No, really, this is the last post ever! As most of you know, my book All Strangers Are Kin: Adventures in Arabic and the Arab World is coming June 14, from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Throw me your email address, and I’ll deliver you a handful of essential, entertaining bulletins about the book and events surrounding it. (You can bet there’ll be some really good food.)
Ah, the year-end recap. Some silly things, some momentous things–and not just a rehash of old blog posts. Genuine new material here.
1. We got a pet.
Well, not really. But we did get Sugar Duck, a very easily anthropomorphized sugar canister from Turkey. He speaks with a lisp, and sounds sweet, but sometimes he can be a bit snippy. Peter and I are rapidly progressing toward being one of those awful couples who only talk to each other via hand puppets.
2. I made Saveur!
Well, really, the excellent restaurant The Curious Kumquat made Saveur, as #39 in the Saveur 100. It just happened to be my name at the end.
3. I got a cover story in a magazine, and I won an award.
Please indulge my career brags briefly. I was moving too fast this year to fully appreciate these things at the time. Typing it now, I feel kinda bad-ass.
Both were via New Mexico magazine, where I’m always honored to be published. The cover story was this roundup of cool hotels in my home state, in the October ’12 issue.
And the award was from the International Regional Magazine Association, for the feature I wrote in 2011 about taking the train to Las Vegas, NM [PDF].
The best awards are the ones you didn’t even know you were up for. A Macarthur is next, right?
4. I traveled alone throughout the Middle East, and I did not die.
Back in February, I was quoted in a story about how Americans were still traveling to the Middle East.
A reader felt compelled to warn me of my foolhardiness:
Hi,
I know you feel travel to the Arab nations is safe, but you need to appreciate is how fast the situation over there can change and as an American you are a symbol of hate at the moment.We had the student hiker’s capture, when the USA has plenty of Mountains to climb.
We have the Aid workers freed by the Navy Seals in Somalia; BTW I think 10 Somalia’s were killed. So sad considering the Aid workers could be doing aid work in plenty of places right here in the USA.
Please don’t promote the middle east until women in Saudi Arabia can drive and vote. Or until women can choose their own husband.
[redacted]
Er.
Anyway, “the Arab nations” (I can’t vouch for Iran or Somalia) I visited this year are safe. I even picked up hitchhikers in Abu Dhabi.
The UAE is unintentionally hilarious; Doha is delicious; Lebanon has great hiking; Morocco is full of sweet people.
Actually, everywhere is. I don’t think [redacted] appreciates this, and I feel sad for him.
5. I took up a sport.
If you consider hula hooping a sport. It’s certainly more of a workout than I usually get, a bit of a break from my couch-and-bonbons schedule. And, remarkably, it is the only physical activity I have ever been reasonably good at on first attempt.
6. I made friends in Arabic.
For all my years studying Arabic, I have never actually gotten to know someone in the Mid East purely by speaking in that language. That has a lot to do with studying at fancier schools in Egypt, where most people speak English as a second language.
This year, I went to more French-as-backup countries, and my French sucks. And those countries also happen to have some charming and outgoing–and patient–women I’m honored to have met.
7. I went back to Morocco with my parents.
They spent a lot of time there in the late ’60s, which is why I have the name I have. I also finally figured out what my name is really supposed to be in Arabic.
All the details will be in the book.
(Oh, sh*t! The book! Why am I writing this blog post when I should be writing the book?!)
8. I turned 40.
And I feel pretty good about it. Even though I almost immediately had to have my wisdom teeth pulled. Life is so much easier at 40 than at 20. And so is traveling.
9. I might have just hit my limit with traveling.
I hope this isn’t related to the previous point. But it was a long year. As I’m writing this, I should have been on a plane to Kuala Lumpur. But general tiredness and a creeping sense of responsibility made me stay home. What’s happening?!
I do have a book to write (ack, sh*t!), and that requires sitting still. I’m a little behind schedule. After this post, you might not hear from me for another month or so.
