Tag: middle east

Hey, Ladies! What to Wear in the Middle East

Last week, my esteemed colleague Celeste Brash published her Top 5 clothing picks for women traveling to hot, conservative countries.

It’s a great list, but in the heart of the Middle East, you’re dealing with dry heat and more-conservative modesty norms. So I thought I’d share what I usually pack for a Middle East trip. Let’s begin with a parable:

I once saw a Russian woman in hot pants at the Pyramids. First, I had an urge to grab her ass. Then I got heatstroke just looking at her.

Moral: There are two very good reasons to keep your skin covered in the Middle East. First, of course, is it’s just polite, and even normal people like myself (er) can respond strangely to the sight of naked flesh if they don’t see it often. Second, that sun will kill you.

I tend to spend most of my time in cities, so I want to look dressier, rather than sporty. But most of my wardrobe can adapt fine to a day in the desert or a hike up Mount Sinai.

1. Long-sleeve, button-front silk shirts.
I used to pick these up at thrift stores all the time, and I still do occasionally find one, but I have less time to comb the racks. I haven’t found a reliable first-hand source for them yet, but I always keep an eye out.

Hmmm... This doesn't look bad. But $98? That's why: thrift stores.

Silk is really sturdy and super-lightweight. It dries in a second, if you do a sink wash, and it’s hardy enough to handle whatever they do at the drop-off laundry. Buy dark colors, so it’s not see-through, and/or patterns (to hide stains).

If you can’t find silk, then button-front lightweight cotton shirts are fine. Either way, you want them to be longish–hanging over half your butt, if possible, and the sleeves should be full length. You can roll the sleeves up to your elbows, or keep them buttoned at your wrist if you’re in a very conservative situation, or cold.

2. Skinny ankle-length cotton or nylon pants with pockets.
Contrary to Celeste’s advice, I think tight clothing is A-OK. It makes you look more city-fied. And it’s not violating any modesty norms in the ME, contrary to what you might think.

I wasn’t planning on my super-skinny cropped cargo pants from J. Crew to be a travel essential, and now I wish I’d bought two pairs.

They’re very tight at the ankle, so they don’t slide down when I’m using a squat toilet. And the pockets are super-useful. I have other ankle-length pants, in nifty nylon-cotton blends, but they always lose because they don’t have pockets.

Typical capris, which end right below the knee or mid-calf, don’t do it for me. That exposes too much flesh for my taste. Too much sunburn and ogling potential.

And I wouldn’t go for leggings because, well, they’ve already got plenty of camel toes in the Middle East! (Thank you, ladies and germs! I’ll be here all week.)

3. Linen trousers.
OK, this is as close as I get to the typical desert-explorer look. I have a couple of pairs in brown and slate gray. Side pockets look proper enough (though you have to be careful about change falling out in buses). Linen is sturdy, and its rumpled-ness is somehow acceptable in high society, but you can also hike in them.

I just roll them up a couple of inches before venturing into any sketchy toilet situation.

4. Silver shoes.
You can wear the daggiest orthopedic things, but if they’re silver (or gold), you suddenly look like a fashion queen. These Doc Martens totally rocked in Cairo–nice thick soles so you can slog through muck.

I'm sorry I abandoned you in Ras al-Khaimah for getting too stinky! Next pair, I'll wear those little socklets, I promise.

It’s a bonus if your shoes are slip-off: easier to go in and out of mosques.

I also just bought these, from Ecco–not slip-off, but I think will do double-duty for low-level hiking.

5. Sports bras and tank tops.
The underpinnings. I’m not at all busty, but I do wear a sturdy bra when I go to Cairo. Young dudes in the street are like those detectors for earthquakes–they’re sensitive to the slightest jiggle.

