Home | Art | Writing | Travel | Shop | Previous Month

June

June 9th, 2004
    I just bought my ticket to visit Upper Egypt. This experience has confirmed my belief that Egyptians are the most obnoxious and loathsome breed ever to infest the planet. There was of course no line at the ticket window, just a crowd of pushing men. I had to jam my way into this abominable mass of stinking humanity, and when I finally wormed my way up to the window, I attempted to occupy it by sticking out my limbs and elbows in all directions. Nevertheless, brown oleaginous heads crammed in from all directions, and grossly distended bellies tried to shove me aside. Also at this time huge rusty iron chains were being dragged across the tiled floor for some reason, so everyone had to scream to be heard. After repeating this process at several windows, I finally reached the right one and bought my ticket. I was so exasperated by this degrading struggle that I forgot to take my ticket, and just walked off with my change, but someone called me back. Then walking through the street, random strangers stopped me to insult various aspects of my personal appearance and clothes. Others laughed and pointed me out to their friends. Then I tried to buy something, and the vendor kept piling things I didn’t want into my bag, despite the fact that I was clearly telling him I didn’t want them. I’ll be damned if I spend a millisecond more than is necessary in this totally foul, toxic, obnoxious and abominable megalopolis, all of whose male inhabitants should be thoroughly lashed.
   This morning I delivered my sister back to the airport. She had been visiting me for the past week. It was interesting to see Cairo through her eyes for the first time again. It apparently appeared very big, poor and dirty. On her first day here, I took her to explore some of the weirdest and most crabbed back alleys of medieval Cairo, in order to maximize the culture shock. I don’t think the shock ever really wore off, for the whole time we were exploring together, her face wore an expression of mingled astonishment and terror. The insane inhuman traffic was especially horrifying. I think we did have a good time hanging out together though. I hadn’t seen her in more than a year. I took her out to the pyramids, and down to Saqqara and Dashur. Our legs hurt for many days afterwards from climbing down the cramped pyramidal shafts. We also visited Ibn Tulun and Sultan Hassan mosques, and Coptic Cairo. Molly bought a nice tapestry in the street of the tentmakers. Furthermore, we spent quite a while walking around Cairo, sitting in Midan Orabi and drinking “crack tea” and juice, observing the Egyptians and talking about various things. We took a fancy train up to Alexandria for a few days as well. There we visited the Bibliotekka, the Serapaeum, catacombs and museum. I found out that the weird statue in the museum of the goat legged demon holding keys was a representation of the Gnostic or Manichean god Aion, or eternal time. Molly especially liked the catacombs. We realized how much work it must have taken to chisel them out of the living rock. We also ate at some of the restaurants I visited last year, including the quail restaurant, where I broke a very long streak of being vegetarian (except for fish), dating back to October. The quail was really excellent, but I did notice a slight corsening of the vibrations afterwards.
    Also, during our trip to the tentmaker’s street in Cairo, we managed to get up into Bab Zuweila, one of the massive ancient city gates. We climbed one of the minarets about an hour before sunset. The view was truly incredible, certainly the best view of Cairo I’ve ever had. What was particularly noticeable was the stupendous amount of trash and rubble piled onto the roofs of the crumbling buildings. In fact, the streets were not visible because of the angle, so the whole area appeared to be one continuous sea of grey rubble and trash, interspersed with mosques and hundreds of minarets stretching far in every direction. Some of the mounds of rooftop rubble appeared to be like twenty feet deep- plastic bottles, palm veggie crates, worn out tires, plastic bags, bricks, stones, broken oil filters and lots and lots of grey Cairo dust. To the birds, it must appear that humans are a sort of burrowing creature that worms around in vast accumulations of its own waste. Also at this gate was a display charting the recent restoration work. Apparently, the gate had the first recorded use of a ball-bearing hinge, dating back to the 10th century. Cairo was right on the cutting edge of technological progress back then. The corroded circular joint with its circular bearings was on display, and indeed it looked to have been a fairly brilliant innovation- an excellent way to support the four ton wood and iron doors. We did a lot of walking, and I was very impressed by Molly’s ability to keep up at my side, while so many others have collapsed in exhaustion.