(The book, in case you’re new here, has a lot to do with “the Arab nations”–and how they’re a great place to travel.)
******
I dedicate 2012 to all the wonderful people I met on my adventures: Maala, Btissam, Said, Alaa, Mido and family (oh, that was late 2011–but still!), Agnes, Holly, Arva, the women behind Qatar Swalif, Habooba, the Asrani family, and many, many more.
May your 2013 be filled with nourishing food and kind strangers.
Travel life is better after 40.
Help me out here, Internet. I’m trying to identify a mystery fruit. Or maybe fruits.
There are three stories to tell:
Incident #1: Lebanon
A nice Druze woman on a bus in the Chouf mountains in Lebanon told me her favorite fruit was Persian aprict–mishmish ajami. She said it stayed green, and was both sweet and sour, and was not very fuzzy.
Sadly, I was scheduled to leave Lebanon just a couple of days later, and had no time to look for this fantastic fruit.
In lieu of a picture of that fruit, or of that woman, here at least is a nice photo of Peter with a Druze man.
Incident #2: Greece
After the fantastic ladies at our favorite restaurant in Eressos showed us how to make Easter lamb, they pointed to a crate of fruit and told us to help ourselves.
They called the fruit milorodaxino–literally, “apple peach.” From far away, all piled in the crate, the fruit did look like kind of crappy little Golden Delicious apples. Up close, though…best nectarine ever:
And, as you can see, green all the way through.
Was this the phantom Persian apricot, by another name? The farmer who grew the fruit was there outside the restaurant, all burly forearms like Popeye and a mustache to beat the band. He was the only one that grew this fruit, he said. End of story.
Incident #3: Astoria, New York
When we returned to NYC, one of the 24-hour produce stores (yes, we have more than one) had these “honeydew nectarines” in stock:
They looked the same, but they were kinda crappy–a little mealy, not intense flavor. The woman who runs the store admitted they were not at their best. It was hard to tell whether it was not the same fruit at all, or just a typically poor American rendition of it.
And because she’s Greek, Peter asked her if she knew if these were the same as the milorodaxino. No, no, she said–those are part apple, and these were part melon.
Er, I think she’s wrong on both counts, because that would be like serious fruit miscegenation, so unfortunately I have to discount her as an unreliable source. But I appreciate that she makes an effort to source new and interesting fruits and veg–we also got these neat bulbous cucumbers from her, and some great liver-colored heirloom tomatoes.
Second data point: After writing all this, I flipped over an old issue of Cook’s Illustrated, and it had an illustration of peaches and nectarines. The Honeydew variety was on there. The issue was from 2002–so this isn’t a new strain.
Further data point: Turkey
Check out these marzipan fruits in a storefront in Istanbul. A couple of them look like they could be the mysterious fruit.
Ala elma = “ala apple” according to Google translate, which is maybe just the variety name of an apple, like Gala?
Or this one:
Papaz erik = “pastor plum”
Obviously, the fact that these were rendered in marzipan makes it especially difficult. In retrospect, Peter and I should’ve gone to the adjacent market and looked for the real-fruit equivalents, instead of getting distracted by an antiques store.
So gardeners, travelers, botanists, Lebanese fruit-lovers: tell me what you know. Have you eaten any of these things? Are they all the same? Are they different?
Bottom line, really, is: Did I miss the Best Fruit Ever by not getting those mishmish ajami in Lebanon in the first place?
(If you like stories about cross-cultural plant identification, also check out my old story about purslane[PDF]. That one took years to solve. Now that the internet is more full of information, I expect to solve this question in minutes. Right? Hello? Anyone?)
I’m back from an internet vacation, and filing the next rash of posts under “Summer Break.” First, I was in Lebanon. I know it doesn’t look like work, but trust me, I’m writing a book! Later, we went to Greece and Turkey, where I wrote for a bit, and traipsed for a bit. More on that later.
Near the end of my six-week stint in Lebanon, Peter and I planned to hike a few legs of the Lebanon Mountain Trail, a 260-mile north-south route through about two-thirds of the country.
