The past few weeks have been a roller coaster. The lowest, most despondent moments of my first year of teaching, exacerbated all the more by my lack of a real social and familial network over here (not to mention a real dearth of Christian fellowship), followed by back-to-back good news: first, another potential avenue to get my novel published when I get home in June, followed by the news that my best friend in Dubai, Martine, who had been home in California due to a family emergency since November (the day after we got back from Jordan), was coming back to Dubai. More ups and downs preceded and followed, but most of my ups since seem to be writing/publishing-related.
On the novel front, I’ve picked up the pen again, rewriting the novel (entitled From the Ashes, for those of you not in the know) into what should be a final draft (to be tweaked between its completion circa the first of May and its hopeful submission for publication in late June). This past week alone, I’ve written over nine-thousand words on it. As most of you who know me well are aware (especially those of you who’ve known me well in these past two years), there are few things in life that I want more than to be a published novelist, able to write for a living and travel the world researching ideas and locations for subsequent stories. And as God is wont to do, when I was the most distraught I’ve been in years, He goes and opens a window, a door, and possibly a whole slew of portholes in the possible attainment of my greatest dream. I have been blessed with at least two individuals who are well-connected in the publishing world who are interested in my work, at least one of which is eager to get my finished novel into the hands of the right people to get it published. Given, neither of them have read the latest version of the novel, but I don’t think it will disappoint. That’s the aforementioned door and window. Here come the portholes.
This weekend, the inaugural Emirates Airlines International Festival of Literature is coming to Dubai. Dubai Festival Center, actually, the mall that is located just a ten-minute walk from my school. Forty-some-odd authors from all over the world are coming to participate, giving presentations and hosting Q&A sessions, as well as availing themselves to fans for book signings, chats, etc. I’ve bought tickets for five sessions with five different bestselling authors (Peter James, Kate Mosse, Frank McCourt, Wilbur Smith, and Philippa Gregory), and I’ll be meeting Julia Glass, NY Times bestselling author and winner of the National Book Award, when she comes to our school on Sunday (the first day of the workweek out here, if you’ve missed that in previous entries). In short, I’ll be meeting six bestselling, well-connected authors in the next week. Hence, my portholes.
In addition, I’m going to be taking along the first twenty-four pages of my revised novel (the prologue and first chapter)… just in case the opportunity might arise for me to show it to one of the authors. Who knows? If they read it, they could offer suggestions (from someone who is familiar with the publishing and editing process), or, if they’re particularly wowed (which, considering the busyness of the festival, I don’t really think they’ll have the energy to be wowed by something some silly festival-goer wrote), perhaps they’ll give my contact information, with the author’s recommendation, to someone within the industry. Probably a pipe dream, but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Even if nothing much happens to get the ball rolling on me getting published this weekend (which is the most likely scenario), I’ll still glean some insights on the life of a full-time author and on the craft from professionals in the field. Should be an exciting and enriching weekend, no matter which way things happen.
Also on the writing front, I’ve begun preliminary work on a non-fiction book based on my experiences, observations, and thoughts about life on the ground here in Dubai. Plenty of books have been written on the city, but most of them have been from a business perspective. Dealing with the children from all over the world, from all sorts of religious, economic, racial, national, and cultural backgrounds, as well as watching the interplay between them and the society they call ‘home’ (at least as much as anyone calls Dubai ‘home’, but that’s a different chapter altogether) has provided a unique insight that I haven’t found to be attainable outside my profession. The book will be probably divided into two sections – one on life as a ‘normal person’ in Dubai (rather than as one of the rich and famous for whom the city is designed to be a playground, or as one of the businessmen responsible for designing and constructing said playground) and one on the insights gleaned as a teacher of the various children of the people making up this grand microcosm of the world. There’ll likely be some overlap there, but those are the basic divisions. I’ve also been told that I should write a book of travel writing, and in all likelihood, I will, but that’ll be separate from this project. I haven’t started actually penning the book itself at the moment, as my writing energies are primarily dedicated to the novel (and keeping you folks back home abreast of my adventures… though I’m sorry for the somewhat rambling nature of this entry… I just churned out another thousand words of From the Ashes, and it used up all my good writing), but I’m keeping notes and recording statistics, experiences, and anecdotes so that when I do begin writing it (probably not until after my stint here is complete), I’ll have a wealth of material already at my fingertips.
So there I am. Hoping, praying to get published in 2009, and pursuing every avenue God opens up to me. And since I’m on it (and I know many of you probably already are), I’d appreciate your prayers on this matter: for the right doors to be opened at the right time. Also, any support you can offer me in this endeavor (whatever that means to you… not donations or anything like that… unless they’re made in cookies!), would be greatly appreciated. And drop me a line if you can sometime (JeremyJBurns@gmail.com). I don’t have much Internet time out here (I only have access at school for the time being), so I might not be able to respond in a timely manner, but any little note from you folks back home would be neat. It gets lonely out here sometimes.
Here’s hoping for magic happening and dreams being fulfilled this weekend and beyond, and as always, thanks for tuning in!
“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”
– Walt Disney
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Inspiration in Roma
[Note: I wrote the following entry towards the end of December. In the interest of giving my entries some semblance of chronology, I refrained from posting this entry until I had written and posted the entries from Bangladesh and Jordan. It appears in its original, unadulterated form, so when reading it, please bear in mind that it was written over a month ago, and refer to the next entry where I will post for more up-to-date information on what’s going on in my life at the moment. And as always, thanks for reading!]
Rome. Where do I start? How do I regale what was the most amazing and perhaps important trip I’ve yet undertaken? I guess I’ll take a page from Maria von Trapp’s book (of The Sound of Music fame) and start at the beginning.
As mentioned in a previous entry, my school closed for an additional three days in early December, bringing a previously seven-day holiday to a much nicer twelve days. So I decided I should go somewhere. Most of my friends at the school had already made their travel plans, and I didn’t want to latch onto someone else’s already-made plans. I knew that wherever I would go, I would go alone. I didn’t trust myself on my own in Southeast Asia or other such third-world locales (where many of my colleagues were going, albeit in groups), especially considering the instability and anti-American terrorism that the region has been rife with in the preceding weeks. I had been on two long trips since coming to Dubai in August: one to Bangladesh with three other teacher-friends and one to Jordan with two teacher-friends and twenty-one screaming high-school students. Lots of touristy activities and ventures (or, in the case of the former, as touristy as Bangladesh could be). See various places, experience the country, sharing the whole adventure with friends. Which is how I always thought I loved to travel: making memories with someone to share them with. But this option was not open to me for this break. Or rather, it was, it could have been, but I chose to forgo it. Work, life had become quite stressful for me in the previous weeks, and I felt that I had some introspection to do, some soul-searching if you will, regarding where I am, where I’m going, who I am, who I want to be, how I plan to get there, and other million-dollar questions of that ilk. Travelling alone would be an excellent opportunity for me to probe those questions, do some writing, get back to what makes me feel most fulfilled and alive. Where would be a good place for that? Where had I always wanted to travel? What part of the world so fascinated me with its history, its people, its edifices, its culture? Answer: Europe. The specific destination for this little trip? Rome, Italy.
I don’t exaggerate when I say that I could live in Rome. In fact, my pipe dream involving lucrative book deals and relative financial freedom in the near future also has me living in Rome for a year or so. There are thousands of stories just waiting to be written in that city. Its history, the churches, palaces, catacombs, and ruins, the mystery and majesty, the dark corners and rich artistry, the whole of the city just oozes inspiration. But I’ll come back to that later.
The cheapest flight I could find on Expedia was on Aeroflot, a Russian airline I had never heard of before. It routed me through Moscow (with a ten-hour layover en route, and a six-hour layover on the way back to Dubai), but as this flight was significantly less expensive than all the rest of my options, I went for it. As I would have had to apply for a visa to leave the airport (which requires both time and a sponsor within Russia, neither of which I had available), I spent the whole of my sixteen hours in Moscow in the airport. That first night in the Moscow airport was decidedly arduous. Considering my degree in history, I should have heeded the lessons provided by the errors of Napoleon and Hitler, but I travelled to Russia in winter regardless. Trying to sleep on a row of uncomfortable airport waiting area chairs in a poorly-heated (if at all) terminal manned by unsmiling and non-English speaking workers was an experience, to be sure. I sat next to a friendly Russian guy in his mid-thirties named Ilya on the flight from Dubai to Moscow. He spoke fairly good English, stemming from his experience in a university exchange program in the States in the early nineties. Nice guy. The only one in Moscow, I think. I know my experience with Russia and Russians is limited at best, but good heavens! They just don’t smile. Even to each other. Maybe it’s because they were on the night-shift at the airport in winter. Maybe it’s because I didn’t speak any Russian (I had brought an Italian phrasebook, but I wasn’t planning on spending much time, and thus, talking, in Russia, so I was admittedly ill-prepared in that regard), but they didn’t even smile to one another, so that argument loses credibility pretty easily. I think it’s most likely because Russia is (and has historically been) commonly associated with four things: atrocious weather, tyrannical leadership, depressing literature, and vodka. And those nesting dolls. I guess that’s their little ray of sunshine. But, at least at the airport duty-free shop, they were rather overpriced. As, I suppose demand for levity and joy would outweigh supply in Russia, so that makes sense. But now I’m getting analytical with something intended to be facetious, so we’re going to skip back to the story now. Sorry if you were enjoying my analysis of the cause of Russian antipathy. I don’t really know what the cause is for certain. I just know they should smile more. If they can do it in Bangladesh, they can do it in Russia. C’mon guys! Stalin’s dead. Laugh a little. It won’t get you killed (probably…).
Leaving the coldness of Russia and Russians behind me, I flew to Rome, Italy. Now, I could easily delve into a step-by-step recap of my trip in Rome, but that would not only be unnecessarily time-consuming (both for me as writer and for you, my faithful readers), but it would also be somewhat contrary to the purposes of my trip. For, you see, this was not a sight-seeing trip. Oh, sure, there were plenty of sights seen (and many more I have yet to see), but, as I mentioned earlier, this trip was different. It wasn’t the ‘go, go, go, rush, rush, rush, take pictures of everything I can and move on to the next church, palace, monument or ruin’ attitude that drives the trips of most tourists (myself included, albeit I tend to loiter a bit more, taking more pictures from more angles and such, than most). The girl who checked me into the hostel the first morning was surprised at the length of my stay (nine days, eight nights), as most travelers (especially young ones staying at hostels) tend to spend a few nights in one city before moving on to the next. So much to see, so little time. Go, go, go. But what I most wanted to see, what I most desired to explore and seek out was not a monument, a basilica, or a decrepit edifice from ages past. To be sure, my encounters with those sorts of locales provided an ideal environment for my true goal, but they served simply as a means to an end. What I wanted to see, to explore, to discover, was myself. And that I did.
I won’t share all of my deepest revelations here. For one, they are revelations primarily for me, and thus far more private than should be broadcast on a public medium such as this blog. For another, some of what I discovered I am in still in the process of analyzing: what I learned, what that means, and how it should (and will) be manifested in my life. Indeed, how those revelations manifest in my life, both at present and in the months and years to come, should be more than sufficient evidence as to the nature and importance of said introspective discoveries. I will share some of what I discovered, though; but first, the process.
As I’ve mentioned, this was not intended to be a touristy trip. As such, for much of my trip, I just explored. I wandered the streets, coming to intersections and picking a direction at random (unless I saw a church or particularly impressive-looking building down one of the streets, but even in that, I was often torn, as all-too-often there were multiple churches, etc. down each avenue… that’s Rome, for you, though). I discovered both the Basilica of St. John Lateran and the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore by accident, just stumbling upon them while exploring. In the course of my exploration, I made every endeavor to avoid tourists. Especially while eating. Most every restaurant I ate at was several side alleys away from the main thoroughfares and tourist sites. I spoke, read, and listened to as much Italian as possible. It’s amazing what you can learn of a language just by reading the signs and adverts around town. (Given, my knowledge of Spanish and my love of etymology certainly helped in my learning). In fact, I felt quite international during the trip, as I spoke a combination of English, Italian, Spanish, German, and French, depending on who I was with at the time, while reading a good smattering of both Italian and Latin (again, utilizing my knowledge of those and related languages, and using etymology and conjecture to fill in the gaps). Also on the international aspect, I befriended people from Italy (duh!), Germany, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Greece, Korea, Spain, America, the Netherlands, and Israel. I went to St. Peter’s Basilica with my friend from Israel, and went on a couple of dates with a girl from Germany. After having lived in the Middle East for so long, it was interesting (and somewhat refreshing) to see the other perspective of things (just as getting the Middle-Eastern perspective was interesting after having lived in the States for so long).
I enjoyed the Italian nightlife, including frequenting a few pubs and partying at a nightclub that seemed to be built into the arched basement of a medieval building. Truly an experience. But the real experience, the real meat of the trip, both in the time dedicated to it and in the long-lasting importance from the trip, was my writing.
I wrote some on a short story for which I had found inspiration shortly before leaving for the trip. I also wrote a little poetry (including one poem about Rome penned whilst sitting on the Spanish Steps at sunset… how’s that for romantic (no pun intended)?). But the bulk of my writing, inscribed in a notebook I carried around Rome with me everywhere I went, took the form of journal entries. Meditative, introspective, reflective. I analyzed, I probed, I second-guessed, I considered, I reconsidered, I wondered, I pondered, I asked, I answered, I dug, I dreamed. The entries covered a range of topics and emotions. I wrote them in numerous churches and basilicas around Rome. I wrote them while sitting in cafes and ristorantes frequented by locals. I wrote them at the Trevi Fountain, in St. Peter’s Square, on the Spanish Steps, in the shadow of the Colosseum. I reflected on my experiences, on my thoughts, my emotions, my goals, my dreams, my failures, my successes, my hopes, my fears, what I thought I wanted, what I now know I want, who I was before, who I was then, and who I want to become. I probed and pondered my thoughts and beliefs, on life, on love, on God, on humanity, on art, on faith, on ambition, on identifying dreams and making those dreams reality, on the brevity of life, on the importance of seizing every moment, on priorities, on relationships, on nigh everything of true import in this life and the next. I can’t tell you everything I learned, for all of my answers are not yet fully formed, and indeed, it may take years to find the words (if such words exist) to properly understand, and then describe, what I learned in Rome (and have been learning since). And again, some of what I decided may be too personal than would be apropos to publish here. A few things I did discover, or perhaps reaffirm, though:
First, I love writing. Writing, and the inspiration that leads to my writing (often taking the form of exploring new places, reading and researching, and traveling) is the single most fulfilling thing I know how to do. I’ve been told I have a gift for it. I don’t know about all that, but it’s what I love to do, and, increasingly, it’s what I know how to do. If I could write for a living, I might be the happiest man alive. And even now, though my profession is non-writing, whenever I write, I am brimming with satisfaction and a sense of fulfillment. More and more, I feel that writing is my calling. Whatever you take that to mean, it’s where my heart is, where my talents seem to lie, where my personality, interests, and goals all seem to fit. And I feel confident (as do many of my friends and family who unwaveringly support me and my pursuit of this dream) that I will be a published author someday. Perhaps sooner than I think. God’s got a way of surprising me like that, and, generally speaking, when I get an idea into my head, an idea that’s more than just a fleeting thought but is the type one structures ones life around, when I get a solid goal in my mind, I pursue it doggedly (I guess that’s my Taurus coming out). And almost without fail, it comes true. The fact that, against all odds and logic, I’m writing this in Dubai should bear testament to that.
Second: this isn’t so much a nice concise ‘discovery’ that I can pack into a little nugget for you (and me), as it is a feeling, a point of growth that happened on the trip. On the trip, in all of my striking out on my own, my exploring, my meeting people, my engaging in new, unfamiliar experiences, I found myself growing in confidence. There are more aspects to it than that (for, to be sure, I have been striking out on my own, exploring, meeting people, and experiencing new things ever since coming to Dubai), and I won’t get into the specifics of the new level of confidence I’m finding myself having, but it’s definitely a higher place of growth and understanding, both of myself and my place in the world around me.
Third (or third and fourth if you prefer, for at this point, the ideas become fairly enmeshed): the world is rather quite different than I had imagined from my relatively sheltered life in Tallahassee. Given, this is a fact that I have been becoming gradually more aware of since I came to Dubai, but this came out all the more in Rome; whether this is because of the numerous experiences I had and everything I encountered while on my trip, or if it is due primarily to my time of reflection, I cannot say; I simply know that I gained a greater acquaintance and understanding of the bigger world while in Italy. When I say that the world is different, I do not mean to say that it is necessarily better or worse; I simply mean that it is different. Certainly some aspects could be argued, from one moralistic worldview or another, to be better or worse than my initially conceived notions, but, as these notions were based on hypothesis and ideals, and as the world I’ve since encountered is based on fact and experience, to compare the two would be a fallacious enterprise.
Following on the heels of that discovery comes a nugget about my writing (this would be where the ‘fourth’ revelation would begin, if you wish to break them up as such). I began writing my first in July 2006, after drawing inspiration from my first trip to New York City. That year, from the summer of 2006 to the summer of 2007, I just wrote. My source material for my writing came from my own head. And, though perhaps not quite crap, it left much to be desired, both in content and in style. Stage 2 of my writing development began in September 2007: I started to read like crazy. In fact, since September 2007, I’ve read over 200 books, most of them novels. There’s an adage or two about having to read to be able to write, and they are decidedly true. When I picked up the pen again to start working on my novel (after a too-long hiatus from the work, but having read dozens of novels in the interim), I ended up scrapping most of my previous work. The overarching story remained, but most of the scenes I had penned thus far (and almost all of the writing) got the axe. And the work was all the better for it. I could recognize good writing and bad writing much better. I knew what worked and what didn’t, what should be told and what should be shown, all the little nuances of writing and pacing much better than before (but certainly, even now, I have much, much more to learn and grow in). (I apologize for the lengthiness of this ‘nugget’ I’ve claimed to have discovered, but I promise its end is forthcoming.) I thought I was done with stages, that I would continue along the path set forth by stage 2 of reading much and writing even more to grow as an author. But, in moving to Dubai, and in all of my new experiences, in all of the new locations I’ve explored, in all of the encounters with ‘real life’ I’ve had, in all the discoveries about how the world really is, I’ve found inspiration, both for new works and for how to make my current works better, more authentic, more relevant. Enter stage 3: engaging in life, experiencing and understanding how the world really works, instead of writing from an isolated, sheltered perspective which anyone who has actually lived outside a box (which would be most of my readers) could recognize as artificial. And I’ve been blessed with an ideal place for that. A place where travel is easy, where life comes at you fast, where can be found a microcosm of all the world’s joys and ills, of peoples and languages, of experiences both new and timeless: Dubai. Dubai may be a shallow, often artificial place, but there is much here that will provide both insight and inspiration, both as a writer and as a person. After all, this is the Middle East: underneath the shallow sand of the glitz and glamour, there’s bound to be some petroleum reserves of experience, wisdom, and encounters with the real world that I can draw on in my stories and in life. And to find it, I just have to dig.
