NOVEMBER 27, 2021

TO

JANUARY 16, 2022

 

MOROCCO

TURKEY

IRAQI KURDISTAN

SAUDI ARABIA

 

2021 - MOROCCO AND TURKEY

 

2021-11-27 MIAMI TO CASABLANCA

 

“You can't get there from here”.

That comes in many versions.

The Miami airport version comes in a charming Portuguese accent. The TAP Portugal Airlines agent is definitive, but offers a shred of hope. We Can get there from here but we need a COVID TEST. Any version will do. The vaccine jabs, two, even with the half jab chaser don’t count. Even if we are only in transit and don't ‘enter' Portugal through passport control. This is not what the IATA, US EMBASSY, and PORTUGAL portal say, but Charming Accent is adamant: no test, no seat. He smiles. Get the test and come back to me at the head of the line.

Testing is at Gate 20. We're at Gate 30. This being (1) Florida and (2) Miami Airport, signage isn't even an afterthought. We wander down the numbers. Near Gate 20 there is a Covid Test sign. In 00.01 point size, roughly visible only to ants. The process is easy, minimally invasive, stick, swab, save, results in 15 minutes, 76 dollars, please. EACH.

Charming Accent is true to his word, checks us in, waves our carry-ons through, orders me a wheelchair in Lisbon, and waves us onto TAP Flight 224.

No one checks for the test in Lisbon Airport.

Fourteen and a half hours after liftoff from Miami, we creak up and out of our seats, pass Vaccine Muster and exit into the brilliance of Casablanca at noon.

Four hours after that we're slobbering over a chicken tagine on a sidewalk table down the street from Hotel Astrid. The waiter hands us forks. We excavate through the slabs of potato, sliced peppers, and squash, linger over the caramelized onions, and help the stewed chicken fall into juicy chunks. Eyes remember. Nose remembers. Tongue remembers.

You can get here from there.

2021-11-28 CASABLANCA

“Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by" is how the song goes. We're living The Moroccan version, sitting on the corner watching all the world go by.

The guide book says that  “there isn't much in Casablanca for the tourist”.

Maybe. But there's a lot for the traveler. And all for free from a front row seat at a little table outside a café, on the edge of a string of pedestrian plazas.

The cafes are everywhere. Almost all the customers are men, alone or in pairs, most , as the French say, ‘of a certain age'. They sit, unhurried, unharried, at rest, and sip mall cups of ‘café noire', slim glasses of ‘café au lait', or smaller glasses of ‘thé au mente', mint leaves floating in the gold tea. We join them, settling into chairs at one end of a long open plaza. We sip too, watching the world go by.

The passers-by come from all over Africa. Skin tones of North Africa are bronze, but muddled by the pallor of city air. Faces from south of the Sahara are polished ebony tall atop slender rangy silhouettes.

The men have standard outfits: slim jeans, often slit open, wounded dungaree, topped with padded jackets, an occasional scarf in the cool afternoon light, and, rarely, a baseball cap, brim to the back. Most dress in black, well-chosen setting for the dark eyes, hair, and beard above. A few opt for tight padded vests in pseudo-neon orange, or lime, or rancid yellow, Neon is unfortunate stacked under Moroccan city- pallor but flames under the glossy black of the southern Africans. Some men wear thick hooded robes, wool in the color of sheep. A few younger ones stretch out of a hoodless, sleeveless version. The robes bring a taste of the desert, but otherwise the guys rattle no sartorial cages.

The women are wildly different. Some grandmas move smoothly by, wrapped in tradition, head to foot. Their daughters cover, too, but in slacks, boots, and headscarves. Their granddaughters totter on stiletto heels, flash tights below, tighter sweaters above, pierced extremities, and boyfriends in hormonic tow.

The center of the plaza is pigeon territory. They flap down to eat, irresistible to little boys doing what little boys do everywhere. They run, rush, and make noise. The pigeons do what pigeons do everywhere. In the centerpiece of the plaza, a sculpture of stupefying ugliness suggests a forty- foot pterodactyl did the same.

Morocco sits north of Florida. The sun lies lower than back there. It slips softly angled light down the plaza, a wash of gilded patina to flatter Casablanca's ageing art deco buildings.

We sip, watch, pay, walk back to Hotel Astrid, past chickens roasting, beige to deep brown, oranges hanging in bags above squeeze machines, and ‘Helen's Bar'. Helen is a mystery place of raucous male laughs and whoops seeping through a beaded curtain. Sports bar? Higher pitched lady giggles nudge our guesses in other directions.

There is a lot of HERE here.

We have one more day in this place ‘of no great interest' then plan to head south to Senegal and Massimo's camp by the beach. Then on to Istanbul, Iraqi Kurdistan, Saudi Arabia, back here, then Portugal, and Florida in mid-January, one day before I begin rehearsals as first act cardinal, and second act judge in Tosca.

In our room up in Hotel Astrid the iffy Internet is strong enough to reach us from Luis. “Guys, Morocco announces that all air traffic is banned for 14 days. Beginning at midnight.”.

We ain't going nowhere. We are here in Morocco for the duration. Could be worse. Maybe we'll find out what goes on in Helen's.

2021-11-29 and 30 CASABLANCA

It's true.

There will no flights after midnight. Were booked tomorrow on Iberia airlines to Madrid then south back over Morocco, and Western Sahara, and Mauritania to Senegal. We gamble that we might squeeze on today's Madrid flight. The cab hurls us through Casablanca's mad traffic, dumps us at Mohammed V Airport. At the wrong end. Short of teleportation this will be tight. It's not even close.. Iberia counter has closed shop. There is no Iberia office at the airport to plead our case. No Madrid. NO Senegal.  No Senegal then no Senegal to Istanbul flight. No Istanbul flight then no flight to … Saudi Arabia evaporates on the other side of that. Maybe Morocco will open on the 12^th. Maybe we can get flights to catch up with Luis and Elfie in Kurdistan. If we don’t go, then the trip becomes much more expensive for Elfie and Luis. OK, so we stay HERE, no choice. And our friends?

The ladies at the in town Iberia office are sympathetic as they shake their heads. They offer to email us if any possibility opens. Luis texts that Iberia is launching repatriation flights. The ladies do email us. The walk back across town is quicker the second time around. Yes, there are flights, But, the flights are only for Spanish passport holders. ‘Repatriation’. Got It.

Time for the nitty gritty.

There are nine flights to be reconfigured in our aborted trip. Iberia helps. It cancels our flights from Morocco to Madrid to Senegal. Some year they’ll issue us a voucher. This flight was the great-grandvoucher descendant of an original ticket already bruised by several Covidized cancellations. We cancel the internal flights in Senegal online, kiss those fares goodbye. There is time to cancel the others. Internet at Hotel Astrid is too soft and sloppy to manage any adjustments requiring accuracy and nuance.

Omar and Rashid at Hotel Astrid are sympathetic, and offer us the best they can, “Inshallah”, eyes and hands raised to heaven. As Rosie Hoffman Grosshandler, neighborhood Auntie to one and all, used to say: “ It couldn’t hoit.”

Before Luis and Elfie suggested Kurdistan and Saudi, our plan was to spend all 7 weeks in Morocco.

Could happen. We go for a walk. Eat roast chicken and yellow rice. And drink large mugs of fresh squeezed orange juice sitting at a table on the sidewalk. The crowd at Helen's is whooping it up.

Tomorrow we will make plans for our many unexpected days here.

Inshallah.

It coudn't hoit.

And it doesn’t. We have no idea how or where he gets his info, but, Luis emails. “There are special flights on Royal Air Maroc, Iberia, and Air France.”

2021-12-01 CASABLANCA

The line at Royal Air Maroc stretches to dimness way down the road. We gamble on Iberia. The line at Iberia moves quickly, not a good sign. The Iberia Ladies smile in recognition, shake their heads in resignation.

That leaves Air France, flag carrier of the nation that has perfected ‘non' as universal solvent. The line creeps, so maybe a ‘oui' or two is on tap. Our guy is awash in ouis. He whips up two seats on tomorrow's special flight straight to Paris, the last flight out. Period. And he prints us the official Covid rules from Air France --- vaccination alone is OK --- in case there’s a ‘non’ or two afloat.

Our trip to Iraq and Saudi could be a go.

The airlines cluster along one side of the walls separating the old medina and its shops from the city. Moroccan medinas are good for a wander, though we suspect what we'll find. The walls and tower look honest. But, the stuff is ersatz Chinese effluvia, obscene anywhere, doubly more so in this country of design genius.

We are in a good mood, light of step, buoyed by our good news, and, so, forgiving.

Then we get even better news from our son, now a refugee in Kenya from the ethnic civil war in Ethiopia. The government troops have retaken his hometown of Lalibela. His mother and family will be safe.

He is giddy with a new idea: a website where people can order flowers to send to friends. “Dad, there's nothing like it in Ethiopia". The news that FTD already does that just makes him laugh. “See I have good ideas. “We love this kid.

The blip in our plans evaporates, insignificant.

2021-12-02 CASABLANCA TO PARIS

The lady has a past. Fortunately.

No, not Helen, of the bar down the street, though I am sure she has one.

Hotel Astrid, just up narrow rue 6 novembre from Helen's, has been here a while, an experienced lady, on this street, if not of the streets. Her charm is in the details. A poke and plug switchboard from her youth in the 1950’s sits in a corner of the lounge/lobby where we butter croissants and baguettes for breakfast. Her décor is perfect Moroccan, lush and brilliant. We lust for a desk by the window looking out on rue 6 novembre. The design on the door to our room might just make it back to our front door in Florida. She is our home here for 4 days. We'll be back in January, between Saudi Arabia and Lisbon, so we do mean “au revoir" and “a bientôt" to Desk Guys, Omar and Rashid as we leave.

The polyglot crowd watches the Air France ‘rescue' 777-300 land. Empty. 500 of us fill it across two gangways. We're 47J and K, me in the dreaded middle seat, for the three-hour flight to Charles De Gaulle Airport. CDG is not worthy of the City of Lights. Our hotel, a Marriot offspring, perhaps illegitimate, is glitzy ‘Euromodern', all angles, harsh light, deep shadows, and loud international muzak with no beginning, end, or point. The staff is friendly and helpful through their Covid masks. And barely pubescent. Our room is free with points.

The City of Lights doesn’t hold us, not in winter. We decide to go to the real light, the warm kind, on Turkey's southern coast, to Antalya, with its old town, and views of the Mediterranean. Our friend Mustafa used to live there. “Mustafa, can you join us in Antalya tomorrow" on WhatsApp gets an immediate phone call reply. “I am there now. I will meet you at airport. I get you good hotel”.

Done.

2021-12-03 AND 04 – ALANYA, TURKEY

I’ll meet you in ANTALYA is what Mustafa said. He does meet us at Antalya airport. Two hours later, at 3 am, we pull into ALANYA, 140 kilometers up the coast. It's the Florida, the Riviera, the Sun Belt, or maybe the Warm Belt for heat and sun starved Turks, Russians, Poles, and Germans. And of minimal interest to us. It's neat, very UNtacky, and mostly lovely. We don’t travel to wallow in the gently generic. But we are genuinely enthusiastic to be with Mustafa in his favorite city, even if it lacks the spark of the Turkey we return to as often as we can. The setting IS lovely and the food IS Turkish. Friend Ennis herds us into one gluttonous meal of barbecued barnyard, enough slabs and skewers of charred beast to satisfy a Serengeti of carnivores. We retreat the next day to the minimalist perfection of ‘tavuk tantuni’, Turkey's tubular take on stir-fried chicken tacos.