June 10th, 2004
    This day I awoke into the ghastly dawn, the peeled scab of the night. I went up to Ramsis station and boarded the 7:30 train to Luxor. The trip took 9 ½ hours, but was actually rather pleasant. The miles of green scenery were refreshing, and the second-class carriages were full of peaceable men in galabiyas and Turbans. My sister brought me a much-craved copy of Plotinus’ Enneads, which I was reading as we passed through his supposed birthplace Asyut. As we approached Akhmim and Nag Hammadi, an enormous cliff face rose East of the Nile. In some places it was almost covered with its own talus, but in others it stood stark and very tall. I think it was around this cliff that the Nag Hammadi codices were discovered. During the whole trip, I watched miles of maize fields and palm groves. I sat next to a nice man.
    Once in Luxor, I checked into the St. Mina Hotel. I’ve really got to remember not to say Salam Alekum to Copts. I’ve done it twice, and both times got this instant negative vibe from them. Anyway, I went down to have a look at the Luxor temple. It has a really nice crisp obelisk in front. Most of the first pylon or façade was built under Ramsis II, and is quite decayed. Many of the god’s faces had been chiseled off by monotheists. Indeed, a huge mosque was built right inside the temple. The interior contained some very fine carvings, many with considerable traces of the original colors. The fact that any colors remain after 3,500 years is testament to the ancient Egyptian’s alchemical prowess. The scenes portrayes the usual subjects, such as elaborate feasts and bowing suppliants. I noticed that the crowds of European tourists had a very distinct smell, perhaps from their clothes. It reminds me of how when you’re out hiking in the wilderness and you pass another hiker you can smell their fabric softener and personal chemical products a long ways off.
    Next I visited the mummification museum, which displayed mummies and the tool used to make them. It completely failed to explain anything significant about the process, however. I also walked up to the main Luxor museum, which was very fancy and modern, compared to the Egyptian museum in Cairo, with its piles of unlabeled random mysteries. At last I explored the town a bit, and met the local touts and parasites, ate some koshari, and came back here to pen these reflections.

June 11th, 2004
    This day I awoke and moved to the Venus hotel, a cheaper and more salubrious dive. I took a ferry across to the West bank, rented a bicycle, and started to explore the sights there. First and most impressive was the temple of Medinat Habu, constructed by Ramsis III. The first big wall or pylon bore curious images of the pharaoh holding large bunches of enemies by the air and preparing to smash their brains out. The enemies were portrayed in a curious way, meant to imply vast multitudes, but it made them look like some nightmarish 100 headed Lovecraftian god, or else perhaps like a single enemy vibrating when struck. The other side bore absolutely disgusting engravings of huge piles of severed heads and enemy penises being carefully counted by scribes after the battle. These guys were almost as bloodthirsty as the Aztecs. Also on this pylon was a huge scene of the emperor driving his chariot into a confused mass of maimed and dying enemies. It looked like a sort of glorified version of the battle scenes I used to draw with my friends as a kid. There was furthermore a portrayal of the pharaoh slaughtering vast numbers of oxen, beasts, fish and fowl in a swampy area. Its so weird what they chose to display and immortalize. Yipee, I killed a bunch of animals and foreigners. Quite an accomplishment there, Mr. Ramsis III.
    In a second courtyard, all the gods were shown holding hands. Throughout this awesome temple, much of the original paint had miraculously preserved, especially on the ceilings. This gave the whole area a curious feeling, almost like it wasn’t quite a ruin yet, just temporarily abandoned. There was also a special window from which the pharaoh would show himself to the civilians below. It adjoined his palace, throne room and harem. Surrounding this whole vast complex were the extensive mud brick remains of a medieval town, and rising beyond it were towering cliffs. The whole complex was beautifully preserved.
    Next I rode over to the temple of Ramsis II. Like so many of this pharoah’s efforts, this temple seems to have come in for more than its share of ruin. A truly colossal granite visage, half sunk, lay shattered on the sand. I can’t imagine how such a stupendous solid granite monolith could have collapsed. Hatshepsut’s temple was next on the itinerary. This was a place more notable for its setting than its architecture. It is built right into a huge cliff face. There was an absurd amount of tourists there, and a special dinky train to ferry them the grueling 100 meters from their busses to the temple. They all waddled around with elaborate electronic devices in front of their faces. Although it was now getting broiling hot, I decided to walk over the mountains to the valley of the kings. The view from the pass was awesome. I could see all the temples, the Nile, fields and the distant mountains across the way. Also the colossi of Memnon. By the time I came down into the funereal valley I was quite hot. Here also a special little train was in operation. I looked at six tombs, most of which were rather bland, although impressive for excavation. Most of the tombs there were closed for some sort of supposed renovation. In almost all the ones I visited, the decorations petered out a little ways into the tomb. I guess once the old geezer croaked, they just stuffed him on in and forgot about doing all the decoration. One tomb though had a cool double image of the sky goddess Nut. Fortunately, I happened to have a large amount of change for baksheesh. I then biked back to the ferry, recrossed the Nile, and went back to my hotel to try to take a nap. But when I closed my eyes, I saw a continued parade of garbled pharonic iconography that lasted for a long time. At last I fell into a light sleep, only to awake paralyzed, dreaming that I was being electrocuted.
    I just can’t figure out these ancient Egyptians. Their architecture is so impressive, and their engineering skills unrivalled, but their art often makes them seem childish, like twelve year old boys run amok. It’s so repetitive, brutal and inhuman or alien. They crafted these beautifully polished statues out of the hardest stone, but always in the same manner, with the same subject, unvarying over the millennia. Furthermore, although their culture did develop, it seems to have done so backwards, to have decayed from an initial apex. Despite its huge scale, there is nothing I’ve seen here in Luxor that even begins to remotely compare with the enormity and precision of the Old Kingdom pyramids at Giza.

