The Eye of the Storm

Last weekend, in an attempt to understand the Lebanese 'situation' better and to see my aunt and cousins in Beirut I popped across the border on thursday night. A day or so of eating and relaxing in the mountains and I was keen to get on with the task in hand. Marwan, my cousin, was game to go out on the Saturday night and, wanting to do some research before hand we struck off for Solidaire - the newly rebuilt centre - around seven thirty.

Driving into the centre of town was like entering a war zone. On every corner, patrolling every pavement and rolling the streets in laden, khaki transports were the red berets of Lebanon's armed forces. For the first time I felt a twinge of nerves, not for any tangible reason other than the 'precautionary' weight of men carrying guns and smoking cigarettes. In the two months I have been absent the Opposition, camped just off Martyr's Square, have redoubled their efforts and now number around 1500. As everyone said, "there are two teams in this situation" and as Marwan added, "as we say in Lebanon, they want to break each others bones." This desire to break each other is not physical, but the opposition awaits its fate and the once thriving downtown area awaits its sentence. Its customers have all moved on to Gemayzeh and Monot, where it is now nearly impossible to get a table in one of the crammed bars on a Saturday night.

Lawrence, the manager of a Cafe Supreme, in Solidaire, just off the Place De L'Etoile, was working late because his one hundred and fifty seat restaurant was busy. There were seven customers, including Marwan and I. All the restaurants around us were empty excluding one which had a table of twelve. Ali, the manager of this second restaurant, once had a staff of twenty four but tonight he only had three on for the night. A few days ago he had been alone and he was not rushed off his feet. Lawrence was smoking heavily throughout. He thanked us after we sat down as another table arrived just after us, perhaps we had, as Lawrence suggested, drawn them in. It seemed more likely that there were few other options. Down the road, Akiki Cigars, a memory of happier times for all, was one of the only shops still open at eight thirty on a Saturday night. The manager told us he was open for the sake of being so. By turning on the lights and coming into work he was validating the existence of his shop but custom was down. Custom is down for everyone in Lebanon and the emptiness of Beirut's once pounding heart is testament to the state of uncertainty under which most Beiruti's conduct their daily business.

There were plenty of questions to ask but the answers that were causing Lawrence to smoke, Ali to book a ticket for Australia - for the time being one way only - and Marwan's friends to joke later in a restaurant that English students from Damascus enjoy going to Beirut while the Lebanese just want to leave were all economic. Ali summed it up thus: "We are all Lebanese, we are all the same. Give me one hundred dollars and I will go to a nightclub. Now, there isn't a hundred dollars to give. Anyone who does not want peace is not Lebanese, of that I am sure."



A few yards up from the tumble-weed silence of Central Downtown, in Gemayzeh, the red berets were bobbing their way through the crowds, road-blocks were being set up and people were pouring out onto the streets as on any other Saturday night. The Opposition encampment, a stone's throw from the packed Monot and Gemayzeh districts and the desolate Solidaire was patrolled, or should I say policed, by Hezbollah members. The army had advised Marwan and I to head over to the Christian section of the demonstration as my nationality might cause problems on the Hezbollah side. General Aoun's Christian movement was also guarded by Hezbollah security and so it was to them that we found ourselves talking. They looked like normal chaps, no headbands, or flags, or paraphernalia. Most wore jeans and comfortable jumpers while one had his hair waxed up and a black, fur-hooded jacket that made him look ready to join the dancing hoards up the road. They wanted representation, and they were prepared to stay as they were until that happened. Once the Government had granted the opposition its appropriate share of seats in parliament they wanted an election. They said they represented over half of the population, and it seemed, even if that was not true, that an election was an inevitable compromise for both sides to settle their positions and ratify or nullify their demands.