Just like I did in Rome.
Rome. Where do I start? How do I regale what was the most amazing and perhaps important trip I’ve yet undertaken? I guess I’ll take a page from Maria von Trapp’s book (of The Sound of Music fame) and start at the beginning.
As mentioned in a previous entry, my school closed for an additional three days in early December, bringing a previously seven-day holiday to a much nicer twelve days. So I decided I should go somewhere. Most of my friends at the school had already made their travel plans, and I didn’t want to latch onto someone else’s already-made plans. I knew that wherever I would go, I would go alone. I didn’t trust myself on my own in Southeast Asia or other such third-world locales (where many of my colleagues were going, albeit in groups), especially considering the instability and anti-American terrorism that the region has been rife with in the preceding weeks. I had been on two long trips since coming to Dubai in August: one to Bangladesh with three other teacher-friends and one to Jordan with two teacher-friends and twenty-one screaming high-school students. Lots of touristy activities and ventures (or, in the case of the former, as touristy as Bangladesh could be). See various places, experience the country, sharing the whole adventure with friends. Which is how I always thought I loved to travel: making memories with someone to share them with. But this option was not open to me for this break. Or rather, it was, it could have been, but I chose to forgo it. Work, life had become quite stressful for me in the previous weeks, and I felt that I had some introspection to do, some soul-searching if you will, regarding where I am, where I’m going, who I am, who I want to be, how I plan to get there, and other million-dollar questions of that ilk. Travelling alone would be an excellent opportunity for me to probe those questions, do some writing, get back to what makes me feel most fulfilled and alive. Where would be a good place for that? Where had I always wanted to travel? What part of the world so fascinated me with its history, its people, its edifices, its culture? Answer: Europe. The specific destination for this little trip? Rome, Italy.
I don’t exaggerate when I say that I could live in Rome. In fact, my pipe dream involving lucrative book deals and relative financial freedom in the near future also has me living in Rome for a year or so. There are thousands of stories just waiting to be written in that city. Its history, the churches, palaces, catacombs, and ruins, the mystery and majesty, the dark corners and rich artistry, the whole of the city just oozes inspiration. But I’ll come back to that later.
The cheapest flight I could find on Expedia was on Aeroflot, a Russian airline I had never heard of before. It routed me through Moscow (with a ten-hour layover en route, and a six-hour layover on the way back to Dubai), but as this flight was significantly less expensive than all the rest of my options, I went for it. As I would have had to apply for a visa to leave the airport (which requires both time and a sponsor within Russia, neither of which I had available), I spent the whole of my sixteen hours in Moscow in the airport. That first night in the Moscow airport was decidedly arduous. Considering my degree in history, I should have heeded the lessons provided by the errors of Napoleon and Hitler, but I travelled to Russia in winter regardless. Trying to sleep on a row of uncomfortable airport waiting area chairs in a poorly-heated (if at all) terminal manned by unsmiling and non-English speaking workers was an experience, to be sure. I sat next to a friendly Russian guy in his mid-thirties named Ilya on the flight from Dubai to Moscow. He spoke fairly good English, stemming from his experience in a university exchange program in the States in the early nineties. Nice guy. The only one in Moscow, I think. I know my experience with Russia and Russians is limited at best, but good heavens! They just don’t smile. Even to each other. Maybe it’s because they were on the night-shift at the airport in winter. Maybe it’s because I didn’t speak any Russian (I had brought an Italian phrasebook, but I wasn’t planning on spending much time, and thus, talking, in Russia, so I was admittedly ill-prepared in that regard), but they didn’t even smile to one another, so that argument loses credibility pretty easily. I think it’s most likely because Russia is (and has historically been) commonly associated with four things: atrocious weather, tyrannical leadership, depressing literature, and vodka. And those nesting dolls. I guess that’s their little ray of sunshine. But, at least at the airport duty-free shop, they were rather overpriced. As, I suppose demand for levity and joy would outweigh supply in Russia, so that makes sense. But now I’m getting analytical with something intended to be facetious, so we’re going to skip back to the story now. Sorry if you were enjoying my analysis of the cause of Russian antipathy. I don’t really know what the cause is for certain. I just know they should smile more. If they can do it in Bangladesh, they can do it in Russia. C’mon guys! Stalin’s dead. Laugh a little. It won’t get you killed (probably…).
Leaving the coldness of Russia and Russians behind me, I flew to Rome, Italy. Now, I could easily delve into a step-by-step recap of my trip in Rome, but that would not only be unnecessarily time-consuming (both for me as writer and for you, my faithful readers), but it would also be somewhat contrary to the purposes of my trip. For, you see, this was not a sight-seeing trip. Oh, sure, there were plenty of sights seen (and many more I have yet to see), but, as I mentioned earlier, this trip was different. It wasn’t the ‘go, go, go, rush, rush, rush, take pictures of everything I can and move on to the next church, palace, monument or ruin’ attitude that drives the trips of most tourists (myself included, albeit I tend to loiter a bit more, taking more pictures from more angles and such, than most). The girl who checked me into the hostel the first morning was surprised at the length of my stay (nine days, eight nights), as most travelers (especially young ones staying at hostels) tend to spend a few nights in one city before moving on to the next. So much to see, so little time. Go, go, go. But what I most wanted to see, what I most desired to explore and seek out was not a monument, a basilica, or a decrepit edifice from ages past. To be sure, my encounters with those sorts of locales provided an ideal environment for my true goal, but they served simply as a means to an end. What I wanted to see, to explore, to discover, was myself. And that I did.
I won’t share all of my deepest revelations here. For one, they are revelations primarily for me, and thus far more private than should be broadcast on a public medium such as this blog. For another, some of what I discovered I am in still in the process of analyzing: what I learned, what that means, and how it should (and will) be manifested in my life. Indeed, how those revelations manifest in my life, both at present and in the months and years to come, should be more than sufficient evidence as to the nature and importance of said introspective discoveries. I will share some of what I discovered, though; but first, the process.
As I’ve mentioned, this was not intended to be a touristy trip. As such, for much of my trip, I just explored. I wandered the streets, coming to intersections and picking a direction at random (unless I saw a church or particularly impressive-looking building down one of the streets, but even in that, I was often torn, as all-too-often there were multiple churches, etc. down each avenue… that’s Rome, for you, though). I discovered both the Basilica of St. John Lateran and the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore by accident, just stumbling upon them while exploring. In the course of my exploration, I made every endeavor to avoid tourists. Especially while eating. Most every restaurant I ate at was several side alleys away from the main thoroughfares and tourist sites. I spoke, read, and listened to as much Italian as possible. It’s amazing what you can learn of a language just by reading the signs and adverts around town. (Given, my knowledge of Spanish and my love of etymology certainly helped in my learning). In fact, I felt quite international during the trip, as I spoke a combination of English, Italian, Spanish, German, and French, depending on who I was with at the time, while reading a good smattering of both Italian and Latin (again, utilizing my knowledge of those and related languages, and using etymology and conjecture to fill in the gaps). Also on the international aspect, I befriended people from Italy (duh!), Germany, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Greece, Korea, Spain, America, the Netherlands, and Israel. I went to St. Peter’s Basilica with my friend from Israel, and went on a couple of dates with a girl from Germany. After having lived in the Middle East for so long, it was interesting (and somewhat refreshing) to see the other perspective of things (just as getting the Middle-Eastern perspective was interesting after having lived in the States for so long).
I enjoyed the Italian nightlife, including frequenting a few pubs and partying at a nightclub that seemed to be built into the arched basement of a medieval building. Truly an experience. But the real experience, the real meat of the trip, both in the time dedicated to it and in the long-lasting importance from the trip, was my writing.
I wrote some on a short story for which I had found inspiration shortly before leaving for the trip. I also wrote a little poetry (including one poem about Rome penned whilst sitting on the Spanish Steps at sunset… how’s that for romantic (no pun intended)?). But the bulk of my writing, inscribed in a notebook I carried around Rome with me everywhere I went, took the form of journal entries. Meditative, introspective, reflective. I analyzed, I probed, I second-guessed, I considered, I reconsidered, I wondered, I pondered, I asked, I answered, I dug, I dreamed. The entries covered a range of topics and emotions. I wrote them in numerous churches and basilicas around Rome. I wrote them while sitting in cafes and ristorantes frequented by locals. I wrote them at the Trevi Fountain, in St. Peter’s Square, on the Spanish Steps, in the shadow of the Colosseum. I reflected on my experiences, on my thoughts, my emotions, my goals, my dreams, my failures, my successes, my hopes, my fears, what I thought I wanted, what I now know I want, who I was before, who I was then, and who I want to become. I probed and pondered my thoughts and beliefs, on life, on love, on God, on humanity, on art, on faith, on ambition, on identifying dreams and making those dreams reality, on the brevity of life, on the importance of seizing every moment, on priorities, on relationships, on nigh everything of true import in this life and the next. I can’t tell you everything I learned, for all of my answers are not yet fully formed, and indeed, it may take years to find the words (if such words exist) to properly understand, and then describe, what I learned in Rome (and have been learning since). And again, some of what I decided may be too personal than would be apropos to publish here. A few things I did discover, or perhaps reaffirm, though:
First, I love writing. Writing, and the inspiration that leads to my writing (often taking the form of exploring new places, reading and researching, and traveling) is the single most fulfilling thing I know how to do. I’ve been told I have a gift for it. I don’t know about all that, but it’s what I love to do, and, increasingly, it’s what I know how to do. If I could write for a living, I might be the happiest man alive. And even now, though my profession is non-writing, whenever I write, I am brimming with satisfaction and a sense of fulfillment. More and more, I feel that writing is my calling. Whatever you take that to mean, it’s where my heart is, where my talents seem to lie, where my personality, interests, and goals all seem to fit. And I feel confident (as do many of my friends and family who unwaveringly support me and my pursuit of this dream) that I will be a published author someday. Perhaps sooner than I think. God’s got a way of surprising me like that, and, generally speaking, when I get an idea into my head, an idea that’s more than just a fleeting thought but is the type one structures ones life around, when I get a solid goal in my mind, I pursue it doggedly (I guess that’s my Taurus coming out). And almost without fail, it comes true. The fact that, against all odds and logic, I’m writing this in Dubai should bear testament to that.
Second: this isn’t so much a nice concise ‘discovery’ that I can pack into a little nugget for you (and me), as it is a feeling, a point of growth that happened on the trip. On the trip, in all of my striking out on my own, my exploring, my meeting people, my engaging in new, unfamiliar experiences, I found myself growing in confidence. There are more aspects to it than that (for, to be sure, I have been striking out on my own, exploring, meeting people, and experiencing new things ever since coming to Dubai), and I won’t get into the specifics of the new level of confidence I’m finding myself having, but it’s definitely a higher place of growth and understanding, both of myself and my place in the world around me.
Third (or third and fourth if you prefer, for at this point, the ideas become fairly enmeshed): the world is rather quite different than I had imagined from my relatively sheltered life in Tallahassee. Given, this is a fact that I have been becoming gradually more aware of since I came to Dubai, but this came out all the more in Rome; whether this is because of the numerous experiences I had and everything I encountered while on my trip, or if it is due primarily to my time of reflection, I cannot say; I simply know that I gained a greater acquaintance and understanding of the bigger world while in Italy. When I say that the world is different, I do not mean to say that it is necessarily better or worse; I simply mean that it is different. Certainly some aspects could be argued, from one moralistic worldview or another, to be better or worse than my initially conceived notions, but, as these notions were based on hypothesis and ideals, and as the world I’ve since encountered is based on fact and experience, to compare the two would be a fallacious enterprise.
Following on the heels of that discovery comes a nugget about my writing (this would be where the ‘fourth’ revelation would begin, if you wish to break them up as such). I began writing my first in July 2006, after drawing inspiration from my first trip to New York City. That year, from the summer of 2006 to the summer of 2007, I just wrote. My source material for my writing came from my own head. And, though perhaps not quite crap, it left much to be desired, both in content and in style. Stage 2 of my writing development began in September 2007: I started to read like crazy. In fact, since September 2007, I’ve read over 200 books, most of them novels. There’s an adage or two about having to read to be able to write, and they are decidedly true. When I picked up the pen again to start working on my novel (after a too-long hiatus from the work, but having read dozens of novels in the interim), I ended up scrapping most of my previous work. The overarching story remained, but most of the scenes I had penned thus far (and almost all of the writing) got the axe. And the work was all the better for it. I could recognize good writing and bad writing much better. I knew what worked and what didn’t, what should be told and what should be shown, all the little nuances of writing and pacing much better than before (but certainly, even now, I have much, much more to learn and grow in). (I apologize for the lengthiness of this ‘nugget’ I’ve claimed to have discovered, but I promise its end is forthcoming.) I thought I was done with stages, that I would continue along the path set forth by stage 2 of reading much and writing even more to grow as an author. But, in moving to Dubai, and in all of my new experiences, in all of the new locations I’ve explored, in all of the encounters with ‘real life’ I’ve had, in all the discoveries about how the world really is, I’ve found inspiration, both for new works and for how to make my current works better, more authentic, more relevant. Enter stage 3: engaging in life, experiencing and understanding how the world really works, instead of writing from an isolated, sheltered perspective which anyone who has actually lived outside a box (which would be most of my readers) could recognize as artificial. And I’ve been blessed with an ideal place for that. A place where travel is easy, where life comes at you fast, where can be found a microcosm of all the world’s joys and ills, of peoples and languages, of experiences both new and timeless: Dubai. Dubai may be a shallow, often artificial place, but there is much here that will provide both insight and inspiration, both as a writer and as a person. After all, this is the Middle East: underneath the shallow sand of the glitz and glamour, there’s bound to be some petroleum reserves of experience, wisdom, and encounters with the real world that I can draw on in my stories and in life. And to find it, I just have to dig.
Just like I did in Rome.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Jordan (November 19-24, 2008)
[FINALLY finished and posted!]
The Levant. The Holy Land. Though technically part of the Middle East, Jordan is drastically different from the Arabian Peninsula in environment, history, and culture. The landscape is gray and rocky, with trees, shrubbery, and grass making regular appearances; the hilly contours of the land provide for some amazing vistas; and the weather… well, it’s cooler and it rains more. The region is also rich in history and archaeology, including biblical sites such as the Dead Sea and the River Jordan, ruins from the heyday of the Roman Empire like the cities of Jerash and Umm Qais (as well as theatres, the remnants of temples, and other vestiges of the city’s ancient origins in Amman itself), castles from medieval times, like the Crusader fortress of Karak and the Saracen stronghold of Ajlun, and world wonders like the ‘lost city’ of Petra. And for a history lover such as myself, where the oldest monuments I had yet encountered were from the Age of Discovery, a country steeped in history and monuments from the ancient and medieval periods alike, this was an unprecedented event.
Martine, Sunali and I are the faculty advisors for our school’s Model United Nations team. For those of you unfamiliar with what Model United Nations is, it’s basically just what it sounds like: an organization that models itself on the real United Nations. We assign country delegations to the students, give them issues to research, have them draw up proposals and resolutions, and defend and debate those positions in ‘sessions’. The Amman MUN conference was our school's first conference this year (and incidentally, the first conference ever for Sunali and myself, as well as for fifteen of our twenty-one students; Martine had never taken students to a conference before, but she had some exposure with how conferences were run due to her school having hosted one when she was at university).
We stayed in the Radisson SAS Amman, the site of a car bomb explosion during a wedding in the hotel in 2006. Every time we entered the hotel we had to go through a metal detector and submit to a pat-down. This actually ended up being the norm in most buildings we entered, including at the host school of the conference and at a group dinner with all of the faculty advisors and children that took place in a tourist dinner venue housed in a trader compound built in the 19th century. And yet, as with the poverty and disease that were so blatantly prevalent in Bangladesh, the history of terrorist attacks and instability in the region didn’t stop the residents from smiling and being friendly. Thus far, with every country I’ve visited (excepting Oman (because I was only there for about two hours), and Russia (because… well, it’s Russia)) the people do seem to be quite friendly and welcoming towards visitors (ostensibly because they want their country to get a good reputation from foreigners, but also likely owing to a sense of civic pride in one’s culture and heritage…something we see far too little of in the artificial, shallow, transient world of Dubai).
The first day in Jordan was spent traveling, getting settled in, and exploring a little bit of Amman. More than any place I’ve been thus far in my international travels, Amman reminded me of home. I don’t know if it was the mild weather (like the cool, crisp Autumns in Tallahassee), the rolling hills, or the city planning itself (its road systems, buildings, and whole feel reminded me much more of Tallahassee (or even Jacksonville, the other Florida city I’ve been frequenting over the past few years) than did the spread-out, mall-, hotel-, and highway-philic city of Dubai, the dirty, decrepit and overpopulated city of Dhaka, or the historic bustling city of Rome (getting ahead of myself…)). It was probably a combination of the three. And the fact that the city had a soul. A soul I could relate to (as opposed to the soulless artifice of a city that is Dubai, or the impoverished city of Dhaka which undoubtedly has a soul, but our stay there was too brief, and its ‘soul’ too foreign to be quickly related to). Walking the streets (not like that!), especially some of the quieter, more residential streets in the cool of the afternoon, the gray skies overhead portending rain that wouldn’t come, shading us from the heat and glare of the sun… that was a fun experience. And we (in this instance, being Martine, Sunali, myself, and about half-a-dozen of our students) were all but alone on our little walking journey. Very few other pedestrians were in the area, and even fewer cars. Moreover, despite being in the largest city in Jordan, there was very little ambient noise – automotive or otherwise – intruding into our peaceful escapade. But enough about that.
