Exodus from Egypt and Backpacking in the Middle East

I've started packing all of my stuff here in Cairo. Thanks to my flatmate Katie's generosity with luggage space, I am several rugs and a tablecloth lighter than I would have been, but, aside from that, everything basically fits into one medium-sized suitcase with a bit of spillover into a duffel and backpack. Packing to leave a place you've lived for awhile is always a melancholy sensation--I hate end-of-the-semester move out in the dorms. Inevitably, your friends move out of your cozy collective home one by one and return to wherever it was they came from before you met them (inconceivable thought). While it's a little physically easier to pack a suitcase on study abroad than it is to pack ALL of the dorm stuff (just ask my Dad), I think the sensation of loss or nostalgia is, if anything, compounded. When will I ever be back to Egypt? As we say here, "Allahu 'alum" (God knows). We met two of the guys that are renting the apartment after us this evening--I'm somewhat reassured to know friendly faces will inherit our space. (That's always something I wonder about dorms--Who lives there after me? Is the room a part of them like it's a part of me? How did they decorate? I'm always too scared to ever go back and find out). Anyway, my ultimate exploration of Cairo this semester was quite unsatisfactory--I barely scratched the surface of this huge city, not that it would ever be possible to really effectively see it all. I've decided that leaving Cairo has to be analogous to tearing off a band-aid, done quickly and with as little pain as possible. The more I travel the harder I find it to make peace with goodbyes to a place--I just sneak out and hope to return at some point in the future. My flight is this Wednesday, the 4th, and I'll arrive to Athens, Greece sometime late afternoon, insha'allah.

Now, as to the real purpose of the majority of this blog: Spring Break!

You know that squirmy feeling you get inside when you have procrastinated too long on something? The feeling when you should have started that 25 page paper last weekend or you should have called your mother before staying out til 2 am? Well, that's kinda how I feel about this blog--been putting off its completion for far too long. It's time. I just want to say, though, before you start reading, that I haven't done justice here to the experience or the adventures of spring break, so if you really want to know about it, let's get together and chat sometime... The above map shows a route that we more or less followed in our trek northward from Cairo through Jordan, Syria, and Turkey. The map was a little more ambitious than us (to be fair, it's from a travel company website that makes the trip in 5 weeks, not 2 and a half). We didn't see Wadi Rum, Jerash, Palmyra, Cappadocia, or Ankara. We saw some pretty incredible things, however, and had an unforgettable experience.

As you may recall from an earlier blog, I told you we were headed for Jordan, Syria, and Turkey for 17 days from the end of April through the first weekend of May. Our Spring Break travel group consisted of 8 AUC students, 4 of us from GW and 4 from Georgetown (we cracked a couple of jokes about the parallels of our cross-town peace agreement to the tensions of the Middle East—maybe they could learn something from us). All of us study International Affairs and/or Arabic—unique, I know. Needless to say, we’ve got a lot in common and bonded really well as a group. Before the trip we had planning sessions to ensure we were all prepared with hostels, site, and bus information—each person was given a certain assignment and then we discussed them over record-length e-mail chains or here at my apartment over brownies. The itinerary officially included 3 ½ days in Jordan (seeing Petra, Amman, and the Dead Sea), and 6 ½ days in Syria, visiting Damascus, a Crusader castle called Crac des Chevaliers, Hama, and Aleppo. After that, our group of 8 split into two groups of 4 and each group was to spend between 4-6 days in either Jerusalem or Istanbul. I can confidently say in hindsight that we stuck remarkably well to our scheduled itinerary, and we put together a pretty fantastic group.

Our group in Petra from L to R: Tim, Andy, Leah, Dan, Brian Front: Ariel, Ainsley, Me

ONWARD to JORDAN!