The young men I spoke to were also keen to emphasise that Hezbollah, although a militia, had never borne arms against the people of Lebanon. The implication was obviously that they did not intend to but I do not remember them saying it explicitly and the overcoated, frowning and obviously senior guard who arrived with a radio in hand, seemed to suggest something else. If it was his duty to look surly then certainly he was aiming for a healthy tip, and deserving of one too. I asked Marwan if he thought it wise to question their peaceful intentions but by then it was time to leave. Certainly the party line that we were being fed, was one of peace, of representation, of truth, but always in Lebanon their is a sub-text. It would be a dangerous precedent for rightful representation in parliament to be seized by a militia in a leading Middle Eastern democracy, no matter how great the popular support for such a move.

The involvement of America, who it is said visited the Prime Minister, Fouad Seniora, shortly after he conceded to the opposition demands and in so doing caused him to change his mind, and that of Iran, who fund the military activity of the Shia Muslim (like Iran) Hezbollah, has lead to accusations of a proxy war being fought on Lebanese soil. Either way, in a country so weary of war, so ready for peace and yet in such a state of uncertainty turbulence is never far away. The army and police presence, the bomb detectors in car parks and the bag searches at the gates of downtown all connive to insecurity. Lawrence shrugs his shoulders when I ask is he feels any danger. "Look at the police, its the opposite, there is so much security. But all the solutions are political and the problems are economic." There is no point asking him what will happen if things don't improve. He had already listed ten restaurants that had closed entirely or were only working afternoons before I had to stop him. If there is no settlement, there will be no work, and no money and many will follow Ali to an easier life in another part of the world. Since most of the citizens of Lebanon live outside of its borders, there are plenty of options, and with more leaving all the time the opposition and the Government are draining the country of its most valuable asset, its people. Into the black whole of Solidaire they disappear one by one and if an election is too long coming there will be few left to vote.

Dahab, Nuweiba and Home

A quick google search for “Dahab, Egypt”, produces a mixed haul of watersports, hippy and package dive holiday results. The entry for hippy.com suggests that it would be easy to find “recreational drugs” in Dahab and one reviewer scores it three out of five stars for hippy friendliness. The Watersports pages are dominated by tales of the Blue Hole and the three hundred days a year of force four wind or above whilst the package holiday market stresses the Bedouin origins of the Sinai peninsula and the opportunities for camel driven desert travel. In fact the town is as its google search suggests, originally a Bedouin settlement resulting from its rich fishing on the reef, it became a hippy colony in the seventies and has since become the reserve of the committed package Watersports enthusiasts from the West. The reef, the desert and the drifting, sun-washed way of life holds its appeal for all three and now Dahab is a rich combination of them all; a tourist resort run by the Bedouin, founded by the hippies and worshipped by the sportsmen. Such a contradictory set premis has created an attractive atmosphere, distant from the five star hotels and Hard Rock Café chic of Sharm El-Sheikh it boasts a strong backpacker culture, with a heady array of waterfront restaurants, many made up of swathes of cushioned seating on the floor and centred around large fires burning long into the evening while wafting reggae from the rafters over a nubile mixture of gap year travellers, seasoned divers and, as it turned out, escapist Arabists from Damascus.

“How long are you planning on staying?” asked the receptionist in my chosen hotel, The Sphinx.
“A night, maybe two.”
“Ah, yes, we have plenty of guests who have arrived and never left.”
This ominous thought still filtering its way through the fug of a ten hour bus journey, I wended my way up the warm, open staircase to my home for the night through the shafting sunlight of the open air internet café and down a short corridor which continued onto the roof and down the beach, two hundred yards closer to the large blue mass I had recently discovered to be the sea.