By nightfall my throat is on fire and my rumbling coughs keep me and Dennis awake.

2021-12-05 AND 06 – ALANYA

Alanya hospital does its job neatly and without fuss.

The receptionists are waiting for me with the requisition from our GeoBlue Travel Insurance. The staff and my doctor speak English. The exam is thorough. I open wide, breathe deeply, give blood, a lot of blood. Throat and nose give it up for the Covid PCR test,“to be sure". The staff promise blood results in two hours, with prescriptions. And Covid test in 4 hours. All via email. And, so it happens. In less than 2 hours. My scripts are for symptomatic relief, cough control, and a spray to reduce throat infection and swelling. They cost under four dollars. Covid is negative.

Thus, ends yet another episode of Bob's Kennel Cough.

Put me in an airplane AND land me near urban smog, car exhaust, burning landscapes, and eventually BKC descends. Classic episodes color my memories of India (hospital via motorcycle), Vietnam, Ethiopia (twice there, once for 7 days of tea and honey in the sunny courtyard of a traditional Harari house), Istanbul, Spain, Peru (edges smoothed by coca tea), Rwanda (microbes terrified into rapid evacuation by a home remedy of caustic burnt leaves) , and Florida (efficient, not worth a tale). It has never happened in the desert. Memories of Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Mauritania, Oman, the Five Stans, Iran, Jordan are rasp-free.

But, not Antalya. Bravo GeoBlue and Alanya Hospital. And Dennis for enduring another night of gargles, rasps, and rumbles without complaining, or resorting to a firmly held pillow.

2021-12-07 and 08 – ANTALYA

Antalya was already a few centuries old when Roman Emperor Hadrian, never short on ego or walls, announced his arrival here with a walk through the town's massive triumphal stone gate, so tall and broad even his ego could prance through.

Hadrian was one of The Five Good Emperors, ‘good' being relative in a string that included Nero and Caligula, but he was a decent administrator, and brave and honest enough to suffer publicly when his ‘companion', the handsome Antinous, drowned in the Nile. Hadrian came to Antalya the same year his favorite died. I’d like to think the beauty here comforted him.

The setting is spectacular, on cliffs staggered above the Mediterranean. The ‘Old Town', Kaleici, winds between Hadrian's Gate and the drop to the sea. Outside the gate, modern Antalya twists along streets laid down before Hadrian or run straightened by later Roman precision. We turn our backs on modern Antalya, and like Hadrian walk through his gate, but without pomp, unnoticed, blips on the cobblestones.

Haleic’s narrow alleys twist. Our digs are up one narrower than most and through a slit in a buttery stone wall just off Barboross (Redbeard) Lane. Camel Pension and Apartments is narrower still. Tiny owner, Seref, fits. As do we, under the sloped rafters up the tightly sprung staircase. Mustafa is in a tiny single a floor below. He joins us on our balcony, a covered shelf hanging over tile roofs. The air is damp with wispy rain. And quiet. Until…

‘Old Town' may be old, but it's for the young at night. They descend at dusk, hordes advertising noise, brashness, and the sometimes-unfortunate-clothing choices of the oblivious young, free to do their thing --- and look like everyone else. That includes a pervasive sullen zombiness, movement without spark. Then they cluster and their energy rattles the stone walls. So do the repeated percussive blasts from the DJs. Sleep struggles until the bars close about midnight.

We walk the streets of modern Antalya searching for Mustafa's three banks and the proof they can provide that he – sole owner of a 30 plus room hotel -- is indeed solvent enough to be granted a tourist visa for the USA. His interview at the consulate is in 2 days. The stack of official and stamped printouts are talismans. Surely, they will guarantee the approval of the Visa Minions.

On a short street near a park cobblers stretch boots and shoes. One restrings my boots with shorter and racier laces. Next door, we drink tea at a juice stand converted from two trucks. The cab is now an aquarium. Fish watch us through the windshield.

The day is brilliant, polished by last night's rain. Yesterday’s quiet alleys sprout tourist schlock today, brilliant against the stone walls, but wrong, cheapening and disrespecting this place. That, plus another night of throbbing bass speakers, make leaving old Haleici and new Antalya easy.

2021-12-09 – ISTANBUL

 

This is a big day for Mustafa.

Today, he completes the requirements for his tourist visa to the USA. We will go to Istanbul, up north across Turkey to meet with his visa agent.

Sleep was in short supply last night, eaten by the ravenous acoustic invasion from the bar just across the cobbles. In the chill dark at 6am, the walls of Barbaross Lane look solid still. Unlike our sleep, they did not crumble under last night's seismic onslaught. Forgiving, perhaps still struck deaf, they absorb the ratatatat of our backpack wheels as we descend to the square and a cab.

By 9 we're flying north over Turkey's wide waist, prickly with high peaks, snowy crags under blue sky. By 10 we land in Istanbul. By 11 we're off the shuttle, cross great Taksim Square, turn down wide Istikal Street, then into an alley, then up narrow stairs to an elevator, ride up two more floors to the crowded office of his visa agent where I sign our letter inviting Mustafa to visit us in the USA. It's the missing bit he needs for his 7:45 appointment tomorrow morning at the US Consulate. His trip to the USA is all he can talk about. “Tomorrow I have visa. I will visit friends in New York. Then Miami. Maybe I buy hotel!”

Mustafa is a happy, trusting optimist, who loves and believes everyone, an endearing human Golden Retriever puppy. Tomorrow? We think Covid, the prickly relationship between our two countries, and administrative constipation. We can't rain on this parade.

There's enough rain falling on ours.

The bugaboos of Covid and administrative constipation have left us with a handful of air tickets (Iraq to Saudi Arabia) we can't use due to a change in entry rules for Saudi Arabia, and no way to contact the airline to get a refund by phone, either in US, or here in Turkey. “Your call is important to u…..bzzz, click" works equally poorly in English, Arabic and Turkish.

The Egyptair office is across town. Two Uber drivers can't find us. Mustafa flags a cabby who quotes way too many Turkish Lira. The cabby suggests we would get a cheaper fare from the other side of the street. Traffic there is heading in the right direction. Dennis has suggested this several times, seconded by me, but Mustafa doesn’t go with that. He's still gnawing on the bone on this side.

To be fair, the ‘street' is a 4-lane urban terror with a fence, but no passageway, between this side and Taxi Heaven on the other. Olympic sprint and hurdle jump don't immediately spring to mind as a reasonable life choice. We do it anyway --- with luggage --- setting no records, but providing entertainment for the sidewalk audience. We do find a cab. The fare is good. He drops us at the wrong address. But close enough.

Nine floors up into Golden Manor, the lady at Egyptian Airlines is a goddess in appearance and efficiency. Refunds must be processed on the website. The website is designed to make strong men weep, and of course to give up and let Egyptair keep our money. Goddess Descended will have none of that. In perfect English, she walks us past and through incomprehensible and/or incorrect and/or inoperative online ‘instructions'. We will get our refund in 21 days. It will cost $75 to $90.

Such is the theory.

We have been this Covid-inspired route through many airlines before. Air Malta gave us a total refund in a few weeks. Vueling Airlines took 13 months to get us our vouchers, but did extend the validity into 2023. So, somewhere between 21 days and December 2023 is our best guess.

We head back across the city to our old digs. Owner Murat expands us into a two-room apartment with kitchen and balcony and includes Mustafa for an additional 5Euros a night.

Iraq and Saudi are now safely in our pockets, and down the road. We are in Istanbul, our favorite city. For us, the future can wait.

Mustafa cannot wait, even for tomorrow.

2021-12-10 - ISTANBUL

I doubt Mustafa sleeps at all.

He travels across Istanbul in the dark, by foot, tram, and cab, to line up for his 07:45 appointment with the consular officer.

There is no visa.

Just more administrivia.

The consular officer sends him a stupefying form to fill out and return electronically, the ‘Personal Questionnaire'. We work with Mustafa all day sorting through the names, birthdates, and addresses of his siblings (7), and spouses (2, both exes). And of every place outside of Turkey he has visited in the last 15 years (many, all in Europe, plus Saudi Arabia on pilgrimage), when, and why, and what funds he used. And every job he has had for the last 15 years, where, why, and what he did. And every place he has lived, and all phone numbers, and all email addresses, and any social network accounts. He has most of that information somewhere in his stack of ‘stuff' he collected for the visa agent. Somewhere.

The dates are tricky. The US form wants them in Month-Day-Year format. Turkey, like just about everywhere on the planet, has them in the sensible Day-Month-Year format. (Note: US passports has them in Day-Month-Year format, so I know we can do it.) We're very careful. Bureaucrats love inconsistencies. Rumor has it that it's “One strike and you're out".

All day there are phone calls out to family members—especially to an older sister who has never, ever forgotten anything. In between there are calls in from everyone he knows (or has ever known, judging from the barrage) asking him about his visa. Mustafa is hopeful, still.

He thinks the consular officer said he would get his visa in three days. We are silent. I read the cover letter that came with the Personal Questionnaire. I softly ask him to read the Turkish text again. He does. “No" is all he says. The consulate is clear: Covid, health concern, reduced resources…yada yada yada. It will be at least 180 days before decisions are made.

“So, I stay Turkey”.

At night he goes to pray in the neighborhood mosque. We wait for him at the small table on the sidewalk outside our juice and baklava stand and drink fresh squeezed juice, orange for me, pomegranate for Dennis.

He returns. Has juice, a mix of orange and pomegranate, a little sweet, a little sour.

“Maybe I buy hotel in Alanya. I very much like it. Weather is good. Beach is nice. I like it. Maybe I go there. Inshallah.”

The rain doesn’t fall on his parade for very long.

Or, maybe he just has a good umbrella.

 

2021-12-11 – ISTANBUL

 

Scarlett O'Hara has nothing on our friend Mustafa.

Yesterday, he watched his trip to the USA disappear into the fog of administrivia. Today is definitely ‘another day'.

He takes us shopping. “My Syrian friend will give good price. It's not far”

We walk.

Our hotel is in the bend of a narrow lane on the flats down along the coast of the Sea of Marmara. A multi lane highway rims the shore. From our small apartment we neither see nor hear that road, but the roof terrace is three floors up and from there we look past the road to the sea. Sections of an ancient wall still stand between the lower edge of our neighborhood and what's seaward. The center of our neighborhood is inland, the small, green triangle of Kadirga Park. We cross it to get our fresh juice stand, turn right for water at a small grocery store, or left for restaurants and the bakery where we get hot sesame-crusted ‘simits', Turkey's pretzels, available everywhere but never so good as at our place, fresh pulled from the oven. The park is the only open space. The rest is squeezed, squashed, narrowed, as if compressed by the weight of the city up above. But, it's alive, bristling.