The LMT organization publishes a trail guide, with descriptions of the route (I picked this up in a Beirut bookshop) as well as a series of topo maps for every leg (these I had to buy direct from the LMT). They provide a list of guesthouses and campsites and guides along the route. It’s really very suavely packaged, and inspires confidence.
But then there’s a line in the trail guide, last on a list of bullet points, after the one telling you it’s a good idea to hire a guide: “We walk this trail every year, and there are no land mines. But off the trail…well…”
Actually, that’s paraphrasing, because I left my trail guide in Beirut. But you get the idea. I sure got the idea: If I were to wander off the trail, who knows what could happen? But I chose to squash down the fear of getting lost and losing my limbs and carry on. Squash, squash, squash.
Because Lebanon is crawling with hikers, all able-bodied, I figured the law of averages was on our side. But I figured it would be better to stick to better-traveled sections of trail, where the chance of getting lost was smaller. (Why didn’t we just hire a guide? you might ask. Well, Peter and I are skilled outdoorspeople who can read topo maps and a compass. But really: We’re introverts and really didn’t feel like chitchatting with a guide all day long.)
I also wanted the start and end points to be places that could be reached by public transport. But I wasn’t so self-sufficient that I wanted to carry camping gear.
The only section that satisfies all these needs–well-marked trail; guesthouses every night; accessible by bus–is legs 19, 20 and 21, between Barouk and Jezzine. A lot of it runs through the Chouf Cedar Reserve, for which there are additional, more current maps available (I picked these up at Antoine in Beirut). This gave me greater confidence in our decision not to hire a guide.
In fact, I got so cocky, I decided we should hike south to north, against the flow of the LMT guide, which describes the route north to south. This turned out to be the least of our worries.
If you’re considering this hike, here are some details to know:
Did I mention land mines too much and scare you? I’m sorry–that shouldn’t have happened. The trail is land-mine-free!
I loved hiking in Lebanon–we met nice people and saw millennia-old trees. I’d go back and do it again–I’d love to do some of the more northern legs especially. The Chouf is interesting terrain, and a nice mix of wild territory and farms.
And the efforts of the Lebanon Mountain Trail crew are admirable–it’s an excellent project, and I hope to take part in it again soon.
Beirut is cool! If you’ve picked up a travel magazine once in the last decade, you’ve probably read this at least once. Beirut has been the international equivalent of Portland, Ore., a subject of travel editors’ endless fascination.
After six weeks there, I appear to be the only person who thinks the opposite, and I’ve had a hard time writing this post to say so. (And I like Portland!) I don’t blame Beirut, I don’t think–I blame the hype.
I went to Beirut in 1999, and it was a haphazard mess of terrible infrastructure and jerks in armored Mercedes. According to the papers, though, Beirut’s come a long way, baby!
Guess what? Beirut is still a mess. Ostentatious wealth still rules, and people have to haul water–not like in rural Africa, but anyway, in 5-gallon jugs up stairs because the power is out so the elevator isn’t running.
Added misfortunes since ’99: the internet is some of the slowest (and most expensive) in the world, and crude plastic surgery has become wildly popular among a certain set. (Women look startled, strained, flotational–if you don’t want to feel like you’re having an acid flashback, don’t go anywhere near a mall!)
Sure, it would be a buzzkill to mention these details in a “Beirut nightlife is sizzling hot!” story. But it’s slightly disingenuous to ignore them altogether. All of these things (except the plastic surgery–not sure what that’s about) are indicators of a much more troubling reality, and the simple fact that Beirut is still scarred by war–and so are Beirutis.
This is not a “cool” city mainly because Beirutis do not keep their cool. They are, to generalize wildly, jumpy and aggressive and filled with road rage, and the instant there’s bad news, they retreat to their apartments with a week’s worth of food.
