate host. We are ‘home' at once. Out beyond the date palms, he builds a fire We lounge on cushions spread on adobe coerced into a continuous ring-divan circling the fire. It doesn't rival the stars, but holds off a bit of the dark. Around us is silence. 2020-10-11 SIWA OASIS Not everything that goes ‘Bump' is in the night…. At 6:12 am. I step over the last thin black hose that carries water from the well way behind me at Hassan's camp to the last row of young date palms, and step into the Great Sand Sea. It rolls in waves of dunes for hundreds of miles south to the next great oasis and west, a great tsunami sweeping across the artificial line separating Egypt from Libya, and onward. We will sail on it and around it in our Toyota 4by4s for the next 10 days. We will sleep some nights under its stars. I walk now, up a gentle slope, into the true desert. The light is soft, the air cool. The sun is still below the horizon, firing the sky red then orange, then yellow. Then claiming the sky, white hot, photons scattering the cool. Sunrise and sunset don’t linger in in the desert. Dawn erupts. Dusk plunges. In between there is heat and light, and strong shadows. At noon, in the glare, the thermometer races upwards, nibbling at, then leaving that upstart, 100, behind. The noon sun is voracious. Even then, there is always a breeze, and in the shade at noon we are comfortable. And now, just after dawn, the air is perfect. I return to camp, strip and climb over the wall to sink into Hassan's spring. It’s just right, my private Goldilock’s Zone. We are the only visitors here, among the few in Egypt. Unrest and Corona have stripped Egypt from travel itineraries. Hassan's camp suffers, but Hassan is a realistic optimist. We have learned his mantra: ‘today is today, tomorrow is tomorrow'. Today is for harvesting dates. His palms are young, the dates hanging low to the ground. Boys shake them onto canvas, then full hands pour them into rough baskets. Some make it to our breakfast table, but don’t last long. Box Number Three of Captain Ramdan business cards is dessert. By late afternoon we are surfing the sand waves of the Great Sand Sea. Abdu and our 4x4 Toyota surfboard are fearless, and airborne. We crest the dunes, then stop, then plunge, thirty degrees, forty five, sixty, “oh sh*t", down, down, down. “How is underwear?” says Abdu, wrenching the car sideways, then up another wall of sand to stop, teeter, then drop. He leaves us at the top of the highest dune yet, drives down ahead. Elfie follows down the slope. She's a tiny drop, way below. I start down. Then I fall down the dune and land on my head. 2020-10-12 SIWA OASIS Elfie says she heard the loud thud even from way down at the bottom of the dune. My forehead is sandpapered, and a bit oozy. My left arm, shoulder, and hip twinge a bit, but I am fine. One of my rites of passage in the dunes is to scope out just the right slope, lie down, wrap my arms and roll down until the dune flattens and I bump to a stop. Yesterday's ugly duckling swan dive will have to count. Abdu, Ramdan, and Khalid, our cook, set up camp last night in the dunes, then a fire, and dinner. The desert is silent and cool. The mats and sleeping bags are enough to keep us warm. The endless stars hypnotize me to sleep. The sun doesn't just rise over the desert. It claims it. Even if it has to obey the laws of the universe and dance to the harmony of the spheres, here it reigns supreme, its power distilled in every grain of sand. It wills us awake . Siwa is the most isolated of Egypt's 5 oases, 800 flat and dusty kilometers west of Cairo. That distance did not stop Alexander the Great from crossing the desert 2300 years ago to listen to an oracle confirm that yes, he was the son of the god Zeus. That temple still stands, even the tubes that carried the booming ‘voice of the oracle' from the hidden priest to the willing, hopeful ears of the man who conquered the known world of his time, and still needed reassurance. The heart of Siwa is the great hill of Shali, pile upon pile of nested, folded, collapsed adobe houses. It has deteriorated since our trips here in 2011 and 2015, and we can't climb over the rubble for the view over the oasis. Down on the flat, the town looks much the same. There may be a few more trucks but the streets still belong to the donkey carts, motorcycles, and three wheeled putt-putters. Fully covered women, heaps of black, ride in the backs of the putt-putts, or on the backs of donkeys. Their young daughters wear backpacks and sneakers, but not for long in this deeply conservative town. We find our friend Fahmi's garden, but it is locked up and neighbors don’t know where he is. We're sorry to miss him. We have been in contact since we ate in his garden 9 years ago. Siwa is an oasis: water, palms, people. Note: to Egyptians if there are no people, it isn't an oasis, but something else, usually a ‘spring’. Siwa has a lot of water, most ‘sweet’, some salt. At Salt Lake the sun drives the water away and leaves vast plains of pure salt. I taste it. Siwa Safari Paradise Hotel is both ‘very Siwa’ and very much a desert paradise, adobe draped with bougainevillea . We are the only guests to wander its cool courtyards and gardens. Box Number 4 of business cards hasn't dulled Ramdan’s reaction. 2020-10-13 SIWA BACK TO FAYOUM AND TUNIS The great diagonal route from Siwa southeast across the dunes to Abdu's home in the next oasis is semi-closed to traffic. The 28 checkpoints and the miasma of Egyptian bureaucracy defeat even Abdu’s fount of optimism. Bahariya oasis and Abdu's camp are now very, very far, three times as far. We will have to go the long way, first back east, then south, and break the trip in Fayoum, near where we started a few days ago. Thats 800 kilometers away through flat, pebbly nothingness. We did the dune route in 2011 so know we are missing a repeat of one of the planet's great adventures. But we have Ramdan, Abdu and Khalid and laugh the heat- flattened, unresponsive landscape into irrelevance. Cook Khalid, is tiny and looks 14 (OK, maybe 17), and is shy and quiet. At first. He turns out to be 24, and neither. He is always smiling, and knows exactly when we need a cup of tea after we land at camp or wake up in the morning, pouring it from two feet above the small glass so it foams, as it should. We have it tonight before, after, and with spaghetti when we break those 800 kilometers in the garden of Sarah's traditional house in the Fayoum town of Tunis. Sarah is German, and addicted to rural Egypt. She grows her own food, and rents two rooms in the house. Old friend Abdu brings guests, a win-win all around. Our room has a traditional domed ceiling with scattered holes for ventilation. At night stars peek in. Once again, Abdu and Ramdan have unpacked an Egypt that makes this, our fifth stay, new and wondrous. 2020-10-14 FAYOUM TO BAHARIYAH OASIS We visit an ancestor. It's our son's birthday. There is no internet --- hasn’t been for many days-- but we piggy back on Ramdan’s hotspot to croak ‘Happy Birthday' up into the Internet and down to Ethiopia. Sarah's house is on the edge of Tunis, not the one in Tunisia, but this one, here in Egypt, deep in the Fayoum. Tunisians are potters, magicians of clay. Their workshops string along the narrow street of the village. Abdu has a friend --- of course --- and friend has a workshop. We watch his young apprentices practice making wide-mouthed jars/vases/pitchers, dragging lumps of clay upwards and outwards into graceful, solid shapes. The clay, gift of the Nile, and delivered an alluvial brown, is transformed by hands, fire and glazes. The small hand painted tiles are tempting, might even still keep us under our 7kilo limit on baggage, but we are in ‘divest mode', simplifying things. The tiles stay in Tunis. We have tea, watch the boys do their magic, then leave Tunis for the desert. The Fayoum is the bottom of the long-gone Tethys Sea. Ancestors of Moby Dick, and their huge cousins, swam here. Earliest known ancestors of monkeys, apes --- and us --- may have watched from the trees along the shore. That was 33 million years ago, but their bones remain, huge lengths of spine, with ribs and fearsome teeth, true sea creatures, front limbs already fins, no longer useful for walking. Our ancestor, Aegyptoplthecus (‘Egyptian Ape), is a tiny face, not even a nibble for the teeth of those whale cousins, but a face nevertheless, with the wide eye sockets of our branch of the tree of life. They all lived here when this was wet and lush, one the apex of life in the sea, the other a delicate start of something new in the trees. Descendants of the tiny have almost destroyed all the descendants of the mighty. We visit in the sand and dry wind. And wonder. An almost invisible lifeless chunk of DNA has brought much of human life to a standstill. What comes next? We continue south through epic dunes, cliffs, plateaus, mesas, monoliths, geology sculpted by wind, sun, and the soft, insistent, kiss of abrading sand. The landscape is time-less and time-full. It's dark when we pull into Abdu’s camp, home for the next three nights before our expedition into the White Desert. 2020-10-15 AND 2020-10-16 ABDU’S CAMP IN BAHARIYAH OASIS Abdu’s camp, aka El Haez Lodge Wellness Retreat, is 40 kilometers from Bahariya, the heart of the oasis, isolated and totally quiet. Our rooms are large and high, thick walled against the sun, so cool. The sky is so clear, town lights so far away, that an astronomer friend of Abdul's has a small observatory here and brings sky-folk to gaze. Orion stares back. We laze, off the road, and on the terrace. In the shade, the 100 plus temperature is comfortable. The air is so sucked of moisture that even here in the shade laundry snaps dry in a few hours. Inside, fresh dates shine reddish, then slide smoothely over our tongues, sexy alone, or with fresh cream cheese, or Khalid's tea…or both. It takes work to get them from palm to tongue. The harvest is men's work. The lucky men shake them from the low palms. The others are aerialists, suspended against the blue sky. We watch an expert climb the trunk, stop, brace his feet against the trunk, hold on with one hand and saw off the date plumes with the other. The women sort the fallen dates, by feel as much as sight, some for market, some for storage, some for fodder. We see some doing it by twilight, sitting in a circle, chatting, their fingers fast. They wave, nod, smile. Every date we eat has been touched by such hands. The days slide smoothely in the quiet, blue sky above, yellow sand below, green date palms between, then tea, another of Khalid's meals, more tea. And always… laughs. And the last box of 250 name cards. We have more surprises for Ramdan to come. Abdul has a plan. We're on the flight path for migrating pigeons headed for Europe. Some get only as far as Abdul’s ice chest, headed for stew tomorrow night in the White Desert. 2020-10-17 BAHARIYA TO WHITE DESERT 6000 cigarettes! We are off-off-off road and in two 4x4s for insurance, heading south from the camp and towards the White Desert. There are tire tracks in the yellow sand and crackled, parched surface and not much else. Abdul whoops, speeds up, slides to a stop, jumps out, bends down and up, waving a pink box. “Cigarettes!” Ramdan and Khalid, puffers all, add their whoops, and high 5. Ten packs might get the three of them through a few days. The ciggies are Libyan smokes, probably dropped by smugglers, illegal in Egypt --- and not as good as the Egyptian Marlboros and L&Ms the guys prefer --- but the price is right, and the story is good. We drive on. Abdul is a Desert Cowboy, spinning off track on a whim. But he spots another spot of pink straight ahead and stays on course, stops, corrals it, and hops back in. By the third carton Abdu doesn’t bother to stop, just slows down, opens the door, leans out, one hand on the wheel, and scoops it up and in. Four and five follow. LIke ET following the trail of Reese’s Pieces, we're hooked, sucked along the trail. Then, there is a pile, then a bigger one. This deserves a full stop, and two hands. We all get out, fill our arms, stuff the car with our contraband swag. The last trove is a heap spilling out of a burst plastic bag and bringing our total to 60 cartons, 6000 cigarettes, 5900 illegal Libyans, and 100 legal (“not so good”) in a different package, Egyptian, and inevitably, draped with the letters CLEOPATRA, and the expected images. We guess that the 6,000 started out tied to the top of a 4x4 and bounced off, unnoticed. Abdul is sympathetic. Our find will be a big loss to the smugglers. “Smugglers here don't do it to get rich. They do it to get by". There are no check points out here. The smugglers know their stuff. So does Abdul. Our back up vehicle will be with us while we are in the White Desert, then take our loot back to Abdul’s camp. Cleo, and only Cleo, may come with us. That will save us having to explain 5900 contraband Libyan cigarettes to some bored check point guy in the Back of Nowhere. We have been here before, twice, in the White Desert, but Abdul finds a route new to us. It’s no misnomer, or exaggeration, this whiteness. It's total, chalky, laid down at the bottom of the ancient sea, now sculpted by wind, whipped, frothed, into monoliths, towers, ‘Hen and Egg', ‘The Camel', ‘Rabbit ‘, ‘The Valley of Tables’, all searing white. They rear from a flat, rocky, more solid, less imaginative ex-seabed dappled with white fossil shells, and black fossil seaweed. I found a fossil shark's tooth here on our first trip, a small thing now on a string in Florida. Abdul picks a campsite amidst a fantasy of white shapes, at the base of a narrow monolith scores of meters tall. It grabs the colors of the late afternoon sooner than the others, but soon they, too, turn soft cream then yellow, richer as the sun sinks, then suddenly orange, then deeper colors silhouetted against brighter ones in the sky. We eat Khalid's pigeon stew by firelight, roll into our sleeping bags. Around us the light of stars and the sliver moon have bleached the desert’s shapes. We sleep amidst ghosts. 