Directly above us way up the slope is great open Beyazit Square and the entrance to Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. A short walk from there is ‘tourist Istambul'. The knee-crunching walk down and thigh-burning climb up the cobbles of the slope keep it at bay.

We soon figure out we know more about this neighborhood than Mustafa does. (Ok, mostly because we--- make that I --- get lost almost every time we go out and so have been everywhere). It is all new to him, but he knows we have to go up. We burn thighs up the cobbles then turn into a narrow street new even to us. We’ve climbed up ‘Shoe Street', ‘Cloth Street', ‘Appliance Street', ‘Kebab Street', ‘Little Thingamabobs Street'. This is ‘African and Asian Restaurant Street'. BAM! We're back in Bangladesh, Pakistan, West Africa.

We keep going to the top and the great square. Mustafa takes charge. This, he knows. He reconnoiters, leads us back into the alleys, through a door, up stairs. And stops. “You go. Surprise him!” Uh, maybe not. He runs ahead…and right into the very surprised arms of “my friend Bashar".

Handsome, sweet Bashar is Syrian and used to work in Mustafa's hotel back across Turkey in Malatya. Now he runs an on-line men's clothing store from this space, supplying customers in Europe. His wife handles the women's line. Maybe his three little kids have their own line. The building is stuffed with suppliers of on-line, off-the-cuff, off-brand, too-good-to-be-true-so-probably-isn’t, under-the-table, fell-off-the-back-of-a-truck/wagon/camel/elephant put-ons and knockoffs. Most sellers are Syrian, many are African.

Bashar is the real deal, but Mustafa doesn't find anything in Bashar's sporty line, even for his trim build, even as a gift. Bashar shoves a sharp black on white pullover into a bag and under Mustafa's vest. I think the Turkish went something like “take it or never darken my door again and may your mobile phone be infected with ten thousand calls about your car warrantee”. I may be wrong, of course, but Mustafa  crumbles.

More Turkish. Fingers point in my direction. Hands beckon. Feet follow. Five minutes later I own a handsome ‘Canada Goose Arctic Program' insulated vest, XXL, in deep navy blue, labeled ‘fabriqué au Canada www.CanadaGoose.com'. Mustafa remembered I liked his. It costs $16. Online at Canada Goose it's $495. So, maybe the ‘down' stuffing will not honk, but will quack or cluck or make whatever sound a domesticated orlon or dacron make. It may be useful in the cold of Kurdistan and compresses enough to fit into my ‘one carry-on under 8 kilos' affectation.

Of course, we eat and drink tea.

The day's adventures continue. They include a clumsy, time-consuming, illegal, but successful attempt, on the sidewalk, in a crowd, to get around the rules for buying a pass to travel on the city's great transport system for us foreigners. We walk the tourist route past the city's great sights. Mustafa knows very little about Istanbul and has never been to Aya Sofia, Topkapi Palace, Gulhane Park, or the Blue Mosque, and doesn't know that tulips come from Turkey. We visit friends Ihsan and Huseyin in their restaurant 8 stories up and with a 360-degree view of one of the world's great cityscapes.

We keep him busy. And surprised. Maybe the visa disappointment will hurt less.

 

2021-12-12 – ISTANBUL

 

Our Golden Retriever has become the Energizer Bunny.  

There's no stopping Mustafa. The visa and the USA may be ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow' for the time being, but right now he's after the pot of gold at this end of that rainbow.

By 9 am he has found hotel properties in First Choice Alanya/Kaleici (“far from bars"), Close Second Choice Antalya, and even Distant Third Choice Istanbul. Hometown Malatya isn't even on the list. Mustafa wants out, to some place warm, and away from family pressure to find Wife Number Three, but mostly just out.

He loses us in a torrent of possibilities to check out today, by phone, on line, in person, dissolving our efforts at breakfast, and challenging even his efficient English. It's like watching an Indian soap opera with a thousand characters . .. and no subtitles. Our synapses clog about three minutes in.

Our take-away? He'll be gone all day. Keep the lights on.

And, that's what happens.

He’s off, but greying drizzle keeps us indoors. Then it stops and the view through our wall of windows brightens. Seagulls return from wherever they shelter from the rain, swooping slices of light against the still grey sky.

We move, too, now hungry. We go down, out, around the corner, up to the main drag, and skitter along the narrow sidewalk to the closest ‘lokantasi’ for lunch. The steam table fogs the glass but we can see a tray of a favorite, eggplant stuffed with ground beef. The rice pillau is always available, and bread, plus salad of white and red cabbage, plus lemon slice, ‘come with’. ‘Oven Guy' flattens dough, stretches it into a long canoe, fills it with cheese, veggies, meat, and slides his ‘mixed pide' into the maw of the oven gaping behind him. Lunch is that easy.

Back up the street and across from the park, ‘Juice Guy' pours us cups of his mix of juices from fresh squeezed pomegranates and oranges. Pomegranates are at their most lustrous in December, tart/sweet, and rich red, rumpled rubies by the basket.

 Much later, we have left the light on for Mustafa and are just nodding off when he flops in, a dishrag of disappointment. “Nothing good today". (The details are microscopic and astronomical and beyond our sleep-bound brains.)

“But…” and he whips out the phone, “Look!!”

2021-12-13- ISTANBUL

The wisps of rain structure our day.

We walk through our neighborhood. It's a random wander, the best kind. The beauty here is in the comfort of the familiar, a storefront, an old building revived, an unapologetic stark minaret.,

On the way back we stop for ‘simit', crusty with sesame seeds., and fresh from the oven, hot. I hold them tight against my chest under the Turkish/Syrian/back of the truck vest and the Moroccan padded jacket to keep them hot until we get home.

 

Here's our best take on today’s episode. There's an uncle/father/daughter right now in Istanbul/Germany/Somewhere who is from Turkey/Iran/Iraq/Syria who can/cannot be reached by phone/internet today/tonight/tomorrow/this week who may/may not be interested in selling/renting a new/old/remodeled property that is too big/too small/just right for cash/annual payments/bank guarantee by the month/year for 1/5/10 years.

But... maybe he will/will not have enough money to buy/rent. His brother has made an offer on Mustafa's hotel in Malatya. That's money. There's some land out by the new Istanbul airport Mustafa will/won't sell now/next year/sometime/ever. That's more money. Maybe he will/ will not go today/tomorrow/next day/sometime to airport/Alanya/Antalya to look at these hotels/other hotels/land to build/ buy/rent.

2021-12-14– ISTANBUL

 

“Three for 10"

Friends are the threads in the fabric of our affection for this city.

Zeki wraps us in massive hugs. We met him 9 years ago when he was night clerk at Peninsula Hotel. Now he owns a textile business, is married, father of 6-year-old Yusuf and “the surprise”, two month old second son, Zaran. “He looks like me. I did it right this time.” And laughs. His business is “Okay” even in Turkey's crippling inflation because transactions are international and in dollars. But his landlord is caught by the unstable economy and wants to double his rent. “We have to move.” He shrugs, hugs, and rushes back to work. (Note: In the last two weeks the Turkish Lira has dropped from 13.9 to 17.85.)

Masks don’t hide the smiles above the hugs Ihsan and Huseyin throw around us. We met them nine years ago on the street of restaurants in old Sultanahmet. They were touts and waiters cajoling passers-by into Russian-owned Tria Restaurant. The marinated chicken on a bed of eggplant was sensational, the connection immediate. We've followed them as they---and that genius cook---moved around the city and up the restaurant ladder. Now all 3 are part owners of the spectacular ‘Mezzes 360’ eight stories up into the Istanbul sky with a 360-degree view of the city. They don't have to ask what we'll eat, and don't. There is no check. “This is your place.”

Ihsan has gotten married. (“I told him he is crazy", shrugs Huseyin.) We slip an envelope through his protests. It's not pretty and not the gold tradition suggests, but friends do their best, and friends understand.

They send us off, finally dropping the Covid masks. And we hug.

On our long walk from our digs, we pass the opulent offerings of the shops that line Arasta Bazaar. This is the cream of Turkish design, rich and thick, the colors distilled from gems. A few also offer tourist stuff, but off to the side, embarrassed by it. At one, we go for cheap glass amulets, the white spot-on deep blue that protects from the evil eye and bad things in general. These hang off a crocheted fob tied with tiny eyes for extra protection. They're our favorite gifts for friends. We pick 3. The conversation with the young Guy in Charge of Tourist Stuff (GICOTS) goes like this.

Us: How much are these?

GICOTS: 5 Lira

Us: How about 3 for 12?

GICOTS: No, 3 for 10. Is this your first trip to Turkey?

Us: (handing him a 10 Lira note) No, we have come many times.

GICOTS: Where have you been?

Us: Mardin, Diyarbakir Malatya..

GICOTS: MALATYA!! I am from Malatya. These are my gift (handing back the 10 Lira note). Come in for tea. This is now your place.

And that is how we meet Kahraman.

 

2021-12-15– ISTANBUL

Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

We're not dumb. Forgetful? Optimistic?

We should have known better.

We know from past experiences --- many, and painful, past experiences --- that disaster lurks when a local friend knows a “better way" to do something we have fine tuned to perfection. And Mustafa is just a wee bit this side of a space case. So, we should have known to follow our instincts and set up a ride in advance from our hotel to the well-known, famous, unmistakable, internetted, Google-mapped, Maps dot Me verified stop at famous Taksim Square where the buses to and from Istanbul's two airports drop off and pick up passengers. We've done it a dozen time. We two and Mustafa took the bus from the airport to that very spot a week ago.

Now he insists it does not exist. And even if it did, says he, he would order us a Uber to get there and come with us to send us off. No, there is no need to get a local cab the night before. Our last experience with Mustafa and Uber was a life-threatening washout. Neither ride ever arrived. And we had to climb a fence and play Dodge Death with uncaring vehicles on a semi superhighway, the Istanbul version of Pamplona's Running of the Bulls. So, we are clearly not operating on all cylinders when we leave this up to Mustafa.

The details of the resulting monumental piñata of bad decisions are painful and best left unmentioned. They are less painful than the $30 we have to pay a private driver to drive us directly to the airport. We leave Mustafa behind.

We are well in time to meet up with travel buddy, Elfie, fresh in from Vienna, and load onto our Pegasus flight to Ankara, and on to Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan.

It is only a short walk back to the hotel from where we said goodbye to Mustafa in the rain. He might make it. Unless he asks a local expert for directions.

IRAQI KURDISTAN

2021-12-15 ISTANBUL TO ERBIL, IRAQI KURDISTAN

He gives me the socks.

Some places just grab me, seep in and make me thankful we travel.

Erbil does that. And more.

People have lived here for 6000 years. Or maybe 7000, or even more. And without a break since before the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Christians, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottomans, British, Iraqis, and ISIS. Most of that history is rubble, the accumulated debris of 60 centuries of life and survival. It's now a massive mound, a citadel ringed with thick walls, high above the center of Old Erbil. One family remains, the current residents of the longest continuously inhabited urban place on Earth. They get a lot of visitors. We are clearly the only outside tourists. A family pays our way into the Cloth Museum. The rugs are sensational, worthy of the setting.