Our first stop on the trip was in Jordan. For most of us in the group, it was our first time leaving Egypt since arriving back in January. We were certainly ready, too, seeing how burned out most of us had become in the last few weeks. Our spring break, as you may have surmised, was much later than the average college spring break, which normally happens in March or early April. This gave us more planning time, but it also meant more weeks tediously spent in classes when we were really, really ready for a vacation. It worked out in the end, because it was the perfect time of year (perfect weather) to be traveling in the region.

In order to get to Jordan, we had a couple of options. The first option is a land route, by which you drive across the Sinai Peninsula into Israel and then cross the border into Jordan. Well, as you may know, Israeli stamps in passports can cause a couple of headaches, particularly in Syria where they will absolutely not let you into the country if you have an Israeli stamp--thus, the land route was out. Our other option was by ferry across the Gulf of Aqaba. The Gulf must be one of the most interesting geo-political places I've ever been. At the very northernmost point of the Gulf, Egypt, Israel, and Jordan all meet together, and Saudi Arabia is only a few kilometers away (the grey on the following map). Literally, as we took our ferry across the Gulf, we could see Egypt behind us, Israel to our left, Jordan straight ahead and Saudi Arabia in the distance to our right--pretty surreal. We spent a little time in Aqaba at passport control upon arriving, and then caught a microbus (the most popular local travel option in the Middle East), and rode to Petra. Our day in Petra was our first official day of Spring Break, and I would have to say it was my favorite. Petra was absolutely stunning, and, though somewhat crowded, well-organized and comfortable to visit (unlike the Pyramids which are a chaotic mass of tourists and tour buses being attacked by camel guides and shirt sellers). You would probably recognize Petra by its most famous attraction and its star appearance in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. You know at the end when Indy has to accomplish the three tasks to earn the Holy Grail? He and his dad (Sean Connery) ride through a valley toward a building carved into sheer rock face where the Holy Grail is hidden--that's the Treasury at Petra. Unfortunately, there is no Holy Grail inside (to my knowledge), but there is a giant rock urn on top of the building which for many years was thought to hold the treasure of an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh. The urn is pockmarked with bulletholes from people who thought they would strike it rich.
Petra was also my most photographed day, so enjoy some of the many photos I took. In fact, if you'd prefer just to skip the somewhat verbose descriptions and see more photos (it's ok, I'm not offended), please take the following link to my Picasa file: http://picasaweb.google.com/alison.maassen/JordanAndSyria?authkey=7X2M6h09re8

Coming through the deep and breathtaking valley, called the Siq, upon the Treasury at Petra. The Siq, or "Shaft" in English, has undulating, rose-colored walls up to 600 feet high, and it runs for nearly a mile until you reach the Treasury. Absolutely stunning.

Here is the Treasury itself. There is surprisingly little concrete history about the site itself or, more particularly, about its builders. The Nabataeans, a Semitic people who spoke something akin to Aramaic inhabited the site from at least the 6th century BC. It resisted invasion until about 100 AD when the Romans took over, and was unknown to the Western world until 1812, when a Swiss explorer "discovered" the site (i.e., had a local Bedouin man show him the site).

Throughout the day, the shadows on the face of the Treasury change. The best time to visit is early in the morning, when the contrasts and illuminations are at their peak. We caught some photos at the end of the morning, just as this light was inching its way up the second level of the building. A striking example of the stratified rock, looking at it is like watching a frozen sunset--there are deep reds, whites, pale yellows, and even dark browns all swirled together on the rock face.
Climbing the trail to the Monastery, the most far-flung of Petra's major sites.

Indiana Jones's presence at Petra is palpable (the theme song drummed through my head more than once that afternoon). Sadly, we had no appearance by Harrison Ford on site. We did, however spend the evening at our hostel watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and cheered when Petra came on.

Looking down a street in Amman, Jordan, the capital. Amman is so much quieter than Cairo it's almost ridiculous to compare the two as capital cities (but there's really nothing quite like Cairo). One of the things that struck me most about Amman was the abundance of gardens throughout the city's homes. It seemed that each house could not be complete without a little arbor of grape vines or flowering trees or something--it was very lovely and made the city on a whole so pleasant to meander through. Meandering was made somewhat strenuous, however, by the fact that the whole city is built on a series of 19 hills (apparently it started out on 7 hills like Rome, but has expanded to cover 19). Everything is terraced, and exploring is done by way of lots of stairs and/or steep streets.