2020-10-18 WHITE DESERT The tire is flat. No problem. We have everything we need to fix it. The jack? Oops. Forgot to stow it. Sh*t. Not funny anywhere. In the desert less so. It’s hot. There is no shade. Where is a camel, desert back-up of choice, when you need one? The other Toyota rolls in, lacking a bit of camel charm, but sporting a jack. We don’t complain. Our second campsite in the White Desert is popular. There are tracks all around. Some we recognize. The tiny paw prints of the big-eared desert foxes are easy. The complex braided designs in continuous loopy sine waves are a mystery until we spot a tiny dung beetle scurry out of our way, all those legs frantic. There are bigger paw tracks. We haven't seen any dogs in the desert or anywhere where there are no people. “Wolf", says Abdul. The fire holds us close. We spread around it on the mattresses. Ramdan throws a light blanket over me…. I wake up. It's pitch black. My nose is cold. I'm flat on my back, and warm. And a camel is sitting on me. 2020-10-19 WHITE DESERT TO DAHKLA OASIS Well, not a whole camel, just some weight, and a whiff. Not that ‘days in the desert special pong' (that's probably me) but that fresh from Ahmed's Star of the Oasis Walk Through Scrub and Fluff (One Hump or Two, I've Got A Deal for You) Weekend Special, With Desert Rose Rinse. My ‘camel’ is a goodly bunch of what used to be camel outside, shaved, and woven into a heavy, heavy, warm blanket pinning me to my mat and the sand. I'm too comfortable to mind. And it doesn’t eat much. Orion is straight up. I've never had the imagination to flatten the cosmos and make those fanciful star pictures. My mind goes all 3-dimensional, exhilarated, then numbed, by the size of it all and those distances. I'll give the imaginative ancestors Orion, though. Him I recognize.. And, the Milky Way. And right now it feels like me and my camel are the only things in it. Well, us and the wolf. Morphius takes care of him. Morning is brilliant. The ghosts of the White Desert grow substantial, then solid, then white, then stark against the blue sky. Abdul has promised us ‘sand bread'. Yesterday we gathered the dry contorted branches of a desert shrub that burns very hot. This morning he heaps it and lights it while we drink Khalid's tea. Abdul makes a dough, then flattens and pounds it --- to drive out the air --- into a large round. The shrub is hot ash. He clears it away, digs a flat hole in the hot sand, spreads the dough, then covers it with more hot sand. Fifteen minutes later he brushes off the sand (it doesn’t stick), slices pie wedges and sits back to watch. It's delicious. We leave the White Desert for the next oasis, Dahkla. Abdul has a stop planned. ”He has 3 wives and 34 children” . I think all 38 of them welcome us to sit with them in their courtyard. The patriarch is a handsome man with a flamboyant mustache and panâche to spare. His profile belongs on coins. Abdul gets corrected “34?” “Only 21. The rest are my grandchildren. I don’t remember all their names.” They climb all over him anyway. Two run up and down the courtyard pushing a toy made from a tree branch and 2 lopsided wheels, one a tuna can, the other a bigger plastic lid. They’re not Toyotas but they raise dust, and make noise, essential little boy requirements. Four of the sons (2 from each of 2 wives, late teens through late twenties, are spectacularly handsome. The 17-year old hugs one of the girls and holds up two fingers close together. Twin? Sister? And equally gorgeous. (Papa's genes are strong.) She is tall, graceful, and looks us square in the eye. The other wives and daughters-in-law are more shy, but shake our hands and smile. The wives are probably younger than they look. The youngest looks about 40. She is still beautiful, her startling light eyes and face framed by her black headscarf. Two of the handsome boys are hers. (Papa's genes had some help here.) Google translate keeps the conversation going, tea lubricates it. Older brother is proud of the array of solar panels that keep the house powered. I hope it runs a washing machine. The clotheslines stretch way across the courtyard. We reach our digs, outside the town of Dahkla Oasis, and surrounded by fields just in time to see the house in afternoon light. The owner is another of Abdu's strategically placed friends, dotted off-road across Egypt. It’s a thickly textured, harmonious update of an oasis house using traditional materials, great imagination, and the common sense distilled by generations of desert life. Thick adobe walls, high ceilings, tile floors, and narrow windows with shutters keep the heat at bay. The rest is woven rugs, reeds, palm rib and wooden furniture, and the thick pillows that keep head, butt, and back comfy on the floor or hard-angled traditional benches. The colors bring the desert, sky, date palms inside. The shower is sun-heated and cool/warm. The beds are vast, soft plateaus, with room for us and processed camel. We make do with cotton. 2020-10-20 DAHKLA OASIS Dahkla Oasis is huge. Like Siwa, and Bahariya, it spreads out as far as the underground water wells up, naturally, or with help. The water has succored people for millennia. El Kasr, the ancient core of the oasis still stands, abandoned, but only recently. Its last inhabitant left just a few years ago. She was over 90 and wanted nothing to do with the new digs the government had planned for her. Our guide remembers her sitting in her doorway and inviting the rare visitors to share her tea. We accept in her memory. Inside we wander through narrow alleys and tight rooms, dark, linked, stacked several stories up to flat rooftops. There is no one pressing olives into oil, but the wooden corkscrew in the press still turns, and the woven mats that caught the oil are flexible. There could be life here still, and the living might maintain the crumbling walls. The government has decreed elsewise. El Kasr will tumble as the Shali of Siwa has. That old lady remembers home. Future visitors will see only rubble. “Pigeons tonight. In the dunes.” Abdu's hunting buddies set up camp, build a fire, no rival to the one in the sky. The night takes hold. Web lounge on mats. Khalid stirs the pigeons. Then the wolves begun to howl. We can't see them, but they must be close. The guys leap up, shine lights towards the sound, hoping to catch a reflection from the eyes. Puppies add their yips, a few managing an octave lap into full howl. Then they all stop, and we hear no more from them. We return to the mats, and fire, but a bit of the wild stays with us. What can follow that? Abdu manages. He has BIG news. His friend the astronomer tells him that tomorrow at sunrise, the rising sun will penetrate directly through the narrow door into the inner sanctum of the great monument at Abu Simbel. It happens only twice a year, as it has for 3200 years. And tomorrow we can be there. At 05:30. If we skip Kharga oasis, drive many hundreds of kilometers straight to Aswan, and Kopaniya, Ramdan's village, dump our stuff, and catch a late night convoy south to Abu Simbel. We've all been to Kharga, so can skip it. We've all been to Abu Simbel, too, but this we will not skip. 2020-10-21 ABU SIMBEL In his village edging into the desert on the west and overlooking the Nile on the east, friend Ramdan has our week here leading up to his three-day ‘wedding party' all worked out. We'll do the Agatha Christie ‘Death on the Nile' thing and stay on one of the great 19th century dahabiyas that sailed Hercule Poirot and Company into murderous mayhem. Ours is a reproduction, of course, but accurate in the details... murders optional. It moves only by the push of the wind against its huge sails. But not now. There are no tourists, so the owner has furled the sails and anchored it at the foot of the hill Ramdan's village sits on. The care taker is --- of course --- a Ramdan relative. It's ours for as long as we want it. But, first we have to get there. Down the hill. In the dark. A horde of cousins disappear with our bags. We have headlights casting small puddles of light for our feet. We follow Ramdan's from our car into the trees, over sand, through a field, past a growling mother dog and her yipping babies, then along the narrow ridge along an irrigation ditch, through more trees, over some pipes and wires, down a sudden slope, then down an even steeper slope, onto the sand and the shore of the Nile. The river laps below us as we cross the gangplank. We spread through the 5 double staterooms, each with a private bathroom, dump our stuff, head topside for Khalid's tea and our view of the Nile. Ramdan's felucca is moored alongside. That's for tomorrow. Now, we wait for our convoy car to Abu Simbel, but that's back up the hill, through the night and more puddles of light. Another batch of cousins lead us up a different path. There are no pipes to climb over, more sand, and broad paths, so this path is much easier. Maybe different hordes of cousins have different path-proprietary-rights? I sleep most of the 4-hour drive to the very southern edge of Egypt. Sudan is just ‘over there'. We've been to Abu Simbel before, once from the north down Lake Nasser for 6-days on a tiny putt-putt, and once up from the south by 4x4 for two weeks across the desert of Sudan from Khartoum. It's remote from either direction. It was far distant, far beyond imagining, for the ancient Egyptians, but here is where Ramses ll built his colossal temple with its 70-foot images of himself and arranged it so it would capture the sun twice a year. (Note: please never let Donald Trump see these statues.) Alone among all Egypt's pharaohs Ramses built a temple to his beloved wife. He wrote of her death: The light has gone from my life. There was heart in that ego. Abu Simbel, the morning, and the universe deliver as promised. The crowd is smaller than we expect, and Abu Simbel's colossal figures of Pharaoh Ramses II, bigger than we remember, and enough reason to come. We see ‘the phenomenon', just, over the heads of the more committed and decide it's enough to trust that it happens. Those calculations 3200 years ago impress us. As do the imagination and calculations of the engineers in the 1960's who rescued the temple from the rising waters of captured Lake Nasser, cut it into pieces, built a mountain for it, and reassembled it above the lick of waves, perfectly, to capture the sun as Ramses intended. We wait. The sky lightens. There are no clouds to block the sun. It rises, brilliant, first on the 4 faces of Ramses. Then it finds the shaft to the images deep in the mountain, touches the central image, and moves on. It has no time for human hubris. The crowd applauds. I wonder what the people did 3200 years ago when they saw that fleeting patch of light. Most likely only priests saw it. Maybe everyone else trusted the universe, too, and didn't have to see it to believe it happened. We drive back north to Aswan, spread out in a comfy van. Ramdan has arranged all this: ”Egyptian price, not tourist price.” (Cousins are involved.) The driver would get no votes from Desert Cowboy Abdu. He pokes along at Half Abdu Speed, no wheelies, no off-road, no whoops, no thrills. Maybe itis because the Tourist Police have added a ‘guard’ to keep us safe. From what? He has no weapons, wears a suit, not a uniform, and is either asleep or running to a bathroom. “Diarrhea” says the guide included with the car. Otherwise, our guard doesn’t seem to give a sh……or so they tell me. I sleep most of the way back to Ramdan's. And wake for Khalid’s tea. 2020-10-22 RAMDAN'S VILLAGE AND FELUCCA MisterBob MisterBob MisterBob MisterBob MisterBob MisterBob Husky Cousin Dougu makes the biggest splash, leading the cousins over the gunwales of the felucca, barreling through the air, and slicing down into the Nile, then hand over hand back up the rudder, for the next plunge. Tiny, sweet Ahmed barely makes a dent in the river, but it accepts him anyway. On land, still glistening with Nile drops, they lead us back up yet another path from the river. The mother dog and her puppies no longer acknowledge our passing with even a sniff or a yip. We cross the dusty road that connects rural Kopanniya to urban Aswan, 40 minutes drive south and across the river. From here the going is steep, but easy, through a twist of narrow lanes. The air is hotter than in the desert, thicker with moisture from the river. We sweat. Ramdan’s family compound is at the top of the hill, good to catch a breeze. And filled with family. They know us from our visit in 2018 and our video calls. Ramdan gets his rolling walk, charm, cinemascopic smile, and encyclopedic arms from his father. Dad calls “MisterBob, MisterBob, MisterBob” over and over, and then some more, and grabs me into those arms, with traditional air kisses, close at both cheeks. He patches together enough English words to remind me about his video call to America from the dim light of the night train to Cairo a few months ago. His laugh is like Ramdan’s too, deep, and filling his face. Then, Mama, the three younger brothers, baby sister, and a horde of cousins spring from the house and give it a go, with gusto. The universal little kids hello/hallo chorus morphs into chants of MisterBobMisterBobMisterBob. The double weddings begin in 3 days There is more work to get everything in place than there is time to do it. That's why Ramdan left us a few days ago in Dahkla and came home ahead of us. They make time for us. We sit on mats, drink tea, tear chunks of thick bread, and squeeze lemon over beans, beef stew, and fresh tomato salad. And laugh. Back down the slope the top deck of the dahabiya is an acre of glowing, polished wood. Agatha and Monsieur Poirot sit in the shadows but we have eyes only for the Nile and Ramdan's felucca anchored next door. So, we go. We jump the gunwales, duck under the canvas ‘tent', and sprawl on the mattresses just a few feet above the water. Khalid, a Bedouin, desert born and raised, has never seen the Nile, or any river. The Nile is the only one in Egypt. He's never seen a felucca or ridden the wind across water in one. We know the look. He's hooked on the spot. We spent ten days like this with Ramdan on another felucca, ‘Rendez-vous', almost 2 years ago. But, this one is Ramdan's, not rented, and it will be his future, and the family's. His father, grandfather, uncles and ‘the cousins' hand stitched thick cotton cloth into the two immense triangular sails that define the graceful felucca beauty. It was night work, out of the scorch of Egypt’s summer sun. Ramdan called us several times and panned his phone to show them squatting and sewing on the cloth. Dad waved to MisterBob, of course. The felucca has no name yet. None of our suggestions take hold. Ramdan wants ‘something with a story I can tell'. He suggests ‘Five Friends’, and that feels just right. There's a story there, and we're part of it, 3 of the five friends, plus Ramdan to make 4, and our friend Renate who could not join us this time, to make 5. So be it. The sails catch the winds from the north and push us south against the current carrying the power of the river's drop from thousands of meters up in the highlands of Ethiopia thousands of miles to the south. Ramdan works the rudder with his feet and turns us into a long tack into the wind and across the river. We are silent. The Nile grants us passage. It whispers of memories and promises. The felucca and Nile are all Ramdan asks of his world. We understand. 