Below the Citadel are Erbil's great square and bazaar, distilling 60 centuries of life into intoxicating movement and color. People laugh with one another, smile at us, and greet us, arm over heart, a gesture both honest and disarming. There's kindness here, grace.

“Mix” says the guy at the fruit stall, pointing to the piles of oranges and pomegranates. It's a statement not a question. We sit on the edge of the great square and drink. People mill, wave, smile.

Under the arcade small stands pile bags, phones, …. And money. Money Guy rubs my Ben Franklin, flashes a number on his phone. Done. He pulls out a stack of Iraqi Dinar, counts, hands them to me. We're solvent.

The hat shop in the bazaar is a wall of black and white traditional skull caps and head scarves. Jolly Scarf Guy fits me out, folding and draping my scarf over the cap, leaving just a semi-demi- hemisphere above the folds. It's quite smashing and keeps my head warm in the cool air.

I stop at a stall to buy a pair of socks. The man smiles. He shakes his head when I open my wallet.

He gives me the socks.

Then places his hand over his heart. And smiles.

 

2021-12-16, 17, 18 ERBIL, IRAQI KURDISTAN

We ease into the pulse of the great square and bazaar, gently led by the kindness and genial humor of the Kurdish people of Erbil. By our third visit to their stand, the Fruit Juice Guys just smile, nod and dish up our ‘mix', equal parts fresh squeezed orange and pomegranate juices. We sit and watch the crowds. People nod as they pass. Some stop. Tea Guy peddles tea for 250 Dinar (17 cents) a cup, with or without sugar. He's about ten years old, and way more committed to mugging with us than peddling tea. Baghdad Lady plops down next to us and introduces herself. “I from Baghdad” then holds us her arms, swings them 180 degrees, and machine guns the air, “Baghdad rata tat tat". And laughs.

Across the square in the bazaar the men crowded into Erbil's oldest tea house squeeze to make room for us. The tea is on the house.

Erbil is not a pretty city. It doesn't have to be. It has the Kurds.

2021-12-19 SULAMENI, IRAQI KURDISTAN

Our driver is a terrorist.

Three years from our first e-mails I finally meet guide/driver extraordinaire, Haval. He bounces and bobs and laughs, all with the easy truthfulness of his people. They have already captured us, so we are his for the taking.

In superb, nuanced English—all learned on the go—he tells his story. This version misses his deep humor, but, here goes.

 “My family was refugees when we came back from our forced exodus

 in 2008. Ten of us lived in one room. My father was a cab driver. One day he told me to take the cab. A Filipino lady hailed me. Then she took our phone number. She told me why. “You didn't ask me for sex like all the other cab drivers.” I never saw her again but women from the consulates and NGOs started to call me. I was very busy. I listened to them talking and learned a lot of English. One day in 2011 one lady told me they wanted me to come to a meeting with a man. My English was not very good. He told me he wanted to put me in ‘a terrorist book'. A terrorist book! “No, no, not in a terrorist book". They laughed. “Not a terrorist book. A tourist book!” I didn’t know what a tourist book was, but it wasn't a terrorist book so I said “OK”. That ‘terrorist book' was Lonely Planet Middle East Guide. He published my name in 2012. n the Iraq chapter. I have been busy ever since... as a terrorist guide.” And he laughs his full, round, rolling laugh.

(Note: In 2015 the new Middle East book did not have an Iraq chapter. But Haval is booked solid by word of mouth, and reviews on Trip Advisor.)

Ten minutes into our first day with Haval we are hooked, truly his for the taking. And our terrorist takes us east and a bit south to Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan's Second City, some 6000 years younger than Erbil, and “modern, not conservative".

 Haval has a narrative gift. He unpacks the torturous --- and tortured --- history of his people as we drive. The details wash over me. Some nuggets stick. No religion claims total primacy over Kurdistan’s history. There were Zoroastrians here, before the Jews, the Christians, the Moslems, all children of Abraham and People of the Book, but maybe not before the Yazidi, “who worship no god but nature and have no book”. We climb steep stairs to a relief of a peacock, a classic Zoroastrian signature, on a cliff face, guarding a tomb “but we don’t know who, or when.”. It’s behind a thick metal barrier. The Kurds protect the non-Arab, non-Moslem roots of the country. “Of course. My grandfather was Jewish. He converted to Moslem. My grandmother was a Moslem.”

Kurdistan’s food is predictably and ecumenically ‘gorgyastic’. It would be disrespectful to ignore any of it. We don't.

Sulameni is brilliant at twilight from the heights above it, and bristling on the ground.

2021-12-20 HALABJA, IRAQI KURDISTAN

We can barely listen to his story.

“I was a baby when Saddam bombed Halabja. My mother and all my brothers and sisters were killed. Only me and my father survived. Later my father married again, and I had more brothers and sisters. March 16, 1988, when I was a teenager Saddam dropped the poison gas. It killed my father, new mother and all my brothers and sisters. I was the only one left. I saw some people on a truck so I jumped on but we smelled the smell of flowers and knew it was the gas. People died right away. I did not, but couldn't see. I fell off the truck into the road. Some people found me and gave me an injection and took me to a hospital. The people there thought I was dead and wrapped me in a white cloth to bury me. But someone saw me move and they took me out of the cloth and kept me in the hospital. That was 33 years ago. I married a woman who also survived the poison gas. Our first three children died inside my wife. We think it was the poison. We have three children now.”

Kurds claim that 30,000 people died from the poison gas.

Omer comes to the Genocide Museum in Halabja to tell his story. We're the only people there today. Haval tells us the world found out about the Halabja genocide because of seven photographers. When the bombs exploded and released the gas, the Iranian soldiers in the village had gas masks. They escaped back across the border and reported what they saw. The Iranian government notified all the diplomatic representatives in the country. Only the Swedes, Norwegians, and Finns responded. They sent 3 photographers. Four Iranian photographers joined them. Their photographs revealed the monstrous event to the world. In front on the Genocide Museum is a statue of a photographer, symbolic of those seven.

The white tombstones in the cemetery have one line for each member of the same family killed by the genocide. Most are covered in black script.

Saddam was found guilty of Crimes Against Humanity and hanged on December. 30, 2006. The charge was for the killing of 146 people in 1982, not for the 8000 killed in Barzan. Or for the 30,000 killed here in Halabja.

I ask Haval how his people live with these memories. “Life can be bad. We must laugh.”

Later in the bazaar a man waves me over and rearranges my headscarf. “like Slemani!”.

And laughs.

 

 

2021-12-21  SLEMANI, KURDISTAN

There is no laughter in the Martyr's Museum, rooms of ache and pain, and courage in a former prison The images created by Kurdish artists eviscerate all words, except theirs.

They wrote:“On this day, we didn't escape from death. Our choice was between a dignified death or an undignified life “

2021-12-22 LALISH, IRAQI KURDISTAN

I’m barefoot. On stone. At 40 degrees. Fahrenheit. A few degrees above Frostbite and Toes Crack Off Territory. For two hours.

It's worth it.

We're quiet in Lalish, center of the Yazidi people. They claim roots at least seven thousand years deep. Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, Moslems are all afterthoughts to the Yazidis. Bible Belt Come to Jesus But Bring Your Wallets pseudo- Christians, aren't thoughts of any kind at all to these people. They have no founder, or prophets, or saviors or god, or priests, or churches, or temples. Places are sanctified by nature and by the example and memory of people. Some of the good people are memorialized under steep stone conical shrines.

Lalish is quiet. No one lives here. There is a caretaker who lights oil lamps at night to extend the realm of light. Pilgrims come to carry home olive oil for their lamps and come to baptize their babies. Lalish is a place of remembrance, of identity, of ‘us-ness'.

So, we all walk barefoot out of respect. Some wimp out in rubberized socks. But cold is cold. Toes crackle.

Yazidis have been persecuted for centuries. Haval tells us Moslems recognize Jews and Christians --- and themselves --- as children of Abraham, and ‘people of the book' with holy scriptures, and therefore special. The Yazidi have no ‘book’. They revere nature, especially the sun, thus light, and so, fire. By an unfortunate linguistic quirk, the Yazidi word for fire sounds like an Arabic word for evil/devil. It was easy for Moslems to label them ‘devil worshippers. For Saddam and ISIS that was a convenient route to a death sentence.

We sit toasting our feet while a young man fresh back from Germany debates with older men whether the Yazudi have ‘a book'. He keeps Elfie up to snuff in German. They don’t resolve the question. The only heat generated is by the fire.

Haval says “we were probably all Yazidi once". Could be.

Iraqi Kurdistan is a tolerant place. Erbil‘s Christian neighborhood is one of the wealthiest in the city. There are churches and villages of Yadizis and of Christians. Haval's grandfather was Jewish. There are few Jews left. Most left when Israel was created.

Christians got here very early. We climb steep stairs the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq, and one of the oldest in the world.

St.Matthew built his monastery atop a cliff in the year 363. He’s still here, wrapped in stone. And hasn't been lonely. Tradition, not always the most reliable of sources, says there were 7000 monks here once. In addition to a large grain of salt there were at least enough to create and maintain a famous library. Now, only five remain. Matthew's original structure is a jumble of rubble on the cliff just above us. The five live in its descendant, most recently renovated after ISIS was defeated in 2014.

Haval points down the mountain. “ISIS came within 10 kilometers, just on the other side of that hill.” They were focused on the ‘anathema’ on the mountain above them but defeated by Kurdish Peshrmerga military and their allies before they reached it. They never got any further. The Kurds make no room for extremism.

We wander in their country, pilgrims to history, drawn by Haval's narrative, The facts wash over us. The emotions stick. These are special people,

Our Persian friend Hossein gets it right, speaking of the Kurds in his own country, “They accept everyone.” And we thank them.

2021-12-23 AMEDI AND DUHOK

Amedi ices its plateau with flats and angles, sharp against the mountains and clouds behind it. Since at least 600 bce Amedis have walked up sagging stone steps and through the great gate into the city. We wind up the face of the plateau on a smooth road, but still feel the pull of time.

The town mosque is ancient, an 11^th century graft onto a 4^th century church built on top of a temple a thousand years older. Outside, it is square and squat, an ecclesiastic nonentity, not close to enticing, and even farther from anything mosque-like. Inside it more catacomb than celebration, with secretive niches and cubby holes, and so somewhat mysterious, a cave, hinting at secret rites, dark, even magic

Out in the light, Haval leads us to a friend who is a baker, a kind of daylight magician transforming flour and water and fire into the bread, wafer-thin, and light that anchors every meal.

Later, we climb down the slopes of busy of Dohuk for thicker versions, round or stretched into flat ovals, and filled with cheese, olives, onions in various combos are pizza cousins and our doughy supper. With a pomegranate juice chaser. The town folds and wrinkles over hills and mountains. In a flat space loudspeakers blast a concert of Kurdish songs. I catch the word ‘Peshmerga', the name of the Kurdish military, but the music and the crowd don’t look or sound martial. Adults feed flocks of pigeons. Kids chase them.

2021-12-24 ZAKHO AND AL QOSH

Haval has prepped us: The Little Guy In Charge (TLGIC) of access to the monastery at Al Qosh is a real pain in the ass. But it's Christmas Eve so maybe he'll be in the spirit. Or not.