In the interest of expeditiousness, I’m going to cut most of the MUN part of the trip from this entry (e.g. the sessions, the interactions with the kids, et al), and just focus on the four historical excursions that the three of us undertook. And I’ll be doing well just to keep those rich experiences from turning into a novel-length entry. Here goes.
Despite the wealth of historic monuments in Jordan, one is undoubtedly the most famous. Rediscovered by the Western world in the nineteenth century, popularized by travel journals and pictorials, and immortalized by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the ‘lost city’ of Petra is by far Jordan’s most famous archaeological site, making an appearance on most ‘new’ Seven Wonders of the Ancient World lists (as six of the ‘original’ seven have been lost to antiquity). I admit that, prior to going on this trip, I was unaware of the myriad ‘non-Petra’ castles and ruins that Jordan can claim.
Our trip to Petra was one of the three excursions offered by the conference for students and faculty advisors alike. The others, to Jerash and to the traditional baptism site of Jesus at the Jordan River, were interesting to be sure, but my desire to see those sites paled in comparison to that of seeing Petra. Martine, Sunali and I, along with five of our students (the other sixteen went on other excursions with other advisers from other schools) boarded a tour bus from our hotel and started on our three-hour journey south. And on my head, of course, I wore my Indiana Jones ‘lucky adventuring hat’. It just wouldn’t be right any other way.
From the main entrance, the first hour or so of the journey travels down the Siq, the high-walled canyon that meanders through the rocky region. The path was dotted with idols and miniature shrines, the details of which had long since been blasted away by the sands of time. The cobbled stones of the old Roman road, built when the Nabataeans (the ancient near-east civilization who inhabited these hills and built the edifices that we had come to see) finally relinquished control of their lands to the all-powerful Roman Empire. The well-preserved remains of the Roman dams, now long dry on both sides. The meticulously calculated trenches cut into the side of the Siq, taking advantage of the natural downward gradient of the channel (its ancient riverbed origins being the cause of the canyon’s existence in the first place) and mirroring the preciseness of the gradual slope that the Romans would later use in perhaps their greatest architectural and scientific achievement: the aqueducts. The Nabataeans were a nomadic people originally from Arabia, not unlike the Bedouins, who forsook their wandering ways and took up a permanent residence in the environs of Petra, using the natural surroundings (such as the single narrow entrance (and thus, easily defended) and the natural slope (for irrigation purposes) of the Siq to their advantage in the relatively inhospitable region. But Petra isn’t a world-renowned site, a marvel of antiquity, because of the resourcefulness of its settlers. It is famous because of its tombs, the myriad sepulchers and facades built into the very walls of the cliffs themselves. And the most famous of these tombs, the most elaborate and well-preserved of these facades, belongs to the site that Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford helped to make world-famous as the mythical resting place of the Holy Grail: the monument known (seemingly fallaciously) as the Treasury.
I’ve seen dozens of pictures of the Treasury; I’ve seen it in movies; I’ve studied its history and design. I was obviously excited to see it, and I knew that it would be a monumental (no pun intended) experience for me, a lover of all things historical and all sites archaeological. And yet, nothing could have prepared me for the sight that greeted me as I rounded that last turn in the Siq before the façade of the Treasury, shining dust red in the daylight at the end of that sun-starved alley of twisted stone we had been traversing for the past hour. You must understand, too, that we had no idea exactly around which turn (for there were many in our long, winding journey) that imposing sight would greet our eyes. Even if we had known exactly how many steps lay between us and that fateful sight, though, I have little doubt that my reaction would have been much the same. My reaction? It quite literally took my breath away. I was quite excited when I caught my first glimpse of the easily recognizable monument, but when I finally stepped from the maw of the Siq and into the open canyon floor in front of the Treasury, my breath caught in my throat and I very nearly staggered in wonder. I don’t know if it was the sheer magnitude of it (it was even higher than I had anticipated), the fact that this towering monument dated back before the time of Christ (it is believed that the Treasury was built in the First Century B.C.), or the fact that I was finally beholding one of the great historic, archeological, and, at least in the popular mythos, mystery-filled sights in the world. I was living out a dream of mine, seeing one of the sights that I had always dreamed of beholding. Petra. The Grail Temple (actually, I checked inside, and it’s much more boring than in the movie (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, if you haven’t been following along). Either Spielberg staged the whole thing on a set, or the drab stone walls and ceiling with the rectangular, unadorned doorways are what’s left of the temple after Ilsa tried to bring the Grail across the seal and the whole place came crashing down around their ears). Okay, so enough of my adventure-nerd humor. Back to the story.
The rest of Petra was also amazing, though that moment, that encounter with the mythical monument at the Treasury, was undoubtedly the pinnacle of our excursion. From the treasury, we followed the main path deeper into the city. After a bit, the path opened up from the relatively narrow canyon floor we had been walking on to a more open area. The hawkers, who had made their first appearance at the plaza in front of the Treasury, were out in spades, selling everything from souvenir magnets and books to handmade crafts and ‘authentic’ coins from ancient Rome to rides on camels, donkeys, or in horse-drawn carriages. The sandblasted facades of once-ornate tombs dotted the cliffsides. One large tomb, seemingly hundreds of meters from the canyon floor, showcased a trail of tourists and explorers traversing the narrow precipice that led to its entrance, like ants to an unguarded picnic basket. An ancient Roman theatre, still in good repair after countless generations of its builders’ absence, was the greatest monument in the scene of the city’s Latin conquerors, the theatre-goers of yore watched in turn by the tombs and temples that surrounded the pavilion, a theatre of even greater magnitude and whose shows continue millennia later, the endless parade of tourists from worlds the Romans knew nothing of, still watched by the eyeless sentinels of ages past. Centuries of wind and sandstorms had sculpted the hills into a variety of shapes; in some places they were the rough edges of a broken lump of clay, untouched by the potter and left to dry and crack in the sun; in others, they were smooth and twisted, like the work of a glassblower, pulled and wrapped in beautiful, amorphous forms like taffy. And everywhere, the vestiges of its ancient denizens, Nabataean and Roman alike, caught the eye and screamed the resilience of their stonecraft, still standing, if a little worse for the wear, fifteen centuries after both peoples had ceased to inhabit these haunting hills. As we sat on a wooden bench facing this scene of ancient wonder, munching on a noontime snack of a Twix bar and a bottle of water, but one word flashed through my mind: wow.
Due to time constraints, we were unable to explore most of the city (although what we did get to experience was more than worth the trip), but I definitely plan to return sometime soon, probably camping in the hills and experiencing Petra as it was meant to be experienced. And yet, in great irony, my staying in Petra would have the opposite effect as to that of the first Nabataeans who called this city home: it would be much quieter, less-crowded, and more primitive than that of my normal city-dwellings, while the permanent city that Petra was to the once-nomadic Nabataeans would have provided the reverse experience. And beyond the adventure, the wonder, the excitement of exploring those hills explored by millions of other feet, thousands of years apart, is my other motivation: Petra will definitely figure into one of my novels, probably prominently. I’ve known that Petra would inevitably find its way into one, but my trip there more than confirmed it. If you ever get the opportunity to go, go.
Martine, Sunali and I also got to go visit the old Roman theatre in Amman, a colossal structure set against a hillside. I climbed the treacherously narrow stairs, crumbled in parts by the feet of countless patrons and visitors, the decay and wear of time, to the very top. Although the theatre was in a valley, the view was amazing. For those who are curious, the city we now call Amman is the important site known as Rabbah of the Ammonites in the Old Testament and was called Philadelphia in Hellenistic times, which explains the wealth of ruins of ancient grandeur that can still be found throughout the city today. The few remaining pillars of the Temple of Apollo, near the ancient Citadel and set atop the tallest hill in the city, could be seen from nearly anywhere in the older part of the city, as could a smattering of old palaces and mosques from the Byzantine and Islamic eras, a visual timeline of the long history of the city.
At the northmost tip of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan sits the ruins of the Roman city of Umm Qais (known to the Romans as Gadara). The three of us traveled northward from Amman to this historic site. And what a sight it was! The city was situated at the top of a tremendous hill, from which you could see Syria to the north and, just west of the sparkling Jordan River, Israel was visible. It felt like the ‘see seven states’ motto of Lookout Mountain, Georgia. Only Georgia is somewhat lacking in the Roman ruins department. When the three of us were exploring the theatre and the tunnels beneath, we saw something none of us had seen since we had arrived in Dubai: rain. It wasn’t a downpour; more like a hard, persistent drizzle, but we relished it. The cool autumn air, the crisp smell of unadulterated nature, miles from the nearest urban area, the refreshing moisture from the heavens, a heavens we were already a good thousand feet closer to than was the highest adjacent valley, a moisture we hadn’t had the pleasure of dancing in for months. We laughed and craned our necks skyward, extending our arms in an expression of surrender to the blessing of the heavens, closing our eyes and drinking in the moment. When it was occupied, Umm Qais would have been quite a bustling place. A theatre, several temples, houses and outbuildings galore, and what may have once been a palace (the governor’s house, perhaps?). A long stretch of Roman road, glistening black with the recent rain, extended northward, lined by the ruins of tombs and baths. About a kilometer down the road, I encountered an active archaeological dig (though, strangely, using backhoes and other heavy equipment that didn’t seem quite appropriate for the meticulous, detailed, one-shot-only work of archaeological excavation, but then, what do I know?). A ranger station (or whatever they call them in Jordan) was also just off the road, perched at the edge of the cliff to maintain a proper vigil on the valleys below. When exploring the city, I noticed something that I had never encountered before: there were no guardrails, no blockades, no areas that were posted as being prohibited for visitors. So I just went nuts. I climbed, ran, hopped from structure to structure. The whole city was my playground; my two-thousand-year-old playground. I entered old houses, poked my head in cisterns, crawled through tunnels and passageways, climbed and jumped and wandered my way around the city. I had the most glorious time getting lost and then getting more lost, just wandering and exploring and discovering and satisfying my insatiable curiosity. I doubt that there was ever a Roman who lived in that city who had as much fun as I did just exploring. Good times.
The final historical site we visited dated not from antiquity but from the medieval era: Ajlun, the Saracen fortress built and manned by a nephew of Salah al-Din (known to the western world as Saladin, the great Saracen strategist during the crusades, revered in the Arab and Western worlds alike and generally regarded, alongside Richard the Lionheart, to be the greatest general of the era). When we arrived, the sun was beginning its long autumn descent into dusk, the waning light, breaking through the thick clouds at intervals, silhouetting the stronghold on the solitary hilltop, the modern town of Ajlun filling the valley at its foot like children gathered at the skirt of their mother, seeking protection and refuge from an enemy long-since vanquished. The view of the castle (my first medieval castle, mind you) was captivating. I think my first glimpse of it, its features shrouded by distance and poor lighting, its stalwart parapets jutting into the sky, the enigmatic sentinel standing alone atop its verdant lookout, filled me with even more wonder and awe than when I actually began exploring it, half-an-hour later. Which is not to belittle the experience of exploring a medieval castle, one that withstood every crusader attack launched upon it. On the contrary, exploring the fortress of Ajlun, its myriad halls, tunnels, chambers and passageways was yet another moment of magic and mystery that I will hold dear for the rest of my life. Peering out through the arrow slits in one of the outer walls, I found myself wondering: Who stood here eight-hundred years ago? What did they see in the valley below? Crusaders? Mongols? What went through their minds as they defended this fortress? It was the same rectangular hole in the stone, the same slit in the wall that provided an eye to the valley below, but though the window was the same, the situation of the man who looked through the window and the view itself had changed drastically. Some of the walls were ruined, some looked much as they would have in the twelfth century. Upon climbing to the top (again taking advantage of the lack of guard rails and other such safety measures/barriers-to-exploration that are a staple in American historical sites and tourist attractions), a magnificent view greeted my eyes. The valley that surrounded my vantage point was green with trees, gray with homes and offices. And it extended for miles. No red-and-white banners of the approaching Crusaders to be seen, no blood-curdling war cries of the feared Mongol hordes; just the idyllic sight of the verdant valley, the setting sun stretching shadows across the landscape, the whisper of the wind tickling my eardrums the only sound. Awed as I was by the view, I knew our time there grew short, as closing time was rapidly approaching, so, just as I had in Umm Qais (albeit with more of an element of danger, considering the sheer height of the edifice and its topographical position), I explored my heart out, clambering over wall and through tunnel, up precarious staircases, seemingly not intended for visitors, and down five-foot drops to levels below. At one point, while exploring an area of the roof, I encountered a shallow slope of pebbles and crumbling rock that ended at a thirty- or forty-foot sheer drop (which I actually got on video… yeah, I was running around doing this stuff with a camera in hand… crazy, eh?). ‘Intrepid world explorer’, indeed. All in all, a very interesting place that I want to go back to again and spend more time exploring.
So, in short, this trip, though we had to do teacher supervisor stuff much of the time, was my most enjoyable vacation to date. Great people, refreshing weather, beautiful vistas, and the ability to explore world wonders, ancient cities, and medieval castles mostly unhindered by barriers combined to make this trip one never to be forgotten, and in all likelihood, one to be repeated sometime in the near future.
The Levant. The Holy Land. Though technically part of the Middle East, Jordan is drastically different from the Arabian Peninsula in environment, history, and culture. The landscape is gray and rocky, with trees, shrubbery, and grass making regular appearances; the hilly contours of the land provide for some amazing vistas; and the weather… well, it’s cooler and it rains more. The region is also rich in history and archaeology, including biblical sites such as the Dead Sea and the River Jordan, ruins from the heyday of the Roman Empire like the cities of Jerash and Umm Qais (as well as theatres, the remnants of temples, and other vestiges of the city’s ancient origins in Amman itself), castles from medieval times, like the Crusader fortress of Karak and the Saracen stronghold of Ajlun, and world wonders like the ‘lost city’ of Petra. And for a history lover such as myself, where the oldest monuments I had yet encountered were from the Age of Discovery, a country steeped in history and monuments from the ancient and medieval periods alike, this was an unprecedented event.
Martine, Sunali and I are the faculty advisors for our school’s Model United Nations team. For those of you unfamiliar with what Model United Nations is, it’s basically just what it sounds like: an organization that models itself on the real United Nations. We assign country delegations to the students, give them issues to research, have them draw up proposals and resolutions, and defend and debate those positions in ‘sessions’. The Amman MUN conference was our school's first conference this year (and incidentally, the first conference ever for Sunali and myself, as well as for fifteen of our twenty-one students; Martine had never taken students to a conference before, but she had some exposure with how conferences were run due to her school having hosted one when she was at university).
We stayed in the Radisson SAS Amman, the site of a car bomb explosion during a wedding in the hotel in 2006. Every time we entered the hotel we had to go through a metal detector and submit to a pat-down. This actually ended up being the norm in most buildings we entered, including at the host school of the conference and at a group dinner with all of the faculty advisors and children that took place in a tourist dinner venue housed in a trader compound built in the 19th century. And yet, as with the poverty and disease that were so blatantly prevalent in Bangladesh, the history of terrorist attacks and instability in the region didn’t stop the residents from smiling and being friendly. Thus far, with every country I’ve visited (excepting Oman (because I was only there for about two hours), and Russia (because… well, it’s Russia)) the people do seem to be quite friendly and welcoming towards visitors (ostensibly because they want their country to get a good reputation from foreigners, but also likely owing to a sense of civic pride in one’s culture and heritage…something we see far too little of in the artificial, shallow, transient world of Dubai).
The first day in Jordan was spent traveling, getting settled in, and exploring a little bit of Amman. More than any place I’ve been thus far in my international travels, Amman reminded me of home. I don’t know if it was the mild weather (like the cool, crisp Autumns in Tallahassee), the rolling hills, or the city planning itself (its road systems, buildings, and whole feel reminded me much more of Tallahassee (or even Jacksonville, the other Florida city I’ve been frequenting over the past few years) than did the spread-out, mall-, hotel-, and highway-philic city of Dubai, the dirty, decrepit and overpopulated city of Dhaka, or the historic bustling city of Rome (getting ahead of myself…)). It was probably a combination of the three. And the fact that the city had a soul. A soul I could relate to (as opposed to the soulless artifice of a city that is Dubai, or the impoverished city of Dhaka which undoubtedly has a soul, but our stay there was too brief, and its ‘soul’ too foreign to be quickly related to). Walking the streets (not like that!), especially some of the quieter, more residential streets in the cool of the afternoon, the gray skies overhead portending rain that wouldn’t come, shading us from the heat and glare of the sun… that was a fun experience. And we (in this instance, being Martine, Sunali, myself, and about half-a-dozen of our students) were all but alone on our little walking journey. Very few other pedestrians were in the area, and even fewer cars. Moreover, despite being in the largest city in Jordan, there was very little ambient noise – automotive or otherwise – intruding into our peaceful escapade. But enough about that.
In the interest of expeditiousness, I’m going to cut most of the MUN part of the trip from this entry (e.g. the sessions, the interactions with the kids, et al), and just focus on the four historical excursions that the three of us undertook. And I’ll be doing well just to keep those rich experiences from turning into a novel-length entry. Here goes.
Despite the wealth of historic monuments in Jordan, one is undoubtedly the most famous. Rediscovered by the Western world in the nineteenth century, popularized by travel journals and pictorials, and immortalized by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the ‘lost city’ of Petra is by far Jordan’s most famous archaeological site, making an appearance on most ‘new’ Seven Wonders of the Ancient World lists (as six of the ‘original’ seven have been lost to antiquity). I admit that, prior to going on this trip, I was unaware of the myriad ‘non-Petra’ castles and ruins that Jordan can claim.
Our trip to Petra was one of the three excursions offered by the conference for students and faculty advisors alike. The others, to Jerash and to the traditional baptism site of Jesus at the Jordan River, were interesting to be sure, but my desire to see those sites paled in comparison to that of seeing Petra. Martine, Sunali and I, along with five of our students (the other sixteen went on other excursions with other advisers from other schools) boarded a tour bus from our hotel and started on our three-hour journey south. And on my head, of course, I wore my Indiana Jones ‘lucky adventuring hat’. It just wouldn’t be right any other way.