June 12th, 2004
    Luxor must be the saddest and most shameless place in Egypt. The inhabitants have ascended to gasping heights of obnoxiousness, even compared to Cairo. You can’t walk down the street without picking up a chain of parasitic touts. The popular Egyptian sales technique of insulting the potential customer’s clothes and personal appearance is common here. “Hey Meester, your shoes look terrible! Hey, why you not buy clean shirt?” People often call out to me “Hey, Osama Bin Laden! Hey mustache!” Every time I enter or exit my hotel, a swarm of touts starts jabbering about their donkey trips and alabaster factories. The scrawny girl who cleans the rooms barged into my chamber when the door was closed to demand money, then started coming on to me in the most sad fashion. The whole thing is so absurd it doesn’t even bother me anymore. If Cairo is an anus mundi, the Luxor must be a major infected pustule.
    My hotel window looks out over a narrow, busy market street, and I’ve spent long periods looking down on the action through a slot in the shutters. In about 30 feet of street, there are several vendors of vegetables and personal products. A constant stream of bicycles, donkey carts, motorcycles, carriages, and pedestrians rushes by. Once a truck partially crushed a display of purple onions. One rolled to a legless beggar, who rolled it back. I was surprised to see how long most people took to buy things here. They really fully discuss their purchase with the vendor for many minutes, rather than just scanning a barcode as in the States. Do they even have barcodes here? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.
    This morning I visited the temple of Karnac. It was certainly stupendous, but I’m beginning to get pretty bored of Egyptian iconography and architecture. More interesting was the avenue of ram-headed sphinxes that led up to the temple. As I was walking through the tumble-down village, a few eroded sphinxes started appearing among the shacks. A few baby goats sheltered under the less corroded sphinxes. It was really interesting to see these ancient statues scattered among the modern hovels. Walking around the town, I also noted that there seems to be a much higher percentage of Copts than in Cairo. Perhaps this is because Cairo was largely an Islamic city, founded by the first Arab invaders.

June 13th, 2004
    This day I jumped on an early train down to Aswan, where I checked into a beautifully dilapidated hotel named The Victoria. I suspected that it would be good, because the guidebook described it as appealing to those who rank atmosphere above cleanliness. Indeed, the owners seem to understand the antithesis between these two forces. Aswan is a hot, dusty little border town that reminds me somehow of Inverness in Scotland. At noon the sun is directly overhead here- something I’ve never observed before. I think Aswan is only one degree from the tropic of Cancer, and the solstice is approaching.
    I walked out to visit Aswan’s famous unfinished obelisk. There was something poignant about its immense, supine futility. Although absurdly humungous, it was difficult to find in its weird landscape of bubbly pink granite. Three sides had been cut out, but apparently the workers had discovered a fatal crack, and the project was abandoned. It felt strange to have arrived at this most distant point of a distant land, only to find an immense monument to wasted labor.
    In related developments, I’ve been compelled to observe that this one kind of abominably foul smelling preserved (or rotten) fish is very common in Luxor and Aswan. The stench is almost ludicrously nauseating, and the idea that anyone would purposely ingest something like that, instead of, say, burying it as far from human habitation as possible, is astonishing.  It smells a lot like that Thai fish sauce. Its challenging to retain one’s stomach contents while passing one of the stores specializing in this product, and the intensity of the smell is such that it returns in flashbacks hours later.

June 14th, 2004
    It’s just insanely hot here in Aswan. At night my pillow and iron bed frame feel like they’ve just come out of a toaster oven. Even in the shade you can feel waves of heat radiating from any nearby object. I like this type of heat, as it induces a pleasant languor, and enforces nocturnal habits. Almost every man who passes men in the street says “Hey, mustache!” I can’t understand why they do this, and after the 25th time in one block, it just seems moronic. The touts here don’t follow you down the street as they do in Luxor. Instead, they just shout really loud as you pass their shops “Skooze me! Hey, man! You look here! Hey! Skooze me. You know how much? Good price!” In some of the Ahwas they try to ridiculously overcharge me after I’ve finished my drink, which seems low even by Egyptian standards. I went into this one place for a drink, and immediately all of the guys in the shop came up and sat by me, trying to sell hashish, carriage and taxi rides. One guy even tried to hail a carriage off the street and make me get in it. This experience really made me realize that there is no equivalent for the word “No” in the Arabic language. Then they attempted to charge me LE10 for the drink, when LE2 would have been fair. This experience pissed me off so much that I walked directly to the train station and bought a ticket for the next train out of here to Cairo.