He's not.

TLGIC lives down to the description. He is adamant. No entry because the weather is bad. The sky is blue and cloudless.

Haval pulls out the big guns, drops a name in Erbil. Then points to me. “My friend has come all the way from America and is very religious.” Part two of this is news to me. But, I have been cardinal on stage at least twenty times. I've got this. You can practically smell the incense and hear the robes swirl. TLGIC sniffs fraudulence, but the name does it. He relents. Partially. The gates will open but not the monastery doors.

150 steep steps later the knees of His Fraudulence stop whining, gob smacked by the view. Younger knees have propelled a clutch of young guys ahead of us. They've sneaked in hot tea and cookies. We slurp and chomp then hide the stash as TLGIC arrives on his high horse. He rattles keys. We bow and scrape, my robes chastened and under control. The door opens “for one minute".

Santa Claus and the Virgin Mary decorate the walls of a Christian village. Mary has her arms splayed in the 'come to me' gesture of universal love so beloved by the faithful. Her feet stomp on the black snake revered by her Yazidi neighbors. So, maybe that universal love has conditions. Santa is non-committal.

The day has a surprise, the arched bridge in Zakho, maybe Roman, maybe not, but beautiful regardless of parentage.

At night back in Erbil, Haval takes us to Istan Street, aka ‘Food Street'. We graze and munch. Deep fried meat pies start the night. Caramel coffee ends it, but begins an addiction.

2021-12-25 SHANIDAR CAVE AND BARZAN VALLEY

They dug in the soil and laid the body, then covered it with soil and left. It was an ordinary sad event, except for this: it happened 60,000 years ago and ‘they’ and the man in the grave --- for that is what it is --- were Neanderthals. The discovery of the intentional grave in Shanidar Cave forced the scientific world to re-imagine Neanderthals from brutish evolutionary dead ends to cousins with recognizable signs of humanity.

The dark smear of the cave high up the slope is visible for miles, now as it must have been so long ago. We climb in the bright light.

Haval has a surprise and a gift for us. His two sons 9-year-old Abdullah and 6 year old Mohammed (“I was very religious when they were born.”) are with us. Serious Abdullah barely reigns in non- stop motion machine Mohammed. Neanderthal kids probably weren't much different, humans all.

Down in the valley and 60,000 years later, humanity did not reign. Saddam Hussein rounded up 8,000 males of the Barzani clan, anyone 12 years or older, into trucks. Only 567 have ever been found, buried alive in mass graves. Only one is identifiable. He was wearing his ID badge.

If Neanderthal archaeologists found the others, would they see any signs of humanity in those pits?

Back home, Haval's wife, Nahada, has been cooking all day. The platter of stuffed dolma is three feet across. Maybe there are stuffed grape leaves in the mix, if so, we never get to them. The stuffed eggplants, zucchinis, tomatoes, peppers, onions beat gold, frankincense and myrrh as Christmas presents any day. Uncle, fresh back on a visit from his life in Germany, chats with Elfie auf Deutsch.  The kids cuddle.

We say goodbye to Haval. He has been an extraordinary guide and travel companion, a brilliant unpacker of his people's history, a truly kind and funny man. A friend. I thank that lady back in 2008 who started him on this road to us.

And Christmas passes.

2021-12-26 ERBIL CLIP JOINT AND SUNDAY MARKET

Fruit Juice Guy leads me and Luis past his stand and into the bazaar. He points to the barber shop, flashes 3 fingers, then a smile, and leaves. Our haircuts should cost 3000 Dinar, a snip over $2, each. And they do. This ‘clip joint' confines the clipping to our heads. Kurdistan will spoil us. Our money is no good in the most famous tea house in Erbil. Other patrons pay for our tea and Turkish coffee, or the owner refuses our Dinars. Food is cheap. Five of us can fill on a mix and match gobble of falafel, shwarma, kebabs for under ten dollars, total for all five. Our addiction to ‘mix' of orange and pomegranate juices costs 2000 Dinar ($1.37), a ‘splurge' we give in to several times a day.

Today and the next two are Kurdistan bonus days, originally scheduled for Saudi Arabia, but gifted to Kurdistan by new Covid rules. We can't enter Saudi until we have been out of Turkey at least 14 days. So, there is time for the ‘clip joint', more cheap food, and cool weather before Saudi. And for tea with friendly guys who run a tea shop, quiet in the crowd and buzz of the Erbil Sunday Street Market. Elfie slips new shoelaces into her bag, but serious shoppers hire kids with wheelbarrows to ‘schlep’ their stuff through the crowds.

At night we munch on ‘Food Street', and nightcap on caramel coffee. Coffee Guy remembers us, and dusts our coffees with chopped pistachios.

2021-12-27 ERBIL-ROWANDUZ-AKRE

“That is our town".

Govan, Haval's younger brother, points out across the deep gorge to a smudge of houses skimming the top of a steep mesa. Rowanduz is a spectacular sky-city . It floats above not one, but two gorges, on a knife of rock cutting the sky. Govan takes us up the road to the top, then on foot, off the road through mud, and down a slope to the very edge of the cliff.  “I like this view better.” Score one for Govan.

Even higher into the mountains another gorge narrows. This slit between cliffs did not stop engineer Alexander Hamilton (NOT the one on US greenbacks.) He carved Kurdistan’s famous ‘Hamilton Road’ out of cliff face in 1928 to 1932 to link Erbil with the Iran border. Much head scratching in engineer circles hasn’t produced a coherent explanation of how he did it. They do know he treated and paid his international crew fairly. Lesson learned? People come now to admire the scenery. Maybe more.

Hamilton Road is visible way below us as we munch Kurdistan's spiraling and felicitous deep-fried marriage of potato chip and french fries.

The streets of the old city of Akre have been twisting up the mountain for millennia. It's a traditional place. Many older men wear the baggy pants, knotted belt, skull cap and head scarf that identify them as Kurds. Younger guys go for another look, ‘internationalized and available stud-muffin’, in jeans, sometimes baggy, and hair, curled and pompadoured as on display in the many, many, many barber shops. But, the mountain leaves no doubt this is Kurdish territory. Plastered on the slope is the flag of Iraqi Kurdistan and the word PESHMERGA, the Kurdish military.

We don’t want to rush Akre, so we sit on a stone bench on the street, drink tea, and watch the crowd. And vice versa.

2021-12-28 ERBIL LAST DAY

“You're all negative" 

Govan waves our Covid test results, partial passports to Saudi Arabia. It's what we expected, but confirmation is good

Saudi Arabia is VERY serious about Covid, and Govan has delivered the final proof we need to enter the country tomorrow. Yes, our PCR tests are negative. Yes, it was administered in one of the labs Saudi recognizes. Yes, we have at least two doses of a vaccine recognized by Saudi. Yes, it was administered in a country Saudi recognizes for its health standards. No, we have not been IN, or even passed through Turkey in the last 14 days, (and to cover all bases Turkey-wise nor have we eaten or even smelled a Turkey).  Yes, we have bought the mandatory Saudi Arabian Covid insurance. 

 

But…and it is a big but…we have not registered all that --- as required --- on the Saudi traveler website.

The site looks sleek and efficient, but reaches new depths of sadistic misanthropy, sinking below the previous record holder, the Saudi on-line visa site. Five times it clutched its cyber-breast and expired when we tried to pick a country of residence from its drop-down list. This was of the “Nyah, nyah, nyah,nyah, NYAH, you made a mistake but we won't tell you what it is" variety of cyber sadism. To be fair, it is equally efficiently omni-inefficient in English, Spanish, and German, in mainland USA, Puerto Rico, and Austria. A Royal Jordanian agent will decide our fate in 9 hours. At 3am.

 

Govan gave us a great parting gift this morning: access to Erbil's great mosque. Like Haval, he has ‘a way'. It does not include introducing me as a ‘very religious Moslem', but it gets us in.
He drops us at ‘Money Exchange. Street'.  We hug, not ready to leave. Maybe he will transfer our emotions to his brother, now a friend.

We've changed dollars and Euros many times at individual kiosks in the market, at honest and good rates. This is Money Central. Any currency is available. Good Queen Liz, stares up from atop a pile of pounds, cozy with George Washington in the next pile. Other monetized faces and scenes cover the tables.

There’s a final round of ‘our guys': ‘mix' at the Fruit Guys, tea from Kiddie Tea Munchkin, tea and Turkish Coffee from Coffee Guy --- and his handsome customer --- in his coffee house, a final drink at Caramel Coffee Guy, done twice. For the staff at Erbil View Hotel, home for 7 nights, we carry half a kilo of sweets.

 We will fade out of all their memories.

 We are lucky.

 They and Kurdistan will not fade out of ours. 

 

 

2021 - SAUDI ARABIA

 

2021-12-29 ERBIL, IRAQI KURDISTAN TO AL ULA, SAUDI ARABIA

The tiger has no claws.

 
Check in at 3 am hits the expected major road bump.”No Saudi Health Form? Can't give you the boarding pass without it.”Go to Customer Service. They will help you.”At 3 am? Riiiight. But the lady at Customer Service is there and does. Elfie and Luis are in line behind us, waving their licenses to fly, Their guy said ”here's your boarding pass. I trust you to get the health form”. Ours is a stickler. Forty dollars later we are all legal to enter Saudi Arabia. Our guy gives us our passes. We board Leg One (to Amman, Jordan) of our two leg trop to Jedda, Saudi Arabia. No one asks us for the form.

Men wrapped in white towel- togas fill our plane. They are pilgrims on the way to Mecca. One is tall and blond. Elfie shares her row with two. The women are packaged in black. Men commandeer the bathrooms to change into their pilgrim gear. It can't be easy swirling all that white yardage in that tiny space. One accidental bump against the power flush button and it’s whoosh, white flying carpets outside at thirty-six thousand feet. And bare bodies inside. Why not change into Saudi-wear before coming to the airport? The women did. Oh well…

Our Covid vaccination card alone gets us into Jedda, Saudi Arabia. The country is oil- rich. It shows. The airport is opulent, just short of gold-plated. The current sultan (aka The Hunk, according to friends who notice such things) is opening the country to the world. That shows, too. We get tourist visas and the Saudis get… Burger King and KFC. Unfortunate, that. Food choices are western franchises. We give our order at Pizza Hut to a pair of eyes and a mound of black cloth.

Five hours later we land in Al Ula, up north, near the border with Jordan. Sami, our AirBnB host meets us. His English and our Arabic tank out after”Hello, welcome”and”Salaam aleikum”and”Shukran”. Smiles fill in the rest.

That works too, down at the corner shwarma/kebab/falafel joint. This is not tourist central Al Ula. The street is dark except for this place. Dennis, Luis, and I materialize out of the night, unexpected as genies, but immediately and genuinely transformed into guests by the three young guys running the place. Universal words get us Cola and shwarma. 

 

The guys are over the moon, funny to the bone, no other language required, and sweet. Vehement protests are clear. Our Saudi Rials are not acceptable currency. We are guests. Full stop. Fingers point.”English? Italian?” Whoops and back slaps erupt at our answer. Fingers do a 180.”Iraq”. Guy two grabs those fingers.”NO! Syria! Guy Three slices a line in the air, Iraq on one side, Syria on the other. Border guys, of both and of neither, and so…probably Kurds. It figures.