2020-10-23 RAMDAN'S VILLAGE ON THE NILE “I am Nubian.” And glamorous. Egir billows up the stairs to the deck of the dahabiya, all floating clouds of color, wispy over her tight bodysuit, perfect setting for her mahogany face, lights eyes, and gold earrings, big as tiaras. The lady knows how to make an entrance. I check the deck. Nope, the cousins did not deliver a red carpet while we slept. We never quite figure out how she winds up here, other than she is a friend of Abdu's…like half of Egypt. She's in Aswan for a “photo shoot”, no details. Overnight train and 600 miles for a photo? When her ‘photographer’ arrives it clicks. Think a younger George Clooney, tawny, trim in tight jeans…and on deck. I wonder what the local women think of these dazzling apparitions, two of their own, but so different. We never find out. We're caught up in the wedding, curiosity about the bride trumping the Diva. Ramdan does not know his wife-to-be, though he has met her. “I will be on felucca. It is my job. My wife does not take care of me. I want wife to take care of my mother and father in house, not me. My mother find a girl she like. She is a cousin (and he laughs), but not close. I don’t know her. Her name is Fatima.” Young people here have little or no experience with the opposite sex. Elfie tells him he must be kind and patient with his wife on their wedding night. “Yes" he says,”my mother told me.”. Ramdan is frazzled. The three night ‘wedding party’ starts two nights from now. This is all new to him. He's the eldest of four brothers and their baby sister. He and the next brother, Mansoor, are the first to marry. The wedding was supposed to be next year, when the new couples could move into their own houses. Ramdan still needs to paint, and tile the floor, in his. The family has pushed the weddings up a year “for my father. You understand? We do two together. Cheaper.” Dad has serous effects of ‘sugar'. He is bouncy and spry, and looks about my age. But, I could be his father. So, Dad will see his two eldest sons get married this year, and if biology cooperates, a brace of grandkids in the next. They picked these specific days at the end of October when we told Ramdan we were coming to Egypt. They want us here for the weddings. The double wedding will save money, but it's still a big expense for him and his family: three all- night parties, food? ( they'll buy and butcher a cow), plus make-up, photos, culminating in an all night dance party on the third night with lights, music, DJ. “ Maybe a thousand people. Everyone in village, maybe more". The three of us have prepared a monetary wedding gift for him, and know he can use it now. His eyes tear up, and he hugs us, his “thank you” soft, deep and real. But he is still frazzled. We leave him to his tasks, retreat to the decks of the dahabiya and the felucca, and the quiet of the river. Khalid brings us tea, delivered with his smile and question: “Mia mia?” OK? Very. The others go below to sleep in the staterooms. I lay out a thick mattress, pillows and blankets on the deck, and crawl in, suspended between the stars above and the Nile below. Across the river, a mule brays its harsh song into the night. The night has sung to us before. A few days ago on our last night in the desert before coming to the river…. Abdu's hunting buddies set up camp on a high dune, and build a fire, no rival to the one in the sky. The night takes hold. Web lounge on mats. Khalid stirs the pigeons. Then the wolves begun to howl. We can't see them, but they must be close. The guys leap up, shine lights towards the sound, hoping to catch a reflection from the eyes. Puppies add their yips, a few managing an octave lap into full howl. Then they all stop, and we hear no more from them. We return to the mats, and fire, but a bit of the wild stays with us. 2020-10-25 RAMDAN'S VILLAGE ON THE NILE The Wedding Party Day 1 “She'll be smokin marijuana when she comes…. Ramdan lies on his back, arms and legs stretched out and wrapped in plastic bags. Black goo seeps from the bags. It's henna. Friends have wrapped white tape in complex designs around his fingers, ties, soles and palms, hands and feet and left henna to do its magic. It will color the roman alphabet R on one palm, F, in the other. Ramdan and Fatima. ”He has to stay like that all night and not move" says Abdu. Then he leans in and whispers in Ramdan's ear. The ear -spanning grin, giggles and whoops hint this is raunchy guy-advice from the thrice married best friend of the groom. Across the courtyard and surrounded by women, Fatima lies flat, too, wrapped, dyed, and coddled, prepared for married life by giggles, shrieks, and whoops. We are banned, from the women’s party, but Elfie is welcome ---she is a woman---there and stays for a few hours, returning to the men’s side with all the details of the party on the other side of the walls. She joins us, welcomed by the men—she is a guest. Two am has come and gone. We are all still awake, and thriving. The kids are lining up to get henna-ed, ‘’for fun’’ says Abdu. Us, too, we say! Henna Guy tapes Elfie’s hand with a design like Ramadan’s paints, layers on the henna, then wraps her hand in plastic. He tries something different with me, piling henna into my palm, folding my fingers over it into a fist, then warps it all in plastic. Dennis passes. “Don’t wash it off in the sink. Wash it in the Nile” Now, we, too are immobilized. The room is packed and still in serious party mode. The men dance, weave, sing, wail, laugh, And drink. And smoke. Noses don't lie, but… Surely not THAT…Here in a Moslem country? Then the tall, handsome village troubadour sets the rhythm with his tambourine and starts a song we know, in English. The lady starts out coming round that mountain, but by the time she gets to Ramdan's wedding party “She'll be smokin marijuana when she comes….” Indeed. We do manage the walk back down to the river about 3am and sleep very well. Indeed. Only two more nights to go. 2020-10-26 RAMDAN'S VILLAGE ON THE NILE The Wedding Party Day 2 “Wheeeeeeeeeee!” We slam right, into the car door, shoulders digging into metal, then left, muscle and bone slamming into bone and muscle, then back again. Desert Cowboy Abdu, in whirling ‘round em up and head em out mode’, cops a wheelie into a tight turn, 360 degrees then back again, spaghettiing all over the road, then back again, his arms a blur on the steering wheel. We know this manic assault on desert dunes, and have whooped with him up and down the slopes of the empty Great Sand Sea. But, we are on the main road through the city of Aswan. And it’s filled with other cars--- including the ones with the grooms, brides, and their families, cousins stacked and stuffed-- doing the same, spinning around one another, up over the curb, backwards, forwards, sideways. I'm in the front seat, expecting death. “No problem", grins Abdu, looking my way aa the car hurtles that way. “This is wedding!”. Right. I'm seeing the film about us: ‘Two Weddings and a Funeral’…. The night began quietly hours ago in the photo studio in town. Ramdan and Mansour are in suit and tie, coiffed, made up, eyes lined, a subtle glint of glitter washed over their glowing dark faces. Mansour is more comfortable and convincing in this, his professional drag (he works in a hotel, so is used to this get up). Ramdan puts up with it. They're good-looking guys, would look even better in galabeya and head dress. But, weddings à la mode mean weddings à la western mode. The brides are glorious. Fatima is wrapped in red silk. Mansour's bride is in a spectacular silver creation draped over a hoop big enough to câche the flotilla of younger sisters and cousins in attendance. We never do learn her name, but Elfie dubs her ‘Maria Theresa', as in the Empress. It fits the dress. The photo shoot of the couples is staged by the young photographer. À la western mode. The bride and groom--- who barely know one another--- look dreamy and captivated by the stranger they are holding hands with. These photos don't record a real present, but a hopeful future. We're happy to be in them, even though by our standards we are under dressed…. but welcomed and honored nonetheless. There are no bridezillas here. No one is an outsider. We are just family. We finally meet Fatima, who is sweet and pretty, and not at all non-plussed by the 3 western apparitions in her wedding photos. She has a wide grin like Ramdan's. Mama has done well by her son. Everyone piles into the fleet of cars, even Maria Theresa and her cousin-hiding hoop, for the drive to a park by the Nile for more photo-ops. The drivers rev up the horns and speakers, announcing their intent to defy the laws of physics, and inviting one and all to join in the mayhem. Many do, especially a bunch of kids weaving around us on three-wheel tuk-tuks, waving, not guiding, eyes anywhere but on the road. They, and we, all survive the drive. And, yes, we washed the henna off in the Nile,. Elfie did it when she got back to the boat after the party last night. I slept on it. Her hand is tattooed in lace, pretty, delicate, and red . Mine festers in zombie make-up ebony. “You left it too long. It will go away…maybe”. And Abdu grins. Only one more night to go. 2020-10-27 RAMDAN'S VILLAGE ON THE NILE The Wedding Party Day 3 Bob Marley whirls by, eyes glazed. He grabs my hands and sucks me into the ear-numbing rhythm of the music and the crowd. We dance. It’s 2 am. Three hours into his marathon dance, he spins still through the crowd dreadlocks flat out from the spin. Months ago Ramdan video called me. “We signed the marriage contract. I am getinig married. You will come.” And, so we came. That signing was a legal thing, small, quiet, private, between families. Now it is time for the people of Kampaniya to welcome the marriage, embrace it, weave it into the life of the village. It is taking three days, one for Ramdan's friends to mark him as married, one to help the future to remember the day, and now the last day, one for the village to seal the deal. Now, on day three, there are big doings up in the village. It's too far to hear down here on the river, but we know. Everyone is up there except for a splash of younger cousins in the Nile, and Khalid and his tea. Ahmed, already a handsome sprite of 8, and two burlier cousins rig up a ‘mini felucca’ using a derelict small skiff to ride just above the water and odd pieces of cloth to catch the wind. They sail Elfie off across the Nile, a fluttery blip on the blue, and then back. It’s not Cleo’s gold barge of Roman---and cinema-- memory, but it’s anchored just as strongly in ours. We're due up in the village about 10 or 11 tonight, “maybe finish at 3 or 4 in morning". Three am is a long way off. We nap. Then, it’s time. On Day One, Abdu approved Dennis' simple deep blue galabeya as wedding garb, but vetoed my scruffy green one. He dropped his own elegant embroidered gray one over my head. It's a perfect fit top to bottom, a bit tight across my shoulders, but sooo elegant. His Bedouin headscarf is one size fits all. He wrapped it around my head and tied it into elaborate swirls, stepped back, flashed a thumbs up. Tonight, I tie my own head scarf “Good”, says Khalid. Then he whisks it off and reties it. “Very Good”. There aren’t many Bedouin headscarves in the crowd, just hundreds of men in white galabeyas dancing. Egyptian men have the moves shaking their shoulders, and undulating their hips. For hours. Elfie is the only adult female. Ramdan’s father takes her hands and dances with her, his grin as wide as his son’s. ‘Bob Marley’ grabs me and we whirl through the crowd under the waves of his huge Marley ‘scarf’, table cloth size for a banquet table. We’ve been dancing since midnight, taking breaks on mats and leaning against the wall of the village square to rest. The singer has been singing for three hours, straight. The fireworks explode over Ramdan and his brother, high on the shoulders of their friends. ‘High’ seems to be an operative word here. Then, at 3:15, it all stops. The singer wraps up his gig, robes flow out of the square. Abdu grabs me. “We leave at 12 for Cairo. It’s only about 10 hours to drive.” He’ll