June 15th, 2004
    This day I visited the botanical gardens of Kitchner’s island. Although very close to Aswan, the island required epic adventures to reach. First I took a ferry across to Elephant Island, which is a beautiful, quiet place of rambling villages and palm groves. Trying to cross the island, I soon became totally bewildered in a Nubian village, which had the narrowest streets I’d ever seen. I almost had to walk sideways through these twisty corridors. After bungling around in palm groves and palm detritus for a while, I came across an old man standing in the shade near a sullen donkey with an enormous erection. He directed me to a spot where I could negotiate a rowboat passage to the island. The botanical gardens boasted immense trees of many common houseplants in the genus Ficus. Also some curious bulbous tree with giant spikes and leaves like small horse chestnut. White ibises abounded.
    When I came back to Aswan, I bought a cassette that I already had. I’m starting to remember how in climates like this, I just can’t think straight at all. Like how last summer in New Orleans I left my ID at this bike shop for two weeks, and never could figure out where it was, until I went there to sell them my bike back and they recognized me. Here in Aswan, I’ve bought the wrong train ticket and payed for too many nights at my hotel. It’s like my ID drops by half for every 10 degrees above 80 Fahrenheit. Just sitting in a room here is like being on some kind of mild opiate.

June 16th, 2004
    The twelve-hour train ride from Aswan to Cairo was only slightly grueling. I even managed to sleep a little. I felt particularly stank during this journey, as there hadn’t been any running water at my hotel to take a shower. At least my fellow passengers seemed to be in a similar condition.

June 17th, 2004
    This day was spent in a rather futile whirlwind of activity. Yesterday, I’d bought an oud to sent to Don, my Portland landlord who is storing my books. I spent this morning on a wide-ranging hunt for some foam to pack it in. My search took me through the minute mechanical warrens near Orabi, over to Ataba, and at last to Mohammad Ali Street, where I found it at last, in a furniture-making district. Next I bought an awesome red and black appliqué tapestry near Bab Zuweila. Then home to drop these off, then over to Zamelik, where I bought an antique embroidered Bedouin skirt for Martha. Then home to pack all this up, then to the hardware store for more tape, then in a taxi up to Ramsis post center, which I found had closed twenty minutes earlier, at 3 pm. A hellish 45-minute taxi ride brought me and my packages back home. I was too pissed off even to be pissed off. Now I’ll have to stay here more days while I wait for the post office to reopen badibokra (day after tomorrow).

June 19th, 2004
    This day I’ve been taking care of a few last minute detils prior to my planned exodus tomorrow. Imshaallah I’ll finally pass out of the land of Egypt, or at least into the mighty and terrible wilderness of Sinai. This morning I mailed Don’s oud and a box of my crap. The Kafkaesque rigmarole at the post office would have astonished me, had I not been through it before. In one interesting variation, however, I special censor reviewed some oud and belly dancing tapes I was sending back. I was sent up to the top floor of the vast building, and showed to the censor’s office. She was a profoundly censorious personage who seemed to combine Egyptian rigid inflexibility with Islamic purity. She sat surrounded by videocassette players and stereos for reviewing the dubious invaders and evaders from foreign lands. When I first walked past her door, she seemed to be staring fixedly at the wall, surrounded by a certain aura, but I later noted she was only watching TV. I was very disappointed that she only looked through the tapes, and we didn’t get to listen to them. After much stamping of forms, inscribing and counterreinscribing, I was sent off. I passed a woman coming in with a load of packages to be censored. The floor of her otherwise immaculate office was littered with cut package strings. After more paperwork, I finally left and walked to the mighty Turgoman garage and bought a ticket for Dahab, a small town on the Gulf of Aqaba.
    I’m all packed and ready to head out tomorrow morning. I’ve been living in Cairo for nine months and six days. The first six months were the most wonderful, when I was constantly amazed and overwhelmed by the weirdness and complexity of the place. After the culture shock wore off, though, a lot of the more toxic and abrasive aspects of the city began to catch up to me. In the last month especially, I’ve been having problems with the Egyptians. What started off as bemused irritation has really developed into full-blown loathing and abomination. Enough of that though. Also, the whole time I’ve been here I’ve had a strange feeling that a sort of hex hangs over me, or that I’m aberrantly located in space. I feel no anticipatory nostalgia about Cairo, only an overwhelming need to depart from it immediately. My domestic appliances concur, for my amboobit butagaz ran out yesterday, my toothpaste is used up, and a string broke on my guitar just as I was finishing my final play on it. It reminds me of how my piece of crap bike in Portland miraculously held together until the very day before I left, when it basically collapsed into a rusted heap of junk. I think my plan will be to live in weird countries for six months each, riding a wave of culture shock.

