Urban Birding

A few years ago, at our previous post, I had this discussion with a visiting children’s author about our lifestyle of moving around every few years. This author is a trained zoologist and fierce environmentalist. She said her only real concern was that children raised in this lifestyle will probably never have a native knowledge and love of their natural surroundings. They will never be in one place long enough to learn the local species or get lost in the same forest summer after summer. And I said to her, in some silly high minded expat way, “Sure, but I hope they’ll have a greater sense of their place in the world as a whole. Their sphere of stewardship won’t just be their backyard but the whole world. You know, in a general sense.”

And in her great wisdom she said “Ah, but the power of nature lies in its particularities.”

This phrase inspires me/haunts me often. 

Of course the power is in its particularity! A “general” sense of things is fine, great even. But nothing can replace having a specific experience with a specific landscape. I grew up in the foothills of the rocky mountains and their snowy peaks are part of my very self. I wasn’t an avid hiker and didn’t wade through mountain streams each spring, but their outline shades and protects every memory of my childhood. Wee Felix won’t have one set of mountains or one coastline running through the decades of his life like a thread. Rereading this exchange from my journal reminded me how important exploring the natural world is. For this baby guy, but also for me.  

“Just teach them the birds every time you move. At least the birds.”  She assured me this would be an adequate start. 

So, in that spirit, Felix and I have been urban birding around Cairo. On our first day out we spotted a Eurasian Hoopoe at the botanical gardens. And one afternoon I discovered Max and Felix, halfway out the church door (in a possible escape attempt) staring up at the trees. A small green parakeet had made perch high in the branches. There are terns everywhere as well as the ubiquitous Palm Dove, or, it's better name, the Laughing Dove. Herons dot the marshy receding edges of the Nile, which variety I'm not sure yet. And last week, out of the corner of my eye I swear I saw the impressively dotted wingspan of a black and white Pied Kingfisher just before it flew under the bridge to Tahrir square.

In Which the Red Sea Teaches Me Things

Journal 9.9.17    Soma Bay, Red Sea, Egypt

I left Max to put the baby guy to sleep and headed for the Sea. 15 months since I've been in the ocean. Too long. I've moved to another country, quit my job and had a baby since then. But the Sea is the same. 

The reef is beautiful and I swim a bit too close from time to time, my body stretched tall and thin like superman. Holding my breath. The reef is populated by giant blue clams that flash their ruched insides like skirts of flamenco dancers. If I watch carefully, slowly, I can see them breathing. See their shells open slightly and then close. Their cobalt interior flesh quiver, expand and then retreat. I am particularly mesmerized by a lime green shelled clam and watch it breath for some time. The wind is picking up above water and the clam is speckled with sunlight slanting through water. 

Later I will introduce my baby to the ocean. His Dad will hold him in his lap while waves dribble over their legs, delighting both. But this morning it is just me and the giant clam. Breathing slowly and deliberately. 

I read later the Red Sea coral reefs contain unique species that defy categorization, that are found no where else in the world. As the underlying Arabian and African tectonic plates shift apart, it is expanding, essentially becoming something different every day. The sea is also growing warmer and saltier and experiences frequent turbidity due to sand storms in the region. While these difficult conditions would normally damage reef and dependent life, the Red Sea reefs have adapted over time to become tolerant of the environmental extremes. Thriving even.

When I first wrote this I was riding a moment of new-country-new-mom abundance, but it has been a hard winter. These ideas of resilience and intentionality are much more valuable to me now. 

The Kindness of Strangers

A few days ago My husband had to work late and the baby guy and I didn't feel like cooking dinner. Nothing says "night on the town" like walking to KFC with your 6 month old for some piping hot chicken-like products. While we were ordering (yes, spicy) the manager pulled out a little plastic container of something white and handed it to me.

"For the baby" he smiled. It looked a bit like milky rice pudding. Then he rustled around until he found an orange Marinda soda under the counter. "For when he grows up" he said, thrusting it at me with a pumpkin grin.