Two days of sleeping, eating, snorkelling and sunning in the ‘Funny Mummy’ restaurant, a classy themed affair that served a mean ‘Funny Mummy Breakfast’ and was spitting distance from the most of the required amenities for a windless, sunny afternoon by the sea. On the second night I wandered into town to find the other Durham Arabists from Damascus who I had bumped into on the beach during their own week off and, having slept through their invitation to the pub, was fortunate to run into Mario. Mario was a German who, having left his job around three years ago, was in the process of cycling the materialism of a previous life out of his system. He thought that should take about another eight or nine months, but in the meantime we contented ourselves with indulging in a few frames of pool and discussing the joys and freedoms of cycling, the desert and owning only one pair of trousers. He had just arrived having pushed his way up through the Sahara from Khartoum, following – and drinking – from the Nile all the way into Egypt where the Egyptian authorities, deeming single travellers out of convoy a security threat, forced him to travel up to Sinai on a bus. It was evident that he had found what he was looking for in the saddle, “if I wasn’t happy I wouldn’t still be cycling, I thought I was leaving for five months and I’ve been going three years. I had money before, but now I’m so rich, in time, in freedom and in experience.” The Sudanese of the desert had impressed him enormously with their kindness, often welcoming him into their homes without even asking his name. After several frames of pool and several more beers (of which it turned out neither Mario nor I had been particularly rich in recently) we stumbled off to the Funny Mummy and continued swapping travellers tales well after the rest of the customers had slunk back off to their rooms and the staff were looking keen to do the same. Once the waiter had established that Mario didn’t want to listen to any more “Habibi music” and found some more acceptable Tracy Chapman and we had polished off our drinks it was time to prepare for what would turn out to be an unnecessarily early start by taking ourselves off to our respective beds.



The hotel bus up the coast to Nuweiba left ten minutes late or so and soon deposited us at the port amidst a sea of already travel weary Arabs, asleep in their kaffiyah scarves on their sacks of luggage in the road and on the traffic island. The Lonely Planet referred to the ferry services as ‘reliable’ and so it was with some surprise that we received the news of a nine hour delay and were recommended to spend the day on the beach. A short hop in a taxi deposited us on a magnificent and deserted beach with stunning views of the Sinai Mountains behind, the rusty red Saudi Arabian coastline soaring up from the Gulf of Aqaba twelve kilometres away and a Bedouin family lunching under a palm tree slightly further up the sand from us. We watched as they made their way over to us with a bag full of wares, mostly consisting of ‘gap-year’ style, bead necklaces and bracelets, whilst their children played in the debris of the beach and the shallows of the reef. One boy was rolling a tyre intently around in front of him while his sister, whose name was Jasmine, was fishing in the shallows, and later pulled out a baby octopus, rushing up to show us. She was a striking and dishevelled mess of about ten years old, and was wearing an electric pink jumper with billowing silky black trousers and a shock of black hair across her brow which offset against the stunning Saudi Arabian backdrop and with a tiny, yawning octopus in her hand made quite the picture. After the mixed reaction to our request to photograph the elder women who had now returned to their cars, it seemed wisest not to invite recrimination for either of us by trying, so my camera remained in hand, and her picture a only mental.



After a lovely fish supper, in an empty restaurant in town, we took a Bedu taxi back to the port and were treated to the full beauty of the desert sky at night as we sat on our bags in the back of a pick up truck, racing along the unlit desert road that flows between port and town, on one side the sea and on the other the mountains.

The café we resolved to wait in was a scrubby affair that carried the air of a place quite accustomed to travellers with a long wait ahead. Interspersed amongst the ragged selection of nargile smoking and tea drinking customers were three enormous and cracklingly loud televisions. Each belted out its own channel ranging from z-class American movies, to Arabic farce (with which we were to become well acquainted) and music videos to a captive audience of weary looking Arabs, recently risen from their luggage and apparently unphased by the delay.

At eight o’clock a guard informed me that the ferry was delayed until one in the morning and accordingly we moved to the official 'waiting room' which turned out to be a foggy hall that smelt of bleach despite showing no sign of having seen any. It was full of slightly more 'respectable' passengers than the ones in the street on their suitcases, and very bony benches. A few hours of sleep and another guard told me we could board the ferry at one thirty. Having woken everyone up and stumbled up to the checkpoint again we were informed by yet another guard that it would not sail until the morning. Back at the waiting room we asked a large and important looking Egyptian what was going on. He informed us that the ferry had not sailed because of a high sea and a strong wind. I found this rather confusing having always considered the high sea the place for sailing, and I was convinced from my day watching this elevated mass of water that there was manifestly no wind whatsoever. Finally we asked him when he thought it would leave the next day.
A chorus of voices chirped: “seven…nine…eleven…twelve.” Each seemed as eager as the next to impart their hospitality upon us by producing a figure, regardless of its accuracy, for us to digest. Time for a hotel.