Honestly, this might be slight overkill on my part–I’m making up for my first time in Cairo, when I actually walked around without a bra, which I wish someone had taken me aside and said, “Ahem.” Instead, some crazed dude grabbed my boob and then practically went skipping off down the street with glee. I think he might’ve felt a little like when I saw the Russian chick in hot pants: Must. Touch. It!!!

On top of a sturdy bra, I wear a very thin cotton tank top that’s very long. This guarantees my shirt isn’t see-through and covers up any gaping between button-front shirt and low-rise pants, or if wind from a bus speeding by blows my shirt up. Right now Uniqlo is making good super-long tank tops. I got some C&C California ones years ago that are nearly threadbare now, but that’s OK, since they’re just an under-layer.

Sort-of 6. Ankle-length skirt, with pockets.
Honestly, I have one of these, and I dutifully pack it every time, but I just can’t quite get on board with it. It’s relatively stylish–linen, tailored, with patch pockets. But it’s just outside the realm of my normal style, and I feel a little too much like Sensible Lady Adventurer when I wear it.

But I’m mentioning it because someone once pointed out a very good reason to wear a skirt while traveling: if you ever have to relieve yourself on the side of a road, perhaps with your whole bus looking on, a skirt gives you a little privacy.

So…just putting it out there.

7. Giant scarf.
Totally agree with Celeste on this. Always have one in your bag. I have a bunch of wonderful silk ones from Syria (sigh), but last year I got a giant (18″ x 84″) not-silk one in Morocco that has turned out to be more useful. It’s a little cozier in a/c situations, and slippery silk is tough as mosque-visit headscarf–this has a little texture so it stays in place.

Looks deceptively small...

And a really, really big scarf with distinctive colors can dress up a whole outfit. My Moroccan scarf has gold thread in it. With my shoes, it’s like an ensemble!

8.Short dresses.
I’m just developing this, but I have a nice mid-thigh stretchy tunic dress that I really like, so I tried it out with my little ankle-length pants, and presto–I’m covered up and hip-looking. Or, you know, as hip as it gets these days.

By the by, I totally yoinked this look off the streets of Cairo. Another Cairo-cool-girl standby: tight black long-sleeve top, with whatever crazy top you want over it. Only recommendable in winter, though, as having anything up under your armpits means you’ll have to do laundry sooner.

9. One pearl.
Thanks to Celeste, I have a beautiful one, from Kamoka Pearls. As she said when she gave it to me, it’s great travel jewelry. Like everything, sturdy and lightweight, but also a nice touch of bling.

10. Crunchable brimmed hat.
I’m undoing all my don’t-look-like-a-backpacker effort above, but I swear my brain will melt instantly if I don’t wear a hat. Right now, I have a kind of funky plaid one that I got in Thailand, with about a two-inch brim. Before that I had this funny crochet faux-fedora thing.

Do you have your own old-reliable clothing pieces? I’d love to hear them!

My 7 Links: Selective Best of Roving Gastronome

Ah, blog tagging! I’d forgotten about such a thing, paddling way over here in my little Queens tidal pool. But the excellent Conner of Here Is Havana just reached out and tagged me for this 7 Links round-robin. (Here are her selected links–all pretty great reading if you’re curious about Cuba.)

So hop into the way-back machine with me, and let’s check out some goodies:

1. Most beautiful post:
I’ve got 845 of the buggers. I can’t find the one that used to make my throat constrict and tears spring to my eyes. Can’t even remember what it was about. So instead: How I learned to cook, via Madhur Jaffrey.

2. Surprisingly successful post:
Just scrolled down to see what was charting as my most popular post. What?! New Mexico #4: All Aboard the Rail Runner? This warms my heart, because I guess this means I’m not alone in loving trains.

3. Most popular post:
Technically, second-most-popular: Car Insurance in Mexico: My Experience. This is my most straight-up, just-the-facts-ma’am post ever. So I just ignore the fact that it’s popular, because that might imply that my lyrical wordsmithing and my deep, deep thoughts might not be the reason people read this blog. La la la, I can’t hear you, stat counter.