From the main entrance, the first hour or so of the journey travels down the Siq, the high-walled canyon that meanders through the rocky region. The path was dotted with idols and miniature shrines, the details of which had long since been blasted away by the sands of time. The cobbled stones of the old Roman road, built when the Nabataeans (the ancient near-east civilization who inhabited these hills and built the edifices that we had come to see) finally relinquished control of their lands to the all-powerful Roman Empire. The well-preserved remains of the Roman dams, now long dry on both sides. The meticulously calculated trenches cut into the side of the Siq, taking advantage of the natural downward gradient of the channel (its ancient riverbed origins being the cause of the canyon’s existence in the first place) and mirroring the preciseness of the gradual slope that the Romans would later use in perhaps their greatest architectural and scientific achievement: the aqueducts. The Nabataeans were a nomadic people originally from Arabia, not unlike the Bedouins, who forsook their wandering ways and took up a permanent residence in the environs of Petra, using the natural surroundings (such as the single narrow entrance (and thus, easily defended) and the natural slope (for irrigation purposes) of the Siq to their advantage in the relatively inhospitable region. But Petra isn’t a world-renowned site, a marvel of antiquity, because of the resourcefulness of its settlers. It is famous because of its tombs, the myriad sepulchers and facades built into the very walls of the cliffs themselves. And the most famous of these tombs, the most elaborate and well-preserved of these facades, belongs to the site that Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford helped to make world-famous as the mythical resting place of the Holy Grail: the monument known (seemingly fallaciously) as the Treasury.
I’ve seen dozens of pictures of the Treasury; I’ve seen it in movies; I’ve studied its history and design. I was obviously excited to see it, and I knew that it would be a monumental (no pun intended) experience for me, a lover of all things historical and all sites archaeological. And yet, nothing could have prepared me for the sight that greeted me as I rounded that last turn in the Siq before the façade of the Treasury, shining dust red in the daylight at the end of that sun-starved alley of twisted stone we had been traversing for the past hour. You must understand, too, that we had no idea exactly around which turn (for there were many in our long, winding journey) that imposing sight would greet our eyes. Even if we had known exactly how many steps lay between us and that fateful sight, though, I have little doubt that my reaction would have been much the same. My reaction? It quite literally took my breath away. I was quite excited when I caught my first glimpse of the easily recognizable monument, but when I finally stepped from the maw of the Siq and into the open canyon floor in front of the Treasury, my breath caught in my throat and I very nearly staggered in wonder. I don’t know if it was the sheer magnitude of it (it was even higher than I had anticipated), the fact that this towering monument dated back before the time of Christ (it is believed that the Treasury was built in the First Century B.C.), or the fact that I was finally beholding one of the great historic, archeological, and, at least in the popular mythos, mystery-filled sights in the world. I was living out a dream of mine, seeing one of the sights that I had always dreamed of beholding. Petra. The Grail Temple (actually, I checked inside, and it’s much more boring than in the movie (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, if you haven’t been following along). Either Spielberg staged the whole thing on a set, or the drab stone walls and ceiling with the rectangular, unadorned doorways are what’s left of the temple after Ilsa tried to bring the Grail across the seal and the whole place came crashing down around their ears). Okay, so enough of my adventure-nerd humor. Back to the story.
The rest of Petra was also amazing, though that moment, that encounter with the mythical monument at the Treasury, was undoubtedly the pinnacle of our excursion. From the treasury, we followed the main path deeper into the city. After a bit, the path opened up from the relatively narrow canyon floor we had been walking on to a more open area. The hawkers, who had made their first appearance at the plaza in front of the Treasury, were out in spades, selling everything from souvenir magnets and books to handmade crafts and ‘authentic’ coins from ancient Rome to rides on camels, donkeys, or in horse-drawn carriages. The sandblasted facades of once-ornate tombs dotted the cliffsides. One large tomb, seemingly hundreds of meters from the canyon floor, showcased a trail of tourists and explorers traversing the narrow precipice that led to its entrance, like ants to an unguarded picnic basket. An ancient Roman theatre, still in good repair after countless generations of its builders’ absence, was the greatest monument in the scene of the city’s Latin conquerors, the theatre-goers of yore watched in turn by the tombs and temples that surrounded the pavilion, a theatre of even greater magnitude and whose shows continue millennia later, the endless parade of tourists from worlds the Romans knew nothing of, still watched by the eyeless sentinels of ages past. Centuries of wind and sandstorms had sculpted the hills into a variety of shapes; in some places they were the rough edges of a broken lump of clay, untouched by the potter and left to dry and crack in the sun; in others, they were smooth and twisted, like the work of a glassblower, pulled and wrapped in beautiful, amorphous forms like taffy. And everywhere, the vestiges of its ancient denizens, Nabataean and Roman alike, caught the eye and screamed the resilience of their stonecraft, still standing, if a little worse for the wear, fifteen centuries after both peoples had ceased to inhabit these haunting hills. As we sat on a wooden bench facing this scene of ancient wonder, munching on a noontime snack of a Twix bar and a bottle of water, but one word flashed through my mind: wow.
Due to time constraints, we were unable to explore most of the city (although what we did get to experience was more than worth the trip), but I definitely plan to return sometime soon, probably camping in the hills and experiencing Petra as it was meant to be experienced. And yet, in great irony, my staying in Petra would have the opposite effect as to that of the first Nabataeans who called this city home: it would be much quieter, less-crowded, and more primitive than that of my normal city-dwellings, while the permanent city that Petra was to the once-nomadic Nabataeans would have provided the reverse experience. And beyond the adventure, the wonder, the excitement of exploring those hills explored by millions of other feet, thousands of years apart, is my other motivation: Petra will definitely figure into one of my novels, probably prominently. I’ve known that Petra would inevitably find its way into one, but my trip there more than confirmed it. If you ever get the opportunity to go, go.
Martine, Sunali and I also got to go visit the old Roman theatre in Amman, a colossal structure set against a hillside. I climbed the treacherously narrow stairs, crumbled in parts by the feet of countless patrons and visitors, the decay and wear of time, to the very top. Although the theatre was in a valley, the view was amazing. For those who are curious, the city we now call Amman is the important site known as Rabbah of the Ammonites in the Old Testament and was called Philadelphia in Hellenistic times, which explains the wealth of ruins of ancient grandeur that can still be found throughout the city today. The few remaining pillars of the Temple of Apollo, near the ancient Citadel and set atop the tallest hill in the city, could be seen from nearly anywhere in the older part of the city, as could a smattering of old palaces and mosques from the Byzantine and Islamic eras, a visual timeline of the long history of the city.
At the northmost tip of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan sits the ruins of the Roman city of Umm Qais (known to the Romans as Gadara). The three of us traveled northward from Amman to this historic site. And what a sight it was! The city was situated at the top of a tremendous hill, from which you could see Syria to the north and, just west of the sparkling Jordan River, Israel was visible. It felt like the ‘see seven states’ motto of Lookout Mountain, Georgia. Only Georgia is somewhat lacking in the Roman ruins department. When the three of us were exploring the theatre and the tunnels beneath, we saw something none of us had seen since we had arrived in Dubai: rain. It wasn’t a downpour; more like a hard, persistent drizzle, but we relished it. The cool autumn air, the crisp smell of unadulterated nature, miles from the nearest urban area, the refreshing moisture from the heavens, a heavens we were already a good thousand feet closer to than was the highest adjacent valley, a moisture we hadn’t had the pleasure of dancing in for months. We laughed and craned our necks skyward, extending our arms in an expression of surrender to the blessing of the heavens, closing our eyes and drinking in the moment. When it was occupied, Umm Qais would have been quite a bustling place. A theatre, several temples, houses and outbuildings galore, and what may have once been a palace (the governor’s house, perhaps?). A long stretch of Roman road, glistening black with the recent rain, extended northward, lined by the ruins of tombs and baths. About a kilometer down the road, I encountered an active archaeological dig (though, strangely, using backhoes and other heavy equipment that didn’t seem quite appropriate for the meticulous, detailed, one-shot-only work of archaeological excavation, but then, what do I know?). A ranger station (or whatever they call them in Jordan) was also just off the road, perched at the edge of the cliff to maintain a proper vigil on the valleys below. When exploring the city, I noticed something that I had never encountered before: there were no guardrails, no blockades, no areas that were posted as being prohibited for visitors. So I just went nuts. I climbed, ran, hopped from structure to structure. The whole city was my playground; my two-thousand-year-old playground. I entered old houses, poked my head in cisterns, crawled through tunnels and passageways, climbed and jumped and wandered my way around the city. I had the most glorious time getting lost and then getting more lost, just wandering and exploring and discovering and satisfying my insatiable curiosity. I doubt that there was ever a Roman who lived in that city who had as much fun as I did just exploring. Good times.
The final historical site we visited dated not from antiquity but from the medieval era: Ajlun, the Saracen fortress built and manned by a nephew of Salah al-Din (known to the western world as Saladin, the great Saracen strategist during the crusades, revered in the Arab and Western worlds alike and generally regarded, alongside Richard the Lionheart, to be the greatest general of the era). When we arrived, the sun was beginning its long autumn descent into dusk, the waning light, breaking through the thick clouds at intervals, silhouetting the stronghold on the solitary hilltop, the modern town of Ajlun filling the valley at its foot like children gathered at the skirt of their mother, seeking protection and refuge from an enemy long-since vanquished. The view of the castle (my first medieval castle, mind you) was captivating. I think my first glimpse of it, its features shrouded by distance and poor lighting, its stalwart parapets jutting into the sky, the enigmatic sentinel standing alone atop its verdant lookout, filled me with even more wonder and awe than when I actually began exploring it, half-an-hour later. Which is not to belittle the experience of exploring a medieval castle, one that withstood every crusader attack launched upon it. On the contrary, exploring the fortress of Ajlun, its myriad halls, tunnels, chambers and passageways was yet another moment of magic and mystery that I will hold dear for the rest of my life. Peering out through the arrow slits in one of the outer walls, I found myself wondering: Who stood here eight-hundred years ago? What did they see in the valley below? Crusaders? Mongols? What went through their minds as they defended this fortress? It was the same rectangular hole in the stone, the same slit in the wall that provided an eye to the valley below, but though the window was the same, the situation of the man who looked through the window and the view itself had changed drastically. Some of the walls were ruined, some looked much as they would have in the twelfth century. Upon climbing to the top (again taking advantage of the lack of guard rails and other such safety measures/barriers-to-exploration that are a staple in American historical sites and tourist attractions), a magnificent view greeted my eyes. The valley that surrounded my vantage point was green with trees, gray with homes and offices. And it extended for miles. No red-and-white banners of the approaching Crusaders to be seen, no blood-curdling war cries of the feared Mongol hordes; just the idyllic sight of the verdant valley, the setting sun stretching shadows across the landscape, the whisper of the wind tickling my eardrums the only sound. Awed as I was by the view, I knew our time there grew short, as closing time was rapidly approaching, so, just as I had in Umm Qais (albeit with more of an element of danger, considering the sheer height of the edifice and its topographical position), I explored my heart out, clambering over wall and through tunnel, up precarious staircases, seemingly not intended for visitors, and down five-foot drops to levels below. At one point, while exploring an area of the roof, I encountered a shallow slope of pebbles and crumbling rock that ended at a thirty- or forty-foot sheer drop (which I actually got on video… yeah, I was running around doing this stuff with a camera in hand… crazy, eh?). ‘Intrepid world explorer’, indeed. All in all, a very interesting place that I want to go back to again and spend more time exploring.
So, in short, this trip, though we had to do teacher supervisor stuff much of the time, was my most enjoyable vacation to date. Great people, refreshing weather, beautiful vistas, and the ability to explore world wonders, ancient cities, and medieval castles mostly unhindered by barriers combined to make this trip one never to be forgotten, and in all likelihood, one to be repeated sometime in the near future.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Bangladesh
Restart. I’ve written a lot on my trip to Bangladesh already, but with my overambitious attempt to relate every minute detail (a task all but impossible for even the most seasoned of travel writers), with life going on (and, indeed, accelerating), and with copious other writing projects demanding my more immediate attention, I had just put this on the back burner (along with the entries on my other trips) until I ‘had more time’. Which, as we all know, doesn’t happen. You make time. But, in the interest of allowing time (made or otherwise) for other writing projects, I’ve now taken the liberty of condensing my initially conceived scope of a day-by-day breakdown of the trip into a nice summary. For a vividly detailed, intricately plotted recounting of this voyage (and others), I may end up writing a book regarding my experiences abroad, but this is a more immediate medium, demanding more immediate (and thus, less carefully thought-out and edited) writings. So, in the interest of expeditiousness (nearly three months after the fact…), I’m writing the abbreviated version of my adventures in Bangladesh. It won’t quite do it justice, but it’ll do for now.
(Note: I introduced my co-adventurers in my previous entries on Bangladesh, but for completeness’s sake, I’ll reintroduce them here: Asha and Rebecca, both from Canada, and Jorge (from Spain). All of them friends and colleagues of mine, and all with a good number of foreign countries under their belts (including several third-world nations), albeit none that had the impact on them as did Bangladesh.)
(One further clarification: the vehicle I refer to as a ‘rickshaw’ is not a rickshaw in the traditional, Chinese sense, pulled by a footman walking through the streets. This rickshaw is a covered seat that can uncomfortably (and rather precariously) fit two passengers, tacked onto the back portion of a bicycle. Hope that helps in envisioning the story. On with the show!)
So, Bangladesh. Amazing, strange, dirty, impoverished, mysterious, yet friendly country. About 160 million people (population estimates vary significantly, but without a strong infrastructure with proper census-taking capabilities, it’s to be expected that a good chunk of the population wouldn’t be accounted for, especially considering the high birth and death rates in the region) shoved into a country smaller than the state of Georgia. Once the wealthiest and most beautiful Dutch colony on the Indian subcontinent, now one of the poorest countries on earth. Yet, the people were always smiling. At least when they saw us western travelers. Whether this was because we were as much an oddity to them as their unique land was to us, I can’t say for certain, but it was an intriguing paradox. I could philosophize on poverty and wealth, on the mindsets and worldviews of the first-world nations (and their inhabitants) versus those of the third-world nations, but I won’t. At least not here. An interesting dichotomy, to be sure. We’ll leave it at that for now.
When people ask me what Bangladesh was like, the word I keep returning to is ‘authentic’. Dirt, grime, people everywhere, trash, wild animals, the hollowed-out shells of buildings left over from the region’s colonial past, swampland and dense forests, naked children, deformed old beggars, roadside villages populated by corrugated-tin hovels, shelters constructed of worn tarpaulins and black plastic sheets, emaciated cows and goats withering away on the verdant roadside, fishermen eking out a living in hand-hewn wooden boats, rice farmers wading into the disease-ridden waters of the paddy, toothless old grandmothers sitting in a doorway and staring blankly at the world. The Third World in all its glory. Much of what I saw probably hasn’t changed much since Kipling’s day, or earlier (save, of course, for the occasional faded Pepsi sign plastered on a wall somewhere). Truly an experience.
One more fun note: as you would expect of a third-world country, the water isn’t safe to drink. Bottled water is available, of course, and this was an interesting experience: drinking, washing your hands, brushing your teeth, and every other daily activity utilizing water that we have a tendency to take for granted all become far more tedious tasks than one would think. But that’s not the promised ‘fun’ part; this is: even the bottled water (or at least some brands that we ran across, purchased, and imbibed, albeit without reading the mineral analysis on the label that provided the following revelation) includes some interesting substances, such as lead, arsenic, and cyanide. No joke. Whee!
The car ride from Dhaka in the center of the country to Cox’s Bazar in the southeast (that those who read my previous entries on this trip have been waiting so patiently to hear about) took just shy of fifteen hours… to travel all of 350 kilometers. Bangladesh traffic, especially during the exodus from Dhaka that accompanied the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. Buses overflowing capacity, with boys hanging on the back and sides, dozens of men sitting atop. Trains with dozens more men sitting atop them as the vehicle hurtled across the countryside. What was inside, whether freight or more passengers, I don’t know. Rickshaws, men leading cows through the streets on a tether, bicyclists with baskets of full of dozens of live chickens lashed to the back, boys pushing carts full of potatoes through the streets: these were our traveling companions on the long road south. Half-hour-plus queues awaited us every forty-ish kilometers when we would have to stop to refill our car’s terribly small natural gas fuel tank. Bathrooms consisting of a filthy concrete room with a hole in the floor with more far more grime and bugs than one would find in an au-natural latrine in the middle of the wilderness. A waste-disposal policy consisting of throwing your trash (biodegradable or not) wherever suits your fancy (no, seriously, the guy who ran one gas station told me to just throw my tissues on the ground; I opted to carry them with me until I came to a proper trash can). Five people crammed into a tiny sedan, with our luggage, for fifteen hours. With nothing but an occasional apple or snack bar to eat, and a juice box or bottle of water to drink, for the whole day. And I was fevered and dehydrated to boot. If I can offer any advice on this situation, it’s this: don’t go to a third-world country when you’re already sick. It’s just asking for trouble. But more on that in a moment.
We finally got to Cox’s Bazar around midnight at the end of our second day, and found a hotel of sorts in which to stay. Looking out from our room (or from the balcony on which our floor’s rooms were accessed) we could see rice paddies, trash heaps, a small cluster of makeshift huts that the locals called ‘home’, and the decrepit remains of concrete buildings long since forsaken, iron rebar jutting from the edges in rows like dutiful sentries waiting for an enemy that would never come. It was kind of unreal. Our rooms were kinda crappy as hotel rooms go, but when compared to the accommodations of the locals around us, it was the bloody Ritz-Carlton. On the other side of the hotel (visible from the roof), the view was layered: directly below, the two-lane road leading past the hotel, frequented by pedestrians, bicycles and rickshaws, with the occasional car coming past to mix things up; beyond the road, a hedge of tall conifers (whose tops were just below the roof of the seven-story hotel); past the trees, the longest unbroken white-sand beach in the world (120 km), the beach of Cox’s Bazar, could be seen; and beyond that, the crashing waves of the Bay of Bengal and the majestic horizon. I returned to this view several times throughout the trip: during the brightness of the day, with the excited shouts of bicyclists and beachgoers providing audible testament to the busyness of the place; in the awe-inspiring orange and red of sunset, as the hot tropical sun dipped into the sea for its daily respite; in the cool solace of the night, with the occasional faint ringing of the bells of a rickshaw on the street below the only sound breaking up the soft rhythm of waves crashing against the seashore, the perfect sliver of the Eid moon reflecting off the waters of the Bay, the subtly shimmering sands of the beach, the dark treetops casting their silhouettes on the hauntingly beautiful spectacle behind them. This last, the nighttime view, was perhaps the most memorable, its quietude and peaceful sense of solitude washing over me after a long day.