Being the brave traveller that I am, it took me about ten seconds to pick out my pyjamas. Having removed my shoes and zipped my jacket a little further up against the cold and the snapping bed bugs, I clambered onto my cot.



By seven thirty I was more than ready to wake up, and parting company with the stench of the loo that had kindly accompanied me all night, asked another guard what time the ferry would leave. He was quite convincing when he suggested eleven o’clock, although half an hour later his replacement told me that we should be back by nine thirty for a ten o’clock departure. Such promise was difficult to turn down and the girls and I (Will having decided to stay in bed for an extra hour) loaded up and set off. The guard ushered us through and told us to be quick in a manner suggestive of some urgency. Things were looking good. Just inside the door of the departure gate another man told us that we should change our tickets for the fast ferry at two thirty as the slow one would not leave before five in the evening. He was quickly corrected by a colleague who, alarmingly, announced the ferry was leaving “now”. We were rushed past the ever-waiting Arabs who were now queueing luggage in hand and through passport control. Unsure if our saviour was looking for some grease for his already sweaty palm, and carrying so much kit as to have looked ludicrous in the attempt at a subtle 'backsheesh' for our guide, I mounted the most delightful and grateful smile I could and passed into the departure gate.

After a short period of sitting on a bench, the only western people (and Sarah certainly the only blonde woman) in the room a customs officer swept a group of Arabs off a bench to make way for a Saudi family. Spotting us he took control once more and marched us, conspicuously, past the poor waiting Arabs, a mixture of Egyptians, Jordanians and Palestinians, and onto a bus. Things were moving. Then we waited. Once the bus did eventually fill up the girls were glad to have avoided the groping potential of such confined quarters and so many Arab men especially since there were only three women on the bus.

When we descended to board the ferry, which was stern to the port, we were greeted by three decks brimming with yet more of these particular type of Arabs, who teemed in every corner of this port and its surroundings and carried an air of downtroddeness that was difficult not both sympathise with and be wary of. From above us they stared down. Inside the floor was already littered with cigarette butts, nutshells and bodies, many of whom had been there since two in the morning when embarkation had begun. We picked our way through the mess and the cigarette smoke until we found the ‘first class restaurant’ – the kind of first class restaurant that offered chicken or meat with rice and Coca-Cola, only. Fortunately it was clean and the aggressive colours of fake wall-flowers on the wall made a reasonable diversion from the grime of the decks.

Finally we departed at ten to two. About twenty minutes before we had spoken to Will, who was at last out of bed, and who had suggested that our ferry would not get in until eight at night. When we tried to get off we were told we could not as it was too late. When Sarah asked if there was a problem with the boat causing our delay, the officer looked at her with a shock of great offence and asked what Eric Newby might also have described as “the unanswerable question”: “do you think your life is worth more than mine?” The answer 'no but perhaps my time is' didn't seem as constructive as it did amusing. Back to the 'first class restaurant' for shelter.

A barely noticeable journey in perfect sea conditions brought us up to Aqaba in three hours. Then we stopped off shore. Apparently this mythical wind had reappeared and we would have to wait for it to be safe to enter port. Out of the window the sea barely stirred, but still we floated, awaiting the beck of Jordan. Will called to say he had just left Nuweiba on the fast ferry (which was a mere four hours delayed) and we watched an hour later as the sleek lights of the faster service snuck in to port of us and pulled alongside in the harbour. Still we floated, and the same offended officer quoted “minutes, hours or days”.

After a further half an hour we were on shore, once more ushered off with the other whities and a few Saudi’s beneath the menacing, three-tier gaze of the other passengers, arrayed on deck like crows on a telephone wire.