Halfway through the meal, after a handful of people had stopped to kiss baby guy on the noggin, the manager came back over and brought us an extra piece of chicken. Instead of explaining that my baby has no teeth (and also that he doesn't generally eat food given to him by strangers with their bare hands directly after a smoke break) I discreetly added it to the things at the bottom of my bag I was grateful for but would not be eating.

This baby is a big deal around here.

There are at least six people, and often times more, that little "Master Felix" pays homage to every time we walk the neighborhood. I'm not sure if they are actually calling him "Master" or "Mister" but either way, he is King of the block. The boab with a shock of white hair gets the best grins out of Fix and he will often take him by the hand and kiss his chubby knuckles. The man who sits in front of the optometry clinic, who once offered the dog his fried chicken, is a bit more wary of the baby, but still gives a nod of respect. Walking one length of our block takes about ten minutes, as we ping back and forth across the street to greet the regulars.   

And these are just some of the many kindnesses I've noted in my journal over the last few months.

Last week I took baby guy to the fruit and vegetable souk and en route an Egyptian woman caught my eye and asked about the baby. We walked a few blocks in step while I tried to ask her basic, very basic, questions in Arabic. Sharboot said to me as we parted "Your Arabic will come, Shwayuh Shwayuh. Inshalla." Little by Little. If God wills it. And then she welcomed me to the souk.

A large woman with filthy fingernails at the market wrapped an extra bushel of mint in an already bulging bouquet as I fished in my pocket for money.

I found a lovely local bookshop this week with English titles and they basically let me treat it as a reading library. Without access to a local library this has rocked my world.

I sometimes stress that I've gotten every parenting thing wrong, every expat thing wrong, every modern feminist thing wrong. But these small kindnesses remind me to be as generous to myself and others as people have been to me.     

Takin' It to the Streets: Cairo From the Ground

I have a theory that the more you walk the streets (paths/beaches/bridges) of a place the more you can love it. Something about the sweat and mild leg cramps just ties you to a physical location in an emotional way. So I've been pounding the pavement around downtown Cairo in hopes to crack this city open a little wider.

  

And Also

Out and about with baby guy

x

A few weeks before I gave birth to our son Felix, Max discovered a well-worn vinyl of the soundtrack to the movie Shaft in my Mom’s basement.

I know, that’s a sentence with a lot to unpack.

If you know my mom, you probably can’t imagine her grooving to Shaft today or any day in the past. But people are complicated, aren’t they?  

And yes, we came home from a gloriously long home leave with a perfect baby boy. Honestly, I was worried a new baby would be boring. Just being real. They don’t talk politics or play guitar or make books with you. I thought he would grow on me as he got older and more fun. But I have been completely delighted with everything about this baby. I love all of his baby noises, every sweaty walk through the neighborhood and his adorable fat feet. This kid is great and being a mom is great.

But I’ve also had moments of identity crisis. Pretty mild, since I was expecting them, but still. Moments when I’m not sure quite how to integrate this new role into my old self.

These moments usually occur during one of the many harried sitcom mom scenes I have found myself enacting since returning to Egypt. Last week I answered the phone with dog poop in one hand from my apparently newly un-house-trained dog who was barking maniacally at the phone, a squirmy baby rocking a gnarly spit-up beard in the other hand, and most of my chest covered by the dripping spit up beard. I then tried to put on my shoes hands-free before walking down three hot flights of stairs with the baby for a delivery where they almost never have change and I either have to trudge back up the stairs and search for small coins or find an ATM outside with a baby on my hip.

So, as much as I hate TV Mom stereotypes, sometimes that’s me.

Is this who I am now? My former self, suffocated by drool? 

But before we left home, I had a moment of clarity at the local Target. (Not the first of these moments to occur at a Target, I’m sure. It’s a magical place.) I reached for my wallet to pay for a box of diapers and the contents of my purse spilled out onto the counter in front of the red-vested cashier. I picked up my keys and also a handful of Egyptian pounds, a package of wet wipes and also a water color pencil, a stick of  gum and also a guitar pick, a tube of chaptsick and also my three day pass to see the temples at Angkor Wat from last spring.