June 20th, 2004
    This day was largely spent on a fairly horrific “luxury” bus ride out to Dahab, if luxury means seats a good 6” too small and the intense stench of raw sewage emanating throughout. Anyway, I’m back on the beautiful Gulf of Aqaba, looking across at Saudi. This town Dahab is a sort of gentrified stoner ghetto scuba-diving camp.  Lots of travelers hanging out in fairly luxurious Bedouin style palm thatched shelters, smoking sheesha and drinking Stella. A single resident shoe-shine guy upholds the great traditions of his nation. There are lots of independent travelers here, but many in the fairly well-off category. When I got off the bus here, me and this one Japanese girl were mobbed like shark meat by at least 15 ravenous hotel touts. It was actually kind of sad to observe this kind of squabbling abasement.

June 21st, 2004
    This morning I payed a brief visit to the Dahab Mustache-Fair or hospital to address a slight intestinal horror visited on me since Luxor. I relaxed with Plotinus by the sea for quite a while, reading his fairly perspicacious analysis of astrology. Later I went snorkeling in the sea. The first place I went, the Eel Garden, was a bit rough for me, with waves and fierce currents. I was only barely able to crawl out of the water alive. It was hard to find the one gap in the reef where you could get back to shore, and right in that place was a fearsome rush of water. I was glad to make it back. The next place I went was great though. I saw lots of brilliant huge neon fish with weird protuberances, giant sea urchins, bright corals and anemones. Snorkeling has got to be one of the best things to do on our planet. I love just hanging above the reef, watching the fish and complex invertebrates. At another place right near the shore, in about 2 cm of warm water I found thousands of very active brittle stars. I’d never seen these alive before, and was amazed at how fast and agile they were. They were all keeping one leg in a crevice and the four others waving in the gentle current. When I would put my finger near one, it would wrap its legs around and grab on with its little tube feet. In deeper water, I also observed the weird arrangement of tube feet on large, spineless sea urchins. I watched darkness rise over Saudi for about an hour, then went up to dine and read about alchemy on the internet. I also traded my guide to Egypt for an antiquated one for Turkey.

June 22nd, 2004
    This day I bussed up to Nuweiba, where I’m now staying on the beach. Its sunset now, and the pink mountains in Saudi look ravishing beyond the crisp blue line of the sea. All day they remain a hazy form, but now their craggy, lifeless details are thrown into relief. The camp I’m staying at is run by Bedouin and Sudanese, two of the chillest types of folks in the world. So different from the Nilotic valley dwellers. Everyone keeps speaking Hebrew to me here-everyone else staying at this camp is Israeli.

June 23rd, 2004
    Praise God today I passed out of Egypt. I was expecting the Egyptians to foist some final indignity on me, but fate blessed me with a wonderful new friend and guide in the form of a South African Sufi residing in Jordan. But first. I arose and walked several miles through sandy desert with camels to the port. I finally found the place to buy a ticket, which is where I met Soleiman the Sufi. He spoke fluent Arabic and English and took me under his wing, guiding me through the manifold bureaucratic horrors leading to the boat. These horrors were really too unimaginably appalling to describe- screaming masses, thousands of Egyptians trying to push through a two-foot wide door, endless semi-queues, total interminable mad chaos, furious, vessel-bursting screaming matches- total hell. Soleiman guided me through all this, swept me to the front of the mobs, through the many gates. He knew all the customs and ferry officials personally, because he rides the ferry often to renew his Jordanian visa. Under his care, we made it through to the boat in about 20 minutes. I would have been very unlikely to have made it to the boat in time without his help. Boarding the ferry, I saw with shock how blue the crystalline waters were. The ferry guys showed us to a private room with a shower. Soleilman and I talked about Islam, Sufism, philosophy and the Arab world for a while. I took a wonderful shower and explored the ferry. Thousands of passengers crowded every space with naps and picnics. People were praying all over the place too. I was horrified to see the passengers just tossing their trash overboard into the lucent azure waters.
    When at last the ferry arrived, Soleiman guided me through the inscrutable exit formalities. He also helped a large group of American tourists, and negotiated a taxi to take me to my Jordanian camp. He was one of the kindest people I can think of ever having met. I now sit at dusk on a small hillock overlooking the Gulf of Aqaba. I can see four countries from up here- Egypt, Saudi, Israel and Jordan. The moon is growing plumper and there is a sweet warm breeze.