On day three, our first day at Cox’s Bazar, we took it pretty easy. Got up late, kinda missing breakfast, and we ventured over to the pool of the hotel next-door to our hotel. We boogied down with a bunch of guys from Sri Lanka on vacation in Cox’s Bazar. Actually, they were doing most of the boogying, and we were doing the chilling, watching, and enjoying the spectacle. We did meet a few of them, but my fever, worsened by the long, arduous day in the car the day before and weakened by malnourishment and dehydration, made me less outgoing than I might have normally been. We ordered some beef and fried rice and ate our first real meal in more than thirty-six hours by the pool. It actually tasted pretty good, but that was probably due at least in part to my voracious appetite that had not been sated for the past few days.
That evening, the four of us set out to explore the nearby village of Cox’s Bazar, hiring a pair of rickshaws and their drivers from the group of a dozen or more who crowded around the gate to our hotel, clamoring for our business. We drove/rode (for Asha and Rebecca opted to drive for a good portion of the journey, Jorge and myself seated next to our respective deposed local drivers) down several open roads, the cool air of evening blowing in our faces as we cruised, finally arriving at the village proper. Its streets were crowded with rickshaws and foot traffic, increasingly so as we neared the market. Our drivers led us to a set of about ten shop faces, five on each side of a corridor that opened on one end onto the street. Each shop sold slightly different items at arbitrarily inflated prices (for haggling purposes), was tended by a Burmese (‘Myanmarian’?) woman or two, and was owned by the same businessman in Myanmar. Considering the lovely exchange rate of about 50 Bengali Taka to the UAE dirham (or about 180 to the U.S. dollar) and the incredibly low cost of living in Bangladesh (commiserate with the incredibly low wages available), we found some lovely souvenirs at this collection of shops. Our drivers had followed us in and helped us, with our negligible knowledge of the Bengali language (consisting solely of how to say ‘Thank you’) and relative greenness to the customs of commerce in such a place (myself far more so than my more well-traveled co-adventurers), not to get taken advantage of with shoddy product or overpriced merchandise (given, said merchandise at its ‘overpriced’ state was still a pretty good deal, all things considered).
As the sun set that evening, Eid was called (that is, the holiday was declared to have officially begun… although supposedly it was called the day before (or even two days before) in most of the rest of the Muslim world… that’s Bangladesh for you). There’s something magical about driving a rickshaw through the nighttime streets of a village in Bangladesh, trading shouts of ‘Eid Mubarak’ (a greeting like ‘Merry Christmas’… but for Eid) with my fellow rickshaw drivers, ringing my little bicycle bell all the while. I was having the time of my life. We finally got to the hotel, paid our cab drivers (about ten times the going rate, unbeknownst to us, but the guys were good sports and quite helpful, so we figured they deserved it… it’d do them more good than it would us anyway), and went inside. I was hot, sweaty, and increasingly dehydrated, but still riding high from the surreal excitement we had just experienced. Before I got to my room, I knew I wasn’t feeling well, and I attributed it to perhaps being dehydrated or something. Asha insisted I should drink some water, but I thought I should wait, as my stomach was churning. Eventually I relented and drank some water. A few seconds later I saw it again. And that was the beginning of a delightful twenty-four hours of some sort of illness. I won’t go into too many gory details about the episode. It might have been food poisoning, a twenty-four hour flu, or something else. Jorge and I ate from the same plate during lunch that day, but it could have been that my fever (coupled with the lack of nourishment and hydration the previous day) had weakened me and made me more susceptible to whatever I got. Very few times in my life have I experienced such a low following so close on the heels of such a high. I spent most of Day Four, trying to keep some fluids down, sleeping, groaning, and reading. Even when the ordeal was over, I was weakened by having even more liquid and nourishment expelled from my system (and I still had my fever from before!). Additionally, certain smells, particularly ones that reminded me of the beef and fried rice I had eaten the day before (which, for whatever reason, seemed to be fairly ubiquitous in Cox’s Bazar) made me nauseous. Chicken corn soup (basically Egg-Drop Soup with tiny bits of diced chicken and a few kernels of corn dropped in) was my staple for the rest of the trip. Solid food, especially Bengali food, being seasoned like the ill-fated dish I ate on Day Three, was all but unpalatable for me. On a bright note, though, at the end of Day Four, after night had fallen, I discovered the previously described view of the Bay from the roof of the hotel. Perhaps I was predisposed to enjoying the view due to the miserable night and day I had just completed, but that rooftop view, with its cool quietness, its sense of peace and solace washing over me, was, at least at the moment, one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. A rotten ordeal, bookended by moments of joy and peace. Thank God for small blessings.
So Day Four was mostly a wash; on to Day Five. The four of us rode in a ‘tuk-tuk’, a small vehicle with a go-cart-like engine (hence the origin of the vehicle’s name), that has a roof and walls, but no doors. With a tiny backseat and a small front seat for the driver, it can comfortably fit two or three midgets. We crammed all four of us (plus the driver) into the vehicle. Good times. Every time we got into a vehicle in Bangladesh, from the car on the way to Cox’s Bazar, to the rickshaws whose backseats would accommodate only about half of each of the two passenger’s buttocks, to the perpetual fear of being slung from the ‘tuk-tuk’ and onto the street, to the soon-to-be-described boat ride and domestic prop-plane flight, we always seemed to be taking our lives in our hands. But considering the crowds of locals who ride on top of buses and trains, I suppose that’s just a way of life in Bangladesh. This ‘tuk-tuk’ took (ooh, sorry… bad pun not intended) us to the port, an old wooden boardwalk that branched off for docking in places. The number of bedraggled locals, clothed in rags and old t-shirts, who clamored around us throughout the day was somewhat unnerving. Not so much out of a fear that they posed a danger to our persons or possessions, nor really out of any sort of xenophobia, but rather just out of a sense of their sheer numbers and their lack of the Western idea of ‘personal space.’ But then, when you cram 160 million people into a 144,000-square-kilometer space, I guess such considerations never even enter the popular mindset. Unfortunately, this was somewhat exacerbated by their stares (evoked because of the foreign-ness of us relatively rare western tourists to their land), creating a feeling of being on display for these ubiquitous crowds of locals.
Our guide led us to an old wooden boat, already almost filled to its capacity of about twenty passengers. An outboard motor had been affixed to the boat, so we cruised out into the Bay of Bengal, headed for our destination of the nearby island of Maniyashi. We got an interesting view of the coast as we cruised down it, the groups of fishermen fishing from their dark wooden boats, more impoverished villages, more boats and people than I could count, the people probably the builders or ancestors thereof of many of the boats, every one of them wooden and fairly rough-hewn, betraying their indubitably hand-carved origins. As we got sprayed by water from the Bay during our high-speed crossing, I came to the conclusion that the Bay of Bengal is not only the dirtiest body of water I’ve ever encountered (the Hudson River included), but the smelliest. And of course, said nasty smells didn’t do anything good for my wellbeing considering my new sensitivity to them after my fun on Day Four. But back to our story.
On the island, we encountered an even more ‘authentic’ village, with all its exotic and impoverished trappings. The main purpose of our visit to the island was to visit the old Hindu temple (still in use by worshippers when we went) and the Buddhist pagoda atop the hill. A couple of goats were loafing atop headstones and at the foot of mausoleums in the nearby cemetery, the Bay on one side, the staircase up the mountain from the village to the temple on the other. Children and hawkers were all over the path up the mountain. The temple was fairly interesting, although it lacked the architectural wonders that travel books have impressed upon me as being a ‘typical’ Hindu temple. Dirty, dirty place. And we had to take off our shoes when entering the place. Good way to get gangrene, etc. But we didn’t. Thank Vishnu. Or something.
The Pagoda was pretty cool, too. The path up the mountain from the temple was, for the most part, little more than a goat path, the ground on either side sharply sloping into the valley below. In fact, if one of the goats we saw lounging by the side of the path were to race down it while we were trying to make our way along its perilously narrow course, we would likely as not have tumbled down the mountainside. Upon arriving at the pagoda, which was impressive in its own right, it was the view that took my breath away. You could see for miles; villages, rice paddies, farms, ponds, fishing trawlers in the Bay, children playing in a field, a view of everything that I’d seen thus far in my journey, a sweeping panorama of life in Bangladesh. We stayed at the pagoda for about twenty minutes, enjoying the view, interacting with the locals (including about four children) who had followed us up, and snapping the arbitrary photographs of the pagoda and the surrounding scenery.
After backtracking to the dock and then across the bay to the mainland, the girls went to go do their thing, while Jorge and I sauntered down to the beach. It was truly a sight to behold. And I’m not talking about the record-holding beach itself (as we were unable to appreciate its 120 kilometer length from our vantage point, and the part we could see was not all that impressive). The part that impressed us was the multitude of Bengali and other assorted Indian subcontinental peoples who thronged the beach. There were easily tens of thousands of beachgoers, all local (or at least more local than us crazy western tourists) and all fully clothed. Long sleeves and full trousers for the most part. And they went swimming in the same costumes. I felt like we’d stepped out of the forest and into a beach scene in 19th century England or America. Only the attire was more traditionally Indian… and the people were a wee bit tanner. But the number of the people milling about, most of whom didn’t even seem to be doing anything beach-related (i.e. something related to the sand, the water, or the sun), was the amazing part for us. Vendors walking up and down the beach sold everything from seashells to flowers to popcorn. Groups of young men played soccer in the packed sand. A man used a tether to lead a donkey down the beach, while a boy rode a horse the opposite direction, chased by his hooting friends.
Jorge and I took turns swimming in the surf, ignoring the red flag flying to indicate an undertow warning. The undertow wasn’t too bad, and, luckily, this part of the Bay didn’t stink like the area we’d boated across that morning. After our brief splashing about in the Bay, we wandered about on the beach for a while, eventually returning to the trees, finding a shady spot, and cracking open our respective books to read while the sun set (these books, along with our cameras, were the reason we took turns swimming: whomever wasn’t swimming was keeping those goods dry and unstolen).
Shortly before sunset, a group of about eight or so young men, probably in their late teens or early twenties, came up to the two of us and wanted to take pictures with us. Caught up in the moment, we consented, and they took turns swapping the cameras and the role of photographer, while the rest of the bunch surrounded us and posed with us like old friends. So we’re probably on some Bengali’s slideshow of their holiday in Cox’s Bazar (“…and here are these two white guys we found on the beach…”). As Jorge observed immediately thereafter, “now I know what it’s like to be a rock star.” Personally, I would have preferred a few more females amongst my groupies, but whatever. Kind of illustrative of the previously mentioned entertainment that we foreigners provided the locals.
More shortly before sunset, a group of children and their adult leader came over to us and started singing. Due to their accents, it took me a few verses to realize that they were singing in English, and singing about Jesus to boot. As it turned out, these children were orphans who had been taken under the care of the adult leader, a local pastor. Kind of interesting, being in the middle of a Muslim country, surrounded by countries that are primarily Hindu, Buddhist, and atheist, and here are a bunch of kids singing Sunday School songs. I talked with the pastor a bit, and he gave me his card. Then the sun set. And the sunset was decidedly beautiful (and grew even more so once the sun had fallen below the horizon… but alas, my camera batteries were dead). After regrouping with the girls for dinner, Jorge and I retired to our room, while the girls went to the hotel next door for an Eid dance party. Supposedly all of about ten people showed up, despite the advertisements stapled to the telephone poles lining the street. Jorge and I were bushed, and we decided to crash early. We had an early morning flight to catch.
Day six. The day of airports and smelly flights. Our flight from Dhaka to Sharjah was scheduled for nine or ten that evening. We were in Cox’s Bazar that morning. How to get to Dhaka in time? We decided shortly after arriving in Cox’s Bazar (while the memory of the fateful fifteen hour car ride was still painfully fresh in our minds), that we would take advantage of the domestic flights available on select days from Cox’s Bazar to Dhaka to expedite the trip and get us back to the Dhaka airport with minimal headache (and a much greater likelihood of us catching our flight, instead of being stuck in traffic behind a eight-cow pileup). Royal Bengal Airlines. On their weekly schedule, consisting of about eight or ten different routes between various airports in the country, the airline has about twenty-five different flights. In a whole week. Fleet of one or two planes total, I’d surmise. We traveled by van to the airport. I thought the airport looked like something out of a movie. Some long-abandoned airstrip out in the middle of nowhere, architecture and infrastructure evoking cinematic memories of World War II-era landing fields in isolated areas, a sorry excuse for an airport constructed in the African bush country in the mid-twentieth century. Something like that. On the tarmac sat several old prop planes that looked as though they hadn’t seen service (or indeed, even been serviceable) since sometime in the 1970s, and the tarmac itself was riddled with deep cracks and shoddy patchwork. The airport was tiny, with all of two rooms, the silliest excuse for airport security I’ve yet to encounter, and seemingly no sense of direction or purpose among the workers staffing the terminal. Luckily, the plane that arrived to pick us up did look newer, although it was also a prop plane (my first commercial prop plane!). It was relatively small, but surprisingly nice inside, and due to the morning hour (the flight departed around nine or ten in the morning), or perhaps just due to the fact that most Bengalis can’t afford to fly, the plane was quite empty. We ended up stopping in Chittagong for a few minutes while we dropped off a passenger or two and acquired a few more, before finally arriving in the Dhaka airport.
Jorge toured Dhaka a bit with a van and driver he hired, while Asha, Rebecca and I, adventured-out for the time being and not too keen on the relatively exorbitant price quoted by the van driver, hung out in the airport for the duration of the day, having another day of our meals consisting of snacks procured from vendors until we managed to get past security when our flight started check-in procedures (about seven hours after arriving), when we ate at an actual restaurant further into the terminal.
After boarding the flight, we had a repeat experience of something that happened prior to our arrival in Dhaka from Sharjah five days earlier (that I neglected to mention while relating that episode (at least in this incarnation), but it’s more pertinent here). The cabin crew sprayed insecticide throughout the passenger area while walking up and down the aisle. Considering the personal hygiene of most of the other passengers, and the condition of much of their makeshift baggage (often consisting of cardboard boxes reinforced with packing tape and plastic bags), this practice is understandable, and, I’ve discovered since, a fairly common practice in international flights, particularly in ones with third-world countries at one end or the other of the journey. Kill the bugs who might transmit diseases or be invasive species in the ecosystem of the destination country. They should have used more potent spray, as both Rebecca and myself had cockroaches crawl across our arms during the flight. Good times.
At long last, we arrived in Sharjah. It was nearly midnight local time, and we had to be at work in just over seven hours. However, I had had my heart (or stomach, as it were) set on something for the past several days, ever since my… episode after the rickshaw drive on Day 3. A cheeseburger from the airport McDonalds. Not so much for any symbolic reasons, making the trip come full-circle to the restaurant and airport where it had begun, but rather because I missed food that didn’t remind me of that ill-fated beef and rice meal by the pool in Cox’s Bazar. And the burger was delicious.
And so much for condensing the trip. Geez. Over 4700 words. I’ll try to be more concise with my Jordan entry. I have novels to write…
See you at the next entry!
(Note: I introduced my co-adventurers in my previous entries on Bangladesh, but for completeness’s sake, I’ll reintroduce them here: Asha and Rebecca, both from Canada, and Jorge (from Spain). All of them friends and colleagues of mine, and all with a good number of foreign countries under their belts (including several third-world nations), albeit none that had the impact on them as did Bangladesh.)
(One further clarification: the vehicle I refer to as a ‘rickshaw’ is not a rickshaw in the traditional, Chinese sense, pulled by a footman walking through the streets. This rickshaw is a covered seat that can uncomfortably (and rather precariously) fit two passengers, tacked onto the back portion of a bicycle. Hope that helps in envisioning the story. On with the show!)
So, Bangladesh. Amazing, strange, dirty, impoverished, mysterious, yet friendly country. About 160 million people (population estimates vary significantly, but without a strong infrastructure with proper census-taking capabilities, it’s to be expected that a good chunk of the population wouldn’t be accounted for, especially considering the high birth and death rates in the region) shoved into a country smaller than the state of Georgia. Once the wealthiest and most beautiful Dutch colony on the Indian subcontinent, now one of the poorest countries on earth. Yet, the people were always smiling. At least when they saw us western travelers. Whether this was because we were as much an oddity to them as their unique land was to us, I can’t say for certain, but it was an intriguing paradox. I could philosophize on poverty and wealth, on the mindsets and worldviews of the first-world nations (and their inhabitants) versus those of the third-world nations, but I won’t. At least not here. An interesting dichotomy, to be sure. We’ll leave it at that for now.
When people ask me what Bangladesh was like, the word I keep returning to is ‘authentic’. Dirt, grime, people everywhere, trash, wild animals, the hollowed-out shells of buildings left over from the region’s colonial past, swampland and dense forests, naked children, deformed old beggars, roadside villages populated by corrugated-tin hovels, shelters constructed of worn tarpaulins and black plastic sheets, emaciated cows and goats withering away on the verdant roadside, fishermen eking out a living in hand-hewn wooden boats, rice farmers wading into the disease-ridden waters of the paddy, toothless old grandmothers sitting in a doorway and staring blankly at the world. The Third World in all its glory. Much of what I saw probably hasn’t changed much since Kipling’s day, or earlier (save, of course, for the occasional faded Pepsi sign plastered on a wall somewhere). Truly an experience.
One more fun note: as you would expect of a third-world country, the water isn’t safe to drink. Bottled water is available, of course, and this was an interesting experience: drinking, washing your hands, brushing your teeth, and every other daily activity utilizing water that we have a tendency to take for granted all become far more tedious tasks than one would think. But that’s not the promised ‘fun’ part; this is: even the bottled water (or at least some brands that we ran across, purchased, and imbibed, albeit without reading the mineral analysis on the label that provided the following revelation) includes some interesting substances, such as lead, arsenic, and cyanide. No joke. Whee!