A view out onto some of Amman's hilly residences. My friends Nur-E and Camille helping with the spots I missed in our Dead Sea mud bath. We slathered it everywhere, even between our toes, and waited patiently while it dried and worked its magical spa powers. The Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth, is quite the experience. As you walk out into the water, you will notice any and all cuts and scratches you may have because they will start to sting. Your skin will also feel really, really incredibly slimy, like you are bathing in suntan oil or something. You will not believe that you're actually going to float on the water until, suddenly, you lift your feet from the ground and, pop!, your feet have risen to the surface and you're comfortably suspended. In fact, if you are out deeper than your height, you will find that it is literally impossible to touch the bottom--you bob up and down like a cork and can't sink. If you visit, do NOT, under any circumstances, allow the water to get into your eyes or mouth. In your eyes, it burns like habanero juice might, and it tastes like petroleum might, disgusting...

SYRIA!

This was perhaps the topic of greatest discussion at our pre-departure meetings: how will we get into Syria? The answer should seem pretty straightforward: go through the border. Considering the current tension between the United States and Syria, however (we called them a spoke in the "Axis of Evil"), this is one place where an American passport is not a blessing, especially when it has no Syrian visa inside. Many people had told us that we would have no problem getting in...eventually. The problem was we had no idea how long we would have to wait before they would allow our sorry American selves through; there were horror stories of bribes and 15-hour waits. We decided that we would just have to go and find out. We picked up two taxis in Amman and rode to the Syrian border, where we steeled ourselves for up to 15 hours of compliant waiting. Instead, we had only a 6-hour wait, al-hamdulilah. The duty-free provided some entertainment; there was a Lego display that amused several members of the group and the duty-free guards alike for a little while. All of us girls smelled like 7 different perfumes each by the time we walked out. In celebration as we crossed the border, I took the above photo (surreptitiously, of course, border guards aren't big fans of photos).

For all you worry-worts, here's a story you'll like: Literally 5 or 10 seconds after we crossed the border, the guards were checking our bags for the last time. We stood outside the cars waiting, and suddenly, BANG!!! To our right a trash can had exploded in a huge fireball, causing all of us to either scream, shriek, or shudder. "Welcome to Syria," haha, as the guards laughed at our naivete. I'm still not sure what caused this minor explosion and near-multi-state crisis, but, when pressed, all of the boys from the trip say their favorite moment of the trip was "the bomb"--so typical. Our first stop in Syria was the capital, Damascus. Damascus is one of the oldest and most storied cities in the Arab world, and this is one of the most famous places in all of Damascus, the Souq Al Hamidiyeh. It dates from only the late 1800s itself, but runs directly from the new city into the Umayyad Mosque, one of the most revered mosques in all of Islam. It also has a really good ice cream shop on the right side, called Bakdash, which serves the tastiest vanilla/pistachio ice cream, mmmmm... A hijab, or veil, shop in the Souq al Hamidiyieh. It's amazing how many fabrics, cuts, and methods of wear are involved in a hijab. Many arguments (valid ones) are made for the hijab as not only a religious symbol, but also a cultural symbol, a status symbol, a political or fashion statement...it's pretty incredible. For example, a hijab can either cover the neck or not, cover the ears or not, be sheer or not, be pulled tight or worn loosely, be black or multi-colored, be made up of more than one scarf, the list really just goes on and on and on.

One of my friends took the above photo and commented on just how much I fit in with the other ladies of Souq al Hamidiyieh... Ainsley, Leah, and me taking a photo in the courtyard in front of the Umayyad Mosque with one of those Damascene ladies. One of the women's clothing styles for hijab-wearing women in Syria involved trenchcoats. Instead of wearing a long robe, like a jellaba in Morocco or a galabaya in Egypt, they would wear buttoned-up trenchcoats over pants or jeans to conservatively cover their bodies. It was pretty chic, actually.