We start to leave. Protests. Leader Guy comes close, wraps us in a big laugh.”Name. Tiger!”“Yes, Tiger”go Guys Two and Three. I am not sure I am getting this right. I growl and claw the air.”Yes. Yes. TIGER!”. He laughs, showing teeth… but no claws.

We have found ‘Our place'.

 

2021-12-30 AL ULA, SAUDI ARABIA - PART 1

Three doors from Al Pacino.

You have to hand it to Italians. My people know how to throw a show. Anywhere, any place.
At 8 p.m. on January 3, 2022 in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia three Italian women are filling our stairwell with soft vowels carried by loud voices and, semaphoring layers of additional information, the real story, with arms and eyes, especially the eyes, three people having five conversations. Ears are irrelevant. No one is listening.

 
Our descent from above stops them dead, mid arm stroke. Names and locations are exchanged. ”Venezia e Firenze”get sighs of longing. ‘Roberto Francescone' gets shrieks and hugs. Grandpa from Campobasso di Molise ups the ante, shriek-wise. Geneologies traded and approved, even by omniscient eyes, I immediately forget their names. But with Italians food is always a good starting point. I name the two skinny ones ‘Cannoli 1 (aka The Mouth) ‘and ‘Cannoli 2’, and the round one ‘Arancina'. The guy is big, and just sort of stands there quietly, so Large Pan of Lasagne (LPOL). The names are for private use. Of course we will never see them again, right?.

This morning the universe proves me wrong.

 
Down in front of Sami's gate they have the whole street as stage. My people invented opera. These three know their stuff. Cannoli 1 has locked her lungs onto poor Sami in an aria of indignation, the kind that gives opera a bad name, all shrieked high notes, and repetition. She is stuck on variations of ”late” “no taxi” “you promised",”we will miss the bus". Sami, whose English barely extends from”Hello” to” Tomorrow 8”with a brief stop at ”Here key” misses the words but gets the message: you're in deep doodah, buster.”Francescone” sails out over the bedlam. La Arancina has spotted me. Then they spot Sami's car, doors all open. For us. Cannoli 2 chimes in ”We all go with you”. Cannoli 1 hops in the back row, then C2, then La Arancin, all propelled by sound, a lot of it. Largs Pan of Lasagne remains silent, crumpled, half in, half out. Lungs inflate. Arms fly. A crescendo of instructions fill the street, rises, gains speed. 

 

These are my people. I know where this is going….. a scene to outdo the Grand March from Aida--- complete with elephants.

 
I go in.

“Stop!! ”You (to Cannoli 1) HERE!. You (to LPOL) THERE. You (to Cannoli 2 and La Arancina) STAY. So ,we have an Arancina, and a Large Pan of Lasagne, and a Canolli, a full meal, appetizer through dessert in the back row, and Luis and Sami in the driver row. Dennis and Elfie are in the middle row. Canolli 1 slides in. I shoehorn in after her, smile.”No more drama!”, says I. “We are a dramatic people”  she. I recognize and accept an apology when I hear one. Even when the eyes say ”And those elephants are still waiting in the wings.”

La Arancina says something over my shoulder I think she says ”We have 3 neighbors in California. Dennis thinks she says ”Three doors from Al Pacino". A repeat clarifies. La Arancina actually asked ”Do you have the three vaccinations?”Affirmative nods, then smiles, then apologies for the crowding in the car. That stuff in the street? What stuff?

The pair of Canollis, La Arancina, and Large Pan of Lasgne pop out of Sami's car at their bus. Francescone is ”ciao-ed", others waved addio. The hands create a small air tsunami as they sail off. Sami finally breathes. Then ” I sorry. I sorry.” We just laugh. Then, he does, too.

 

 

2021-12-30 AL ULA, SAUDI ARABIA - PART 2

There are giants …

I had few expectations of Saudi Arabia beyond good dates, some important archeological sites, and a sandbox for giants.

Canolis, Arancina, and Large Pan of lasagna dumped at their ride, Sami swings out of our neighborhood and onto the road to the immense stone tombs at Madain Saleh, Saudi's preeminent archeological site and our main reason to be in Al Ula.

 
We expect sand, and flat, but giants have been at play here. They have dropped huge globs of copper play dough, rounded, gooey, soft, and heaped against a sky so blue, so intense it would evaporate any other landscape than this. The mountains are heated to deep orange by the morning sun, and brilliantly on fire, defying the sky, achingly blue above them. Below, fringes of date palms, greyed blue-green and soft, are cushions for the intensity above. Cameras, click, insufficient, insufficient, insufficient. 

 

I thank our primate ancestors for their gift of color vision.

It goes on for miles. Then for more. Sami drop us at the bus for Madain Saleh. Of our guide we see only green eyes, decorated and delivered a la Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra mode. Madain Saleh is a satellite of Jordan's more famous Petra, built by the same Rome-defiant people, the mysterious Nabataiens. Geniuses at harnessing water they thrived in the desert. And cut grand tombs into the mountainous dollops left by the giants. We thought the tombs would be the highlight of our trip. Anywhere else they would be. Here they are jewels upstaged by their setting, the flaming mountains.

 

Sami has a surprise. We are glutted by beauty on the grand scale of giants. Sami gets that, or he is apologizing for the al fresco almost-opera and stuffed car, or maybe he just gets us. He leads us down the crumbling lanes and date gardens of a deserted village. It is small scale, more human and touching than the mammoth tombs of the morning. People lived here. People like these made the lives of the tomb builders, and thus the tombs, possible. No buses come here. We are alone with the story these mud bricks tell. Date gardens grant us sheltered silence to listen. To me only green rice fields are their equal in beauty.

 
Saudi takes masking seriously. At the entrance to Al Ula's Old Town, Elfie's mask has slipped. A policeman stops her, politely, then asks for proof of vaccination, scrutinizes it, then waves her on. Lesson learned.

 
Old Town is a bit ‘Disneyfied’ for us, but like all the ‘sights' so far, impeccable taste has been in charge, displaying the colors of Al Ula culture against its adobe walls.

The labyrinth of the real old town leads us to the angled columns of the oldest mosque in Saudi Arabia, the Mosque of the Bones. The Prophet Muhammed, Peace Be Upon him, prayed here.  The town was already ancient then, a stop on the trade route for camels carrying spices and frankincense.

 
At night we introduce Elfie to Tiger and The Guys at ‘Our Place’. They absorb us again. The falafel, hummus, teas, cokes flow And, then, again… well, guess.

 

 

2021-12-31 AL ULA, SAUDI ARABIA EXPERIENCE ONE

Be Prepared. Local experts involved.

The last day of 2021 starts off with a BANG! 

 
Our left rear tire explodes. The car lurches, loudly moaning”thwop, thrwop, thwop”.”No problem”, says Sami, Local Expert du Jour. He keeps on driving. Even I know that’s not a good idea. Maybe our Resident Local Expert will figure it out. Eventually.

 
The car figures it out first. There's a shriek as the metal rim meets asphalt. The tire takes over. With the fervor of an over aged stripper in a bar filled with old drunk guys waving 100 bills it strips and flings rubber in frenzied abandon.

 
But, there is a spare, we say. Right? The look on Sami's face tells us the word for spare in Arabic is...spare. He gets it. The slow shake left to right tells the rest, no words needed. Spare. No good.
We are far up a spur off the main road, 125 kilometers from Al Ula back behind us, at least 85 kilos from the last anything in that direction ---a closed gas station --- and who knows how many ‘kilos' to anything in the other direction. We have not seen another car on the spur going either way. Ever. This is camel territory, and maybe not so good for them either. And there is no internet connection up this branch of bone-dry Shit's Creek. It's only midmorning, it's not hot and won't be, we have water, and some munchies. We could wait this out. Inshallah.

Sami decides to hoof it. None of us know why. We've all seen the movies. Stay put. But maybe Sami Knows Something. He doesn't take water. But he leaves the key in the ignition and the engine running. 'Local Expert' sinking to the task? He's a blob, then a dot, then gone.

 
Half hour later a truck zooms past headed where Sami disappeared, slams to a stop, spins around. The driver hops, out runs to us, the car, and tire carcass, hand on chest, and laughs: Sudan!
We've all been there. We string city names, Khartoum, Wadi Halfa… The smile broadens with each. Our happy Sudanese points under our car, then to his truck, mimes a jack then puffs his cheeks and blows. Got it. Famous Mime Marcel Marceau couldn’t do it better. Tools fly. Flat against the sand he extracts the spare.”No good”said Sami. DOA is more like it, chewed by a velociraptor.

 
Happy Sudanese throws the spare into the truck, points to me, mimes a voyage, and off we go. Why, or where, I have no clue, but our happy Sudanese seems to have this under control, so why not? He’s from Sudan, not Local, so maybe a Real Expert. Here.

 
Luis, Elfie, and Dennis have plenty of water. If food becomes a problem I am sure they can manage. Even without a cookbook. The Donner Party did.

 
Ten minutes down the road a black blotch in the dust turns into Sami. He waves then throws armfuls of praise to Allah, then the rest of him into the truck. Ten minutes later the arms pick up an internet signal. Maybe Sami knew this magic spot when he left us. Give a point to Local Expert. The road sign says Al Ula 123km.

 
80 kilometers later we pull into a garage.

Tires are a puzzlement for the garage guys. Sami’s car is the standard 4x4 offroadster of desert countries. And no, I have no idea why the Japanese, native to a country famously short on deserts, make the best desert vehicles. Or why the garage in a country very long on deserts has no tires that fit their cars. 

 

Like males everywhere when in doubt they kick the tire. But (1) It’s an emergency and (2) you gotta make do with what you have.

 
Ditto, on both counts, over in the garage’s bare bones Slump and Dump Toilet. I develop appreciation for previously unexplored uses for three sheets of airline hand wipes and an extra face mask. I miss everything between mandatory tire kicks and The Solution.

 
They made do. The new tire is an old doughnut spare tire, of the ‘this is not a real tire, do not drive fast, or off-road, or more than 50 miles' variety. It fits the bent rim. It is smaller than the original tire. Sami's car will limp.

 
But we won't be going far. Right? Or off road. Right?

 

 

2021-12-31 AL ULA, SAUDI ARABIA EXPERIENCE TWO

We won't be going far. Right? Or off road. Right?

Wrong.

Sami has promised us three of Al Ula's great sights. And three we'll get, stumpy tire be damned.

While the Local Experts attach the wheel, Dennis, Elfie and Luis tell their story. They have not suffered. Three guys stopped, and with true desert hospitality gave them tea, dates, and…sprayed them with perfume. Camel Number 5?

Asymmetrically wheeled, we semi-limp off road in caravan style with the guys who delivered the tire in their pickup. They may or may not be Sami's bosses, but offer apologies for the New Experience' but not much more info. Or expertise.

Everywhere we have travelled in the desert--- sometimes for days or weeks -- the drivers let some air out of the tires, to flatten and widen them a bit for, you know, more surface and more traction on the sand. Our Local Experts do not.