I completely understand why this is, and I would probably be pessimistic and anxious if I lived there too. But as a visitor, you have to be willfully blind to ignore the harsh truth behind the art-book stores, the Gemmayzeh pubs with their reggae-Gypsy-funk-Oriental DJs, and the massive, glittering malls.
That truth is: it takes a long time to get over the trauma of war, and it won’t be happening anytime soon in Lebanon.
Most travel stories nod to the various wars, to heighten the drama of the phoenix-like rise of the capital: “Beirutis, scarred by decades of war…”; “Beirut, once marred by civil war…” etc etc. But the implication is that’s all done–Beirutis are back to boozing and beach-lounging, and it’s all good. The checkered past just gives a little frisson to the decadent present–all the bullet holes add cachet.
But Lebanon’s 1991 Amnesty Law let the perpetrators of civil-war horrors slide back into society, even politics. Lebanon has not signed on to the international Mine Ban Treaty. And any peace in Lebanon is precarious with Syria next door, not to mention Israel–and Hizbullah’s unending “resistance” to it.
I’m not complaining about the poor infrastructure and the bad drivers per se–that I can handle. I have a harder time with partying in the face of obvious psychological trauma. I had a similar reaction to New Orleans after Katrina–a wonderful and interesting place to visit, but it’s wrong to pretend the city is “back” and hopping when a stranger on a streetcorner will, unprompted, in a shaking voice, tell you how he lost his home.
Beirut does actually have all the charms touted in the travel stories. It’s small, so you can crash the “scene” in a week. You’re on the Mediterranean, which is lovely. Women dress in every possible way. (Though cleavage is often deployed in the same aggressive way as the plastic surgery–ow, my eyes!) Its place on the International Hipster Circuit is established thanks to cool bars, good coffee, contemporary art and a visible gay scene.
Beirut is cosmopolitan in a way that most of the rest of the region is not. First-time visitors to the Middle East are usually happy to find the place and people so relatable, which is no small thing.
What do you think? Is it dishonest to push one aspect of tourism to a troubled place, and ignore the trouble? Is it helpful to normalize a place by touting it as a hot destination? Have you had a similar experience in another destination? Do you love Beirut because or in spite of it all? Am I cynical grump who should just shut up and go surfing in Liberia?
Astute followers of this blog will know that it has gotten terribly out of step with reality. I am not currently in the Persian/Arabian Gulf at all, but in Lebanon. I’ve been reading a lot, trying to get a grip on things–Lebanon feels more foreign to me than I expected it to. So in lieu of travel stories, this week I’ll share my reading list.
Without the subtitle (“a bittersweet year in Beirut”), it sounds a bit like a torrid romance, and I suppose I was expecting some bodice-ripping or other high drama, so it took me a little while to get into its groove.
But in the end I was glad for it not to be a high-drama book (as so much else around here is intense). Instead it’s a low-key sort of travelogue and a meditation on what it means to be at home somewhere. And the reason I jumped at reading it (the publisher offered me a copy–it’s officially released tomorrow) is because I know Abdelnour as a food writer, so I figured that angle would be good too. And in that respect especially, it has been a great introduction to the city–Abdelnour uses food to explore Beirut, by heading off on a walkabout to the famous shwarma place, for instance, or trying out the odd processed cheese (Picon) she used to like as a kid.
Abdelnour left Lebanon with her family as a child, early in the civil war, and in the book she returns to Beirut and the apartment her family has kept, to see if she feels like she fits in better here than she did back in the U.S. Each chapter covers a month, and it glides along easily, in the present tense.
What was odd about reading it is that it was eerily in sync with what I was doing at the time. Every time I cracked open the book, it was like reading my own notes: Wait, I just walked that exact same route through the city! I just went to Tell Arqa and Akkar! I just ate that eggplant fatteh at Al Balad!
So I could write a blog post about this stuff…but you could just read this lovely book. To make it a bit easier, I’m running a giveaway of Jasmine and Fire: enter on my Facebook page.
Jasmine and Fire is very much about present-day Beirut. But I’ve also read a couple of books about the past–where the picture of the city grows a lot murkier.
