The Man knows my history

The problem with starting a blog when I’m off on exotic foreign adventures is that now I feel like many, if not most, of my readers—yes, that’s you, hello! Welcome!—expect non-stop action from my blog, of the kind that only travel can provide: being stalked by a water buffalo, getting so sick I still can’t tell you how sick I got, being serenaded in Arabic by a tour guide. Even my trip this summer, which was tame in blog-fodder compared to Indonesia, provides plenty I could write about: trying to blend in as we stalked a group of Iranian pilgrims through Damascus,
getting dripped on by a giant medieval water wheel,
sleeping on a hostel’s rooftop with this view of Jerusalem,
conquering some medieval castles,
being conquered by other medieval castles,
jumping around medieval ruins,
failing to jump around ancient ruins,
posing with world-famous scenery,
being asked to pose, as if we were world-famous scenery,
surreptitiously trying to pose with Israeli soldiers, because, frankly, they are world-famous scenery,and, through it all, acquiring a pretty good Chacos tan, for someone as pale as me.

But now, most of the months of year, you all are forced to put up with whatever mundanities of American life I can come up with, and I’m afraid my blog must inevitably get dear-diary boring: dear diary, today I woke up. (10 am. It’s still winter break here.) Then I took a shower. Then I ate breakfast. (Apple-cinnamon oatmeal.) Then I spent a long time reading (From Ancient Cham to Modern Dialects: Two Thousand Years of Language Contact and Change, by Graham Thurgood). Then I emailed some people about the conference my classmates and I are organizing. (Dear so-and-so: Hi. I need something.) Then I transcribed some Yurok. Then I transcribed some Ao. Then I worked on a conference presentation. Then I talked with a friend, cleaned my apartment, cooked dinner, read some more (Women and Authority, edited by Maxine Hanks), and some more (In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, by Todd Compton), and went to bed. Thrilling, I know: who really wants to hear all those details of personal history?

Even my weekends don’t make that much better blog material: I spent this weekend at the LSA's annual meeting, where, in addition to listening to a number of talks, some of which entertained me, some of which bored me, and some of which caused me to fall massively in academic love with a certain German typologist, I volunteered, in exchange for free registration, to be a perky registration desk volunteer and, later, to ignore my duties as a room monitor by falling asleep in the hallway. (Yes, at the largest and most important professional conference in my field. I have got to work on that.) And let’s see, what else? I finished Rough Stone Rolling, which felt like a major victory in our time; I saw a 5000-person protest downtown about the violence in Gaza; I watched a movie with one friend and spent an evening hanging out with another; I visited the singles ward in the city, where the girl I sat next to in Relief Society gasped, after only two or three minutes of conversation, “Oh, I've got someone you just have to meet!”; and I ate dinner with my Eritrean next-door neighbors, who barely speak English but who are, as far as I can tell, very nice. (Actually, these last two incidents made me feel like I was abroad again: possibly nothing encapsulates my experiences in foreign countries more than not understanding dinnertime conversation and being set up by strangers. If only I had also had a violent stomach illness, I would have felt right away from home.)

I’m not complaining about any of this: I like my life right now, especially the part where it's still winter break, but it doesn’t make for very interesting reading or writing. I have a post-it note on my computer with a whole list of other things to blog about—things that automatically make me cry (when they sing the Marseillaise in Casablanca; the scene where the baby is born in Children of Men; film strips of World War I), why I’m addicted to the New York Times’ wedding announcements section (anthropologically speaking, it’s a fascinating glimpse into the personal and professional lives of the nation’s elite. Plus I’m a romantic.), why I want to marry an immigrant so he can get a green card (why let my citizenship go to waste?), and what happened that one time my brothers and I rearranged all the furniture when our parents went out for the evening (they didn’t think it was as funny as we did)—but most of those things really merit no more than the passing mention I just gave them.

So where does that leave me, besides not blogging very regularly? I’m not sure. I could rehash more travel stories in entries like this one, thinly disguised as being relevant, but that fools no one. I could engage in more scholarly discussion about linguistics, but I do that so much already, or about religion, politics, or literature, but no one cares, and, plus, I don't have the time or energy. I could tell more jokes (what’s brown and sticky?), include more cute pictures of my mom's dog, beg my readers for post ideas (anyone?), post some of the innuendo-laden limericks I write (There once was a city called Sodom...), but those options are unoriginal, cliche, pitiful, and inappropriate--I mean, come on! My grandma reads this!