The car ride from Dhaka in the center of the country to Cox’s Bazar in the southeast (that those who read my previous entries on this trip have been waiting so patiently to hear about) took just shy of fifteen hours… to travel all of 350 kilometers. Bangladesh traffic, especially during the exodus from Dhaka that accompanied the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. Buses overflowing capacity, with boys hanging on the back and sides, dozens of men sitting atop. Trains with dozens more men sitting atop them as the vehicle hurtled across the countryside. What was inside, whether freight or more passengers, I don’t know. Rickshaws, men leading cows through the streets on a tether, bicyclists with baskets of full of dozens of live chickens lashed to the back, boys pushing carts full of potatoes through the streets: these were our traveling companions on the long road south. Half-hour-plus queues awaited us every forty-ish kilometers when we would have to stop to refill our car’s terribly small natural gas fuel tank. Bathrooms consisting of a filthy concrete room with a hole in the floor with more far more grime and bugs than one would find in an au-natural latrine in the middle of the wilderness. A waste-disposal policy consisting of throwing your trash (biodegradable or not) wherever suits your fancy (no, seriously, the guy who ran one gas station told me to just throw my tissues on the ground; I opted to carry them with me until I came to a proper trash can). Five people crammed into a tiny sedan, with our luggage, for fifteen hours. With nothing but an occasional apple or snack bar to eat, and a juice box or bottle of water to drink, for the whole day. And I was fevered and dehydrated to boot. If I can offer any advice on this situation, it’s this: don’t go to a third-world country when you’re already sick. It’s just asking for trouble. But more on that in a moment.
We finally got to Cox’s Bazar around midnight at the end of our second day, and found a hotel of sorts in which to stay. Looking out from our room (or from the balcony on which our floor’s rooms were accessed) we could see rice paddies, trash heaps, a small cluster of makeshift huts that the locals called ‘home’, and the decrepit remains of concrete buildings long since forsaken, iron rebar jutting from the edges in rows like dutiful sentries waiting for an enemy that would never come. It was kind of unreal. Our rooms were kinda crappy as hotel rooms go, but when compared to the accommodations of the locals around us, it was the bloody Ritz-Carlton. On the other side of the hotel (visible from the roof), the view was layered: directly below, the two-lane road leading past the hotel, frequented by pedestrians, bicycles and rickshaws, with the occasional car coming past to mix things up; beyond the road, a hedge of tall conifers (whose tops were just below the roof of the seven-story hotel); past the trees, the longest unbroken white-sand beach in the world (120 km), the beach of Cox’s Bazar, could be seen; and beyond that, the crashing waves of the Bay of Bengal and the majestic horizon. I returned to this view several times throughout the trip: during the brightness of the day, with the excited shouts of bicyclists and beachgoers providing audible testament to the busyness of the place; in the awe-inspiring orange and red of sunset, as the hot tropical sun dipped into the sea for its daily respite; in the cool solace of the night, with the occasional faint ringing of the bells of a rickshaw on the street below the only sound breaking up the soft rhythm of waves crashing against the seashore, the perfect sliver of the Eid moon reflecting off the waters of the Bay, the subtly shimmering sands of the beach, the dark treetops casting their silhouettes on the hauntingly beautiful spectacle behind them. This last, the nighttime view, was perhaps the most memorable, its quietude and peaceful sense of solitude washing over me after a long day.
On day three, our first day at Cox’s Bazar, we took it pretty easy. Got up late, kinda missing breakfast, and we ventured over to the pool of the hotel next-door to our hotel. We boogied down with a bunch of guys from Sri Lanka on vacation in Cox’s Bazar. Actually, they were doing most of the boogying, and we were doing the chilling, watching, and enjoying the spectacle. We did meet a few of them, but my fever, worsened by the long, arduous day in the car the day before and weakened by malnourishment and dehydration, made me less outgoing than I might have normally been. We ordered some beef and fried rice and ate our first real meal in more than thirty-six hours by the pool. It actually tasted pretty good, but that was probably due at least in part to my voracious appetite that had not been sated for the past few days.
That evening, the four of us set out to explore the nearby village of Cox’s Bazar, hiring a pair of rickshaws and their drivers from the group of a dozen or more who crowded around the gate to our hotel, clamoring for our business. We drove/rode (for Asha and Rebecca opted to drive for a good portion of the journey, Jorge and myself seated next to our respective deposed local drivers) down several open roads, the cool air of evening blowing in our faces as we cruised, finally arriving at the village proper. Its streets were crowded with rickshaws and foot traffic, increasingly so as we neared the market. Our drivers led us to a set of about ten shop faces, five on each side of a corridor that opened on one end onto the street. Each shop sold slightly different items at arbitrarily inflated prices (for haggling purposes), was tended by a Burmese (‘Myanmarian’?) woman or two, and was owned by the same businessman in Myanmar. Considering the lovely exchange rate of about 50 Bengali Taka to the UAE dirham (or about 180 to the U.S. dollar) and the incredibly low cost of living in Bangladesh (commiserate with the incredibly low wages available), we found some lovely souvenirs at this collection of shops. Our drivers had followed us in and helped us, with our negligible knowledge of the Bengali language (consisting solely of how to say ‘Thank you’) and relative greenness to the customs of commerce in such a place (myself far more so than my more well-traveled co-adventurers), not to get taken advantage of with shoddy product or overpriced merchandise (given, said merchandise at its ‘overpriced’ state was still a pretty good deal, all things considered).
As the sun set that evening, Eid was called (that is, the holiday was declared to have officially begun… although supposedly it was called the day before (or even two days before) in most of the rest of the Muslim world… that’s Bangladesh for you). There’s something magical about driving a rickshaw through the nighttime streets of a village in Bangladesh, trading shouts of ‘Eid Mubarak’ (a greeting like ‘Merry Christmas’… but for Eid) with my fellow rickshaw drivers, ringing my little bicycle bell all the while. I was having the time of my life. We finally got to the hotel, paid our cab drivers (about ten times the going rate, unbeknownst to us, but the guys were good sports and quite helpful, so we figured they deserved it… it’d do them more good than it would us anyway), and went inside. I was hot, sweaty, and increasingly dehydrated, but still riding high from the surreal excitement we had just experienced. Before I got to my room, I knew I wasn’t feeling well, and I attributed it to perhaps being dehydrated or something. Asha insisted I should drink some water, but I thought I should wait, as my stomach was churning. Eventually I relented and drank some water. A few seconds later I saw it again. And that was the beginning of a delightful twenty-four hours of some sort of illness. I won’t go into too many gory details about the episode. It might have been food poisoning, a twenty-four hour flu, or something else. Jorge and I ate from the same plate during lunch that day, but it could have been that my fever (coupled with the lack of nourishment and hydration the previous day) had weakened me and made me more susceptible to whatever I got. Very few times in my life have I experienced such a low following so close on the heels of such a high. I spent most of Day Four, trying to keep some fluids down, sleeping, groaning, and reading. Even when the ordeal was over, I was weakened by having even more liquid and nourishment expelled from my system (and I still had my fever from before!). Additionally, certain smells, particularly ones that reminded me of the beef and fried rice I had eaten the day before (which, for whatever reason, seemed to be fairly ubiquitous in Cox’s Bazar) made me nauseous. Chicken corn soup (basically Egg-Drop Soup with tiny bits of diced chicken and a few kernels of corn dropped in) was my staple for the rest of the trip. Solid food, especially Bengali food, being seasoned like the ill-fated dish I ate on Day Three, was all but unpalatable for me. On a bright note, though, at the end of Day Four, after night had fallen, I discovered the previously described view of the Bay from the roof of the hotel. Perhaps I was predisposed to enjoying the view due to the miserable night and day I had just completed, but that rooftop view, with its cool quietness, its sense of peace and solace washing over me, was, at least at the moment, one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. A rotten ordeal, bookended by moments of joy and peace. Thank God for small blessings.
So Day Four was mostly a wash; on to Day Five. The four of us rode in a ‘tuk-tuk’, a small vehicle with a go-cart-like engine (hence the origin of the vehicle’s name), that has a roof and walls, but no doors. With a tiny backseat and a small front seat for the driver, it can comfortably fit two or three midgets. We crammed all four of us (plus the driver) into the vehicle. Good times. Every time we got into a vehicle in Bangladesh, from the car on the way to Cox’s Bazar, to the rickshaws whose backseats would accommodate only about half of each of the two passenger’s buttocks, to the perpetual fear of being slung from the ‘tuk-tuk’ and onto the street, to the soon-to-be-described boat ride and domestic prop-plane flight, we always seemed to be taking our lives in our hands. But considering the crowds of locals who ride on top of buses and trains, I suppose that’s just a way of life in Bangladesh. This ‘tuk-tuk’ took (ooh, sorry… bad pun not intended) us to the port, an old wooden boardwalk that branched off for docking in places. The number of bedraggled locals, clothed in rags and old t-shirts, who clamored around us throughout the day was somewhat unnerving. Not so much out of a fear that they posed a danger to our persons or possessions, nor really out of any sort of xenophobia, but rather just out of a sense of their sheer numbers and their lack of the Western idea of ‘personal space.’ But then, when you cram 160 million people into a 144,000-square-kilometer space, I guess such considerations never even enter the popular mindset. Unfortunately, this was somewhat exacerbated by their stares (evoked because of the foreign-ness of us relatively rare western tourists to their land), creating a feeling of being on display for these ubiquitous crowds of locals.
Our guide led us to an old wooden boat, already almost filled to its capacity of about twenty passengers. An outboard motor had been affixed to the boat, so we cruised out into the Bay of Bengal, headed for our destination of the nearby island of Maniyashi. We got an interesting view of the coast as we cruised down it, the groups of fishermen fishing from their dark wooden boats, more impoverished villages, more boats and people than I could count, the people probably the builders or ancestors thereof of many of the boats, every one of them wooden and fairly rough-hewn, betraying their indubitably hand-carved origins. As we got sprayed by water from the Bay during our high-speed crossing, I came to the conclusion that the Bay of Bengal is not only the dirtiest body of water I’ve ever encountered (the Hudson River included), but the smelliest. And of course, said nasty smells didn’t do anything good for my wellbeing considering my new sensitivity to them after my fun on Day Four. But back to our story.
On the island, we encountered an even more ‘authentic’ village, with all its exotic and impoverished trappings. The main purpose of our visit to the island was to visit the old Hindu temple (still in use by worshippers when we went) and the Buddhist pagoda atop the hill. A couple of goats were loafing atop headstones and at the foot of mausoleums in the nearby cemetery, the Bay on one side, the staircase up the mountain from the village to the temple on the other. Children and hawkers were all over the path up the mountain. The temple was fairly interesting, although it lacked the architectural wonders that travel books have impressed upon me as being a ‘typical’ Hindu temple. Dirty, dirty place. And we had to take off our shoes when entering the place. Good way to get gangrene, etc. But we didn’t. Thank Vishnu. Or something.
The Pagoda was pretty cool, too. The path up the mountain from the temple was, for the most part, little more than a goat path, the ground on either side sharply sloping into the valley below. In fact, if one of the goats we saw lounging by the side of the path were to race down it while we were trying to make our way along its perilously narrow course, we would likely as not have tumbled down the mountainside. Upon arriving at the pagoda, which was impressive in its own right, it was the view that took my breath away. You could see for miles; villages, rice paddies, farms, ponds, fishing trawlers in the Bay, children playing in a field, a view of everything that I’d seen thus far in my journey, a sweeping panorama of life in Bangladesh. We stayed at the pagoda for about twenty minutes, enjoying the view, interacting with the locals (including about four children) who had followed us up, and snapping the arbitrary photographs of the pagoda and the surrounding scenery.
After backtracking to the dock and then across the bay to the mainland, the girls went to go do their thing, while Jorge and I sauntered down to the beach. It was truly a sight to behold. And I’m not talking about the record-holding beach itself (as we were unable to appreciate its 120 kilometer length from our vantage point, and the part we could see was not all that impressive). The part that impressed us was the multitude of Bengali and other assorted Indian subcontinental peoples who thronged the beach. There were easily tens of thousands of beachgoers, all local (or at least more local than us crazy western tourists) and all fully clothed. Long sleeves and full trousers for the most part. And they went swimming in the same costumes. I felt like we’d stepped out of the forest and into a beach scene in 19th century England or America. Only the attire was more traditionally Indian… and the people were a wee bit tanner. But the number of the people milling about, most of whom didn’t even seem to be doing anything beach-related (i.e. something related to the sand, the water, or the sun), was the amazing part for us. Vendors walking up and down the beach sold everything from seashells to flowers to popcorn. Groups of young men played soccer in the packed sand. A man used a tether to lead a donkey down the beach, while a boy rode a horse the opposite direction, chased by his hooting friends.
Jorge and I took turns swimming in the surf, ignoring the red flag flying to indicate an undertow warning. The undertow wasn’t too bad, and, luckily, this part of the Bay didn’t stink like the area we’d boated across that morning. After our brief splashing about in the Bay, we wandered about on the beach for a while, eventually returning to the trees, finding a shady spot, and cracking open our respective books to read while the sun set (these books, along with our cameras, were the reason we took turns swimming: whomever wasn’t swimming was keeping those goods dry and unstolen).
Shortly before sunset, a group of about eight or so young men, probably in their late teens or early twenties, came up to the two of us and wanted to take pictures with us. Caught up in the moment, we consented, and they took turns swapping the cameras and the role of photographer, while the rest of the bunch surrounded us and posed with us like old friends. So we’re probably on some Bengali’s slideshow of their holiday in Cox’s Bazar (“…and here are these two white guys we found on the beach…”). As Jorge observed immediately thereafter, “now I know what it’s like to be a rock star.” Personally, I would have preferred a few more females amongst my groupies, but whatever. Kind of illustrative of the previously mentioned entertainment that we foreigners provided the locals.
More shortly before sunset, a group of children and their adult leader came over to us and started singing. Due to their accents, it took me a few verses to realize that they were singing in English, and singing about Jesus to boot. As it turned out, these children were orphans who had been taken under the care of the adult leader, a local pastor. Kind of interesting, being in the middle of a Muslim country, surrounded by countries that are primarily Hindu, Buddhist, and atheist, and here are a bunch of kids singing Sunday School songs. I talked with the pastor a bit, and he gave me his card. Then the sun set. And the sunset was decidedly beautiful (and grew even more so once the sun had fallen below the horizon… but alas, my camera batteries were dead). After regrouping with the girls for dinner, Jorge and I retired to our room, while the girls went to the hotel next door for an Eid dance party. Supposedly all of about ten people showed up, despite the advertisements stapled to the telephone poles lining the street. Jorge and I were bushed, and we decided to crash early. We had an early morning flight to catch.
Day six. The day of airports and smelly flights. Our flight from Dhaka to Sharjah was scheduled for nine or ten that evening. We were in Cox’s Bazar that morning. How to get to Dhaka in time? We decided shortly after arriving in Cox’s Bazar (while the memory of the fateful fifteen hour car ride was still painfully fresh in our minds), that we would take advantage of the domestic flights available on select days from Cox’s Bazar to Dhaka to expedite the trip and get us back to the Dhaka airport with minimal headache (and a much greater likelihood of us catching our flight, instead of being stuck in traffic behind a eight-cow pileup). Royal Bengal Airlines. On their weekly schedule, consisting of about eight or ten different routes between various airports in the country, the airline has about twenty-five different flights. In a whole week. Fleet of one or two planes total, I’d surmise. We traveled by van to the airport. I thought the airport looked like something out of a movie. Some long-abandoned airstrip out in the middle of nowhere, architecture and infrastructure evoking cinematic memories of World War II-era landing fields in isolated areas, a sorry excuse for an airport constructed in the African bush country in the mid-twentieth century. Something like that. On the tarmac sat several old prop planes that looked as though they hadn’t seen service (or indeed, even been serviceable) since sometime in the 1970s, and the tarmac itself was riddled with deep cracks and shoddy patchwork. The airport was tiny, with all of two rooms, the silliest excuse for airport security I’ve yet to encounter, and seemingly no sense of direction or purpose among the workers staffing the terminal. Luckily, the plane that arrived to pick us up did look newer, although it was also a prop plane (my first commercial prop plane!). It was relatively small, but surprisingly nice inside, and due to the morning hour (the flight departed around nine or ten in the morning), or perhaps just due to the fact that most Bengalis can’t afford to fly, the plane was quite empty. We ended up stopping in Chittagong for a few minutes while we dropped off a passenger or two and acquired a few more, before finally arriving in the Dhaka airport.
Jorge toured Dhaka a bit with a van and driver he hired, while Asha, Rebecca and I, adventured-out for the time being and not too keen on the relatively exorbitant price quoted by the van driver, hung out in the airport for the duration of the day, having another day of our meals consisting of snacks procured from vendors until we managed to get past security when our flight started check-in procedures (about seven hours after arriving), when we ate at an actual restaurant further into the terminal.
After boarding the flight, we had a repeat experience of something that happened prior to our arrival in Dhaka from Sharjah five days earlier (that I neglected to mention while relating that episode (at least in this incarnation), but it’s more pertinent here). The cabin crew sprayed insecticide throughout the passenger area while walking up and down the aisle. Considering the personal hygiene of most of the other passengers, and the condition of much of their makeshift baggage (often consisting of cardboard boxes reinforced with packing tape and plastic bags), this practice is understandable, and, I’ve discovered since, a fairly common practice in international flights, particularly in ones with third-world countries at one end or the other of the journey. Kill the bugs who might transmit diseases or be invasive species in the ecosystem of the destination country. They should have used more potent spray, as both Rebecca and myself had cockroaches crawl across our arms during the flight. Good times.
At long last, we arrived in Sharjah. It was nearly midnight local time, and we had to be at work in just over seven hours. However, I had had my heart (or stomach, as it were) set on something for the past several days, ever since my… episode after the rickshaw drive on Day 3. A cheeseburger from the airport McDonalds. Not so much for any symbolic reasons, making the trip come full-circle to the restaurant and airport where it had begun, but rather because I missed food that didn’t remind me of that ill-fated beef and rice meal by the pool in Cox’s Bazar. And the burger was delicious.
And so much for condensing the trip. Geez. Over 4700 words. I’ll try to be more concise with my Jordan entry. I have novels to write…
See you at the next entry!