Entering the Umayyad Mosque, you stand on a spot long revered in many different religions. Originally, the site was a temple to a god, called Hadad, in a polytheistic Semitic tribe. It later became a temple to Jupiter (some of the columns of this temple still stand in the courtyard in front of the Mosque), and still later, it became a Christian church. In the early 700s AD, the current Mosque came into being after the church was purchased by local Muslim rulers. This makes it one of the oldest mosques of significance in the world. Legend tells that the Prophet Muhammed himself chose not to enter the Mosque because its interiors were so beautiful that they could rival Paradise in the afterlife. The tomb of Salah al-Din (known in the West as Saladin) is just outside the Mosque, and the interior allegedly holds the head of Husayn, the Shiite-revered Grandson of the Prophet, and the head of John the Baptist, revered in Islam as well as Christianity.Muslim worshippers at the shrine to the head of John the Baptist, called Yahia in Islam. Interestingly enough, I supposedly saw John the Baptist's head at not one, but two places on this trip. The Tokapi Palace in Istanbul also claims to have John the Baptist's hand and a piece of his skull in gilded gold cases. Another somewhat revered, or at least respected, figure in many parts of Syria, is Hassan Nasrallah, the current head of the Islamist party Hezbollah. It was pretty eye-opening to see the "other" side of world politics. Reading policy papers for US Foreign Policy classes, we see warnings of a Shiite "Crescent" of increasing political influence running from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut. Interestingly enough, a vast majority of the Syrian population is Sunni Muslim, but the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, is a member of a prominent Shiite sect, the Alawites. One thing's for certain, Syria won't be leaving the news anytime in the next few years...

The man himself, President Bashar al-Assad, on a large billboard posted to an old gate leading into the Old City. Perhaps even more than King Mohammed VI in Morocco, al-Assad is EVERYWHERE, in every pose, in every city. Many of the billboards say something along the lines of "kulana m'aik" ("All of us are with you") or "We believe in you, Syria, etc."

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Damascus now is green neon. Everywhere in the city at night you would find mosques and signs aglow in green neon lights, lending the surrounding areas an absinthe-like atmosphere (not that I know what absinthe is like, Mom and Dad, don't stress). Green is the official color of Islam (think Saudi Arabia's flag), and it is used both in Damascus and Cairo to light up the minarets of Mosques at night (here in Cairo, they sometimes even have huge neon اﷲ -"Allah") on the sides of the mosques.

When we left Damascus, we headed northeast toward the Mediterranean coast of Syria. Our goal was the Crac des Chevaliers, one of the best preserved Crusader castles in the entire world. We bought tickets and spent half the day wandering in and out of not-so-secret passages, medieval bathrooms, hammams (steam baths), dining halls, and stairwells. Tim, our resident medieval history enthusiast, had some interesting facts about castle construction. Did you know that they make the doorways shorter so that you have to duck your head under to pass? They did this because it made it easier to chop off invaders' heads as they ran amok through the castle. Crac des Chevaliers also had the holes in the ceilings to drop boiling oil on invaders...all in all, it was a pretty sweet castle.

Haha, too funny not to steal and post. Ariel, Ainsley, and Leah taking advantage of reading time over the Crusader potties.