The sand knows.

 
It waits until we have seen two of Sami's sights, the Split Rock, and Madakhil Arch, stupendous proof of the desert’s genius. Then the sand grabs us. We are stuck, mired, submerged, buried, semi-digested.

 

The bed of the pickup is exploding with stuff. None of it is a shovel, or shovel-like. After all, why would an off-road vehicle need a shovel in the desert?  Much digging with bare hands is more fun, no?

 
We are many kilometers from a paved road. There hasn’t been another vehicle in hours. Sudanese truck drivers and Saudi perfumers would be a mirage. Dusk is in the offing. We look around. It’s beautiful, yes, but we are way up a minor tributary of Shit's Creel. Without a paddle. Or even a shovel.

Offers to help push are shrugged off. Next, the LEs try stones. The sand eats them, reaches up for more wheel. Late in the game they figure out that with two vehicles here, towing might be a good idea. There is rope, a wispy thing, in the truck bed. Knots and misguided hope uninformed by the laws of physics (or the evidence provided by eyesight) link the two vehicles. We know what comes next and stand back from the SNAP.

 
More digging. 

 
Elfie, wise in the ways of sensible snow-smart Austrians, wonders why they don’t have one of those metal thingies to place between demanding tires and unforgiving snow/sand. Indeed. But, nope. The pickup does have a thick blanket, not perfect, but occasionally successful at seducing traction. Blank stares tell me this is clearly Beyond the Pale. a cute fantasy of the tourists who know nothing about sand. 

But, the Local Experts are on it. Maybe a Group Push might work after all. It doesn't.

 
More digging, more stones, more sinking We head out to harvest more stones. Sticking out of a sand drift is a wisp of fiber. Archeology produces a Wimbledon of thick, heavy, strong netting. I yank and haul, don’t even ask permission and dump it behind the wheels. Back up! They do. Sami's car lurches out of its sandy grave, free of the desert’s maw. The tourists get a smiling thumbs up from the Local Experts.

 
Lesson learned? I doubt it. But the mini-Wimbledon goes into the pick- up. So…. Maybe.

Sami has promised us three places. And three places it will be. The megalithic triumvirate of The Three Dancers awaits. The sun does not cooperate. It gives up on us. Sami drives on through the dark, bouncing over clumps of desert caught by the headlights. Then he stops. Local Expert has noticed night means dark. Dark means no see. No see means”Go Al Ula”. And we do.

 
“Two New Experiences”crows the driver of the pick-up. Indeed. We head home. The day is over.
It's late.

What else could happen?

 

2021-12-31 AL ULA, SAUDI ARABIA EXPERIENCE THREE

What else could happen?

A loud CLANNNNGGGG could happen.

Right rear brake thingy has re-imagined itself as a pile of metal pieces.

“Go Al Ula”? Not in Sami's car. We smush into the pick-up truck.”Three New Experiences” crows the other LE..”In one day!!!!!”“Tomorrow another car”.

 
Good. Bring a shovel.

Ya just gotta laugh.

 

 

2022-01-01 AL ULA, SAUDI ARABIA

A hunk, an elephant, and a tornado.

Sami waves towards the street.”Another car”and , yes, it is another car. We don’t check the spare, or for a shovel. (Spoiler Alert: we need neither.) There are 4 intact tires. We don’t kick them. ‘Inshallah' has taken hold.

The mountains have not yet released the haze of dawn when Sami drops us at the bus for the tour to the excavations at Dadan. The city was already big doings 25 hundred years ago, a major stop on the spice trade between the Arabian peninsulas and the other civilizations that surrounded it. It was famous then for its welcome to traders, and openness. It's famous now for the ruins of a temple, cave tombs, and the larger than life stone sculpture of a well- muscled torso with rock solid abs, perhaps an ancestor of the guide who tells us the story of the city.

 

We climb into a valley. The walls are covered with long texts, most of them carved or sculpted wishes and hopes of travelers. They are prayerful and beseeching. Some are graffiti of irreverent passersby, maybe ‘Ahmed was here', and more significant now than just egotistical scratchings. All of what is here is a library that documents the development of the Arabic language over centuries and written in stone. I drop a nod of thanks towards long-ago Ahmed.

 
The afternoon is Sami's. He delivers. In spades, (making up for what he lacked in shovels?) Afternoon light barely reaches down to us as our shoulders bump the rough walls of the ‘siq' that cuts through the rock to…. a café, with padded loungers, cappuccino, and lemon cake made by the mother of the barista. And…..no, I can't do justice to the kid with goggles, red jacket and shoes to match.

 
Later we soak in the sunset. 

 

But, first, we walk under an elephant. It’s stone, carved by wind and maybe occasional rain, a huge arc framing that sunset.Sami claims one of a pile of posh pillows, comfy dots across the sand. Saudis like their desert very tamed. And with cappuccinos. We all indulge and watch the sun set, pink then orange then red then purple.

 

Sami has another surprise. We bounce through the dark again, sure we are lost. Local Expert has got this one licked. He leads us from the car into his orange grove. Mandarins, Valencias, Honey Bells drip in glowing globs from stunted trees. He smiles and gifts us with bags of his crop.

 
Back in Al Ula, just down the street from Sami's, Cappucino 1 and Company are revving up for another opera with two tour guides who look dumbstruck. We snare some shadow and sneak in unnoticed.
Tomorrow Sami will drive us 5 hours north to Tabuk. It's bed time, maybe relayed a bit for farewell to Tiger, et al, down the street.

But, the day isn't finished with us.

 
We're hit by a tornado, a two-legged, charming, generous, whirling explosion of personality and kindness. Luis met Ibrahim 4 years ago in North Korea. Ibrahim must have registered as something seismic on the Korean Richter scale. Here everything around him vibrates. 
Five minutes after he arrives, we are his. Forever. 

 
“Lets eat!” He hauls us into in his jeep/house/office, sweeping cameras and telescopic lenses to the floor.”I'm not very organized.” He has no idea where a restaurant is. No problem. He stops in the middle of the road, flags down a car, asks. A minute later he is giggling.”The guy says we don’t have to find a restaurant. the restaurant is in his house. We're all invited to go home with him. I told him next time.”

 
He finds a restaurant. We sprawl around a flock of chickens, some baked, some grilled, nesting on a two foot platter of rice. He talks non stop. His passion is the beauty of Saudi Arabia. The photographs are spectacular. They have made him famous. He knows everybody, even Salem, our contact guy in our next stop.”I will call him for you.”

 
And then he casually suggests that maybe he can sneak us into the holy city of Mecca.”I'll say you're Turkish.” We believe him.

He drops us at Sami's, turns down our offer of a comfy couch.”I like to sleep in my car.”

In the morning Sami tells us Ibrahim came by to drop off the jacket I forgot in the car and gave Sami the money for our ride to Tabuk.

 

 

 2022-01-02 Al ULA TO TABUK, SAUDI ARABIA

The long ride north to Tabuk is our farewell to Sami. His English, confidence, and smile have come a long way since that little black dot disappeared down the road a few days ago.

Halfway to Tabuk we wait outside a restaurant in Tayma until the staff finish noon prayers. The oasis town of Tayma may be the oldest settlement of all in Saudi Arabia, a history gifted by water. Its wells were crucial to caravans travelling the spice route. Phaoroh Ramses III knew of it and later the Assyrians controlled it. 2800 years later, it's pretty sleepy, but we imagine its glory times easily at the reconstruction of the pulleys that lifted water from its great well.

In Tabuk, we say goodbye to Sami. He will have company on the long drive back to Al Ula. We never do know who the young girl is who sat quietly in the third row. Sami never introduced her, and we took that as a clue not to ask. 

 

Tornado Ibrahim delivers. He has called Tour Guy Salem who meets us at our hotel and gives us a major discount on driver, car, lunch.”For friends of Ibrahim.”Truth be told we got Salem's name originally from the Cannolis in Al Ula. We mention ‘Italian ladies told us’. His eyes don’t glaze over, and he still has hearing, so we guess he did not get The Full Experience, Arancina to Cannolis. 

 

 

2022-01-03 TABUK , SAUDI ARABIA AND EXPERIENCE FOUR

Driver Motip has not drained air from the tires. We ride high and a bit stiff across the sand. Offended, it grabs us and suck all four wheels into its grainy, greedy maw. 

 

Experience Four takes over our day.

 

Old hands, we know the plot now. There is no shovel. There is no tire thingy to sandwich between rubber and hungry sand. It looks like a push would free us. We offer. The Local Expert is in charge. He revs the engine, spins the wheels deeper and deeper, beyond any help possible by pushing. Does that a few times. Then a few times more. The wheels are halfway to their homeland in China.”This has never happened to me.”Obviously. Or there would be a shovel. But….maybe not. Motip feels the sand. It is damp from last night's rare rain, so that's why it misbehaves.

Around us the sand looks docile, lazily flat to the horizon. It is miles to a paved road. There are no obvious skeletons. We have water. And…Motip's phone works, eventually. Salem is on his way. We climb rocks and laze on the friendlier patches of sand. Salem may be local but he is a real Expert. His vehicle has a built-in winch and chain. The sand accepts defeat gracefully.

Rock replaces sand. Motip serves lunch at the edge of the canyon where a spur of the Great Rift Valley is splitting Arabia in two. It's a thousand feet deep and fraying at the edges. The geology is so potent we are sure we feel the earth move. 

 
By day's end we have left the open lands and are deep in a cleft in the mountains.

Al Ula’s beauty left us breathless. Tubuk’s destroys language. Photos demean it, but will have to do.

 

 

2022-01-04 TABUK, SAUDI ARABIA

 

The mountains of the Sinai Peninsula are a bumpy haze, grey above the blue of this thin sliced east branch of the Red Sea. From space the Red Sea is a giant fish diving northwest to southeast. On Mother Earth it is a great crack, just a few million years shy of freeing Africa from Arabia and creating Island Africa.

 
The geological tumult beneath our feet is quiet. The air is still for our lunch break on the eastern shore. We are a two car caravan now. Salem has joined us with a Malaysian couple, 15 years in Saudi.”It was hard at first, but it’s easier now” says, the wife. She's swathed in black, but her face is not covered.

There's a burned wreck of a plane on the shore. The story has a major dollop of colonial arrogance behind it, but no deaths.

 
Later in the day we climb to cave tombs like those at Al Ula's Madain Saleh, tripping back 3500 years, then even further back at a well revered as the spot where Moses met his wife. That's Charlton Heston and Yvonne DeCarlo for film buffs.

The walk through the cleft of Wadi Tayyb-Esm upstages even Cecil B. DeMille's wildest cinematic extravagances, but again, words fail, and photos trivialize.

Motip and Salem have been good companions. Saudi's people match its landscape. Unforgettable.

 

 

2022-01-05 TABUK TO ABHA, SAUDI ARABIA

We fly east, change planes, then fly south, losing latitude but gaining altitude, skimming the mountains of Abha. 