Reunited, and having picked up two other Damascus students we fought our way through the taxi rank, which was patrolled by a Jordanian soldier wielding a baton, and negotiated a fare. Five minutes down the road, just comfortable with what might be considered a perfect number of people in our taxi we stopped to pick up “four Egyptians.” Reluctant as we were, four soon became six and eventually, after much negotiation and unwillingness to have our luggage strapped to the roof we set off again with only four of them. Our driver was either drunk or stoned, or both and we drove the full four hundred kilometres at a tantalising eighty kilometres an hour, with at least five coffee stops, and one lunch break around three in the morning. When we arrived in Amman and were considering asking for a discount because of the extra passengers (who had paid less than us) our driver asked for more on account of the two guys we had thrown out. Reflected in this argument were the two very different attitudes to service, from two ratehr different parts of the world. Four in the morning was no time for bridging cultural divides so we bunged him the original amount and left.

Our taxis departed Amman at four fifteen and we rolled into the border with a beautiful sunrise on the horizon around five thirty. One of the drivers stopped short of the main border post to deposit some cigarettes behind a bush and before contiuing. Eventually we fell out and into Bab Touma at seven thirty in time for a shower and a nine o’clock lecture.

Cairo

Powered by a growing dose of the gold-rush syndrome (that is: realising toward the end of something that you have so much left undone) and keen to pack my last four months in Damascus with as much eastern travel as possible it was with some flippancy that I booked myself a one-way flight from Heathrow to Cairo from behind a settling pint of strongbow in a quiet, rain-swept, Lake-District pub. As I stepped onto the plane at six in the morning less than a week later, hauling my ludicrous selection of hot and cold clothes behind me, it began to dawn on me how short a period (four or five days) I had selected, for such a long distance (about eighteen hours of buses and "four egyptian hours" on a ferry). Bit late now.

The appaling start at four in the morning was (carefully) calculated to deposit me in Cairo with an afternoon of sightseeing, before a next morning at the pyramids and then an afternoon bus to the Red Sea. I had forgotten how overwhelming Middle Easterners, and certainly Egyptians, could be in the hospitality. The scene on the plane as we dropped in to land was like the awkward beginning of a prep-school french trip, with Egyptians pairing themselves off with foreigners, to show them around the city. Of course, you should always be open to such kindness and generosity, but having resolved to schlepp my way back to Syria unsupported and without resupply I found it beholden upon me to squirm for all my worth to avoid such a potentially illegal (at least under my rules) liason. Having arranged to call my neighbour once I was safely at my hotel, the name of which inevitably escaped me, and securely written his number on a napkin, I was saved when he went right in the aisle and I, left. Caught the bugger knapping.

Once established in the downtown Ramses Hostel, in Tala'at Harb, and having paid for a 'private' taxi and then waited forty five minutes for a minubus to turn up, I set off for the Khan Al Khalili (the tourist souq) around dusk. There wasn't a huge amount to see in the dark, but it was rather pleasant that most of the tourists were elsewhere, and the shopkeepers more interested in their coffees and conversation than touting lost foreigners like myself. I also decided that this was a decent moment in which to have a craic at some street portraiture. Brimming with uncertainties I loitered about until I spotted a chap in a fairly Arab looking get up (dish-dash etc) smiling at me from the corner of a shop. A second (nonchalant) pass confirmed his friendly advances and as I approached him I realised he was a shoeshiner. A perfect first target. I watched as he turned my very nice grey 'distressed' effect trainers to a strange shade of cherry and then, motivated by a desire to take his photograph, paid him handsomely for it. He returned to the default crouching position and, still clutching his fairly generous reward for the disastruous handiwork to my shoes, tried not to look ascance when I asked for a picture. By the time I had cocked one up and tried another with the flash, a crowd of small-ish children gathered round and began calling and laughing at him (us?). Keen to end his ignominious discomfort and becoming rapidly aware of my own, I left it at that, without a decent photo to show for it but the proud new owner of a pair of cherry trainers and cheeks to match.