4. Most controversial post:
My commentary on the flap around Thomas Kohnstamm’s book about his first gig as a Lonely Planet author. Stupid Yahoo killed my comments in that era, but eesh, I got an earful by email. I stand by it all, though I take even fewer freebies than I used to–not worth the trouble.

Runner-up: I complained mightily about Pistilli, Astoria’s worst developers, in Why Astoria Will Never Be Cool, and it pulled out all the love-it-or-leave-it Queensians who didn’t get the tone. Again, no comments thanks to Yahoo, but there were some gems. Years later, I’m channeling my Pistilli loathing into Astoria Ugly.

5. Most helpful post:
I set up this blog back in 2004 to record the details of our pig roast, because at the time, I couldn’t find anything similar online. Turned out the pig rocked, and we did a lamb for good measure. And in the course of writing the specs down, I also wrote a long story. And years later, that story got turned into a section of Forking Fantastic!, and then people read that and did their own. So by that definition, that single post has likely helped the most people.

Runner-up: Cancun bar bombing: not a tourist issue. I woke up one morning and was dismayed to see people freaking out on Twitter about an explosion in a bar in Cancun. I used Twitter then to spread the word about the bar’s real location. I hope I helped some people feel less freaked about traveling to Cancun.

6. Most underappreciated post:
A whole set of them, the ones I wrote about Robert Farrar Capon’s book The Supper of the Lamb. Rereading them (start here), I can’t say they’re really bursting with my best writing, but I feel like they’re underappreciated because not every. single. person. has written to say “Thank you thank you thank you for introducing me to this book!”

On the other hand, come to think of it, maybe these posts are how I came to know A Thinking Stomach? In which case, I’m completely satisfied.

7. Post that I’m most proud of:
I think this one about the Momofuku cookbook, line cooking and copy editing. After seven years of blogging, I think I’m finally getting better at controlling my urge for digression. This one is focused and doesn’t gallop off by itself.

Now time to pass the hot potato. I tag:

A Thinking Stomach: I live vicariously through her garden.
Killing Batteries: Fellow LP author, master of the miserable/hilarious trip diary.
Food Bridge: All the nuances of Israeli food. Which I have not yet eaten, and it kills me.
Hudson Line Rider: Beautiful smartphone pics of an NYC commute.
Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking: Kate the Great, bursting with tips and thoughtful words.

Carry on, and happy blog exploring!

Buy This Book: Day of Honey

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.

Best of RG IV, in which I give props to Queens

Joanie and Chachi seem to have stepped out for a moment. Or I’m not hearing their dopey dialogue in my head right now, which I guess is a sign my health is improving? Gosh, those antibiotics were pretty intense.

Anyway, this blog is ostensibly about how much I love Astoria, but the poor nabe hasn’t gotten too much specific attention of its own.

This essay in praise of the local supermarket won’t make you yuk it up the way talk of aggressive thong underwear does, but, people, we should learn to be serious sometimes, yes? Especially about something as essential as groceries.

A moment of somber silence, as the screen goes wiggly and we’re transported back to the cramped aisles of Trade Fair…

January 27, 2004
Astoropolis

Why do I love my neighborhood so? It’s all about the groceries. (Has “It’s all about…” ever had those words tacked on the end?)

When I first got off the train in Astoria, when I’d first arrived in New York and was looking for an apartment, one of the first things I saw was a huge mass of glossy black eggplants, all beautifully stacked in a pile that went well above my head. I love stacks of vegetables. There’s nothing more gorgeous to me than a produce stand in the wee hours of the night (and in Astoria, the stores are open in the wee hours), when all the bruised things have been chucked and all the fresh stuff is neatly arranged. So, considering that most other neighborhoods I’d visited could offer nothing more than a few over-waxed oranges and a limp bunch of scallions, I was totally sold.