have about three hours sleep. “No problem”…and there is that rumbling laugh. We believe him. 2020-10-28 TO CAIRO Four hours later we are up. By 11 we visit Ramdan and his wife in their new house, lent to the couple by Ramdan’s uncle until his son gets married. Ramdan introduces us to Fatima. She smiles, shakes our hands and rejoins her mother in the kitchen. “Fatima’s family will make the kitchen. I do this…” and he points to a new washing machine and new refrigerator. We sit on spanking new and lovely padded furniture, probably the very first people to do so. Fatima and her mother serve us cake and drinks, surely a first for them. Ramdan and Fatima can have visitors, but they can’t leave the house for a week or “the village will think the marriage is not good”. There’s probably another time-tested reason. Time will tell. In about 9 months. Ramdan hugs us, and stops at the door as we pass through it to the car. He waves, now a married man with a wife, mother-in-law, and house, a new man saying goodbye to old friends. Khalid also stays behind. He will take the bus back across the desert to Bahariya. He laughs that now that he has seen the Nile at Aswan he has to change his name to Khalid Aswani, Khalid from Aswan! Next year is his wedding. Who knows, maybe we’ll be back for that. The trip to Cairo is slow because there are police checkpoints along the obvious road, tarmac and smooth concrete all the way up the Nile. Abdu laughs. “I know how to go”. Abdu’s way involves bumping through villages, snorting over gravel, a lot of sand, and the occasional camel. Close to midnight Cairo sucks us in. Abdu is still perky. We are not. Plans have formed to go with him to the far southwest of Egypt as soon as it opens again, to Sinai in the northeast, and to the far southeast to the border with Sudan and the best beaches on the Red Sea. He’s off in the morning back across the width of Egypt to Siwa to visit with Hassan’s family. He couldn’t get there for the funeral, but now is OK, too. We hold him close as we say goodbye, but only for now. Dahab Hostel sprawls across the roof, way above the streets. If there is traffic we don’t hear it. Sleep is a knockout punch. 2020-10-29 AND 2020-10-30 CAIRO We share the roof with trees, flowers, a posse of cats and kittens, and no other guests. Elfie and I do a walkabout while Dennis sleeps. Trees shield some of the streets from the sun in this part of Cairo, near the Museum. The Nile is right there. Even walled in and bridged it’s the river of the desert, feluccas, village life. We will be back.

TURKEY-NORTH MACEDONIA-ALBANIA 2020-09-02 TO 2020-10-08

2020-09-02 AND 03 MIAMI TO ISTANBUL MIA is Missing In Action. Empty, abandoned. There are no clear sounds, just a cacaphony of ‘ought to bes'. We check in with the Mask at Turkish Airlines. There's no one ahead of us, or behind. Gate J5 is far away. The shops along the linear spendatorium are shuttered. Lunch is a duo of half-hearted, over-cooked and under-thought lumps of egg salad, dolloped between two derelict, crumbly slabs. Dessert is a Big Mac from the only other shop open. At Gate J5, more Masks, maybe 50, spread across the rows of seats. A lot more load neatly onto Flight 78. Turkish Airlines has kept the seat between us empty, but some of the rows around us are filled with Masks. Turkish Airlines, usually, and justly, ranked in the Top Five for its version of ‘food' aloft, serves their Corona Special in cardboard boxes twice in the 11 hours. No drink carts ever rattle down the aisles. My bank card can now claim pseudo-victory over voracious ATMs on a third continent (see episodes in Argentina and Bangladesh). A helpful guy and a key rescue it from the Munching Machine in Istanbul Airport. Two hours later, tall Edip and his mask welcome us to our digs on the top floor of Arat Apartments with news that he has just passed entrance exams for law school. “The other students are so young. I will be like their father.” Too much time and no time have passed since our last visit. Dinner is up by the park, on a small table on the narrow sidewalk. Outside we don’t need masks. Starters are two glasses of fresh squeezed ‘nar’ (pomegranate juice), and then tavuk sote, chunks of chicken breast sautéed with red pepper and tomato. We sop up the sauce with bread, sip tea. We’re home. 2020-09-04, 05, AND 06, FRIDAY TO SUNDAY Istanbul never sleeps. But, it’s drowsy, its buzz masked to a muffled hum. The Golden Horn and Bosporus, gateways for millennia to the Black Sea, the Sea of Mamara, the Mediterranean and the world are quiet. The ships that cover the waters in great swarms in normal times are gone, swallowed by the pandemic. Our digs are on the top floor of Arat Apartments down in the narrow alleys between Kadirga Park and the road that holds back the Sea of Mamara. The call to prayer from the mosque next door pulls us into this place. Friends will do the rest. We stumble over the cobblestones and wheeze up the steep hill to Sultanahmet, `Tourist Central' . Tourists can’t resist Istanbul. They still come, but not in throngs, masked, languages muffled. We join them in Aya Sofia, a church for a thousand years, a mosque for 500, a museum for 80, with an entrance fee, and now a mosque again, and free. The Christian images high in the dome are covered with unobtrusive banners . Only the empty crosses in the mosaics over the doors remain. Otherwise the great space seems unchanged. We're early. Zeki is always late. Tea at the café on the corner brings us chatty waiter, Reber, who knows Omur, the waiter from our last visit, and takes us across and down the street to see him. Tea and a shrug fill us in about Corona here on the streets. Zeki whirls in and drags us up to the usual place, the roof terrace of the Hotel Peninsula. The view of the mosque-topped hills and the sea affects us more than them. Down on the ground, Corona and inflation are devastating. Bariş opened a new hotel two years ago. It has too few guests. Zeki's textile business is ‘not bad’, but ‘not good’. Then, he laughs and takes a tiny box from his pocket. In it is a small gold coin. “I go to a wedding tonight. We give gold coins as gifts. I bought this one last year for 100 Lira. Now it is worth 700 or maybe 1000. Maybe I should keep it.” At their restaurant, stitched to the blue sky, Huseyin and Ihsan bump elbows, and give us a table right at the open walls. The bougainevillea along the edge have grown since our last trip, but even they can't compete with the view. The guys know what we'll eat. We catch up in snippets as the other tables fill. There is no check. “You're family.” On Sunday, we take the ferry from Eminonou, in Europe, down the end of the Golden Horn and across the Bosporus to meet Nüri in Uskudar, in Asia. It's 20 minutes and one of the great trips on the planet, a travel junkie's dream, stitching continents…for 3 Lira, about 40 cents. Nüri's job setting up study abroad English language trips for Turkish students is on hold. Eçe, his wife, an architect, is on mandatory leave from her job. The damage of Covid-19 runs deep. But, Nüri is always up, and up for munchies. We brunch on gorek , pillows of layered pastry wrapped around cheese or spinach. He takes us up to a park overlooking the Bosporus and European Istanbul to the east and Asian Istanbul to the west, for the view…and more munchies: pizza, French fries, loaded potatoes, and ayran, yoghurt's drinkable avatar. Nüri collects keychains. We dole out our latest haul for him, a course at a time. Paris, Spain, Canada, Brazil will join duplicates on the big board his grandfather made for his office, but Iceland and Bangladesh will need new hooks. At night, Murat, owner of Arat Apartments, offers to find us a cheap ride to the airport tomorrow before dawn with a friend who “maybe goes empty to airport to meet someone, so maybe only 40 Lira.” Friend is not going empty, but Murat calls to arrange a cab to the airport bus and goes in person to the cab stand to make sure the cab picks us up at 05:15. (It does.) Murat teaches literature in the local high school. He's a good man. He hired Edip as manager when Edip lost his university teaching job (along with tens of thousands of other faculty members) after the failed coup attempt a few years ago. He hired night watchman, student Ahmed, a refugee from the atrocities in Syria. We'll stay in his place two more times as we pass through Istanbul from Albania, and before we leave for Egypt, another tie to this place. Corona may have tamed the buzz of Istanbul, but ‘our Istanbul’ remains. ********* 2020-09-07 TO 2020-09-09 MONDAY -WEDNESDAY- SKOPJE, NORTH MACEDONIA Everyone has been here. Skopje has been a crossroads for millennia, from way before written history, they come ...the Greeks, Romans, Christians, Byzantynes, Moslems, Ottomans, various European empires, the Communists and Marshall Tito, all strewing bits Destroyed by earthquakes 3 times in 1400 years it knows how to recreate itself. Today Skopje is capital of an independent country that has bought that independence with blood and suffering. The country has even had to fight for its name. Greece claims dibs on the name Macedonia, as in “we already have a Macedonia here. Find another name for your country.” The compromise is the ‘new’ country of North Macedonia. It has been a long time in the making. It has a right to strut its stuff. And strut it does. Three personages born ‘here’ are bookends to these years of history: Alexander the Great, his father, King Philip of Macedonia, and Mother, now Saint, Theresa. Phil and Alex rear majestically on brontosaurian horses over major squares. Mother T. was born in Skopje. Her birth house was destroyed in the cataclysmic 1963 earthquake. Her memorial is more restrained. And best left undescribed. We wander on our own for a couple of days before and after a three-hour Free Skopje Walking Tour with witty retired civil engineer, Vasko. We like the city, and the cold beers under the trees in the restaurants along the south side of Skopje's just wet enough Vardar River. Yes, we like it. It's laid-back, a bit small town---a brass band played John Philip Souza marches in Macedonia Square on our first afternoon--- a bit modern metropolis…and a bit of a Disneyland Tour of the World's Great Monuments. Post 1963 earthquake Skopje decided that the city needed a new look. It went Neo-Classical. And a bit derivative. The Arc de Triomphe is bumper close to the Brandenburg Gate and its rearing horses. The sculpture-crusted bridges across the shallow Vardar River are Parisian, in inspiration. The statues on one are endearing. Artists, poets, musicians, authors, actors puff, pontificate, orate, and wink in bronze, across the river. They ignore the 3 HUGE wooden Columbus-style boats beached in the shallow river. They are of the bloated Nina-Pinta-Santa Maria Who Ever Thought That Was A Good Idea school of urban planning. Our free walking tour guide, civil engineer, Vasko, just shrugs. The river divides the city, into the new , only since the 1963 earthquake, to the south, and the old to the north. The new city is getting a facelift. Many of the bland Tito Era buildings are being resurfaced in neo-classical style “with plaster, not stone”, says engineer Vasko, with a whiff of a sniff. Age wont be any kinder to them than it is to human faces. In the new city he stops us in front of a shop. “Maybe this is the only one in the world.” The shop sells elevators, doors wide open, trendy interiors on full display. Right down the street is a shop selling something more in our price range, ‘borek', the national snack. “It’s a small shop. Always eat in the small shops.” We find it again on our last day for a $2.00 lunch. Across the river is row of columns, porticos, and plazas of the city's Neo-Classical modernism, frozen in Macedonia's white marble. Until the next earthquake. The 15th century ‘Stone Bridge arcs over the Vardar to the north shore and the old bazaar. We walk past the narrow row of neo-classical behemoths housing museums and government offices, and the squat National Theater, and National Opera and Ballet. The ragged poster offers a tempting pre-corona season: Barber of Seville, Samson and Delilah, Verdi's Macbeth, Carmen, Swan Lake, and Giselle. Beyond is the old city, the old bazaar, and the crenelated walls of Skopje's castle/fort. It has been ‘touristicated’, the ancient shops, bath houses, and inns, repurposed with galleries, souvenir stands, a micro brewery, and showcases of ice cream, and Skopje's traditional confection of silver filigree. The old architecture and cobblestones remain, so it’s all good walking in the old part, though hot in the 90 degree sun. We have beef kebabs, roasted peppers, and drink yoghurt the afternoon of our first day, and baked beans with salads, one with shaved white cheese, on the evening of our second day. We walk out of the bazaar and take a shortcut through a park up to the castle/fort. It's cool under the trees. Today is Independence Day. There are families picknicking in the shade. A man waves and asks where we are from. “USA". His response surprises us. “Trump is great patriot.” Our response about Russian interference holds no water. It has been natural here for decades. There are smiles and civility between us, and we wave goodbye. From the top of the castle walls Skopje’s faces are all there, old, new, real, fake, home-grown, copied. It’s only a surface to us. It has deeper meaning to our friendly picknicker. He has inherited and lived the chaotic history beneath this quiet afternoon. We see again on our way down. He waves and yells “Long live the king!”. We can only smile. 