So I guess I am left with this: dear diary, today I woke up. Then I took a shower. Then I ate breakfast. Then I blogged. And now, internet, you know it all.

mbatE2008 stories: part 3: palling around with Palmyrans

We almost didn't go to Palmyra, arguably Syria's most famous tourist site, because it's just Roman ruins, and not to sound too blasé , but once you've seen one set of Roman ruins, you've seen them all--that was kind of the point of that whole empire thing, after all. And, having seen Jordan's ruins earlier in the summer, I had had enough of columns, carvings, and concrete.

Or basalt, in the case of Umm Qeis.

I forget why we decided to go; I think we just woke up in the morning and thought, ah, what the heck. So we hopped on a bus and headed out into the desert, a decision we wouldn't regret: Palmyra's ruins, and especially their setting, are pretty spectacular.



More spectacular, though, were the people we met: first, a Bedouin family that lived in a tent near the ruins; as we walked past, their kids ran out to beg for pens, and then invited us in for a drink and a chat. They spoke a dialect of Arabic unfamiliar to me, with the palatal affricates of Iraqi Arabic and the voiced uvular stops of Bedouin Arabic, but they were patient, and so with lots of repeating, we spent about an hour there, discussing everything from how much our shoes cost (too much) to how we remove leg hair (I shave, Amy waxes) to why we're not married (no good men). I think this last answer is where we really made friends: as it turns out, we were hanging out with a mother, her five children, and her beautiful-but-unmarried sister-in-law, who clicked her tongue in recognition at my answer. No good men, indeed.


Or maybe just a few good men: after touring the ruins, we stopped into a cafe in town for drinks and lunch. The owner was either super friendly or super bored, which means he fell in love with us instantly and insisted that we spend hours there, drinking water and talking about sex. Apparently, they don't call it Palmyra for nothing.

Before things got weird with the sex talk, this guy, unsurprisingly, offered us tea, and when we refused, said, surprisingly, "What, are you Mormon or something?"

My jaw dropped-- the Church practically doesn't exist in the Middle East, and no one all summer had had any idea what kind of crazy religion would forbid me tea. I asked how he know, and he gave some vague response about a large group of Mormons who had come through Palmyra a few years before. "They spoke Arabic, too," he said. "They had been studying in Egypt or something."

It didn't take much to put two and two together: a large group of Mormons studying in Egypt who had come through Palmyra a few years ago. "Do you remember their names?" I asked. "Was there a Kaitlyn? Maybe a Ken? Or a Stephen?"

And yes, indeed: this Palmyran restaurant owner had hosted my study abroad group back in 2004, when they traveled in Syria. He probably made them play dress-up with Bedouin robes too.

****

That was just the beginning of our random encounters with friends and friends-of-friends. We ran into someone I knew from Amman while walking towards the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem. We walked into a restaurant in Petra only to see Chris, an archaeologist and the director of the center that hosted my program in Amman. At one of the Sunday evening concerts hosted by BYU's Jerusalem Center, we met an old acquaintance of mine from BYU. An in perhaps the funniest coincidence, a taxi driver in Amman who wanted to tell us all about the Americans he knows--a common, if overly hopeful, practice--actually knew a friend of mine. I was getting all ready to give the "how could I possibly know all 300 million Americans" spiel when I realized, hey, wait, Jeremy P.? Who has blond hair? And glasses? And speaks Arabic? Uh oh. Don't think this is typical! We don't all know each other, I swear!

****

It was a good trip for people, I'd say, both the people I knew before and the people we got to know: the aforementioned Bedouin family; the ever-so-kind restaurant manager in Hama, delighted to meet and greet Americans unafraid of traveling in Syria; the ever-so-kind hotel manager in Amman, excited at sharing a birthday with Amy; the shop owners in Aleppo who attempted to seduce us with foul--yet hilarious!--language; the huge group of American pilots we hiked with in Petra; the Japanese couple we met in Palmyra, and bumped into again in Aleppo's Great Mosque and Damascus's Old City; the hotel manager in Damascus whose pro-Bush pro-war stance confused us until we learned he was Kurdish; the American backpacker we adopted briefly in Amman, finding him a taxi ride and hotel room; the Israeli Couch Surfer who put us up in Jerusalem for two nights for free; the friendly Iraqi tourists at Crac des Chevaliers and Damascus with whom we talked a little bit about the war ("Do you have any relatives in the military? No? Thank God!"); and the teenage boys in Hama who entertained us for an afternoon, throwing themselves off a bridge into a lake, running around to see the pictures Amy had taken, shouting "faxxam! Awesome!" and repeating. Awesome, indeed, kids. Awesome indeed.

mbatE2008 stories: part 2: signs of the times

Often, instead of taking pictures of exotic people and places, I take pictures of signs. What? They're funny.

