A Very Different Place

It's hot. It doesn't seem to matter where you are. The thermometer in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia topped 110 degrees Fahrenheit during my recent visit. Dubai, UAE was the same but sticky with the misting fans at the airport just making things worse, not better.

Though the Arab Spring revolutions brought turmoil to the region, you don't see it on a typical trip. The security at airports is stepped up some. In Algiers, there was police armoured car presence in public spaces the week after the food price protests. But in Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia little else seemed out of place.

Some of the dialogue was as you'd expect. Universally everyone hated Israel. This just seemed to work its way into every conversation. There were countries that would check passports for Israeli entries with the intent to deny entry to anyone who had been there. The intellectuals I generally work with in my profession also usually had choice things to say about their own authoritarian governments and Islamic fundamentalists. No one seems to mind sharing coffee and a game of cards with an American though; here with my colleague.

But the cultures and countries of the region offer up very different flavors of the common theme. At a more localized level, the Lebanese Christians were not keen on their Palestinian compatriots or current government, Jordanian Muslim taxi drivers tried to sell me on visiting the site of John's baptism of Jesus, the all female call center staff in Dubai were segregated into separate rooms by ethnicity rather than religion; Arabs vs. Asians, Algerian road signs are posted in English, French and Arabic in a country which celebrates expelling the French, and in Saudi Arabia the female staff would call out the presence of males entering their work areas so staff could cover with their abaya as needed. The last was almost comical, as it was repeated over and over again anytime a male needed to pass through that portion of the office.

All in all it is a very different place.

On this trip I perhaps liked Lebanon the most. Its mix of religions, ethnicities and cultures all knocking elbows in a very small strip off the Mediterranean make it a comfortable yet exciting place for a foreign visitor. Differences are celebrated, or ignored, which makes it far different than the Gulf States or Algeria. This is perhaps because of its history.

I visited Byblos (Jbeil) during my trip, the oldest continually inhabitated human settlement in the world. It figures prominently in the Old Testament, was the original Phonecian city, and was a key transit point for ancient Egyptian goods to the rest of the world. There is a significant Egyptian influence on early Phoencian art I recognized from my time in Egyptian museums.

The city got its name from the export of Egyptian papyrus; Byblos in Greek (Gebal in Phonecian). Many will recognize that because of this role in the printed word, its name is associated with the root word for library in many Indo-European languages. I thought it appropriate on this trip to read a book on the region in celebration and I chose T.E. Lawrence's undergraduate thesis on Crusader Castles now available in print from the Folio Society. His research for his thesis was his first introduction to the Middle East. He even learned Arabic to write it. What better author to read on a first trip to the Levant and Arabian Peninsula?

Apart from Phonecian, Greek and Roman periods, Byblos was a significant Crusader outpost before being ruled by Turks and Arabs. Its castle was a communication point and fiefdom within the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Lawrence's book provided great detail in preparation for climbing all over the remains (though without the native Arab residents who apparently lived in its ruins in Lawrence's time). For anyone with a fascination with castles as I have, it is a great visit as well as a good read.

In Lebanon I also had occassion to visit the caves of Jeita. At first I was not excited by the prospect and viewed it as an enforced stop by my tour bus on the way to Byblos. However, once I had entered it was beyond expectation. As a jaded cave visitor I did not expect much, but the sheer scale of the upper caverns and the river trip in the lower were impressive.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was different again. Flying over the Arabian Desert to get there gives you the sense of being over a great sea of sand. I was destined for Jeddah, so the tail end of my flight passed over the Red Sea (which is more purplish). There is not much else visible other than an urban sprawl and the King's massive Jeddah Fountain. And yes, it was over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit every day.

Saudi Arabia was perhaps the country most like what I anticipated, and yet completely different. My flight in was filled with pilgrims on Umrah dressed in their white Ihram garb. Coming from Amman, it was quite different than the pilgrims from Afghanistan. One pilgrim had all his electronics on a coordinated, white belt and a stack of luggage, which was so markedly different from impoverished Afghans it made me wonder if the two actually could become one even if thrown into the same space. As you would expect, security was tight at Jeddah airport which is a main pilgrimage port of entry.

Indeed, the residents of Saudi Arabia presented a more religious homgeneity than the pilgrims. I was particularly struck by the locals gathering for prayer on large rugs laid out on open sidewalks outside strip malls during the call to prayer. Saudi Arabia's working world is a mixture of ethnicties and nationalities. Here they were gathered together wherever and with whomever it was convenient using a rug provided by a shopkeeper to practice their faith. It seemed far more in the spirit of the faith than the electronics laden Umrah pilgrim.

As anticipated, there were no women drivers. You wouldn't notice this unless you paid attention to it, as female passengers were not always hidden in the back seat behind tinted glass (though often they were). Nor were all women wrapped like mummies in hijab, though the abaya was ever-present. Women at the airport had fold-up versions they would pull from a purse upon arrival, though not always close.

Just as exciting was my dip in the Dead Sea from the Jordan side. Yes, it is so salty that you have to work to sink. It tastes bitter too, though its supposed to be very theraputic. You can see the Palastinian West Bank from the Jordan side of the sea, which again made me think of how what goes on in such a small place can influence a whole region. It makes the influence of Jesus and the disciples easier to understand, much on my mind as I looked at the dried up river bed of the Jordan, the summit of Mt. Nebo and passed roadsigns for the site of John's baptisms. I breakfasted next to a US Army Special Forces noncom and his partner afterwards who was talking about work, just bring home how far the influence of this spot stretches across the planet.

In contrast to the sleek tile and air conditioning of the Dead Sea Marriott, the world outside was much as one would picture it. Along the road camels were grazing in the midst of herds of goats in farmers pastures or corralled in stalls. Nomadic or impoverished pastoralists lived in pitched tents or mud brick huts on the rocky ground in the shadow of two and three story housing compounds. In the evening, numerous vactioners between destinations pulled their cars over to the side of highway, laid out their bedrolls and lit fires to cook ther dinners in the desert night. For me it brought back memories of cooking shashlik from the trunk of a car on the side of the road in Moldova and Kyrgyzstan.

The Kasbah in Algiers was yet a different twist; its winding narrow Turkish streets and common houses a decided contrast to the modern development in the other countries or the old souks of Jbeil in Lebanon.

Perhaps the final conclusion I had from my trip was that Islam as it is practiced is certainly not unified or even cohesive. Yes, it pervades every aspect of life. However, there is official and unofficial Islam. There is conservative and liberal Islam. In every society, and within societies, Islam as it is really praticed can be widely, and surprisingly, different.