And Also.

I am a mom, and also a person. A mom, and also a traveler. A mom, and also an artist. A mom, and also a mediocre-but-getting-better bassist.

I’ve been a little gun shy about blogging because I didn’t want to drift into the land of boring, naval gazing baby poop stories. Sure, it’s a large portion of how I spend my day, but the circle of people interested in my baby’s poop is very small. And said poop doesn’t define me anyway.  

The mothers in my life knew this. I’m lucky.

So here’s to writing, to making art, to living, and also, to momming.    

Expectations

Taking a breather at Horus' Temple in Edfu

On our first trip to Egypt, we visited an old house with a whale bone affixed to the floor.

"Walk around it 7 times and you will be sure to have a baby!"

Well, I didn't because...that's dumb. 

Now here we are in Egypt again, almost nine years later, finally getting ready to welcome a wee baby in March. A boy. It wasn't easy for us to start a family, and it certainly took a lot more than a whale bone.

I've heard a lot of advice over the years. 

"Put a thread of saffron in carbonated volcanic water. Drink it while you are at the Hammam and then make sure to stay wrapped in blankets after you...you know...chika..chika" came from Morocco. 

In an incredibly kind gesture, someone brought me water from the Zam Zam well of Mecca after attending Hajj for the first time.

"Each morning, for seven days you should eat two dates and drink the Zam Zam water and ask Allah for a baby"   

Taxi drivers from one end of the Middle East to the other have offered many unsolicited opinions that Max had the foresight not to translate for me. 

People often recommend that you quit your job, or get a job, or take up Yoga or quit running. Adopt, don't have kids, try every treatment available as soon as possible. 

Here's what I say. It's personal and everyone will figure out what works best for them.

When someone in the Middle East asks you why you don't have a baby, and they will, all of them will, the best Arabic response is to say "Illy begeebu arrabb kuweis".

What God gives is good enough.  

And it is.

We are thrilled for this baby guy to join our family and to show him the world that we live in.

   

Saying Yes

Islamic Cairo

 Saying yes has gotten me pretty far in life. 

Saying yes to my husband when we were barely old enough to give our own consent, saying yes to moving to the Middle East with basically a suitcase and a smile, saying yes to graduate school one afternoon after doing some pondering but not that much. 

So when the blind man sitting in front of a Mamluk mosque off sharia khayamiya (tentmaker's street) in Islamic Cairo invited us to come inside, I said yes. Many great adventures have started this way for us. 

This was not one of them. 

I hadn't brought a scarf to cover my head, but the nice man offered me his own neck/armpit scarf. Who could refuse such a gift? Max took it from his shaking hands, wrapped it around my head and whispered "It might be a little soggy". 

Islamic Cairo

What's a soggy armpit scarf in pursuit of a private tour of a 14th century Mamluk mosque with who knows what treasures inside!

Our new friend led us to a small prayer room and beckoned us to sit on the chairs. At this point I realized the mosque was mostly non-existent. A few stone walls, generic carpets and mish mash roof. Maybe it was from the Mamluk period, it probably wasn't.

He took Max's hand and blessed him. After some time he scurried around to take my hand and bless me. His body stood between us and the exit, holding us, perhaps, just a bit hostage. My knuckle cracked under the weight of his grip. He was not unkind, just a little overly familiar. I gave Max the bat signal. Everyone should perfect their "let's scram" face for moments just like this. We thanked the man, paid him and went on our way. 

This is a pretty common tactic to coax a bit of cash out of wide eyed dummies...of which I am sometimes one. I should have seen it coming.   

"Sorry" I said to Max as we stumbled out into the sunlight.

But really, I'm not sorry. You can't let one sweaty armpit scarf get in the way of potential awesomeness.

And yes, Mom, I could see the exit at all times.

Arriving in Cairo...And There Are Birds

It's a pretty intimidating drive. From the Cairo airport to downtown. Hours through hundreds of people sardined together and as many cars and busses just as close. The buildings raise up from every direction, most half finished and surrounded by rubble and sand. 