This one's on the highway that runs along the Dead Sea. While the water is extremely salt, what I don't understand is why the sign must be on the highway --does salty water sometimes jump out at unsuspecting cars?

(ha HA, take THAT, car! Just watch what I'll do to your paint!)

At Petra (ha, Petra at Petra! Imagine that!), I was grateful for a sign that told me what I was seeing: a view. Oh, good. I wouldn't have figured that out otherwise.

Some Syrian sign-maker was having delusions of grandeur.

Most Syrians we met gave us a big thumbs-up when we told them we were American, but apparently not everyone feels like that.

Not all Israelis feel like that either.


If Jesus visited Jerusalem nowadays, he'd be casting out the souvenir shop owners. Seriously--selling the widow's mite?

If only it said "but call it Israel as you're trying to get across the border."

Pretty much as close as I want to get to the Golan Heights. (Note: this is not true. With a few more days, we would have gone.)

This one's my favorite sign picture of all, but it takes a little bit of explanation: like many children, I grew up playing Monopoly. Unlike many children, my family only owned Hebrew Monopoly, in which all the traditional properties (Boardwalk, Park Place, um, er, I don't know any of the other traditional properties--see that "my family only owned Hebrew Monopoly" thing above) were replaced with Israeli properties--the yellow, if I remember correctly, were streets in Tel Aviv, and other colors were streets in Eilat and Jerusalem. This means that as we walked around Jerusalem, I recognized street names, and was especially excited about Ben Yehuda Street, an outdoor shopping area in Jerusalem. Was that the Boardwalk of Hebrew Monopoly? Did I often try to get a monopoly on its color group? Or is my subconscious just enamored of the Hebrew language revivalist?

Who knows. But a picture was still necessary. Duh.

mbatE2008 stories: part 1: crazy talk

blogger's note: the thought of having to sit down and write everything about the mbatE2008 makes. me. tired. So instead of doing grand travelogues like last year, I'm just going to tell my stories at random: what I want, when I want. And it's my blog, so there. 

blogger's note, part 2: mbatE2008 stands for, in case you don't remember, most bitchingly awesome trip EVER 2008--that is, the two weeks I spent in Syria and Jordan and Israel with Amy, who has beat me to blogging some about the trip; see here or here.  

****

We were tired, the last day of our trip, because the day before we had biked the 40-mile circumference of the Sea of Galilee.  Let me emphasize: Israel. In August. During the day. 40 miles.  Yeah, it was hot. 

Biking in Jesus' footsteps.  I'm glad my back sweat isn't visible in this picture. 

We were also tired, of course, from two weeks spent traveling at our pace--no time for sleeping! no time for eating!--and so were happy to spend an afternoon, after having crossed from Israel back into Jordan, hanging around Amman sampling Arab desserts. 

Kunafa. I'm for it. 

As we were sitting there, a fight started brewing on the street--loud voices, lots of arm waving. That's not too unusual, so I didn't bother to listen at first, until I caught some of what one man was shouting: 

"You never change!  Americans can change--they change their president every four years!  They're having an election right now!  You Arabs, though, just sit around all day doing nothing!"

Interesting, I thought, so I tuned into the fight. From the looks on the faces of those watching, this was crazy-homeless-guy talk, not normal fight-on-the-street talk. The guy shouted some more along those lines, detailing the worthlessness of his listener, who, after a few minutes, lost patience and walked away, with the guy still shouting as his back, throwing out his final invective:

"What are you, an EYE doctor? Interested in EYE medicine?"

I made eye contact with another bystander and raised my eyebrows in a question: WTF?  He shrugged at me: Who knows. Just ignore the crazy homeless guy. 

Ignore I did, but the phrase has stuck with me: what a nice rhythm, what total lack of sense. And in the last few weeks, back to normal life, guess what runs through my head when someone bumps into me, cuts in line, opens their car door as I'm biking past, or tries to pay in pennies at the grocery store:

What are you, an EYE doctor? Interested in EYE medicine?