2020-09-10 TO 2020-09-12 THURSDAY-SATURDAY - OHRID, NORTH MACEDONIA Hammocks are seductive. Ours hangs over paradise. The old town of Ohrid, North Macedonia, is an aerie above the shimmer of the lake that shares its name. We slog a thigh-busting, winding, zigzag over cobbles up from the old town center and the angular stones of the church of Saint Sophia that has marked it for centuries. Everywhere there are flowers. Grapes, purplely black, hang off a wall. A litter of kittens ignores them but not us. One is silky champagne with dark eyeliner around light eyes, a seductress who flashes a backwards glance then joins the shadows. We hang out by the hammock. “Be at home”, says host tall, lanky Igor (Eegor, not Eyegor), through his mask. What we see of his face suggests the mask is a shame. He strips it. We’re right. “ You're handsome!!” “I know". And he laughs, with a sweet honesty. He runs off to make calls that will get our direct, fast, almost nonstop connections onwards to Gjirokasta in southern Albania. “The bus leaves at four thirty Sunday morning. I will tell the taxi to meet you at the old upper gate at four.” Duly noted… We find ‘our' restaurant, a strip of tables and a covered terrace in the shade near Saint Sophia. Three bicycles lean against the fence. There are no locks. I doubt the large dog snoozing flat out on the cobbles would notice if anyone took them. Further into town, the atmosphere changes. Down here, away from the stony glare of Saint Sophia, Macedonia disrobes and plunges. Bulky Balkans bounce in the clear water. Way around the lake the water is even clearer below the exquisite geometry of the church of St. Nuan. With the luck that hitches rides on all our trips we find cabbie Totor to take us there. He is chatty, super bright, curious, and good company. He stops above the Bay of Bones. A decade ago marine archeologists discovered evidence of a village built on wooden stilts out in the lake. Three thousand years ago this lake was already seducing people to move here. Maybe it was for protection, for the now famous trout…or the view. The monks who founded the church of St. Nuan picked a spot of divine beauty, perhaps the most photographed in Albania. Now, there is refined tourist schlock, Turkish in design, Chinese in origin. It costs 40 cents to pee. The water gushing from the fountains is free, and delicious. St. Nuan does not hold us long. Totor offers us a next day trip around the lake in the other direction to Struga. There are beached bulging Balkans all along the shore. Struga is lovely. Trees and cafes line the clear channel that carries lake waters inland. Behind the pedestrian shopping street old houses lean against the newer ones, stone and wood meeting concrete. A husky lumberjack chops winter firewood in balletic whacks. Behind him grand-dad stacks it against the stucco walls, up to, then over, the windows. Back on the drag, we join the shoppers. I find a pseudo-substitute for my favorite bite-sized (three-section, fits all the stuff I want to snea…, er, uh, carry into aerial steerage class) backpack, left on a chair after breakfast at ‘our' restaurant. I need a comb. From the back I look like an ambulatory 1950’s shag carpet. I keep losing the little black ones, want a colorful replacement, easier to keep track of. We have been looking for days, in the usual places, supermarkets, street markets, general purpose shops. Brushes, (tooth, hair, scrub) Yes . Combs? Nope. (Note: Macedonians do have hair. Straight hair. But...many of the middle-aged men affect the bald head look of mature stud muffins…maybe more shaven from a lack of combs than naturally smooth from a surfeit of testosterone?) Yesterday Dennis suggested we try a pharmacy. I mime. The pharmacist nods. Eureka! He leaves. Retrieves a plastic bag from another room, carefully, (reverently?) reveals his stash. I pick one, the smallest. It’s a foot long, not easily misplaced, but cheap and not black, and up for de-shagging. He bundles the rest. Ties the bag, stashes it behind the counter. My comb feels like a lethal weapon. The next day Totor takes over and finds me a 4 inch comb in Strugo's open market. It is wavy-striped in lack and grey.. “Gift. To remember me.” Then he giggles. “Same color as your hair…(more giggles) and mine.” On our last afternoon we clomp over the wooden slats of the boardwalk along the shore to another lakeside church, as beautiful as St Nuan, and not girded in tourist schlock. The restaurant has indifferent food but Lake Ohrid and its mountains compensate. We wash down the after taste but not the afterglow, at ‘our' restaurant by unfussy St. Sophia. Up above, Igor reminds us again to meet the taxi at 04:00 and the bus to Albania at 04:30. Right. 2020-09-13 - SUNDAY- TO GJIRAKASTA, ALBANIA There is no bus to Albania. It’s 04:30 and dark. The bus station is even darker. And locked. Maybe the bus is late. “Never we have bus to Albania” says the nice man about 05:00. So, not late. My Balkan guide book went west with my lost backpack. There is no internet on the street at 05:00. It is time to rely on the kindness of strangers. Two helpful bus drivers, and a young Macedonian woman get us to the border. We’re the only crossers in that no man's land, the black border line on maps. Two stamping border guards get us out of Macedonia and into Albania, no questions asked. A kind cabbie, two more bus drivers, a curb-crawling minivan driver, Antonio, affable restaurant owner, another cabbie, and finally Juliano, another restaurant guy, get us to the top of Gjirokasta, Albania, and our AirBnB Albania and Gjirokasta impress us. People are kind to us strangers, and except for the larcenous blob of attitude who plucks us from the side of the highway for the last long leg into Gjirokasta , they are affable and honest. That overweight felon just drops us on a corner in Gjirokasta and speeds off. Within minutes high octane Antonio spots us looking lost, invites us to sit at his restaurant, takes charge of our currency problem (“that’s the ATM. Be careful crossing the street”), and assures us he makes the best roast chicken in town. We like him immediately. Ditto, the chicken, whipped from its rotating spit next to the whole lamb, chop-sliced through its crispy skin, and piled onto our plates. We bow to the tomato salad, but worship the oozing ripe figs from his mother's garden. We mouth them whole with slabs of crumbly, slightly salty, white cheese. Our previous meal was last night in Ohrid. This one is worth the wait. Antonio charges only for the chicken and drinks, gives us his Facebook info, introduces his wife, Mary Jane, finds us a cab, gives instructions, and waves us off. The cabbie slips the clutch into mountain-scaling gear, Everest mode, and corkscrews up the twisting cobblestone alleys of old Gjirakasta. He stops for directions at a semi-horizontal spot just wide enough for a restaurant of four tables and an awning. And we meet Juliano, scion of Taverna Tradicional. “No problem!” and he jumps into the cab. Stone House 1890 is just a few twists up the street, UP , as in 30 to 40 degrees off the flat. Legs wince…and we’re sitting down and those Everest mode gears are doing the grinding. They get us to the top of Gjirakasta and to the red door of Stone House 1890 our AirBnB. It has been 12 hours since we woke up atop beautiful Ohrid at three a.m. We flop bedwise. 2020-09-14 TO 9-15 MONDAY AND TUEDAY - GJIRAKASTA, ALBANIA “There's nothing here for me.” I envy eagles. This side of the red door are uneven stone steps, then a terrace, then just air. We are airborne above the maze of old Gjirokasta, way above the gridwork of the modern town, and the sandy smudge of the Drinos River. Way across the valley, the mountains look down on us, here just momentary blips in their view. We sip tea. Eda’s parents bring omelets, slices of tomato and cucumber and white cheese., toast, jam, yogurt, thick and peaked, and grapes. More grapes hang in clusters above us from the vine that shades our stony almost flying carpet, borne by the air if not quite airborne. I envy eagles. They get such views whenever they want. On the fly. We settle for walks on the cobblestones. Gjirokaster castle is massive, holding the town from launching into the air. It is castle as fortress, thick-walled, with dungeons and high, arched chambers, arrow slit windows, echoes. Its moat is the air that licks its walls. A few young couples slip into and out of the shadows, nod. We're all spectres in this place, insignificant against its stories. Juliano's mother makes us great lunches, veggies stuffed with good things. Her son joins us under the bamboo sun shade. Light stripes the table. Juliano is young, smart, articulate, frustrated. He has no job, nor any prospect of one. Covid-19 is a wall between him and hope. Maybe he will join the Albanian diaspora to Greece, Italy, anywhere. “There's nothing here for me.” Dinner is from Eda’s mom, on the terrace. The air softens the high notes of the Moslem call to prayer from the mosque down by the bazaar. Chanting from a church we can't see adds low notes. Dogs bark. I don't envy the eagles way up there tonight. But I want Juliano to soar. 2020-09-16 – WEDENESDAY - GJIROKASTER TO SARANDË I hear voices. The stones of the rubbled city of Butrint are mumbling their polyglot stories. The city is abandoned now, but for millennia was important, sometimes less so, to the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, militarist or hedonist who couldn't resist the setting, all blue sea and hazy archipelagos, an emporium for the goods and power mongers of the Sea at The Center of The Earth. The tiers of the Roman theater and the roofless pillars of the Byzantine basilica are stark in the bright light, but most of the city lies muted under the trees. The stones are lonely. I touch them, and thank them for enduring. They thank me for remembering, Butrint is why we have bussed south from Gjirokaster, twisting up and over the coastal mountains to the sea, and Sarande. Corfu and Greece are just offshore, mirages of substance in the haze. Sarande is less ephemeral. It is the star of Albania’s Riviera, beachy heaven for Europeans lapping up sunshine---and low prices---along the blue Mediterranean. The stripped down fauna can be decorative. But, not always. A bulging Balkan mermaid climbs onto the bus. She is economically bikini-ed. And left buxom behind at the dessert table a decade ago. It's behind her…in more ways than one. She been out in the sun too long, strawberry jello as she ripples to her seat. She smiles. I see the beauty under there. She walks, unselfconscious about her body as are so many Europeans. And why not? The trip is a last minute decision, but the mother of our AirBnB host is on top of things and sets us up in the family’s compact apartment. “Eat right down the street “ emails Bismer, our host. “ Its real traditional food. Delicious". We do and it is. The potato stew, chunks in a slight whiff of cinnamon, the eggplant baked with caramelized onions—and called ‘iman bayalldi' (the imam fainted …because it was so good )---like our favorite Turkish dish, and thick yoghurt with lemon, garlic, parsley make us more sympathetic to our Bulging Bikinied mermaid. Food like this deserves worship. And excess. 2020-09-17 – THURSDAY – SARANDA TO BERAT We are kidnapped. But, that comes later. The plan is to go to Berat. Wiser now to the Balkan ways of the road, we accept that Balkan bus schedules and Balkan bus stations are enthusiastic, but unreliable, approximations. The internet suggests there are both a station and a schedule just down the street from our digs, due to get active at 8 am, maybe 10 15, maybe even 14:30. At 7 we walk to check. The bus station IS the bus schedule, one bus parked under a 2x3 foot sign claiming destinations and precise times. “Berat? This bus will leave at 8”, says the man with the name tag. 10:15? “No bus. Only in summer.” 14 :30? “Maybe. If he comes.” His bus is our only chance today. We split up. I buy breakfast at a pastry shop, water, cheese borek and a thick cookie (“Very good", says the clerk.) Dennis runs back and packs up our stuff. By 7:45 we've dumped our backpacks on seats along the left, shady, western side of the bus for the trip north to Berat, and sip thick coffee in the fast food place under the sign that makes this chunk of street the bus station. Berat is four hours north and inland. The bus climbs up off the coast leaving lush Sarande, the blue sea and Corfu. The road swirls and twists, then drops into the narrow valley, a sinuous eel between mountain ranges. The fields here are ripe, not fallow, or abandoned, as they seem to be in neighboring Macedonia. The hills are rocky and dry, the realm of olive trees, hazy gray-green puffs. Corn stalks remind us it’s Fall. The olive trees remind us it’s Mediterranean Europe. By noon the bus has emptied and left the highway. There are only 5 of us bumping along the one lane road, a guy stumped into sleep and two young guys, handsome with the high cheekbones and bronze skin common here, a reminder that there is only the borderless sea between Albania, and north Africa, and the Middle East. Four hours into the trip I see the first sign for Berat, a turn off a roundabout. This small town, tiny compared to Sarande, has an actual bus station. There is no hint of a town connected, just a building, marked lanes, and, yes, busses. Our driver points down and out the door to the building: “Berat". Uh, I expected more of “The Town of A Thousand Windows", a UNESCO World Heritage Site, famous for its castle, and for its mountain, covered with stone houses and those windows looking out across a valley to its mirror image on the other side. All of that is in short supply here. What we see is flat, and concrete. We have no Red Shoes to click so just look lost. Then we are kidnapped. She's short, all in black, armed with authority, enthusiastic and approximate English. And In Charge. “Berat. Bus. Here" and her arm makes the definitive palms down descent from her shoulders all dog owners understand. We stay. The bus comes. “Go!!!” We go. In the bus the palm descends again. We stay. “Money!!" Ransom!! Already? And there are witnesses, but…She takes our money, makes it clear she is paying her own fare, pays the fare, gives us change. “Mother die”. She points to her black dress and rolls her eyes and shrugs in the universal (around the Sea in the Middle of the World anyway) gesture of “whaddya gonna do…it happens to everybody”. “Three children”. More eyes, no shrug (“ whaddya gonna do…but it shouldn't happen to me”). The monologue that follows loses us in the details but we get the gist: “I am in charge. Resistance is futile.” We round a hill and Poof!, there they are, the mountain, castle, stone houses, and those Thousand Windows. The bus stops. “Down". We do. She snaps her fingers. “Where hotel?" We show her the address on our phone. The arm goes straight up, then down, pointing, across the street and up the mountain. She takes off, legs flat out in blitzkrieg mode. The traffic stops. She does not. She invades a hotel, bivouacs, commandeers a phone, dials, speaks, hangs up, arm goes up, down, points. “Go!” She stops a cab. “In!” The cabbie knows what's good for him, guns then grinds gears and heads straight up the mountain. Berat doesn’t fool around with switchbacks. The road is straight up, steep, unapologetically Olympic ski jump steep. We slalom through a narrow stone gate, slide into the courtyard of the castle, stop. “Here. Money. Five hundred.” She gets back into the cab. We try to pay her way back. “No. I help. My name is Nanita. I help.” The arm goes up again. This time it waves goodbye. And is gone. A man comes up to us. “Bob? I am Mikel. Welcome to Berat.” 