The Gothic-style dining hall

The medieval waterwheels in Hama, which still churn through the river and send water to irrigation canals outside the city (about an hour from Crac des Chevaliers). The sound of the heavy groaning wood is, as my friend Leah described, somewhere between a dying cow when standing far away, and a rusty engine when you are standing next to them. We gained the attention of a group of boys who decided they would show off for us "Amerikis" at the waterwheels. They would climb onto the waterwheels at the bottom and then either ride them around full circle or do a dramatic jump from the top down into the river (but only after checking to see that we were still watching intently).
I think it takes a pretty manly man to permit a picture of this sorts to be plastered on a billboard--I mean, you must be very comfortable with yourself to allow this as an authoritarian dictator. I think it was a telephone company ad of some sort... The citadel in Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city. It was a lovely city, but made all the lovelier by the fact that we were able to meet a very nice Syrian-American family through Ariel's Arabic professor from AUC, who happened to travel with us for part of the break. We spent an evening at their beautiful home and a day shopping with Syndi, the Texan-married-to-a-Syrian expert on local merchandise. They added a real human element to the experience that we were lacking on Spring Break (a lot of sightseeing, but not as much people-meeting). They also epitomized the hospitality that we all came to appreciate Syria so much for. It was ironic, as I've noted to a few people, that they were so kind to us as Americans in light of our government. I mean, if you think about it, we are a democracy, as we like to harp at the rest of the world; thus, "for the people, of the people, and by the people." Regardless of this, when Syrians met us, they were quick to say something to the effect of, "You are most welcome here, but we don't like your government." It doesn't seem that Americans are as understanding of the whole thing. We seem to jumble and lump people and governments all together.

Stacks of fresh honeycombs dripping into bowls for canning in the markets of Aleppo. I wish tremendously that I had the writing power of the following author in his blog entry on Aleppo, but, alas, I'm more than willing to give him full credit for his beautifully concise and precise description of Aleppo's souq and people. If you want to know how I felt about Aleppo, expressed without plagiarism on my part, follow the link: http://jamestravelling.blogspot.com/2007/09/syria-souqs-and-surprises.html
In fact, the above blog is really, really interesting in general. The British man (James) traveled through three countries in South America, and has posts on those as well as Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, and more. I really enjoyed them (especially the one on Petra); check it out!

TREKKING on to TURKEY!

So, after our amazing adventures in Jordan and Syria, it was time for the group to split up. Four of us would head on north to Istanbul, by way of the Turkey-Syria border, and four of us would retrace our steps through Damascus and Amman to reach Jerusalem. I went with Ariel, Andy, and Dan to Istanbul, and Brian, Tim, Leah, and Ainsley headed back south. Ainsley and Leah had both already seen Istanbul, and the boys preferred to see Jerusalem, so it worked out well. I knew I would be seeing Jerusalem this summer, so Istanbul it was! Back in January on my first flight into Cairo, I had flown over Istanbul at about 3 in the morning. Even from thousands of feet away, it was beautiful, and I really couldn't wait to get a chance to see it in person.

We left Aleppo on a Monday morning, following the Eastern Orthodox Easter, and drove through the border near a city called Antakya--formerly known in antiquity as Antioch, and allegedly the site of the first Christian church and the place where people were first called "Christian." Driving through this part of Turkey was absolutely stunning. The landscape of Anatolia was so different from the lands we had come from. There were fields everywhere and rolling hillsides, olive groves, poppies in the fields--everything felt so springlike and new, and it was one of my favorite parts of the Turkey experience. We drove from Antakya through to the city of Adana, where we meet no one at all who spoke any English, and who spoke only a bare minimum of Arabic. It was pretty disconcerting to be in a country where we suddenly couldn't speak the language even a little bit--we had learned Turkish numbers 1-10, but beyond that and "thank you," we were pretty stuck. Luckily, persistence and gesturing widely got us onto a minibus that took us into town from the bus station, and from there found a taxi to the airport where we flew on to Istanbul later in the evening.

Once we arrived to Istanbul, we met up with Steph, Anthony, and Liz, three other Georgetown students who had been doing similar travels to ours for the last few weeks. It was great to compare adventures and to have some fresh faces to travel and explore with. The seven of us saw the major sites of Istanbul and had a couple of memorable trips to Taksim Square, the hub of Istanbul's nightlife. Istanbul's most famous site, the Hagia Sofia, or Ayasofya as it is known in Turkish. This was built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, and served as a Christian church until the Sultan Mehmet conquered Constantinople and converted into a mosque in 1453. In 1935 it was converted once again into a museum by Ataturk. The inside is truly breathtaking, even when a quarter of its most famous feature, the dome, is covered by scaffolding.