This is the time of year when pollution swarms through the city and gets trapped between brown cement buildings. Combined with street exhaust, transatlantic jet lag, and car sickness, my first foray into Cairo was a little overwhelming. Where will I get food? Walk the dog? Get fresh air?  

When we reached our new apartment, I took a bath, lay down and fell immediately to sleep. There is only so much you can take in in a day.

But I woke up just after dawn and made my way to the balcony. The streets were empty, but I could hear Cairo slowly waking up. Small radios flickering to life, buckets of water sluicing over sidewalks, motorbike engines sputtering.  

And birds chiriping. When I looked up into the trees framing our street I saw flocks of birds soaring between branches and resting on rooftops. Birds. Lots of them. 

And I remembered the look on the face of the Egyptian woman sitting across the isle from me in the plane as we made our descent. She beamed with pride as she gazed out over the city. Fierce pride. For some reason it almost brought me to tears. 

The birds flourish and the people are proud. Certainly, I too can thrive. 

Buying Bangkok

Chiang Mai Night Market

I hate sentences that start with "I got this beautiful "X" and it only cost me this much!" or "Have you been to "Y"? It has the most amazing "Z" and it's so cheap." When conversations start this way I usually discover an urgent need to pee. Or get a drink. Or "Hey look! Someone I'd better say hi to on the opposite side of the room."  

I firmly believe that places are more than our purchases. 

And yet, here I am in Asia's biggest open air market with more bags than I can carry. I've purchased a painting that I have to come back for at the end of the day and I've already made plans to have a Thai silk dress made before I leave the country in 24 hours. 

Chiang Mai Night Market

These beautiful this's and amazing that's will later stuff my suitcase to the point of seam bursting proportions. I will have to negotiate with the baggage handler to get them all on board, shifting things from one bag to another in the airport lobby. But I have to because now I'm committed to my tiny Buddha amulets, triple pack of paper lanterns, sack of scarves, new printed tablecloth, wooden candlesticks, woven bag, tacky t-shirts that I love, ubiquitous baggy Thailand pants, and two new watches. 

To consume means to use up a resource and in some cases to completely destroy. As in a fire. I imagine myself a blazing, sucking ball of greed prowling the streets of Bangkok. Flaming lassos reach out for shiny things in my periphery. All of the shiny things. Consumption was once defined as a "wasting disease." A wasting of. A wasting away. I don't want to waste, to be wasted. Will I cherish all of these things in my hands or lose them, break them, become embarrassed of my pillage and hide them? 

I think about all of this wasting, this consuming during a massage later that week. Yes, this is true. The irony of contemplating excess while relaxing through your second massage of the day is not lost on me. 

But then I have these glowing moments where the haggling, the inspecting, the exchanging of money for goods and services so firmly root me in place. I snuck out one afternoon and found a busy noodle shop full of after work Thais. Not much more than a shop face, I squeezed past the steaming cart of broths and delicate rice noodles stuffed in a glass window. 

"Noodles?"

I point. 

"Tom Yum? Spicy?" 

I slurp and enjoy and savor and panic when I hit a pepper. It's so delicious. The sun is streaming in through the tiny, open store front and people flood the streets to buy things. Peeled durian wrapped tightly in plastic wrap to mask its gasoline smell, sacks of broth and noodles to feed the family at home, toasted peanuts, fried duck chopped on a wooden cutting block, fresh juice. T-shirts, flip flops, toys, DVDs, office supplies. 

Pink Pad Thai! 

And I realize it's not just me out there eating and spending money - all of Bangkok seems to be buying and selling, squeezing melons and demanding lower prices.

After my throat of fire is soothed by a Coke, I push back onto the busy street. My shoulders brushing against Thai shoulders. All of us carrying something in our hands. 

  

Jebel Shams Balcony Walk & Misfat Village

Jebel Shams

Jebel Shams

Last week an Omani told me that he wanted to build a new home with a great big yard. "To host the moon and the stars at night." My gosh Oman. You are great.