June 24th, 2004
    This day I went for a snorkel above the reef near my camp. This reef was really awesome, with incredible fluorescent yellow soft corals, gigantic tubular sponges, and lots of wildly colored fish. I even saw a huge moray eel. The water was calm and deep beyond the reef, perfect for snorkulatory explorations. I wonder when people discovered how cool things were down there. It’s also mysterious to me why the animals down there are so brightly colored. I’ve yet to hear a convincing explanation of that. This region of the Earth is quite strange. The huge craggy mountains cut down to soft beaches, then into the brilliant blue sparkling warm sea. There is no land vegetation here at all. All the biotic action occurs in the reefs a few meters from shore. I also picked up a weird sunburn on the backs of my legs, which had been fish-belly white. Lots of Jordanian families were picnicking on the beach. One family of three middle-aged brothers and their sons invited me over for tea. The littlest boy flew a plastic bag kite. I talked with the men about Israel for a bit, and they were kind to me despite my abhorrent nationality. They named Amreekee heroes such as Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. After two super sweet teas, I took my leave and flagged down a bus into Aqaba, where I found a hotel and set out to explore the city.
    Jordan seems much more modernized and affluent than Egypt. The people all seem to speak excellent English. Nobody hassles me or makes fun of me when I walk around here. They actually seem to be kind and respectful. Also the food doesn’t taste like it’s been stored in a syphilitic donkey’s anus, as is the case in Egypt. The monetary system is really confusing here, as there are three ways of dividing money- the dinar, the piaster, and the fil. Also, everything is about 3 to 4 times more expensive than in Egypt. Internet connections are startlingly fast. The people look quite different from the Egyptians too. They seem more stocky and fair. Many have grey eyes, and their ears seldom protrude in the dramatic Egyptian fashion. Instead of Mubarak icons, there are one of King Abdullah and his perky wife. The malik-factor himself looks a little like a chubby JFK.

June 25th, 2004
    Last night I was awoken by a series of stupendous detonations sometime after midnight. They sounded way too loud for fireworks- the whole building shook and they seemed to be coming from all over. I feared some sort of Israeli attack, but apparently the noises were related to some Royal Abdullah festivity.
    This morning I took an early bus out to Petra. We climbed through craggy mountains, out of the lifeless Gulf of Aqaba region, into a land of very high mountainous hills that were covered with a sparse grey shrubbery, upon which goats were sustained. I saw lots of rambling Bedouin tents and goatherds. Even some marginal farming and olive growing happens up here. It seems very different from Egypt- much more Mediterranean. I felt happy on the bus ride. When we arrived, I found a hotel and set off to explore Petra. This turned out to be a truly beautiful and unique place. It’ll be difficult to describe. You pass under a ruined arch, into a very deep and narrow canyon called a siq. It’s more like a crack in the Earth 2-4 meters wide and very, vary deep. The rock is a brilliant red and purple layered sandstone with intricate psychedelic patterns. The siq winds for a long way down, getting narrower and deeper. Along each side is carved a conduit for water. In some places the siq is so narrow and deep that the sky appears to be only a narrow ribbon of profound blue. Suddenly, this narrow crack opens out into a vast open space surrounded by red cliffs. Placed in front for obvious dramatic effect is the famous treasury façade, familiar from billions of photographs. I sat and contemplated it for some time. It was really one of those places that can’t be captured on film, because the 360 degree surrounding is so impressive. Apparently it was built by Arab frankincense traders during the 1st or 2nd century BC, but it appears totally Roman in style, with ornate Corinthian columns and statues in flowing robes. Although every particle of the elaborate capitols was intact, the statues had been utterly effaced. It looked like there had been a goddess flanked by winged beings, surmounted by giant eagles with equestrian statues below. A tall door led to a large cuboidal chamber carved from the rock. I hiked around the area and explored many more of these mysterious buildings. Apparently, no one knows if they were tombs or temples or what. Most were topped by large carven urns. In fact, the ornate decorations of foliage and urns reminded me a little of Victorian architecture and Amelia Bedelia books.
    Their large interior rooms were particularly awesome because of the swirling sandstone rock patterns on the walls and ceiling- like the marbled endpapers of a particularly psychedelic old book. Purple, red, pink, white and black were all layered together. Also near here was a massive freestanding temple called Qasr Al Bint, or the girl’s palace. There was a small museum at which I learned that the Nabateans worshipped a goddess called Al-Uzza or something. They also wrote in a weird drippy script from which Arabic letters apparently evolved. I could discern the connection in a few letters like the Kaff. I don’t think they were a very literary sort, as their culture is so unknown and mysterious. Next I hiked up a beautiful canyon to another enormous temple/tomb called Al-Deir, or the monastery. The scale of this place was truly stupendous, dwarfing the semi-naked tourists and their digital apparatus. The echoes of sound in this canyon were wonderful. I could hear every banal detail of a distant conversation. I Bedouin trinket vendor played the flute beautifully. On the way back down, I decided to go off the path and try to climb a nearby mountain peak. I had an excellent scramble over the phantastical rock formations and among the gnarled junipers. I reached beautiful, silent, untrodden chasms and thickets. It reminded me a little of the Sierra Nevada in California near Yosemite, because of the deep blue sky, the silence and stillness, and the gnarled ancient trees. Except here instead of white granite, the rock is this beautiful sandstone, which is eroding into weird pockets and columns. After exploring around for a bit, I finally reached the awesome peak, which commanded a view over the whole vast site. I could see the huge urn topping the monastery temple, the half moon, the girly temple, and hundreds of tomb openings far below.
    The plants in this area are quite fascinating as well. I noticed a sort of Cyprus or juniper with hard berries and shaggy bark. A tall shrub with pink aromatic flowers bloomed everywhere. Some of the plants sported very elaborate and impressive thorns. It was so nice to be somewhere peaceful and still, away from other people. Eventually I clambered back down and made my way back to the treasury and back up the siq. A Bedouin boy followed me for a lot of the way, and I spoke to a nice Jordanian woman. Now I’m back at my hotel, but the tazzkara (ticket) is good for another day.
     I was amused to note that the guidebook warned of hassle from trinket vendors. I was like “You call this hassle? You ain’t seen shit!” Here if you smile and say no thanks, they smile back, unlike in a certain other country I could mention, where they follow you, shoving crap literally into your face, tugging your clothes, filling your pockets with postcards, laughing at you repeatedly and without end, more shameless than dogs, greedy than pigs, more obnoxious than a fly in your nostril. Ahem.