This is a short graphic novel about the good old pre-war days. Or it is at first: colorful, somewhat childish watercolor illustrations show tan ladies by the sea. But that Beirut is gone within a few pages, and the rest of the story is the author’s childhood recollections of the war–the images and the language are simple, but the story is concise and all too brutally clear.
What I found gripping was almost incidental. At one point, Ziade details all the various militias and their insignias, with slightly comical drawings of typical militia members (one machine-gun toting woman wears an oh-so-seventies rainbow T-shirt). I knew, abstractly, that many of the militias and political wings established during the war still exist in Lebanon—but seeing them laid out here, and illustrated, made me realize it concretely: Phalangists, Lebanese Forces, Amal–I’ve seen their flags in various parts of the city and around the country, marking turf. The fact that all these groups still exist—after doing such barbaric things during the war (which are detailed in this book)—is more unsettling than I’d had time to consider, especially when juxtaposed with the otherwise glossy image Beirut has now.
I’m only halfway through this, but I’m liking it a lot—Cortas was a passionate educator who ran a prestigious girls school in Beirut, and this is her memoir. Like Bye Bye Babylon, it’s also deeply nostalgic, but it doesn’t candy-coat anything. It also starts in an earlier era, during World War I, when the Ottoman empire was dismantled. Reading these two books in succession is not exactly comforting—I’m getting a strong sense of how deeply wrong things went in the colonial era, and how that still echoes everywhere. It’s the kind of thing you learn in grad school—colonialism is bad, sure—but it’s not until you’re actually in a place, and see that people have been working over the same problems for decades, and still are, that it really sinks in.
What I’d really be interested to read is a memoir by an active militia member during the war. So far everything I’ve seen is by innocent bystanders. But I know the war’s real participants are still around. When I was standing in front of the shell of the Holiday Inn, listening to a tour guide explain the building’s strategic significance, a man drove by and shouted out his car window, fist raised in triumph, “I fought in that building!” Where’s his story?
**Remember: Go enter the Jasmine and Fire giveaway on my Facebook page!
For weeks, since I read Day of Honey cover to cover in a big, delicious rush, I’ve been mulling over a lengthy proper review in my head. Great books about the Middle East are so rare that they deserve splendid treatment.
But I finally realized that’s not going to happen. I already lent my copy to someone else, and gave three more copies to friends. All the details are slipping away. But here’s the essence: Annia Ciezadlo writes about people in the Middle East like they’re real live individual human beings, not political pawns or members of the “Arab street.”
Ciezadlo was a reporter in Iraq not long after the war started, then settled in Beirut just before Israel’s war with Lebanon began in 2006. The book covers her time in both countries, with the added complication of basically being on her honeymoon with her Lebanese husband (also a reporter) when she first heads to Baghdad.
Even with all the chaos around her, Ciezadlo focuses on the still points, the regular daily rituals people go through even when–especially when–everything else is going to shit. This naturally leads to food–the seemingly simple grilled fish Iraqis treasure, the beautiful preserves the Lebanese live on in wartime, and, where the book gets more personal, what Ciezadlo’s mother-in-law teaches her to cook in Beirut.
Day of Honey is also one of the best-written books–on any topic–that I’ve read in years. There’s so much wit here, and sharp observation, and hilarious turns of phrase (why yes, those freelance mourners who crash funerals and chant the Quran–they are “a kind of squeegee men of mourning”). I’d quote more, but, as I said, my book is lent out. Instead, read this review in the New York Times, which is densely packed with some of the finest lines (though certainly not all).
A note about the cover: Don’t judge by it. One of these years, American book publishers will understand that not every book about the Middle East needs to be covered with children and flowers to make it less scary.
And here’s another link to buy the book, just for good measure. And please tell your friends.
Last night just before I got into bed, I glanced at my little collection of notebooks stacked on the radiator and noticed my journal from my Lebanon/Syria trip from...geez, 1999?