Here are two more great things about Oman: the Jebel Shams Balcony Walk and Misfat Village.

The Balcony Walk is just what it sounds like - a thin ledge that leads you around Oman's "Grand Canyon." A small village is tucked into the rocks as the canyon horseshoes. Had the spit scared out of me a time or two.

Clearly, we were owning that ridiculous adventure stance 

Misfat is a lovely mountain village with a functioning falaj system. 

Misfat Falaj

After Dinner

There is a Bedouin adage of sorts about hospitality, it goes like this: If an unexpected visitor arrives at your door, he should be welcomed, fed and given rest in your home for three days. He is your esteemed guest. Only after three days can you ask the person's name, where he comes from, and what he wants. 

This spirit of warmth and welcoming has, almost without exception, been our experience in the Middle East over the past decade. I was reminded of this a few nights ago as Max and I shared sushi, of all things, with an Omani friend. 

"In the region of Batinah, where I'm from, you must first share a meal together before asking about serious things. After the meal is cleared you can ask how is your family? how is your health?"  If you just sit down and ask about someone right away, he continued in broken English, this signals to your host that you are anxious to eat and then leave their company as quickly as possible.

Sure enough, after eating he leaned back and we talked about politics and shared stories for a few hours.

Throughout our years in the Middle East, Max and I have been welcomed into dozens of homes by people who were often not much more than strangers. They shared their traditions, asked about our families, and offered us their best meals. They lived Islam in a way that exemplified generosity, moderation, and sincere devotion.   

In this season of gratitude and reflection, I’m thankful for the many meals over which I’ve come to better understand Arabs and Islam. For the many friends we’ve made in the Middle East who have taught us how to build relationships on shared values despite coming from very different places. I’m thankful for the space it’s made in my brain and my heart.

If you are having a hard time separating the heinous acts of groups or individuals claiming to represent Islam from the regular folks with the same concerns and joys as you, lean on my experiences for a while. And if you have the chance to make real life connections with people who believe differently than you –don’t turn it down. In fact, seek after them. You’ll be surprised how much the people you get to know are different from the narratives we often accept about them. You’ll learn about their daughter’s acceptance into University. You’ll learn about their bad bosses and their favorite picnic spot. You’ll learn about their best chicken recipe and their retirement plans. You’ll find you have a lot more in common than you thought.   

All after dinner of course.  

Light Over Darkness

This week Hindus celebrate Diwali. My Indian colleagues explain it to me as they light  diyas or small candles. On the first day they wear new clothing and shining hair as they fill a banquet table full of Diwali sweets: Maaladu, Ladoo, Burfi made of coconut, almond and cardamom.

“We celebrate the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil, and hope over despair."

During the five days of celebration I contemplated the symbolic timing of Diwali  - the first night coincides with the darkest night of the year.

I have been thinking about this all week as a kind of beautiful, hopeful defiance. In the darkness they put on their best clothing and light candles – small acts that some could argue won’t make a difference to the overall status of mid-winter despair. They recognize the realities of light and dark, good and evil, and symbolically participate in the gradual return to light, goodness, hope, wisdom.

Today I awoke to the terrible news of terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut. Over 120 dead in Paris, over 40 in Beirut and many more wounded. Borders are tightening up and people are, understandably, afraid.

And I thought about that phrase “light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil, and hope over despair.”

I have to believe it’s possible.

Palimpsest

Why yes, I did study Medieval Manuscripts in Graduate School

“Blend in, adapt.” He says while kneading gnarled, woodworkers hands. "That is what we did when we moved here 30 years ago. We didn’t want to change things, we wanted to understand, to add our lives to whatever they were already doing here.”

The elderly couple before us seem as central to this small town as anybody we’ve met over the last few years of visiting, but he went on to describe the not so subtle warning spoken over the pulpit their first week in town “We don’t need nobody with college degrees coming to our town and tellin' us what to do!"