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Springtime in December
In literature, poetry, and songwriting, the winter months, most notably December and January, have long been used as symbols for dark and somber periods, for death, cold, and other elements often associated with that time of the year (at least in the northern hemisphere). In increasingly typical fashion for me, I’m bucking the trend.
November was a rather rough month for me. I won’t get into too much detail, but between stress at work (observations gone awry, having to get my grades done a week in advance, getting everything squared away for my absence from school for four days on an international field trip, figuring out what the heck my students had been doing and what I need to have them do next upon my return from said field trip, and preparing for student-led conferences on top of the usual first-year teacher insanity), lack of proper sleep for several weeks running, and a series of events and observations that kind of soured me towards Dubai and its shallowness, I was mentally, physically, and emotionally struggling. Homesickness started to hit in full-force, largely propagated by an amazing trip to Jordan (whose rolling hills, naturally verdant landscapes (in places), and cool, cloudy weather reminded me at times of Tallahassee; the trip culminated in my seeing the kids’ parents greeting the students as they returned from to Dubai the last night), and I was really starting to get down.
Our school’s work days for the month of December were recently cut to just the 14th through the 17th. I was planning on just staying in Dubai for the month and write, but, since I’m now leaning towards just staying in this country for the two years of my current contract (instead of extending it another year like I was considering doing prior to becoming disillusioned about the city in November), I figured that I needed to do as much traveling as I can while I’m here. So I’m going to Rome for nine days. On my own. It’s a place I’ve always wanted to go, and it’s a trip I definitely think I need to take right now. It should be inspirational, both in bringing out my muse (more on that in a moment) and in bringing up my spirits for life in general. In more ways than I can say, I’m quite excited.
In addition, I’m resolving that, henceforth (in theory, for the rest of my life), I will write at least one page a day. On my novels, on a short story or novella, on a blog entry or whatever. Just to write. Just to stay in practice with the passion that I’ve allowed myself to neglect over the past few weeks. I’ve used the excuse of late that, were I to launch into writing on another major project, I would become obsessed with it at the expense of sleep or other activities, as I’ve been known to do in the past. And, truth be told, I probably would, but as it is, I’ve still managed to putz around at night to deprive myself of sleep with admittedly much less productive activities. And if I can find the time to read fifty-five books (no, seriously) in my first three months here, then dang it, I can afford to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard, as it were) and write on a daily basis. Given, the chances that I’ll be able to stop my daily ritual at one page, or even five, is slim, and this was the main reason for my postponing of writing on my major works for so long. But so be it. My mind is constantly coming up with new ideas for stories, gleaning them from the sights, sounds, people, and experiences that I’m encountering on this amazing adventure I’m on. I need to put them down. Besides, writing is decidedly cathartic for me, so beyond indulging in my great passion, beyond increasing my repertoire of written works, beyond practicing my craft, I’ll be releasing the stress of my rather hectic life. And it’s a heck of a lot less expensive and more productive than a lot of other de-stressors available in this town.
I’m also planning on writing a good deal while in Rome. Lots and lots to see, but I know I’ll be back, both soon and often, and I just want to have a nice relaxing trip. Meeting people, doing some sightseeing, some photography, a little reading (I’m taking Virgil’s Aeneid, just to be meta), and a lot of inspiration and writing. I think it’ll be cool to say, ‘oh yeah, I wrote that passage while sitting on the Spanish Steps,’ or whatever.
Thus, this December shall not be the embodiment of the cold darkness that it oft symbolizes in poetry and prose; instead, it shall be the advent of a new springtime in my life, of brighter horizons, of indulged passions and inspirational experiences, of hopes, dreams, and resilience. And if that’s what my December looks like, I can’t wait to see what the actual spring months hold for me.
Postscript:
I’ve been slacking on blog entries the past few months, and I apologize for that. I hope to have more entries up in the coming weeks, including a completed (albeit condensed from its initially conceived scope) entry on my Bangladesh trip, one on my Jordan trip, and one on my upcoming trip to Rome. Stay tuned, and thanks for your continued prayers, support, and sharing in my adventures.
November was a rather rough month for me. I won’t get into too much detail, but between stress at work (observations gone awry, having to get my grades done a week in advance, getting everything squared away for my absence from school for four days on an international field trip, figuring out what the heck my students had been doing and what I need to have them do next upon my return from said field trip, and preparing for student-led conferences on top of the usual first-year teacher insanity), lack of proper sleep for several weeks running, and a series of events and observations that kind of soured me towards Dubai and its shallowness, I was mentally, physically, and emotionally struggling. Homesickness started to hit in full-force, largely propagated by an amazing trip to Jordan (whose rolling hills, naturally verdant landscapes (in places), and cool, cloudy weather reminded me at times of Tallahassee; the trip culminated in my seeing the kids’ parents greeting the students as they returned from to Dubai the last night), and I was really starting to get down.
Our school’s work days for the month of December were recently cut to just the 14th through the 17th. I was planning on just staying in Dubai for the month and write, but, since I’m now leaning towards just staying in this country for the two years of my current contract (instead of extending it another year like I was considering doing prior to becoming disillusioned about the city in November), I figured that I needed to do as much traveling as I can while I’m here. So I’m going to Rome for nine days. On my own. It’s a place I’ve always wanted to go, and it’s a trip I definitely think I need to take right now. It should be inspirational, both in bringing out my muse (more on that in a moment) and in bringing up my spirits for life in general. In more ways than I can say, I’m quite excited.
In addition, I’m resolving that, henceforth (in theory, for the rest of my life), I will write at least one page a day. On my novels, on a short story or novella, on a blog entry or whatever. Just to write. Just to stay in practice with the passion that I’ve allowed myself to neglect over the past few weeks. I’ve used the excuse of late that, were I to launch into writing on another major project, I would become obsessed with it at the expense of sleep or other activities, as I’ve been known to do in the past. And, truth be told, I probably would, but as it is, I’ve still managed to putz around at night to deprive myself of sleep with admittedly much less productive activities. And if I can find the time to read fifty-five books (no, seriously) in my first three months here, then dang it, I can afford to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard, as it were) and write on a daily basis. Given, the chances that I’ll be able to stop my daily ritual at one page, or even five, is slim, and this was the main reason for my postponing of writing on my major works for so long. But so be it. My mind is constantly coming up with new ideas for stories, gleaning them from the sights, sounds, people, and experiences that I’m encountering on this amazing adventure I’m on. I need to put them down. Besides, writing is decidedly cathartic for me, so beyond indulging in my great passion, beyond increasing my repertoire of written works, beyond practicing my craft, I’ll be releasing the stress of my rather hectic life. And it’s a heck of a lot less expensive and more productive than a lot of other de-stressors available in this town.
I’m also planning on writing a good deal while in Rome. Lots and lots to see, but I know I’ll be back, both soon and often, and I just want to have a nice relaxing trip. Meeting people, doing some sightseeing, some photography, a little reading (I’m taking Virgil’s Aeneid, just to be meta), and a lot of inspiration and writing. I think it’ll be cool to say, ‘oh yeah, I wrote that passage while sitting on the Spanish Steps,’ or whatever.
Thus, this December shall not be the embodiment of the cold darkness that it oft symbolizes in poetry and prose; instead, it shall be the advent of a new springtime in my life, of brighter horizons, of indulged passions and inspirational experiences, of hopes, dreams, and resilience. And if that’s what my December looks like, I can’t wait to see what the actual spring months hold for me.
Postscript:
I’ve been slacking on blog entries the past few months, and I apologize for that. I hope to have more entries up in the coming weeks, including a completed (albeit condensed from its initially conceived scope) entry on my Bangladesh trip, one on my Jordan trip, and one on my upcoming trip to Rome. Stay tuned, and thanks for your continued prayers, support, and sharing in my adventures.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Bangladesh - Day 1 - The Adventure Begins
Apparently I don't do things halfway. I start writing fiction, and instead of putzing around with short stories, I hammer out a full-length novel. I get my passport, and instead of vacationing in the Bahamas or Europe, I move to Dubai. And now, for my first international vacation, when most of my colleagues are going to tourist-friendly areas like Greece, Egypt, Turkey, and even Thailand, I go to freakin’ Bangladesh.
Our adventure began officially at 8 a.m. Monday morning (September 29th). A private cab took us to the Sharjah International Airport, in the neighboring emirate of Sharjah (just a few kilometers away from our apartment building), for our flight to Dhaka. As this was my first flight out of a non-U.S. airport, the attention to security (or relative lack thereof) was kind of surprising. Asha actually got through the first security gate (into the terminal) with a giant Swiss Army Knife in her pocket, which she showed to the guard and asked if it was okay for her to take with her. He said sure (the second guard, at the second security gate which lead to our particular gate, did confiscate it, but only after Asha had again volunteered that she had it on her person). I set off the metal detector, and the guard did sort of a cursory sweep of my person with the hand-held detector, then let me through. None of this silly x-raying of our shoes as we walk through barefoot. The guards threw casual glances at the x-ray machine as our luggage went through, more engaged in the jovial conversation they were sharing than in meticulous scrutinizing. Kinda interesting.
When we got through security, the immigration control agent stamped our passports with exit visas from the UAE. I guess a person is kind of in no man's land at a point like that. A man without a country. Although I guess the issuing country (i.e. the U.S., for my passport) would still be valid, though no flights from that airport flew to any of our native countries. But I digress.
We arrived in a large duty-free area, but instead of buying anything (as we had a good three-plus hours until our flight left), we headed to the food court, which, to our surprise, was not only open, but was also permitting patrons to eat their purchases right there in the food court. If the importance of this moment escapes you, it’s probably because you haven’t been reading my other entries (go back and read them!). Short version: it’s still the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and eating in public during daylight hours is illegal. Apparently the airport has their own regulations once you get past security. It may have only been nine in the morning, but let me tell you, that McDonald’s burger tasted darned good.
Fast-forward a few hours (and another burger… hey, I was hungry, and Lord knows we had no idea when the next meal we would eat would be (note: it ended up being at about ten p.m., Dhaka time), and we were in the departure lounge by our gate. Asha bought some Smirnoff at the duty free area for use in Bangladesh (because, again, we had no idea how long it’d be or how easy it’d be to get some sort of alcohol in Bangladesh… another Muslim country, still during Ramadan, and much less tourist-friendly than the UAE). I watched the baggage while the girls went to the restroom. Coming back, Rebecca started singing the ‘one of these things is not like the other’ song from Sesame Street to Asha. And she was right. The three of us were the only non-Bengalis waiting for our flight. In fact, we were the only people whose ancestry was not from the non-Indian subcontinent that we saw for days. We did meet a guy named Rashid in the lounge, though, who was of Bengali ancestry but who was raised in Canada and now lived and worked in Dubai. He gave us some tips on Bangladesh, some that encouraged us, some that made us wonder more and more what the heck we’d gotten ourselves into. He would be staying with a friend of his in Dhaka for the week. We swapped phone numbers, and he told us to call him if we needed anything.
The plane was about forty-five minutes late arriving, and there wasn’t any announcement (at least, not one that we could hear, or in a language we could understand) regarding the reason for its tardiness. Realizing that we had gotten a cheap flight and that we were going to freaking Bangladesh, we joked that they were busy building the plane. The whole trip was full of these ‘what-are-we-getting-ourselves-into, laugh-to-maintain-our-sanity’ moments. At last, the plane did arrive, and we left on an Airbus A320. We flew over the Arabian/Persian Gulf, Iran, Pakistan, and India before finally arriving in Bangladesh. Shortly before we landed, our flight attendants sprayed the cabin with insecticide. I didn’t realize that’s what it was at first, but apparently it was their attempt to abide by the health regulations of Sharjah (out of which Air Arabia is based) in staving off the spread of disease carrying bugs (we’ll see how successful those efforts were on the return trip on Day 6… stay tuned!).
It was dusk when our plane landed in Dhaka. One thing I noticed as we flew over was the relative darkness of the city, the lack of lights below, like most metropolis’s I had flown over or seen photographs of. A few streetlights, a lighted building or two, and a good chunk of headlights. It reminded me of Peter Pan’s Flight at Disney World, when the ride takes you over turn-of-the-century (that is, last century) London at night: the scene was dominated by those little sets of headlights rolling through the streets.
Finally we arrived at the gate and disembarked. Even in the terminal, there were no other westerners. ‘Welcome to Bangladesh’, a giant overhead sign greeted us. Indeed. We went to the passport control counter and were asked by the agent for our visas. We told him we didn’t have them, that we figured we could get them there, etc. etc. etc. Well, we were right. We were directed to go over to the currency exchange booth and pay fifty U.S. Dollars, returning to the passport control counter with a receipt. We did so, and got a fifteen-day visit visa stamp in our passport. Easy peasy.
After changing our money to Takas and searching unsuccessfully for some food or tourist information, we headed toward the airport exit. We met up with Rashid again at baggage claim, and he hooked us up with a driver who took us to the hotel where our friend Jorge was staying. And when we left the airport, that’s when Bangladesh really hit us.
There were armed guards with helmets and rifles slung over their shoulders making their rounds through the airport, who, like most people in the country that we encountered, would return any smile we gave with an even bigger one of their own. Kind of an unnerving sight, until they smiled at you. Several of them were holding back the mob of impoverished onlookers as cars and taxis left the airport. There was an iron-barred fence that enclosed the vehicle cue, and in each gap between bars, faces peered out at us, the unwashed masses come to see what sort of people were arriving at the airport today. The things you do for entertainment when you don’t have the technological trappings and economic prosperity of our Western world, I suppose. It kind of felt like we were on display, those dozens of eyes on us, taking in the sight of these light-skinned foreigners. Little did we know that this would prove to be a recurring theme throughout our journeys.
We got into a van with our luggage and a driver who spoke virtually no English. We spoke no Bengali, so it made for a fun match. Luckily, Rashid’s friend who hooked us up with the ride gave the driver instructions before we left, so we got to the hotel alright. The first thing I noticed when I got in the car (other than the people cramming themselves in to see the airport arrival festivities) was that the steering wheel was on the right side of the car. “Hey!” I observed. “They drive on the wrong side of the road here!” My comment was meant to be facetiously ethnocentric, but I had no idea how prophetic my words would prove, especially in the days to come.
After a van ride filled with traffic lights that weren’t working, long lines of street lamps that were broken or unlit, clogged intersections (where buses and rickshaws drove side by side), and several dark alley roadways, we arrived at our ‘hotel’. The Hotel Zakaria seemed kinda seedy, but that was exacerbated by the facts that a) this was Bangladesh, where everything is dirty and seedy by Western standards, and b) there wasn’t a whole lot of light in the lobby, the hallways, the stairwell, the restaurant, or the road outside. Ultimately, it was a nice enough place, a place to eat (where I almost cracked a molar on a piece of bone hidden inside a bite-sized morsel of ridiculously spicy chicken), sleep (once we got rid of the rat poop that was on Asha’s bedsheets), refresh ourselves (by brushing our teeth using bottled water), take photographs (like the plant that was growing in a bathtub in the hallway outside our room, or the giant cockroach in the stairwell that Jorge took up with immediately), and ride the elevator (that had no door, so we could actually touch the wall of the elevator shaft as we ascended… who needs fingers, anyway). We had dinner, explored a little, relaxed and chatted in our room, and then retired to bed. The driver that our hotel manager had secured to take us to Cox’s Bazar the next day would be arriving at 8 a.m., so we had to sleep fast. And sleep we did.
Our adventure began officially at 8 a.m. Monday morning (September 29th). A private cab took us to the Sharjah International Airport, in the neighboring emirate of Sharjah (just a few kilometers away from our apartment building), for our flight to Dhaka. As this was my first flight out of a non-U.S. airport, the attention to security (or relative lack thereof) was kind of surprising. Asha actually got through the first security gate (into the terminal) with a giant Swiss Army Knife in her pocket, which she showed to the guard and asked if it was okay for her to take with her. He said sure (the second guard, at the second security gate which lead to our particular gate, did confiscate it, but only after Asha had again volunteered that she had it on her person). I set off the metal detector, and the guard did sort of a cursory sweep of my person with the hand-held detector, then let me through. None of this silly x-raying of our shoes as we walk through barefoot. The guards threw casual glances at the x-ray machine as our luggage went through, more engaged in the jovial conversation they were sharing than in meticulous scrutinizing. Kinda interesting.
When we got through security, the immigration control agent stamped our passports with exit visas from the UAE. I guess a person is kind of in no man's land at a point like that. A man without a country. Although I guess the issuing country (i.e. the U.S., for my passport) would still be valid, though no flights from that airport flew to any of our native countries. But I digress.
We arrived in a large duty-free area, but instead of buying anything (as we had a good three-plus hours until our flight left), we headed to the food court, which, to our surprise, was not only open, but was also permitting patrons to eat their purchases right there in the food court. If the importance of this moment escapes you, it’s probably because you haven’t been reading my other entries (go back and read them!). Short version: it’s still the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and eating in public during daylight hours is illegal. Apparently the airport has their own regulations once you get past security. It may have only been nine in the morning, but let me tell you, that McDonald’s burger tasted darned good.
Fast-forward a few hours (and another burger… hey, I was hungry, and Lord knows we had no idea when the next meal we would eat would be (note: it ended up being at about ten p.m., Dhaka time), and we were in the departure lounge by our gate. Asha bought some Smirnoff at the duty free area for use in Bangladesh (because, again, we had no idea how long it’d be or how easy it’d be to get some sort of alcohol in Bangladesh… another Muslim country, still during Ramadan, and much less tourist-friendly than the UAE). I watched the baggage while the girls went to the restroom. Coming back, Rebecca started singing the ‘one of these things is not like the other’ song from Sesame Street to Asha. And she was right. The three of us were the only non-Bengalis waiting for our flight. In fact, we were the only people whose ancestry was not from the non-Indian subcontinent that we saw for days. We did meet a guy named Rashid in the lounge, though, who was of Bengali ancestry but who was raised in Canada and now lived and worked in Dubai. He gave us some tips on Bangladesh, some that encouraged us, some that made us wonder more and more what the heck we’d gotten ourselves into. He would be staying with a friend of his in Dhaka for the week. We swapped phone numbers, and he told us to call him if we needed anything.