2020-09-18 AND 19 – FRIDAY AND SATURDAY – BERAT Were still up at midnight. All three nights Nina, husband Fred, son Arjan, and neighbor Mikel, draw us into their family. Supper comes, then raki, octane unknown but well into high double digits. We talk. Dusk settles and the air darkens around our terrace, hides the tile roofs of the houses that flow down the mountain to the valley. We float in the night. We tell stories. Ours start with photos of our travels, theirs with questions about those places, sharp questions softened by genuine curiosity and their great kindness. Mikel is translator, his magnificent and idiomatic English fluent and fluid. Nina and Fred have a deep sadness. Their younger son complained of a pain in his side, died a few months later from a voracious cancer. The AirBnB is named for him, Vasili. Older son, Arjan, talks about trying to join an uncle in Boston. He has a wide smile. Nina’s fades when he talks of Boston. Mikel has been disabled all his life by rheumatoid arthritis, can't work. Books, movies when he could afford them, TV, and time produced his impressive mastery of English. There are a few other languages in his quiver, acquired the same way. He lives across the narrow lane, his roof just below our terrace. Nina and Fred give him a stipend to help with translation when guests need it, and he shares meals. “They opened the house to guests to give them something to do besides grieve, and they help me, and I help them.” Berat is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s two villages, originally one mostly Christian, one mostly Moslem, joined by stone bridges across a narrow, shallow river. Those distinctions are dimmed by several decades of communist policy. Looking up from the valley both are walls of great windows, the Town of A Thousand Windows. From above they are cascades of terracotta roofs and stone walls. Many of the houses are abandoned. Work is scarce, young people, like Arjan, leave. For Fred, “In socialism we did not have much, but everybody helped one another. I don't know if they do in capitalism.” “He likes Trump", says Mikel (and “I cannot.”) Fred has lived through a lot of change. He looks for assurances. Maybe I have learned something on this hill in Albania. AirBnB Vasili is one of many houses inside the castle of Berat. It is not Cinderella’s castle, turreted gingerbread flight of fantasy. Berat castle is solid, stodgy realism three concentric rings of thick stone, tall walls built centuries ago to protect the people living inside. Now, tourists pass through the narrow gates unquestioned, free. There are no turrets, no dungeons, no illusion of beauty. The mosques and churches are rubble. We walk the walls. We see two other people. They nod. A horse does not, too busy munching sparse grass from the spaces between the cobblestones. The view of the valley, the mountains, and the twin town across the river is reason to climb the walls. The walls did their job ‘back when'. They can't defend against a virus, or economic injustice. I thank them anyway. Lunch is on a uneven table in a narrow lane, rice and chicken for me, stuffed eggplant for Dennis. We eat more to satisfy Tongue than Tum. Nina's breakfasts, which include raki, and dinners, ditto, are parentheses around our day. Anything that happens between them is inconsequential. Dinners and talk stretch our nights way past my usual nod off time. This really does feel like family. Then we seal the deal with a photo. Dennis’ flashes a photo of Will, his nephew by marriage. The family hoots and hollers. He is a dead ringer twin to Arjan, beard, smile, paunch, eyes, doppelganger extraordinaire. “We will all come for Arjan's wedding. But maybe Will's wife will want Arjan!” Who knows? We’d come back in a flash. On our last morning, Arjan drives us to the bus station. Fred gives us a bottle of raki. We all laugh, then hug. Then we are gone, taking Berat and this family with us. I hope something of us stays with them 2020-09-20 AND 21 – SUNDAY AND MONDAY – TIRANA, ALBANIA Tirana surprises. We expect that after years under the isolated and unimaginative regime of Communist dictator Hoxha, Tirana would have a sort of ‘Design by Mother Theresa ‘ life and look. Wrong!! The city has clearly kicked that habit. Albania is not a rich country, but Tirana seems to thrive. The neighbourhood around our all white and edgy, hyper-modernist/minimalist AirBnB is lush under the shade of chestnut trees. Cafes and restaurants outnumber the glossy shops. They spill tables across the sidewalks. Pizza and ‘pastabilities' crowd the menus. Tirana looks and eats like Italy, just 100 miles across the narrow Ionian Sea. “When in Rome…EAT! Our hosts, Mikel and Anisa send us a list of their favorite eateries. They score a perfect 10. My homemade garganelli pasta with spicy sausage and green peas, and Dennis’ with ricotta and mint have lost nothing in crossing the Sea. The gelato is silk, in laser colors, mine deep brown, Dennis’ the blackest raspberry. The cost is a fraction of what it would be anywhere else in Europe. The food has made it across, but the traffic has left noise and Latin habits back on the boot. Albanian drivers know the motor, not the horn, powers the car, that screaming aspersions against other drivers and their mothers does not untie traffic, and that driving is more productive if only one person speaks at a time, and keeps both eyes on the he road, and both hands on the steering wheel. Tirana is a great eating and walking city. We do both. The bakery on our corner has cases of caloric confections. We graze, sample and stock up on still warm crumbly shortbread cookies for our early fight on Air Albania back to Istanbul. Mike has arranged for the shuttle to pick us up on our corner at 7. We fly from Mother Theresa International Airport. Mama Italia's victory is not total. 2020-09-22 - TUESDAY - ISTANBUL Tirana’s Mother Theresa Airport and Air Albania Flight 1001 are Milan-sleek. We sacrifice the last of our Albanian Lek on the altar of the Duty Free Spendatorium, the one offering slabs of nutty chocolate to penitents. The change goes in the Red Cross tank. Our flight is a one-hour straight run up into the clouds, across a tip of Macedonia, a lot of Greece, the Sea of Marmara, and down into Istanbul. We descend through blue skies as we finish our tomato and cheese sandwich, cube of cake, and square wax carton of peach nectar. The bottle of water comes with us. The new Istanbul Airport is designed for Decathlonetes, survivors of the Tour de France, and Kenyan marathon runners. Distances are continental. Signage is abundant, bilingual, well-intentioned. And useless. Exit signs flourish, but we don't see any for food, or for the place offering Covid-19 testing. Turkey has flooded the travel addict sites with news of its two-hour turn around Corona testing, for 16 Euros (or maybe 36), available 24 hours a day. And nowhere to be found. We tramp across the continent from Sweden to Switzerland before we find someone who points us ‘thataway’. ‘Thataway’ is down around the boot of Italy, just barely in the airport. The sign is miniscule but an impeccably dressed, handsome, man takes charge. Our problem is simple. We leave for Egypt late on October 8. Egypt requires a negative test taken no more than 48 hours before touchdown in Cairo, and hard copy of the results in Arabic or English. Can do? Can do! Come the day before, take the test, pay. Come the day of your flight and get the results, signed, sealed, and delivered. In two languages, Turkish and English. Over his shoulder we see the testing site. It’s impressively Sicily-sized, well-signed, antiseptic. The lines in front of the windows are short. I see no screaming or rending of garments. We leave hopeful about October 8. Corona-spawned challenges to airborne international travel semi-negotiated, we venture into the mysterious territory of domestic land travel in the Age of Covid-19. I have done my homework. Or tried to. Turkish websites are notoriously, willfully, unhelpful, though they lose stars to Spain's Iberia Airlines website which registers astonishment that you want to buy a ticket, or pay for one, and kicks you out. Olě. I am prepared. But…Kamil Koc (pronounced Coach), biggest and best of Turkeys scores of bus companies wants info we don’t have: a Turkish ID number, universal national ID tattoo for Turks. To travel by plane or long distance bus Turks need a TC code, which they have anyway. We don’t have one, can't get one, need one. We have wandered into Agatha Christie/Arthur Conan-Doyle territory. The Road Company Poirot and Watson troll the internet. Clues abound. Foreigners can get a temporary equivalent, an ‘HES code', new under Covid-19. It contains citizenship, name, DOB, passport number and how many days you will be in Turkey (guesstimate and add a few for insurance). Every passenger on the bus can be identified, so there is a way of tracking who went where, and how, and when, and who else was on the bus…in case one of the passengers comes down with the virus. That's the official explanation, and the government is sticking to it. Imagination can provide others. Instructions are clear: text all the above to 2023. From a Turkish mobile phone number. We have one. On our ancient Turkish flip phone. On my desk in Florida. Several transcontinental trips get us confirmation that this is what we need, and $35 gets us a Turkish sim card and phone number. We call 2023 get our HES number. The bus website shakes its digital digit. No. NO. Where is your Turkish ID number? There is a direct bus from the south shore of the continent to Istanbul's bus station, Otogar. Otogar is bigger than the airport, home to KamilKoc---at gate 145---and hundreds of bus companies touting their pan-European, and Asian, destinations in sign, voice, and photos, colors faded but still lurid. We are not tempted to scrap tomorrow’s 8 hour bus trip to Amasra for one to Finland. Kamol Koc is a success. HES code works on their local system, money passes through the covid barrier, tickets return. We’re in seats 17 and 18 at 9am. We are good to go. It has taken us six hours. Arthur and Agatha would be proud. We heft our backpacks and descend into the Metro for the trip to our old digs at Arat Apartments. 2020-09-23 – WEDNESDAY – TO AMASRA I have a fantasy. I want to fly around the world in a glass airplane. Today I get a dry run, flying across Turkey in a glass bus. Kamil Koç bus line may fall short on websites, but it has this long– distance bus thing rethought, spiffed, humanized, and licked. There's a single row of soft leather seats down one side, a matching double row on the other, room for human-sized legs and hips. And for the tall, burly, uniformed, flight attendant to deliver water and a choice of snacks from his cart. The computer screens on each seat back, and the movies on demand, are unnecessary. We are wrapped in wall sized sheets of glass, seat to roof, linked together at almost invisible joints. Turkey is playing fulltime all around us live and in color. For 8 hours. Just past the first sign for Amasra, the driver pulls over, stops, opens the door, points down. And out. “Amasra”. We see only trees and more road. We descend, girded by residual confidence from our episode of Roadside Abandonment in Albania. Been here, done that. Don’t want the tee-shirt. Tall and Burly is right behind us. He gets our luggage, points to a cab we hadn't noticed, hands us the bags, and the cabby some cash, points to the cab: “Amasra. Goodbye". Ten minutes later we arrive in Amasra---chauffered. Kamil Koc has this thing licked. Amasra is beautiful beyond imagining. I’ll take this version of my fantasy. 