Our new friend was the former director of the Anasazi State Park in Boulder Utah and even though we had walked the packed gravel road to find a notary for some important mid-vacation legal work, we spent a good portion of that morning talking to the historian and his wife about Ancestral Puebloan funerary rites, uncovering ancient burial plots, the national woodworking conference from which he had just returned and their life in this small town. I couldn’t help but comparing their philosophy to that of those he spent his life studying.  Adapt, study the local flora and fauna, expand on the strengths of your tribe and find a way to make your identity compliment your circumstances. 

Last year, after returning from home leave I felt that familiar expat split: part of two worlds and not really sure of either. But as each year passes I’m getting better at integrating my experiences into something relevant and meaningful in the present.  My past selves into one life, one identity.

Last week back in Muscat we fought the terrible traffic to little India and picked up a 100 year old book press My husband’s family unearthed in Salt Lake City a few years ago. Literally unearthed. It was hidden under the porch of the century old family home and covered in rust. I’ve packed this beast from DC to Morocco to Oman hoping that I could someday use it in my bookbinding studio. This year we found a metalworker who could grind off the dirt and rust, paint the turning wheel, lubricate the spindle and re-attach the press plate. Suresh, from Bangladesh, finally fixed our early 20^th century cast iron book press once used by Max’s English Great Grandfather. With my new excitement over the press, I just started teaching a bookbinding class, a skill I first learned in college before studying with a bookbinder in Jerusalem.

A palimpsest is a manuscript that, as textual needs and circumstances change, has been prepared and written over again and again. Much of the previous text is altered or erased, but there is a still a trace of the preceding texts in the final product. Over the centuries a medieval manuscript could have acquired four, five, six different surface writings – all previous writings mostly hidden from view but still part of the integral makeup. In fact, the building up of the text surface can make the book stronger. Unusual, perhaps, but more able to receive the next text and maintain its usefulness and beauty.

I should be so lucky. 

Sri Lanka: Wonder

Kandy Lake

“The Buddha did not deny the existence of suffering, but he also did not deny the existence of joy and happiness.  If you think that Buddhism says, “Everything is suffering and we cannot do anything about it,” that is the opposite of the Buddha’s message.”   

Thich Nhat Hanh The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching

friendly critter

Lest you think Max and I moped about in paradise being sad sacks the whole time, there was also much joy and happiness. We stayed in an insane bungalow, hidden in the mountains of Kandy by verdant, jungle canopy but also by thick morning fog.  I fulfilled what was, until that moment, an un-realized life goal to bath al fresco in a rooftop bathtub enclosed by trees. Sure, I had to watch for critters what might fall from said trees and into my bath, but vigilance was a small price to pay.  Later, over a candlelight dinner of spicy curries we took turns watching for snakes slithering from the foliage to join our meal unbidden.  Frogs perched in the eves above us and croaked their night song.

Our "jungalow" surrounded in fog.

We spotted black hooded orioles and a ceylon blue magpie while riding an Elephant, hands resting on his massive ears, and toured tea factories after winding through hills being harvested by Sri Lankan women. 

Sigiriya

We climbed 1200 steps to the top of a 5^th century citadel at Sigiriya and inspected remarkably preserved paintings before exiting through enormous lion paws carved into rock.  

So. Many. Steps. 

Beautiful frescos - half way up the citadel face.

But the business of writing about travel is fraught with temptations of vanity and dishonesty. It makes for great facebook updates and crafted high adventure identities based on a few photos, but its author is constantly at risk of boiling complex people and places to one-dimensional objects of consumption existing only for personal pleasure.

I think about this so often I am paralyzed by it. 

It felt a bit disingenuous to share only photographs of lush green forests and majestic Elephant baths from our trip to Sri Lanka without placing them in context of Sri Lanka's recent troubles. …but there were incredible creatures swinging from trees above our private bungalow terrace, glorious rain and lightening storms that stretched over the highlands and tea plantations so green and misty that we lost ourselves inside. To ignore the wonder of a place feels just as dishonest as to focus on its grittier aspects.       

And the world is too amazing not to share.