The plane was about forty-five minutes late arriving, and there wasn’t any announcement (at least, not one that we could hear, or in a language we could understand) regarding the reason for its tardiness. Realizing that we had gotten a cheap flight and that we were going to freaking Bangladesh, we joked that they were busy building the plane. The whole trip was full of these ‘what-are-we-getting-ourselves-into, laugh-to-maintain-our-sanity’ moments. At last, the plane did arrive, and we left on an Airbus A320. We flew over the Arabian/Persian Gulf, Iran, Pakistan, and India before finally arriving in Bangladesh. Shortly before we landed, our flight attendants sprayed the cabin with insecticide. I didn’t realize that’s what it was at first, but apparently it was their attempt to abide by the health regulations of Sharjah (out of which Air Arabia is based) in staving off the spread of disease carrying bugs (we’ll see how successful those efforts were on the return trip on Day 6… stay tuned!).
It was dusk when our plane landed in Dhaka. One thing I noticed as we flew over was the relative darkness of the city, the lack of lights below, like most metropolis’s I had flown over or seen photographs of. A few streetlights, a lighted building or two, and a good chunk of headlights. It reminded me of Peter Pan’s Flight at Disney World, when the ride takes you over turn-of-the-century (that is, last century) London at night: the scene was dominated by those little sets of headlights rolling through the streets.
Finally we arrived at the gate and disembarked. Even in the terminal, there were no other westerners. ‘Welcome to Bangladesh’, a giant overhead sign greeted us. Indeed. We went to the passport control counter and were asked by the agent for our visas. We told him we didn’t have them, that we figured we could get them there, etc. etc. etc. Well, we were right. We were directed to go over to the currency exchange booth and pay fifty U.S. Dollars, returning to the passport control counter with a receipt. We did so, and got a fifteen-day visit visa stamp in our passport. Easy peasy.
After changing our money to Takas and searching unsuccessfully for some food or tourist information, we headed toward the airport exit. We met up with Rashid again at baggage claim, and he hooked us up with a driver who took us to the hotel where our friend Jorge was staying. And when we left the airport, that’s when Bangladesh really hit us.
There were armed guards with helmets and rifles slung over their shoulders making their rounds through the airport, who, like most people in the country that we encountered, would return any smile we gave with an even bigger one of their own. Kind of an unnerving sight, until they smiled at you. Several of them were holding back the mob of impoverished onlookers as cars and taxis left the airport. There was an iron-barred fence that enclosed the vehicle cue, and in each gap between bars, faces peered out at us, the unwashed masses come to see what sort of people were arriving at the airport today. The things you do for entertainment when you don’t have the technological trappings and economic prosperity of our Western world, I suppose. It kind of felt like we were on display, those dozens of eyes on us, taking in the sight of these light-skinned foreigners. Little did we know that this would prove to be a recurring theme throughout our journeys.
We got into a van with our luggage and a driver who spoke virtually no English. We spoke no Bengali, so it made for a fun match. Luckily, Rashid’s friend who hooked us up with the ride gave the driver instructions before we left, so we got to the hotel alright. The first thing I noticed when I got in the car (other than the people cramming themselves in to see the airport arrival festivities) was that the steering wheel was on the right side of the car. “Hey!” I observed. “They drive on the wrong side of the road here!” My comment was meant to be facetiously ethnocentric, but I had no idea how prophetic my words would prove, especially in the days to come.
After a van ride filled with traffic lights that weren’t working, long lines of street lamps that were broken or unlit, clogged intersections (where buses and rickshaws drove side by side), and several dark alley roadways, we arrived at our ‘hotel’. The Hotel Zakaria seemed kinda seedy, but that was exacerbated by the facts that a) this was Bangladesh, where everything is dirty and seedy by Western standards, and b) there wasn’t a whole lot of light in the lobby, the hallways, the stairwell, the restaurant, or the road outside. Ultimately, it was a nice enough place, a place to eat (where I almost cracked a molar on a piece of bone hidden inside a bite-sized morsel of ridiculously spicy chicken), sleep (once we got rid of the rat poop that was on Asha’s bedsheets), refresh ourselves (by brushing our teeth using bottled water), take photographs (like the plant that was growing in a bathtub in the hallway outside our room, or the giant cockroach in the stairwell that Jorge took up with immediately), and ride the elevator (that had no door, so we could actually touch the wall of the elevator shaft as we ascended… who needs fingers, anyway). We had dinner, explored a little, relaxed and chatted in our room, and then retired to bed. The driver that our hotel manager had secured to take us to Cox’s Bazar the next day would be arriving at 8 a.m., so we had to sleep fast. And sleep we did.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Bangladesh - Prelude to Adventure
I’ve now technically been to eight countries. I was born, and lived for most of my life, in the United States (1); I took a cruise in the western Caribbean in June 2003, spending a day each in Haiti (2), Jamaica (3), the Cayman Islands (4), and Mexico (5); I moved to the United Arab Emirates (6) in August 2008; and I spent a few hours in Oman (7) in September on my visa run across the border (read the previous blog entry for more on that little trip). My eighth country, though, was my first real international “vacation”, the first time I spent more than a day in a country that I wasn’t calling “home”. And boy did I pick a doozy: Bangladesh.
Our travel agent actually asked us, point blank, why we would want to go to Bangladesh. Apparently it’s not a popular tourist destination. Even among my extremely well-traveled colleagues, no one had gone to Bangladesh. But we were going.
Let me back up a bit. I wrote in a previous entry about the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. I wrote about how there was a distinct possibility that the Eid holiday would be extended from the original four-day weekend to a five-, six- or nine-day holiday. I also wrote about how, if the holiday were extended, I would go to Istanbul for four nights, and if it were not, I would go to Nepal. Well, by the time the Dubai Ministry of Education finally decided to extend the holiday, all of those packages were already snapped up. Some of my colleagues and I went to travel agents, scoured the internet, and phoned airlines to find out what was left that we could afford with our single paycheck we’ve received thus far. The answer: not much. Which was disappointing, but not devastating. There were plenty more holidays coming up, and I didn’t have much to spend on a trip yet anyway. I was kind of resigned to spending the week in town, perhaps going on a short trip or two to Abu Dhabi or Oman, or perhaps on an off-road camping trip in one of the neighboring Emirates. There was a lot of Dubai yet to be explored as well, and I had just started work on a new story idea that was really starting to take hold. Then, as things often seem to do when you become content with what you have, opportunity presented itself.
Maybe ‘reared it’s ugly head’ would be a more apt description. Two groups of friends/colleagues found two different trips available. One was to Bangkok, Thailand. The other was to Dhaka, Bangladesh. Actually, I didn’t know it was to Dhaka at first. I didn’t really know the capital of Bangladesh. It’s kind of one of those things where you’re like “oh yeah, I knew that” when you find something out, like dredging the deep recesses of your mind for some bit of information that you had acquired, but really didn’t properly catalogue it for recall. Incidentally, both were on my list of places to travel to someday. Bangkok, and Thailand in general, was a significant one (along with about fifty other countries). Bangladesh wasn’t. In fact, I really didn’t know much about what there was in Bangladesh. But incidentally, that was what won me over to going there instead of the ultimately preferred Thailand.
There were two main reasons why I chose Bangladesh over Thailand for this trip: lack of funds and lack of time to plan. Thailand has many ancient historical sites, touristy destinations, and other crap that I specifically want to see. Bangladesh has… well, I really didn’t know. So there were no expectations, no plans to make, no things that I just had to see/do/experience. The flight to Bangladesh was about 700 dirhams (~190 US$) less than the one to Thailand, and the lure of going somewhere that virtually no one had gone to was kind of exciting. So Bangladesh won. Thailand will be there, but the chance that I would find another opportunity to go to Bangladesh, especially with three other willing adventurers, was slim.
The idea of going to Bangladesh was the brainchild of Jorge, a Spanish (both in subject area and in nationality) teacher at our school who has taught in Thailand and traveled to 31 countries, including Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, and Iran. For him, the trip was also born out of necessity, as the trip to Athens he was planning on taking ended up being more expensive than he was planning on. He had a Bengali kid or two in one of his classes who put the bug in his ear for doing something original by going to Bangladesh, and when I caught wind from a couple of my colleagues (who will be introduced momentarily), I thought, ‘hey, why not?’ Hook. Line. Sinker.
My other two fellow adventurers were both Canadians. Asha, a PE teacher, had traveled to some rough countries before, including Uganda, Ecuador, Kenya, Tanzania, and Thailand. Rebecca, who teaches science, had also traveled to 31 countries, including South Africa, Malaysia, and Singapore. All three of my companions had roughed it in much of their travels, staying in hostels and guest houses in Africa and South America, backpacking for four months across Europe, and bicycling from Bangkok to Singapore. An adventurous bunch. But they had never seen anything like Bangladesh.
The adventures began before we even left the country. Just deciding to go to Bangladesh (figuring out where we were going to go, the length of our vacation changing at the last second, the frantic search for flights, the ‘sure, why not?’ decision to go to Bangladesh of all places) set the roll-with-the-punches, fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants tone that would become par for the course during the trip. Jorge had bought his ticket before Asha, Rebecca and I did, and he left on Sunday (September 28). The three of us who were to follow him bought our tickets on Saturday (September 27) under the pretense given to us by the travel agent (who asked us why we wanted to go to Bangladesh) that we could get our visas at the airport upon arrival. He said that his information said that the country ‘strongly advised’ visitors to get visas prior to arrival, but that they are available at the airport. So we bought our tickets and decided to go to the Bangladesh Consulate in Dubai the next day (Ravi, the travel agent, called the main consulate in Abu Dhabi to confirm that his information about visas was correct, and he also found that we could get our visas beforehand, with same-day service (if we arrived at ten a.m., we could have the visas by one p.m.)). We left early, which really didn’t help us get to the consulate on time. No one seemed to know where it was. Lots of people thought they knew where it was, but unfortunately there were about three or four conflicting accounts as to where it was. Eventually we found it… and realized why no one knew where it was: it was tiny. It was really just a crappy two-story house that the Bangladeshi government decided to convert into their consulate. And I use the term ‘convert’ loosely. The second-story waiting area was a living room full of china cabinets, furniture from the seventies, packing boxes, and all sorts of other knick-knacks that looked like they belonged in the attic of some pack-rat grandmother.
After waiting for a while, the Assistant Consul (actually I don’t know what his title was, but he was the only guy other than the Consul General who had an office, so I’m deeming him as such for now) heard our inquiry and gave us some forms to fill out. Halfway through, we realized that we didn’t have a lot of these things that the form was asking us for. A sponsor letter? An invitation from the government of Bangladesh? Seriously? We asked the guy about it, and he said that we needed sponsor letters from our employers. Oh, and no, you can’t get same-day service. In fact, it’s eleven o’clock, our office is closed. What time did you open? Nine. Seriously? A two-hour workday? No wonder no one ever gets to visit your country. And no, you can’t get visas at the airport. You were told wrong. Wait, no, you can, Mr. Burns. Americans okay. No one else can get visas at airport. Crap. But the guy’s story changed several times while we were talking to him. Either he didn’t understand what we were asking at first, or he just didn’t know what the heck he was talking about. I kinda figured it to be a mixture of the two. So, no visas were to be gotten before we left, and in theory there weren’t going to be any available at the airport. Jorge’s flight left in about an hour for Dhaka. Maybe a quick turnaround flight. Maybe a reprise of Tom Hanks’s role in The Terminal. Or maybe, just maybe, we’d all manage to get into the country.
We left the consulate to grab some ‘sponsor letters’ from our school, just in case those might help our case with immigration officials in the Dhaka airport. On the way out of the building, though, a poster in the stairwell caught my eye. “Visit Bangladesh,” it said, “Before the Tourists Come.” Wow. Well, we were sure gonna try. And we wouldn’t be disappointed...
Our travel agent actually asked us, point blank, why we would want to go to Bangladesh. Apparently it’s not a popular tourist destination. Even among my extremely well-traveled colleagues, no one had gone to Bangladesh. But we were going.
Let me back up a bit. I wrote in a previous entry about the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. I wrote about how there was a distinct possibility that the Eid holiday would be extended from the original four-day weekend to a five-, six- or nine-day holiday. I also wrote about how, if the holiday were extended, I would go to Istanbul for four nights, and if it were not, I would go to Nepal. Well, by the time the Dubai Ministry of Education finally decided to extend the holiday, all of those packages were already snapped up. Some of my colleagues and I went to travel agents, scoured the internet, and phoned airlines to find out what was left that we could afford with our single paycheck we’ve received thus far. The answer: not much. Which was disappointing, but not devastating. There were plenty more holidays coming up, and I didn’t have much to spend on a trip yet anyway. I was kind of resigned to spending the week in town, perhaps going on a short trip or two to Abu Dhabi or Oman, or perhaps on an off-road camping trip in one of the neighboring Emirates. There was a lot of Dubai yet to be explored as well, and I had just started work on a new story idea that was really starting to take hold. Then, as things often seem to do when you become content with what you have, opportunity presented itself.
Maybe ‘reared it’s ugly head’ would be a more apt description. Two groups of friends/colleagues found two different trips available. One was to Bangkok, Thailand. The other was to Dhaka, Bangladesh. Actually, I didn’t know it was to Dhaka at first. I didn’t really know the capital of Bangladesh. It’s kind of one of those things where you’re like “oh yeah, I knew that” when you find something out, like dredging the deep recesses of your mind for some bit of information that you had acquired, but really didn’t properly catalogue it for recall. Incidentally, both were on my list of places to travel to someday. Bangkok, and Thailand in general, was a significant one (along with about fifty other countries). Bangladesh wasn’t. In fact, I really didn’t know much about what there was in Bangladesh. But incidentally, that was what won me over to going there instead of the ultimately preferred Thailand.
There were two main reasons why I chose Bangladesh over Thailand for this trip: lack of funds and lack of time to plan. Thailand has many ancient historical sites, touristy destinations, and other crap that I specifically want to see. Bangladesh has… well, I really didn’t know. So there were no expectations, no plans to make, no things that I just had to see/do/experience. The flight to Bangladesh was about 700 dirhams (~190 US$) less than the one to Thailand, and the lure of going somewhere that virtually no one had gone to was kind of exciting. So Bangladesh won. Thailand will be there, but the chance that I would find another opportunity to go to Bangladesh, especially with three other willing adventurers, was slim.
The idea of going to Bangladesh was the brainchild of Jorge, a Spanish (both in subject area and in nationality) teacher at our school who has taught in Thailand and traveled to 31 countries, including Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, and Iran. For him, the trip was also born out of necessity, as the trip to Athens he was planning on taking ended up being more expensive than he was planning on. He had a Bengali kid or two in one of his classes who put the bug in his ear for doing something original by going to Bangladesh, and when I caught wind from a couple of my colleagues (who will be introduced momentarily), I thought, ‘hey, why not?’ Hook. Line. Sinker.
My other two fellow adventurers were both Canadians. Asha, a PE teacher, had traveled to some rough countries before, including Uganda, Ecuador, Kenya, Tanzania, and Thailand. Rebecca, who teaches science, had also traveled to 31 countries, including South Africa, Malaysia, and Singapore. All three of my companions had roughed it in much of their travels, staying in hostels and guest houses in Africa and South America, backpacking for four months across Europe, and bicycling from Bangkok to Singapore. An adventurous bunch. But they had never seen anything like Bangladesh.
The adventures began before we even left the country. Just deciding to go to Bangladesh (figuring out where we were going to go, the length of our vacation changing at the last second, the frantic search for flights, the ‘sure, why not?’ decision to go to Bangladesh of all places) set the roll-with-the-punches, fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants tone that would become par for the course during the trip. Jorge had bought his ticket before Asha, Rebecca and I did, and he left on Sunday (September 28). The three of us who were to follow him bought our tickets on Saturday (September 27) under the pretense given to us by the travel agent (who asked us why we wanted to go to Bangladesh) that we could get our visas at the airport upon arrival. He said that his information said that the country ‘strongly advised’ visitors to get visas prior to arrival, but that they are available at the airport. So we bought our tickets and decided to go to the Bangladesh Consulate in Dubai the next day (Ravi, the travel agent, called the main consulate in Abu Dhabi to confirm that his information about visas was correct, and he also found that we could get our visas beforehand, with same-day service (if we arrived at ten a.m., we could have the visas by one p.m.)). We left early, which really didn’t help us get to the consulate on time. No one seemed to know where it was. Lots of people thought they knew where it was, but unfortunately there were about three or four conflicting accounts as to where it was. Eventually we found it… and realized why no one knew where it was: it was tiny. It was really just a crappy two-story house that the Bangladeshi government decided to convert into their consulate. And I use the term ‘convert’ loosely. The second-story waiting area was a living room full of china cabinets, furniture from the seventies, packing boxes, and all sorts of other knick-knacks that looked like they belonged in the attic of some pack-rat grandmother.
After waiting for a while, the Assistant Consul (actually I don’t know what his title was, but he was the only guy other than the Consul General who had an office, so I’m deeming him as such for now) heard our inquiry and gave us some forms to fill out. Halfway through, we realized that we didn’t have a lot of these things that the form was asking us for. A sponsor letter? An invitation from the government of Bangladesh? Seriously? We asked the guy about it, and he said that we needed sponsor letters from our employers. Oh, and no, you can’t get same-day service. In fact, it’s eleven o’clock, our office is closed. What time did you open? Nine. Seriously? A two-hour workday? No wonder no one ever gets to visit your country. And no, you can’t get visas at the airport. You were told wrong. Wait, no, you can, Mr. Burns. Americans okay. No one else can get visas at airport. Crap. But the guy’s story changed several times while we were talking to him. Either he didn’t understand what we were asking at first, or he just didn’t know what the heck he was talking about. I kinda figured it to be a mixture of the two. So, no visas were to be gotten before we left, and in theory there weren’t going to be any available at the airport. Jorge’s flight left in about an hour for Dhaka. Maybe a quick turnaround flight. Maybe a reprise of Tom Hanks’s role in The Terminal. Or maybe, just maybe, we’d all manage to get into the country.
We left the consulate to grab some ‘sponsor letters’ from our school, just in case those might help our case with immigration officials in the Dhaka airport. On the way out of the building, though, a poster in the stairwell caught my eye. “Visit Bangladesh,” it said, “Before the Tourists Come.” Wow. Well, we were sure gonna try. And we wouldn’t be disappointed...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