Suleiman arrived at eight the next morning. His nephew, who managed reception at the Ramses, had assured me that for the outlandish price I was to pay him he would show me around the entire site at Giza (the pyramids) and deposit me back at the hotel for one o'clock. It was with some surprise then that we turned off the road about half a mile from a great looming triangle of rock and parked up in a square. "What's this Suleiman?" "The stables." he replied. As I stepped out of the car I was invited to choose my poison, "Horse or Camel." I recalled Frank Gardner - the BBC Security Correspondent - talking about riding around the Pyramids in the early morning during his year abroad in his autobiography Blood and Sand. Never one to be outdone I said horse and was swiftly introduced to a rather diminutive cob by the name of Mickey Mouse and my guide Ramadan.



My pony club days having ended after about two weeks at the age of six, I asked Ramadan for a bit of a refresher course, rather than accept the indignity of being led by the reigns for the next two hours (the site at Giza is 12km). It wasn't long before he decided we were ready for galloping and we struck out across the sand with poor old Mickey puffing and blowing beneath my un-jockey like weight (my un-educated guess would have put him at eight or nine hands) and by the time we reached the Sphynx his feet were dragging in the sand, and I suggested to Ramadan that perhaps we didn't need to do too much more "fast - gallop - fast" not least because my arse, like the horse it was sitting on, was about to give up the ghost. The pyramids themselves were spectacular (if a little overshadowed by my newfound joy for riding)and with a copious bag of photos, a bit of a schpiel from Ramadan about their history we put Mickey out of his misery and headed back to the stables.



Suleiman was on his fourth or fifth tea and, after a cup of the same for myself, we set back off in the direction of Cairo. He was fairly determined to take me to a perfumery and a papyrus shop and so I relented and had a lecture on the difference between scent and perfume and the various types that had made their way to popular markets (Tut-an-khamun I was assurred is now sold as CK One) and the aphrodisiac properties of 'Secret of the Desert' ("the woman make it like pyramid, here, here (nipple, nipple) and then you know where, and it make man like arab stallion. this my favourite.")

After a decent (and authentic) lunch with Suleiman I headed to the Mosque of Al-Azhar (pictured at the top), a great and traditional seat of Islamic learning, founded a thousand years ago and still stunning in its simplicity. As I walked out I met a small, older looking chap who had a sincerity about him that was vaguely arresting. Within about five minutes I found myself on a tour of the old bedui souks, far from the very tourist traps of the Khan Al Khalili, and I realised, as Fathi told me he had featured in the 1987 edition of the Lonely Planet, that I had been honeytrapped. Still his opening bid at the mosque of "no money" was a promising start, and he certainly knew all the rightplaces to take pictures of the warren of ancient Harems and Coptic Churches - strangely the Harems were all women at the top and Islamic schools at the bottom. It just shows that women, however lowly a position in society they enjoy, are never far from the Arab consciousness, indeed, traditionally, the three taboo subjects in Arab countries are women, politics and sex. I escaped from Fathi's "museum" (I believe the word is shop) without buying but it was noticeable that as he showed me back to the Mosque there were no photo opportunities and no time to talk to his neighbour. His was an impressive ruse, and judging by his guest book, he usually ended with a sale.



The evening was for walking along the Nile, according to Lonely Planet. So there I headed, snapped a few photos and then went for a stiff bloody mary in the Nile Hilton to get me through until midnight when my bus for Dahab was due to leave.

When I finally clambered onto the bus (whose seats were covered in plastic in that so Arab way) I put on a big coat and attempted to starfish my way across two seats in the least neighbourly looking fashion possible. I was rewarded by the arrival of a small Egyptian lad who chose not to sleep (and therefore could not snore) in lieu of my nemesis; the fat, scratchy Arab orc, who kept me company on the roof of a Turkish 'hotel' two summers ago. Dahab, here I come.

The Queen