2020-09-24 2020-09-25 THURSDAY AND FRIDAY - AMASRA Amasra is ancient. There were beach and fish lovers here by 800bc. They stayed for the view: two crescent bays of transparent blue waters swept apart by a peninsula, and a small island hanging from it by a stone bridge. We’re hooked. Our airy digs are on the near side of the island, two floors up, facing the smaller tiny bay, across the stone bridge, and just past the end of the crumbling stone wall that protected Amasra when need be, as it was frequently. Only Turkish tourists come now, and few of them. We hear no English, or any language other than Turkish. The view from our balcony sweeps the whole of old Amasra, from clear water below to mosque on the hill above us. If we wanted we could jump into the clear Black Sea right from the rocks below. We leave the water to fishing boats and the kids diving off the high rock just to the left. Their splashes and laughs are counterpoint to the calls from the mosque. We face south. Sunrises and sunsets are ours. Our first breakfast fills the table and us: cucumbers, tomatoes, green olives, their spicy cousins in black, three kinds of cheese, off-white through saffron, ham/sausage slices, shape and color challenging exact taxonomy, crusty bread, fruit preserves. Then the real meal appears: menemen, Turkey's delicious melange of eggs and tomatoes, shirred together into a stew then baked, and a flat egg crêpe/omelet topped with melted cheese and sausage. This costs under four dollars each. We have found ‘our' place, return every day. The next morning we have “Trabzon pide", breakfast heaven named for a town way east along the coast. Take pizza dough. Stretch it into a dinner plate circle. Crimp the edges. Fill the center with 2 kinds of cheese. Bake it. Crack an egg in the center, add a lot of butter. Bake again. Say a prayer to the God of Cholesterol. Die happy. The days are lazy interludes between gorgiastic breakfasts and sunsets. We wander the walls. At one of the arched gates that cut through the stones, a man points to one of the bottom stones. “Caesar". And there it is: CAESAR, still clear in that stiff angular way of Roman inscriptions. I don't know which of the many Caesars was responsible. It was surely not Cleo’s boyfriend, but one of the later gaggle of wannabes mistaking bombast and the authority to create monuments for the right to be respected and remembered. Things haven't changed much. It’s a short walk across the peninsula from the small bay to the big bay, though a narrow bazaar. There is gaudy stuff for the Turkish tourists, and women selling luminous veggies and fruit for the people who live here. The tourist stalls are resigned. Its mid-week, post-season and Corona time. Nobody is buying. We cross to the big bay. It's more self-consciously ‘beachy’, with a few touts selling putt-putt trips out onto all that blue, but still gloriously seductive, luring us into dolce vita fantasies of life along the Black sea. “Where you guys from" snaps that dream shut. English? Here? Yep, via several years in Boston , but with no dropped rs. He's laid back and offers us a boat ride. He won't have many chances today. We hate to turn him down, but we like wandering the streets. The local museum is a few carefully curated rooms of bits of history left for us by all those beauty-besotted ancients. We have it to ourselves. It’s right by the beach on the small bay. We can see our balcony across the bay, over the boats pulled up for painting, and the metal tables and chairs waiting for tea drinkers. A dog plays in the water, a yellow spot on blue. At day's end, we sit right above the lapping ripples, toasting the sunset with fried kalamar, and grilled fresh-caught Black Sea fish, sea sass for Dennis, sole for me. And cold beer. Tea in tulip glasses finishes the meal and the day. We wonder how many of those ancients got this far and no farther. 2020-09-26 SATURDAY- SAFRANBOLU “Bonus!” A final breakfast with the restaurant family, a glass of tea, photos, and they send us off with Turkey's graceful right-arm-crossed-over-the-heart gesture. The minivan to Bartin is waiting around the bay, in the square by the museum. We walk slowly, holding onto Amasra. Across the bay, our balcony has caught morning light. On this side, Yellow Dog is already playing in the water. There are fish to catch… or play with. He ignores us. Our HES code and 14 Lira get us seats---socially distanced---on the mini-bus to Bartin. The hills rise steeply above Amasra. The town and the Black Sea disappear from view, gone now from the days we have left here, south from the Black Sea, in Anatolia, the heartland of Turkey. The transfer in Bartin to the bus for Safranbolu is seamless, and in a bus station, no roadside dumping involved. We head south. Outside the glass walls of the bus the hills bulge upwards and capture more of the sky, become mountains of pine forests, so dense the needles blur into a smooth edge, a green scimitar against that sky. The smooth road is the only sign humans have been here. Then we rise into Safranbolu. The old part of Safranbolu is the largest collection of Ottoman Empire wooden houses in Turkey, or anywhere. It is a UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE but not a museum. People live here in these houses, some down in the valley, around the bazaar, the caravanserai, still a place for travelers to spend the night, but with cars not camels tethered around its high walls, and around the old hanam, one of the most famous baths in the country. We are up on the hill, out of the bazaar, in the neighborhood around Ulu Camii mosque, down a cobbled slope. Fatosh and Metin welcome us to their AirBnB, smiles Corona-masked, eyes not. Sebastian leans in for a sniff, wags his tail, and returns to his snooze on the couch in the garden. The inn is original, patina-ed wood, stone, stucco, carpets, all true. Our room is the ‘family room', with 5 beds, a king for mama and papa, and twins for 3 kids. The bathroom is a concession, adapted from a closet, so tight. Windows overlook the garden. And, there is a balcony. Our room is perfect. A long string of operatic meows from the balcony suggest someone else thinks so, too. Our diva is half-grown, spotless white, star graduate of Kitten Cute School, and irresistible. But she stays outside. The opera picks up pace, volume, and range, from indignant high soprano to pitiful low contralto. But she stays outside. Stomach rumbles: food. We listen, trot out our door, across the old carpets, down the winding wooden staircase, out into the courtyard, twice left and up the cobbles to a flat alley, then right to the square around the mosque. Women chat behind piles of peppers so red they heat the air, guys chill over their tea. The minaret is silent, between calls to prayer. Renaissance painters know this place. We turn left again, up a market street, and leave old Safranbolu. The main drag buzzes. This is Turkey. Every other shop sells food, or coffee. They all sell tea. Tavuk (chicken) rules, strung whole in long lines, turning slowly in roasting mode, or chunked and skewered, perfect kebabs, or sliced thin and stacked on a vertical spit, then sliced again into warm bread. We pass. A man waves from a small table, points through a door to trays behind glass. This is a lokanta, Turkey's take on buffet, choice of three or four dishes freshly made back in the kitchen and sold by the ‘porsyion'. The food looks good (duh…we’re in Turkey), he has a wide smile, and reminds us of our friend, Ned. And so, we meet Omer and his 19 year old nephew, Resul. And find ‘our’ restaurant. The tavuk here is shredded, in broth with chunks of carrot and potato, a joyful marriage presided over by Omer's wife, magician. Kofte, long narrow meatballs snuggle with tomatos and peppers in the other pan. Not for long. Bread, and fresh tomato salad ‘come with'. Lunch is a ballet of forks and spoons carrying tongue heaven across the table, to murmurs and slurps. Omer understands. He scoops up a ladle of kofte and friends and drops it onto our plate. He grins: “Bonus.” Indeed. 2020-09-27 AND 2020-09-28 SUNDAY AND MONDAY- SAFRANBOLU Saffron gave birth to Safranbolu, and named it. The spice is ephemeral and insubstantial. The town is neither. From up on our hill the town below is a rugged plateau of terra cotta roofs layered over walls of stone, wood, whitewash. Saffron merchants built summer houses up here to catch the breeze off the mountains. Were staying in one The old bazaar is way ‘down there’. Google maps gives us a path. It squeezes between houses, and drops, would-be corkscrew, down rocky steps worn to uneven clumps, hard on balance and complaining knees. A family of long-skirted women stare for a second, then disappear off to the right. It's quiet and beautiful in the late afternoon light, now sliding to saffron, but eyes and logic---and knees--- tell us Google's plan is not ours. We climb back up. The next morning we try again, with directions from Metin. His route down is an easy paved walk along a two lane road that curves in a steep drop off the summit and ends in the square behind Safranbolu’s old hamman. It’s one of Turkey's most famous baths, now behind us as we pass through a narrow street to the old bazaar. The alleys and squat shops are original. The content is not. We pass on the shops, piled with thick Turkish towels, or sticky Turkish delight, or desserts oozing honey, but not the Coffee Museum, purveyor of seductive aromas. It’s hot. Google translate does its magic by a table under the trees in an alley, a thread of air through stone, and “would you like to try home made black mulberry juice” gets a nod from us and and a full liter bottle of deep purple ‘dut', citrusy thirst quencher from the pudgy waiter. Later, when we pass the restaurant again, he waves, holds up one of our phone charging cords, and returns it, a memory installed. Still later, on our last day, we stop for more ‘dut’. “Liter?” asks ‘charger guy'. “No, one glass each”... then another in the heat. “My name is John”, says ‘charger guy' and laughs when we order that second round: “why didn’t you buy a liter?” Only the metal workers remain of the traditional shops, at the edge of the bazaar, across a gorge, and before the cobbles turn upwards out of the bazaar and into the alleys of other neighborhoods. Metalsmiths are magicians, fire-wielders, transformers of iron. ‘Our' guy hand makes complicated elaborate locks, magical in complexity and simplicity. He points to the framed UNESCO approbation. He is a UNESCO Master. Five of his small hooks will find a place somewhere in our backpacks, then at home. Memories will hang from them. Our hosts tell us to walk out of the old bazaar into the hills on the other side of the bazaar. We find a mosque arched over a shallow stream and total quiet. The houses, here away from the center, lean, weighted by history. There are stories here. Next time. “Black carrot", and Resul points to his phone. That's what it says, but surely not. Carrots be orange. Beets? Maybe? Fingers whizz over the screen. There they are: carrots in Halloween drag. The juice is black, but what we expect from carrots, dull compared to the lemony zip of purple ‘dut'. The flavor is irrelevant, its memory re-invented by Omer and Resul as they toast us and send us off. FATOSH AND METIN 2020-09-29 TUESDAY – TO GAZIANTEP Metin knocks on our door at 6 with kahve and kek to get us going. White cat complains through the window. In the garden, Sebastian leans in for an ear scratch, stretches all four flat on the cobbles. Upright two-footers talk travel plans. They’ll visit us on the way to Cuba after visiting their son , permanently emigrated to Ģermany. Cat disappears. Were not worth a farewell. Sebastian gets his final scratch, sings for his breakfast, and takes his morning pretzel to his couch. Fist bumps send us off for the two hour bus trip to Ankara, then our flight to Gaziantep. Metro busline is almost Kamil Koc spiffy. Seats are 2 by 2. Tall and Burly is Short and Pauncby but he wheels the cart with khave (alas Nescafe, not Turkish), cai, and plain kek with panache.The walls are glass, the view cinemascopic. Pine trees upholster the mountains in plush, thick green. We drop out of high mountains, arrow straight southward. The landscape relaxes to ripples, with an occasional rage of bluffs, then flattens and dries. The pines are assertive, prickling clumps, then stipples, then spiny dots, then gone. Fallow fields lead us to the skyscrapers of Ankara. Flying around Turkey is cheap. Flights connect all the towns, but most flights go via Istanbul. We wait 5 hours in Ankara for a 60 minute flight to Istanbul, 4 hours in Istanbul for the 90 minute flight back southwest to Gaziantep. I should have done the math. The bus is faster, only 10 hours. Ah, hindsight. Sixteen hours after fist bumps in Safranbolu the last leg of our ‘grand tour of Turkey’ flight drops into Gaziantep. Half an hour later the cabby stops and points up the cobbles. We have been here before and know the way: up, left, up some more, ring the bell next to the iron door. The sign still says Asuke Konagi. Below it is the now universal Covid warning to wear masks, in Turkish, but “maski" is clear. It’s verging midnight but our hosts offer us cold beers on the table in the courtyard . They remember us from 2 years ago.! The vines now cover more of the stone walls, up to the windows on the floor above the courtyard. We have our old room, stone walls paneled with smooth, aged wood, and puffed with new bed covers. The tall windows open to the courtyard. If there are sounds we don’t notice. 