 

Our hotel, a blind pick at Booking.com, doesn’t look promising. The desk clerk is a round Sudanese, a stranger to English, but bubbling with good cheer. We ‘chat’ via hand signals, mugging, shrugs, and a universal understanding of what people who turn up at a hotel desk are probably interested in. Another guest helps in fluent English, confirms Jolly Sudanese is on top of things. Jolly Sudanese even calls to get us a driver for tomorrow.

 
Luis and Elfie return from room inspection four thumbs up in front of big smiles. Our apartment has two big bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and not one, but two bathrooms. One is a traditional ‘Slump and Dump’. The other is a ‘Flop and Drop' (aka ‘Sit and Sh*t'). F and D has no toilet seat, no big deal. Both have showers and lots of hot water. So, we're covered bathroom-wise, regardless of preference.

Dinner is another story. 

 

Google tells us there is a ‘Syrian market' and a Pakistani restaurant nearby. Pakistani it is, down on the left. We pass street after street of huge glass storefronts displaying acres of rolled wall to wall broadloom and massive living rooms of gilt congealed into furniture. Even Louis XIV would have nixed the chandelier. The Pakistani restaurant is closed. Syria is just as far in the other direction. The furniture doesn’t look any better the second time around.

Google gives up on the ‘Syrian market’. Sign language and friendly guys get us there. It’s a five foot wide take out joint, hiding deep in alleys behind the storefronts. 

 

The shwarma are good. 

 

 

2022-01-06 RIJAL AL-MA, SAUDI ARABIA

The road nosedives off the mountain, the jackknifes tighter and tighter, now a cascade of spitcurls. We drop 1400 meters (4620 feet) on a road 9 kilometers  (6 miles) long.

 
Usman, our driver, is from Sudan, all desert sand stretched flat, verticality limited to speed bumps. This is new terrain for him. He rides the brake going down. The car struggled getting up the hills to the top of The Drop, 3000 meters (10,000 feet) high and cloud-wrapped. There's ominous banging from the right rear wheel well. We doubt we will make it back up.

Usman is a gift of our roly-poly Jolly Sudanese Nighttime Desk Guy at the hotel, transmitted through the excellent English of Day Guy. He's tall, quiet, and probably new to this guide the foreigners gig, but gets the job done, and knows a great place for breakfast. For three mornings we inhale sliced egg sandwiches on thick slices of toasted brioche, with fresh squeezed orange juice chasers.

 
Usman wills the car--- and its overworked brakes--- safely down the corkscrew, into the deep valley and then into the main square of Rijal al-Ma Heritage Village. The village is vertical, dark walls of 5 and 6 story angular stone houses piled up the mountainsides. This is defensive architecture. The walls are thick, the geometry stark, broken by white window frames and polychrome shutters.

 
Color has taken refuge inside. The museum is a first taste of the brilliance. Then a young man calls to us from way above. We climb up to his terrace, then down through the many rooms anchored against the hillside. The stairs are bright green, the doorways blazes of multi-color geometry, the designs angular as the village itself. Sinewy Dad shows us how he and his daughter do the painting, free-hand, the hands guided by tradition.

 
We lose count of the rooms. Many are fitted out with sleeping couches. Maybe they are being hatched as AirBnB digs. Color us ready!

Outside, a large family of women and kids sprawls over a terrace. They wave to us. The Guy in Charge comes over, all smiles and a few words in English surrounding”Welcome to Saudi Arabia” and, thumbs up, then hand over heart, pays for our coffee.

 
Usman has never been here. He takes as many photos as we do.

There is another road back, a longer, lazier swirl around and up the mountains, and gentler on the car. Gears gnash a bit, but don't buck. 

 
We make it, and book Usman for tomorrow.

 

 

2022-01-8,9,10 RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA

 
Riyadh oozes money, shaped into glitz and gleam, Gucci and Cartier, and some speculative contemporary architecture. We ascend the 99 floors of Kingdom Tower and watch the city glow from the skybridge linking the two arms, 999 feet in the air.

In Europe especially, ‘Saudi equals gaudy’. That may be true for some of the megalithic mosques Saudi Arabia exports, or for the overstuffed and gilded furniture, Trumpesque in pumped up hollow excess. But all over the country we see a style and sensibility with the purity of desert air, angles catching the dark and bright of desert light, as do the knife edges of sand dunes. Traditional Al-Masmak Fort and the new National Museum share this tradition.

Cars rule. Kids start early. Only out of the city center do we share the city with other walkers. We're sniffing for a potential doughy lunch outside a bakery, when ”Can I help you", cuts through the aroma. He's Abulaty with the generous kindness of Saudis everywhere in this country. He points us in the direction of food shops, then gifts us with the real thing behind those aromas, sweet baklava, and ”salty, because its better”. Selfies safe and WhatsApp contacts noted, he drives off. We get the memory. And the calories.

Over our three days we grow used to the rhythm of prayer time. The rumble of metal doors of the shops as they slide down before and up after key us to down time. In between, away from the glitz, the souk is lively. We watch a man twist and twist cotton cord into the circular weights that hold Saudi headscarves firmly on Saudi (male) heads, finishing touch to our planet's most elegant traditional garb for men.

Riyadh is our ‘city fix’ after the desert of Al Ula, and the mountains of Abha. But Riyadh is a modern city. Tomorrow we go to Jeddah, another deal entirely.

 

 

2022-01-11, 12, 13, 14, 15 JEDDA, SAUDI ARABIA

 
Jedda, with a touch of Mecca.

How old is Jedda? Well…

Eve, yes THAT Eve, landed in Jedda when she fell from Paradise. (Adam landed in India and thus began humankind’s first long distance relationship).”She is our grandmother, our jedda, so that’s why the city is called Jedda, to honor Eve.”That's one story, anyway”, says coffee house owner, Selim.

How old does that make Jedda? I'm not up to the math.

It's a short walk to Old Jedda, aka Al-Balad, from our hotel, and to a breakfast place with scrambled egg sandwiches and milk tea, a storefront with fresh juice (orange and mango), falafel and “shawarmer”, an Indonesian restaurant with gado gado (veggie salad with peanut dressing), nasi goreng (fried rice), and apokat (thick, creamy avocado shake). We have ‘our places'.

Al Balad is where we hang out. The streets twist under the dark balconies hanging off the tall ornate buildings. The streets were built that way to catch the breeze from the Red Sea, says café owner, Salim. Given the slope and slant of many of the old houses, that breeze might be a Category 4. Selim's family houses do not lean. They are magnificent dowagers, getting a facelift, a nip here, a tuck there, for their debut as guest houses as the government restores Al Balad. Most of it is ‘as is', a lot is abandoned. The four stone gates stop thru traffic, but some streets are outdoor souks, so, crowded.

Riyadh oozes money. Al Balad oozes life. And surprises. Many of the people we meet down here on the street are not Saudis. A fruit seller asks where we come from, and delights in our answers. He pats his chest ”Yemen”. The other hand breaks off four ripe bananas from his cart for us. We meet a lot of Yemenis and Sudanis. There's a large southeast Asian population mostly Filipinos. The local bakery is Filipino. The signs over our Juice Guy are in Tagalog. Saudi sails on the backs of its ‘guest workers’.

Most shopkeepers close for prayer, and carry their prayer rugs, by hand or head, to the local mosque. We have to wait a half hour one day for our daily fix of fresh squeezed sugar cane juice (with lemon? Yes!) at Sugar Cane Guy's mini/micro stand. He locks his with a padlock. Neighbors just cover their shop entrances with cloth. We wait, watching passersby. One Mama and Son pair make the generation gap brilliantly clear. Sugar Cane Guy returns, unlocks. carries plastic chairs across the street for us.

 
Jedda is colorful. The furtive cat population takes that literally, and seriously. The cats are blips of scurrying color, swirled, striped, dotted, and dripped by the Kitty Koloring Kommittee (Artist Director Emeritus, Jackson Pollock).

 
Jedda’s folks lounge and picnic, and wave to us, as we walk all along the city's corniche. The corniche stretches for miles along the water, city on one side, Red Sea, ancient link to the world, on the other.  Straight across is the border between Egypt and Sudan.

 
Jedda delivers Abdul into our lives. Tornado Ibrahim is off churning up the sand in Saudi's remote Empty Quarter. We’ve been turned over to younger brother Abdul. He spoils us rotten. The restaurant he takes us to is a revelation. There are mixed parties of men and women. Many of the women have doffed the head scarfs, face masks, and the black abayas they wear in the streets. Eye candy almost upstages the meal. An ungenerous thought flashes: maybe the custom of hiding these lovely women arose because the men --- peacocks in their elegant white and red ensembles --- don’t want any competition. Then the meal wrenches me back to the important matter at hand.

 
Abdul arranges our PCR tests, prints out our results, and takes us high up through the clouds to the town of Taif where we eat sweets and sip coffee.

We pass through Mecca, holiest city in Islam. Technically it is forbidden for non-Moslems, but no one checks us. We can't visit the Holy of Holies but we can buy coffee at a Tim Horton's in a mall Tim shares with Dunkin’s and Mickey D's. We don't let the ordinariness of those places overwhelm the serendipity of their arrival in this holy city.

 

 

2022-01-15 SAUDI ARABIA TO MIAMI

The ATM machine beeps, never a good sign. Then it flashes a message:”We have retained your card.” Just for the hell of it. Seriously???

I am in Jedda airport, our plane leaves in 3 hours, the Emirate desk clerk has told us we are in the wrong place, our flight leaves from the ‘other terminal, Terminal One', requiring a cab fare, we have changed all our Saudi money, and the Bank Guy tells us I can’t have my card until tomorrow. I'm calm. Bank Guy will change US cash.

 
Card? Tomorrow. Inshallah.

But, this is Saudi Arabia. Someone will help.

 
The airport guard tells me to wait.”We must help one another.”He does some magic. A flurry of white robes and red head scarfs arrives. Gargled consonants follow. Bank Guy rethinks ‘tomorrow, inshallah'. He produces a key, unlocks the carnivorous machine and extracts my ATM card. It says goodbye to two other cards that remain in the maw of the machine. ATMs have eaten our cards and left us Peso-less in Argentina, and reabsorbed all my Taka in Bangladesh. 

 

Compared to those mechanical mastications, this is small potatoes. 

 
The ride to ‘the other terminal' is not. Terminal One is 23 kilometers from this airport. Surely that qualifies it as another airport. But,maybe not. No worry, we have plenty of time. I bargain the fare from 100 Rial down to 80. The cabby chats about his father (younger than me). He has only one 10 Rial note as change for my 100 Rial note. I believe him. People here have been scrupulously honest.”For your father” I say. He beams.

It's a short hop from Jedda to Dubai, then 8,948 miles, non-stop for 16 hours to Miami. Emirate Airlines lives up to its reputation. Even in steerage we are spoiled. Our seats recline --- close to flattish --- without performing orthodonture on the people behind us.

 
We fly right over Malatya, Turkey, hometown of friend, Mustapha, then way up north, over the Barents Sea, Greenland, and down North America to Miami, a huge curve on the flat screen.
Somewhere up there in the stratosphere I delete ALL the text of my Saudi Arabia blog, including several days I have written but not sent. The file is empty. I go to sleep anyway. It will work out.

Inshallah.

Note: all blogs beginning with January 8 were written today, January 28.