I had a slight problem with my first photos from Turkey being deleted, so here's a picture of the dome thanks to Wikipeida.
One of the great challenges restorers of the Hagia Sophia face is what art and history to preserve and restore. When the building was converted to a mosque, the Christian icons were either removed or plastered over and then redecorated with Islamic motifs. Now, some of the plaster has peeled away or been removed to show well-preserved Christian mosaics such as the one above with Jesus and Emperor Constantine. It is a challenge to decide whether to willingly remove some of the Islamic decorations to reveal more of these beautiful mosaics or to appreciate as it is.

Directly across the way from the Hagia Sophia is the Sultan Ahmet Mosque, better known as the Blue Mosque, thanks to the blue-themed tiles decorating the interior. It was constructed in 1609 on the site of the former Byzantine Emperors' palace. It is easily recognizable from a distance by its six minarets (it was the first mosque outside of Mecca to have six minarets). The fountain in this photo is the same one seen in the above photo of the Hagia Sophia, since they stand separated by a park containing this fountain. During our time in Istanbul, Matt Lauer of NBC's Today show came to visit as a part of his "Where in the world is Matt Lauer?" series. He stood next to this fountain with the Blue Mosque as his backdrop and talked a bit about the city. My friend Anthony just made it over to see Matt Lauer in person, and even made it onto NBC's broadcast as they went to commercial break...small world.
A view of the interior. The low-hung chandeliers illuminate the rich carpet where visitors and worshipping Muslims stand. High above this is the series of domes and half-domes covered with blue paint and blue-tinged tiles. Apparently, there are over 50 different tulip designs painted onto the different tiles in the building. I came one afternoon around prayer time and sat quietly for awhile, just people-watching; despite its high traffic volume, it's such a peaceful place. In a lamp shop in Istanbul's Grand Bazaar. This place is really unlike any other bazaar I've ever seen--in true "touristified" Istanbul fashion, the bazaar is completely covered and actually has flat-screen tvs running down the length of the main streets. The shops are all well lit and the hassle is kept to a minimum. As nice as it is, it is definitely not the all-encompassing sight, smell, and auditory odyssey that Egypt's Khan al Khalili or Damascus' Souq al-Hamidiyieh is.

Haha, "STOP" in Turkish.One evening in Istanbul, we took a ferry from the European side over to the Asian side to have dinner. The sun began its descent when we left from Europe, and by the time we reached Asia, it was setting in stunning fashion over the Blue Mosque. If you look closely you can see the six minarets of the Blue Mosque under the sun. I wish the picture adequately described just how beautiful it was--we didn't move for at least 5 minutes as we watched it sink lower and lower and finally disappear.

A Turkish boy passing under the metro line in Sultanahmet, the most touristy neighborhood of Cairo, where the Sultan Ahmet mosque (the area's namesake) and the Hagia Sophia are located.
I thoroughly approve of Turkish street cats treatment--these kitties looked healthier and bigger than any cats I'd seen all semester. I heard they had some kind of system by which the government helped care for them...great idea. : )My last morning in Istanbul, I took a solitary cab ride up along the Bosphorus to Ortokoy, the neighborhood of the Bosphorous Bridge. There were small cafes and restaurants and stands all along the sides of the water. I just loved this picture of the boat sitting on the temporarily-still waters where tankers and military vessels and cruise ships, amongst other things, constantly pass.
The Bosphorus Bridge in the background, the world's fourth-longest suspension bridge (the three longest are in America).
This quiet morning in Istanbul was a great way to end Spring Break--lots of reflection while staring into the steely waters of the Bosphorus. We caught a flight back to Cairo later that afternoon. Thus ended an unforgettable adventure backpacking through the Middle East.

I hope to update you again soon with the last from Egypt. Thanks for reading and be in touch soon!