2020-09-30 WEDNESDAY GAZIANTEP We are easily seduced. Gaziantep found that out 2 years ago, and infected us with a demanding ‘memory worm'. We’re back, for more of ‘Turkey`s best food', it’s best mosaic museum, the floodlit castle that floats over the city in the night sky, and our viney courtyard. Mostly, we just walk. All of Turkey's cities have life. Gaziantep has it, lived large, and lived colorfully, and lived gently. The bazaar is our favorite of all the bazaars. It begins just down the steps from our inn, and across the road, just past the mosque. We walk through the tap and clang of the coppersmiths, the earth smells of the leather crafters, and the colors of the spice merchants. We buy half a kilo of pungent ‘urfa beber', red pepper distilled by the sun to black. We’ll share it with our foodie-buddy Anne-Marie, and chef friend Chérie. I’m a sucker for the unremarkable stuff of daily life. At the tinsmiths we buy a small ladle, distant cousin to the long-handled strainer from Mauritania, and the even longer-handled ladle from Bangladesh. It costs a drip over a dollar. The teen-ager who sells it to us holds it up for a photo, his smile as unfettered as the curls that rampage over his head. Those same curls top life-sized brawny gods and mortals doing their mythological or Roman upper class thing in bits and pieces across town in the Zeugma Mosaic Museum. The mosaics are floors of villas, rescued from land to be sacrificed for a dam. They are splendid, sprawling, pixillated messages almost two millennia in the coming. Well, the pre-Christian ones anyway. They burst with life. Rollicking, raucus doings of the denizens of heaven and myth suggest a bit of a Raunchy Romp might be available just ‘off screen'. It may be old hat. The expression on the face of goddess Europa as she is being ‘abducted’ is a bit “not again, Zeus. Do try a little imagination.” I don’t know how many chances she got to improve his technique. Once Christianity is firmly established, the godly doings become ungodly. They and their human cohorts disappear. The mosaics twirl and vine and rope, just bland design. They are no fun at all. Neither is the War Museum. After the Great War (soon to be renamed WW One with the arrival of WW 2 two decades. Megalomaniacs can't stop with just one ) when the ‘victorious’ Allies decided to carve Turkey into fiefdoms, Gaziantep’s citizens refused. Men and women fought the French. And won. The museum is a narrow line of detailed daily histories and bronze friezes curving upwards through the rocky spiral of the main corridor of the castle. The atmosphere is dark. It fits the story. Whoever thought war makes sense? In the afternoon the women relatives of Shari, our host, invite us to share a meal that remembers surviving another war, this one a family dispute among the descendants of the Prophet Mohammed. The men fought…and still do. The dispute created the Sunni/Shia schism that divides the Moslem world. The women back then pooled whatever they could bring from their separate fires into a thick sweet gruel to keep their families alive. 1300 years later the men are still fighting. Sometimes the women join them. But not today. The custom now is for one woman to cook each ingredient, but separately, then mix them all together as her fore-mothers did. She is their distillation. The thick, sweet gruel is soft, crunchy, smooth, chewy, and delicious, probably an improvement on the wartime fare of the original batch, no matter. It brings the women together. They come: Shari's mother, two aunts, a sister. Her daughter-in-law brings Shari’s first grandchild, John. He's adorable, cuddled and coddled. And they may send him off to war someday. Will that gruel seem so tasty then? 2020-10-01 THURSDAY GAZIANTEP “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” We're crunched at a tiny table on the sidewalk, spilled out of the glass closet of the chicken restaurant. The place just stretches to contain the chef’s swirling knives as he samurai-slices slivers of chicken from the spit. He sizes us up. Not local. Goes for what he knows :“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” “Ja, aber nür ein Bischen" and German 101 from 1962 pops out, no match for his Deutsch, honed like his knife cooking Turkish for “sieben Jähre in Deutschland”, but enough to get us two portions with everything “damit", that comes with it. And free tea. On a street corner. In Turkey And they ask us why we travel! *** 2020-10-02 MALATYA “I work fifteen hours to save one life. Man with gun kills thirty people in one minute Why?” Its 2 am. Sorrow and anger leach from the young doctor. He's waiting for his lift to the airport in the lobby of our hotel. He has stayed here many times. Our friend, owner/manager Mustafa would not let a guest sit alone. He's a night owl, assumes we are too, and commandeered another friend/guest to join us making the night grow thin for the doctor. We sit spread across the lobby, masks in our pockets. The doctor speaks through his. I get a bit entangled, then lost in his explanation of why the 5 and 10 day tests are better than the quickie tests we'll take at the airport to give us entry into Egypt. He's deadly serious about this seriously deadly disease. All Turkey is. Everywhere people are masked in public, or pay fines. “Disinfectant, he said drink disinfectant.” Everybody knows who ‘he' is. Everyone laughs. Our country has become a joke, a seriously deadly joke. 2020-10-03 AND 2020-10-04 MALATYA Malatya has no obvious draws for tourists, none of the glamour and history of the ancient cities around it, here in bedrock of ancient Mesopotamia. We came 2 years ago because it was the cheapest airfare to this part of the country. Then we met Mustafa, owner of our ‘stab in the dark’ hotel, fluent in English, tireless, and great fun. Friend at first hug, he unwrapped the laid-back charm of his city for us. So, we are back, for a short visit. It’s no digestible compensation for the longer one he planned to Florida before Corona arrived, but Mustafa’s regrets are short and his arms are long. He wraps us in his genuine friendship and hospitality. As does Malatya. ‘Tantuni Guy’ still makes his spicy Turkish take on tacos in his tiny corner shop, remembers us, waves, rolls up a batch of the chicken version, hot, mine a bit spicier than Dennis', as good as we remember. Later, we stop in for a cool drink. He waves us off when we try to pay. ‘Apricot Guy’, inevitably, and of course, a Mustafa cousin, steers us to the bin of naturally sun-dried apricots, black and chewy, packs up a half kilo…then dances before us trays of chocolate, nuts, fruit in tongue-lust inducing combinations. We leave on a sugar high. But don’t forget to straighten our masks. “Fish!!” is Mustafa’s call of the day, the expedition planned right after breakfast. Mustafa hasn’t driven or even sat in the front seat of a car since he was in a bad accident while riding shotgun. We’ll go by bus. We mask up. Mustafa herds us out the door through the market and onto a bus heading out of the city. The road splits around the solar-sized apricot that announces the city's most delectable product, then rises up into the mountains. Our bus is a local run, picking up more than it drops off. An hour into the hills we sweep off the bus with most everybody else. There's no town, just trees dripping apples and signs sprouting fish. “Red or white?” He means apples. We go for red, pick our own, munch, then follow the fishy signs. The restaurants all raise fish in pens fed by a clear stream, all serve the same dishes, all look good. A waiter leads us into the kitchen to help us choose a way for our fish to enter gastronomic heaven. We go for a version pampered with tomatoes and onions, and baked, then broiled to bubbling in a shallow clay oval. Mustafa adds cheese to his. We add drool to ours. 2020-10-05 - ISTANBUL “Christian, Moslem… fundamentalism is all bad.” One arm points to the old church, the other to the mosque across the narrow street. In between, Edip shakes his head. He's tall and dignified, a minaret/steeple next to the Italian Baroque bustle and waving arms of Murat. One manages, the other owns our digs here in Kadirga, just off the Sea of Mamara, and way down the steep hill from Sultanahmet and ‘tourist Turkey'. The few obvious outsiders we pass here sprout backpacks (all bigger than ours) and the glottal stops of middle and eastern European languages. This is our 4th stay with them. They know ‘our' room, the one with the balcony facing inland. It was already booked when we looked online. The guys have a plan. “Why did you book the double room? Without balcony! Its not good for you. You will be tired. You will stay in our friend's hotel tonight, then come here tomorrow when guests check out of your room. I have paid already. The room is very good” Friend's hotel is around the park, part way up the hill, and brand new. We are the first guests. And the room is very good indeed. We drop our bags, and follow Murat down to his favorite restaurant, new to us, but right next door to the bakery where we get our hot straight from the oven ‘simits' in the morning. Murat is an Italianate explosion of arms, wildly inventive English syntax, and invigorating charm. He's also in his early 30's and handsome. Very. He laughs at my suggestion his classes in the middle school where he teaches world literature must popular with the students. “They don’t think. They have cell phones and want to be heros and swing swords. Nothing more. But, I try.” His arms whip the air. Those students don’t know what they're missing. Much later, after a nap, we sit in twilight at a small table in front of ‘our' restaurant. The fresh squeezed orange juice is good. The bread sopping up the sauce from our ‘tavuk sote', chicken sautéed with tomatoes is even better. A young man walks by. His tee-shirt says ‘WALLS ARE FOR CLIMBING'. Murat would approve. 2020-10-06 - ISTANBUL In which we are fed by friends high above the city, and I get a haircut down on the street, with a wax job and a green facial, smoke a shisha, and am serenaded by gypsies while I dance in black face. *** 2020-10-07 AND 2020-10-08 ISTANBUL AIRPORT We've done our Corona homework. 2,000 tests an hour they say. 40,000 a day they say. Results in two to four hours they say. On line, in email and hard copy, they say. 36 dollars in US, Euro, Turkish, or credit card. They say. Two weeks before our October 8 flight to Egypt we pass through Istanbul airport to check all that out. There are no signs pointing up down, left or right towards Corona testing, but people are helpful with gestures thataway. Istanbul airport is soon to be designated Europe's fifth or sixth smallest country, bigger than Vatican City or Monaco, but smaller than Luxemburg so thataway is a hike, at the far end of the Arrivals floor. We get confirmation that yes, a test on October 7 will get us results on October 8 and in time to get us onto our flight to Egypt that evening. The plan is to meet our travel buddy, Elfie, when she arrives from Vienna at 1pm on the 7th, do the deed, meet again on the 8th with plenty of fudge time, pick up our hard copy and wing off. Right. On the 7th the efficient Havaist airport bus drops us at Arrivals, midway along the continent-sized airport’s southern coastline, so kilometers from the western border and Corona City. The Arrival doors are locked. We wander westward. All the doors are locked. Very close to the far western border, within commuting distance of Corona City, a guard tells us we can't enter via Arrivals. We have to go up into the higher altitudes and enter via Departures. There is an elevator, but only one door is open. It is back there, and he points over the horizon towards the Central Highlands, aka back where we started. All this is true. We trek back, ride up, are checked in, follow the signs for Arrivals, make a left at Azerbaijan Airlines, go down the escalator, and arrive at Arrivals. So does Elfie. We lead her to Corona City. The Nice Man in Black shows us where to get our numbers, and to join one of the several lines to register and pay for our tests.. “You can only pay in Turkish Lira” says the deep voice behind us. “But, the sign says….” The voice has a grin, then a shrug . We pay, pass our passports through the slot in the glass On the other side fingers fly over the keyboard, and fly, and fly. Eyes scrunch passports are turned, smelled, tasted, compared to the masked apparition on our side of the glass. Printers whirr. My passport and two teeeeeeny labels pass back through the slot. There is gobbledygook, a QVC code, a website address, and on one label a creatively truncated version of my name, fingers and spaces defeated by a middle name with too many consonants and a family name with too many letters. This, I distrust, but the lady with the flying fingers demures:“OK. No problem.” They say. We line up for the test. There are 20 people in front of us, facing a larger number of space capsules. At ‘2,000 an hour’ that should get us in, swabbed, and out in less than a minute. Right. Half an hour later “Next one" means me. I croak a few ‘ahhs' to the masked lady swaddled stem to stern in HazMat, she swabs my throat and nose, sticks my labels to a tube, and I am done. I don’t know who does statistics for Corona City, but they have misplaced a decimal. “Results in 4 to 24 hours.” says The Nice Man in Black. “Check it at the website” and he waves us out of Corona City. 19 hours later, at 07:00, and 10 hours before check-in for the flight, we give it a shot. ‘NAME and LAST 4 DIGITS OF PASSPORT NUMBER' get me ‘NO RESULTS FOUND IN SYSTEM’. Dennis? Ditto. He tries his name and last four on his phone: “RESULTS: NEGATIVE”. One down. One to go. And not going anywhere via either phone, at least not yet or at 8, 9, or 10. The 11 o'clock bus gets us to the airport at 12, and … ‘NO RESULTS FOUND IN SYSTEM’. Elfie gets there about 1. “I got my results last night”. One more try, then: nope! Contingency plans flutter unspoken around pseudo sang-froid. NO results keep me out of Egypt and free to wander around Turkey for another three weeks, but are better than POSITIVE results which keep me locked up in quarantine here. In either case, Egypt and friend Ramdan's three day wedding party on the Nile goners. Maybe this will become an adventure and make a good story. Right. By 2pm I am still nowhere in the system. I throw myself on the mercy of one of The Nice Men in Black who have been so helpful before. NMinB Number One listens, hears, nods, commiserates, turns me over to NMinB Number Two, who waves his arms to part the sea of heads lined up to pay and leads me to the head of the line at Red Window 12. Teeeny slip and passport go in. Fingers fly. Printer hums and clicks. Paper spews, gets a look, a stamp, joins passport for the return trip. The block labelled ‘RESULTS’ is not empty…