June 26th, 2004
    This day I again walked down the siq to Petra. I contemplated the famous treasury for a while and decided I very much liked its style and winged lintels. Next I hiked up to the High Place of Sacrifice, a mountain on whose peak a sacrificial alter was carved. I had more ambitious hiking plans, but these were foiled by an insurmountable fatigue that made every step painful. I ended up climbing into a narrow gorge above the amphitheater and just resting there for a long time. When I came down, I talked to a necklace vendor who immediately recognized that I was an American who had lived in Egypt. I guess Egyptian Arabic is pretty distinctive. I walked back up to my hotel and watched the sun set over the lower mountains to the West. The hills and valleys here are terraced and planted with olive trees.
    I can really feel how the energy of this land is so different from that of Egypt. Egypt has a very heavy feel of wet earth and water, deep mud and hot sun, a sluggish, languid, low place, a fertility tinged with rankness. Here in the mountains of Jordan, I can feel a spirit of Air. It is a clear, high feeling, like the intellect straining after a vision, like a distant lost song.

June 27th, 2004
    This day I arrived in Amman, another sprawling giant city. Unlike Cairo though, it is built on a lot of steep hills with narrow stairs going up them, and the air is clean. I climbed up to a sort of Acropolis in the center of town, which had ruins and a good small museum. I’m a sucker for museums. This one had some very eerie statues from 6,000 BC. Apparently the world’s oldest statues, these plaster images looked like weird modern idols with staring bright eyes. Several of them were two headed beings of some sort. I also learned that the Nabatian fertility goddess Al Uzza was related to the Egyptian Isis. I walked downstairs to a large Roman amphitheater, then back up the citadel to watch the sunset. I noticed these weird black specks in the sky, and at first thought they might be distant helicopters, but then I realized that they were kites. Looking around, I noticed hundreds of kites flying all over the city. These and the flocking birds, and minarets lit with green were all very beautiful.

June 28th, 2004
    This day I went up to visit the ruins of the Roman city Gerasa, now called Jerash. There was a well-preserved theater, and a large temple of Artemis. I burned some incense for the mistress of beasts. In fact, mostly beasts were haunting the ruins. I saw many large lizards, pigeons and cats. The colonnaded main street had prominent ruts from chariot or cart wheels worn into its huge paving stones. All alongside in the dried up yellow grasses and skeletal thistles were hundreds of ornately carved stones lying haphazardly jumbled together. After exploring the ruins, I tried to take a bus to the anti-crusader castle at Ajlun, but couldn’t find the proper place to stand for the bus, so I went back to Amman, where I got a guide to Syria. On one of the steep hillside stairways, about an hour before sunset, I came across an incredible swarm of red and black bugs. There must have been tens of thousands of these little red and black guys scurrying up the concrete edging. The smaller ones were pure scarlet, while the adults had a bold pattern of red and black triangles, like the Minoan axe heads. Some were joined together in pairs, with one walking backwards. There was something numinous about this eruption. Perhaps it was a sign of something burbling in the benthonic abyss of futurity. I climbed up to the acropolis to watch the sunset and kites, and to listen to the evening prayer. Its quite wonderful that right in the middle of this immense sprawling metropolis there is a large mountain topped by ruins, totally empty and deserted.