In the last five years, you’d think I would’ve discovered all the food there is to buy in my neighborhood, but I keep finding new things. Or learning more about different cuisines and finally realizing what that whole dusty shelf of dried potatoes was for, for instance (next research stop: Peru). And every year a new group of people move in, bringing all their food with them: Brazilians, Yugoslavians, Mexicans (in that order, I think). Could they be showing up just to keep me entertained? Sometimes it feels that way: “Tired of gyros? Try my adorable cevapcici!” “Perk up–taste these cheese-and-shrimp-filled pies!”

Over the years, I get more things pinned down (usually with help from Peter, who has even more free time than me): best source of tamarind concentrate and verdolaga (Hidalgo), only source of reasonably crusty well-leavened bread (small Portuguese loaves at Trade Fair), good mint at the Lebanese grocery (look for sign in Arabic saying “we have Moroccan mint”), fish sauce at the produce place under the tracks, stupendous bacon from the Romanian orange-window place, duck fat from the Hungarian deli. But even as I’m poking around, finding New Zealand honey and green coffee beans and forty kinds of beer, this little know-all-eat-all frenzy is building in me… The more I discover, the more I know I haven’t found. And don’t even mention Flushing or Elmhurst.

So this all culminated recently when I visited the Trade Fair Near Tamara (as opposed to the Trade Fair Near Me). Now the TFNM is stupendous enough, with a great array of treats, including loofahs for scrubbing yourself in the proper Middle Eastern way and numerous brands of dulce de leche, as well as that Portuguese bread, but it is nothing compared to the one at 30th Ave. and 31st St. I’d gone to the TFNT once a few years ago, but it didn’t seem worth a special trip. And I’d been a little deterred from going in because Tamara calls it the Trade Scare, and says she’s had to abandon her basket and run screaming out the door because of the crowds.

But I had a small inkling of its treasures when I was trying to rustle up some goat for Karine (for her own carnivorous New Year’s project), and the guy on the phone at the TFNT spoke to me in Spanish for some reason and told me they had it in the regular meat case. At the smaller TFNM, you could only order from the butcher, and they were out of it anyway. Karine picked up her goat (right inside the front door–which seems like a sketchy, un-temperature-controlled place to put your meat case, but soooo instantly gratifying) and came to my house raving about the place. Apparently they’d expanded.

The first time I visited post-expansion was on a quick errand for Tamara. I was gone for what must’ve been hours. I roamed aimlessly, running my hands over stacks of legumes in every color, every imaginable spice in bulk, Lebanese olive oil for $4 a bottle, up and down every aisle. I doubt they had anything that couldn’t be found elsewhere in Astoria, but here they had it all in one place: Pillsbury Ready-Puff Pappadums next to mulukhiya next to banana leaves in the freezer case, above which hung about thirty kinds of dried Mexican chiles. Whole lamb carcasses next to D’Artagnan duck breasts. Organic Valley European-style butter next to those big green tins of Egyptian ghee. Baltika Porter for 99 cents. Banana-flavored tobacco for the sheesha pipe. One aisle still bears the standard-issue “Spanish products” that Trade Fair must send from HQ in the suburban Midwest, to label the Goya stuff. But at the TFNT, “Spanish products” also includes Peruvian huancaina and chile pastes.

There are some serious logistical flaws–“Trade Scare” is no joke. The aisles are just wide enough for one cart, the lines are often eight people deep, the produce section (more of a produce prison) can be reached only by one tiny passageway, and some children always seem to be screaming on aisle 6. I know there are bigger, more amazing international groceries out there, but I don’t live an eight-minute bike ride from them. I live next door to the people who shop here: The Egyptian families buying mulukhiya and Cheez-Its, the men on their cell phones asking which kind of chana dal they should be getting, old ladies shaking the coconuts in the produce section (oh wait, that was me). I feel very lucky, if a little overwhelmed, to live in the Independent Republic of Trade Fair.