June 29th, 2004
    This day was quite an adventurous one. My goal was to visit the Dead Sea. Following the map in my guidebook, I managed to find the obscure bus station for transport out there. Amman is surely an odd city, with all its hills and cars. It can feel so odd to be a lone pedestrian in a sea of mechanized pods. All the excitement of the city is about rushing to other places in it, like in LA, where more than 50% of the land area is devoted to cars. I took a series of minibuses out to the Dead Sea. At last the driver stopped and made me get off, pointing across barren fields to the sea several kilometers away. I walked across these fields, which were strewn with plastic bags, and through some abandoned construction sites. I was picturing some kind of resort or hotel, or something along these lines at least, but what I found was an old lady, a tent, and an improvised shower or spigot, in the middle of a vast construction site. I hiked down through the rubble and building materials to the deserted sea. The water looked bright blue, and Israel was visible on the other side. Or Palestine, rather. There was nobody around, just me and the plastic bags. Feeling somewhat nervous, I stripped and entered the water. It was warm and felt a little strange somehow on my body. I didn’t quite believe that I’d be able to float on my back, like in pictures I’d seen, but when I lay back, my legs bobbed up, and I floated. It was so weird that I started laughing and couldn’t concentrate on reading the newspaper I’d brought. It felt a little like laying on a jiggling waterbed. I floated there for a long time, becoming profoundly relaxed. I could almost have gone to sleep, and a long time passed before I was able to make myself crawl out. Such a weird empty place to float under the sky. At last I came out and had a shower at the old lady’s tent. I was probably her one customer of the week. There didn’t seen to be any proper roads or buildings about, just construction rubble and idle machines. I hiked back to the road and didn’t really know what to do, or how to get back to Amman, so I just started walking. It was then that my walking demon took over. Have I told you about this? It’s where I can’t stop walking. I walked under the broiling sun for a long time alongside the highway. I put my salty T-shirt on my head as a turban, and it dried into a rigid, crusty form. I walked for a few miles, and started to worry a little about how I was to get back. The infrequent traffic was speeding by too fast to flag down, so I just kept going. At last I spotted a minibus coming up, and I stood out into the road, and made the Middle Eastern hitchhike gesture, palm down. It stopped, and I climbed up into a strange little speeding world, decorated with plastic fruits, leaves and fabric tassels. The stereo was blasting. I caused a minor sensation among the passengers, with my weird headdress and exotic phenotype. We were going somewhere fast, but I didn’t know where. I jabbered ineffectually with the others. They showed me where to transfer to Amman, so I made it back OK in the end. On the trip back, the air was hot and sweet, like if you open the oven door when an apple pie is cooking.

June 30th, 2004
    This day I traveled up to Damascus Syria and explored the city for a while. The first thing I noticed was that the enormous portraits changed from the cheerful King Abdullah II of Jordan to the cross-eyed, lost looking President Basher Al Assad of Syria. Its kind of funny to see giant illuminated posters of such an odd looking chap. Chairman Mao radiates a certain glow of plump self-confidence, Stalin seems firm and avuncular, Mubarak appears a paradigm of monolithic stability, but old Basher just looks bewildered and confused. There are also a lot of giant icons of his dad, who looks profoundly ill, like he’s just about to keel over any second. These two walleyed nitwits preside over every cash register and traffic intersection.
    Damascus seems like a big amusement park for cars, like every other city I’ve been in. It’s particularly hard to cross the street here, because of the spiked iron fences that line the roads and medians. The old city is a different story, however. There many of the old souqs are covered in old iron and glass roofs, like you see in Victorian train stations. Dim beams of light pass through, giving the place a mysterious aura. Bright striped candies are sold. I visited the large and fascinating Umayyad mosque, which has been a site of worship for over 3,000 years. First it was somebody called Hadad, then Jupiter, then Jesus, then Allah. There were brilliant green and gold mosaics of phantastical trees and columned buildings. I believe these were very ancient. I love how mosques are so calm and full of light and peace. This is so different from the dark and gloomy cathedrals of the Christians. There are usually a lot of people about, some sleeping, some praying, while children hop about. I also visited the nearby tomb of Saladin.


July Journal


Home | Art | Writing | Travel | Shop