Lightening Overlooking Kandy

Kandy, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka: Suffering

Offerings at the Dambulla Cave Temples

“It was a terrible time.  There were bombs going off everywhere and a lot of innocent people dying.”

Our local guide Rajita said this to us one night as we snaked through dark jungle roads lit dimly by naked bulbs in fruit stands. This was the single comment he offered about Sri Lanka’s horrific 26 year civil war. And really, civil war is too tidy a word for the kind of fractured brutality that took place. Suicide bombings, kidnapping and dismemberment were daily occurrences.   

While Rajita was, for obvious and good reason, brief about the war, he did talk at length with us about Buddhism. Sri Lanka has been an important stronghold for Buddhism since the 3^rd century BC and Sri Lankans take credit for initiating the Buddhist monastic movement. 70% of the population is Buddhist. 

To learn about the war and the Buddha at the same made sense to me. The Buddha found the way to enlightenment as he sought to come to terms with suffering. He meditated on inevitable truths that all get old, we get sick,we die. All of the things that we love will be taken at some point in life.  The slow time frame of these natural realties is collapsed, pulverized in war. Suffering 2.0.

Ok, so suffering exits. But what is one to do about it? What responsibilities do we have to each other or, if you are inclined, to God? I have thought about this a lot in different places we’ve lived in the Middle East. What is a morally responsible way to engage with the suffering of others and, by necessity, to manage the suffering of one's self? How ought we to approach and interpret unfair and indiscriminate suffering? Conflict seems to bring these questions to the forefront and the Buddha’s meditations are as important today as they were during his own time.   

In her book “Buddha” the religious historian Karen Armstrong wrote “In his view (the Buddha), the spiritual life cannot begin until people allow themselves to be invaded by the reality of suffering, realize how fully it permeates our whole experience and feel the pain of all other beings, even those we don’t find congenial.”

As we left Sri Lanka to come back to Oman we read about the terrible earthquake in Nepal.  Nepal is one of the world’s poorest countries and probably one of the least able to deal with the effects of such a devastating natural disaster. A lot of people will suffer for  a long time. Sri Lanka itself lost more than 35000 people in the horrible 2004 tsunami.     

Train Station in Nurya Elia

It was easy to be naïve in Sri Lanka about the island nation’s painful recent history. It’s beyond beautiful, the people are kind and adventure seems to lurk around every corner. On our trip we read about The Buddha on a train bound for the highest point of the island, Nurya Elia, and shared snippets out loud over the roar of the wind through open windows. We visited the temple of the tooth where ear splitting drummers guarded a relic said to be the Buddha’s tooth. We climbed shin splinting stairs to the cave temples at Dambulla where a distant relative of the Bodhi tree grows.  But suffering was never far from our minds. 

Dambulla Caves

Dambulla Caves

Temple of the Tooth - people waiting to give offerings

Sri Lanka: Remembering How to See

Dumballa Cave Temples

 My family has a mysterious hip dysfunction that, when at its worse, makes sitting for any period of time agonizing. A few years ago I spent a sweltering DC summer trying to figure it out which amounted to basically remembering how to walk and how to sit. I felt like a 4 year old. 

At breakfast a few days ago I was thinking through how to write about our recent trip to Sri Lanka when my hip pain became enough to distract me from thoughts of lush green jungles. I paused, took a deep breath,  lifted my rib cage and tilted my pelvis slightly forward to settle back onto the chair with purpose.  Remember how to sit. The phrase often comes to my head when the pain becomes too much. I sit taller and re-align my shoulders and I can usually manage the position.

And it hit me.  Remembering how to see.  That is what this trip was about. In fact, now that I think about it, for me travel is always about remembering how to see. How to see the value in people very different from myself, how to see fractured national identities resulting from power and place, how to see the incredible effects of natural forces over time. How to see God in practices very unlike my own and how to see suffering that has never directly affected me.

We explored temples, ate delicious spicy curries, drove through misty mountain jungle passes, rode elephants and relaxed in what we affectionately think of as our "jungalow" but mostly we remembered how to see.     

Dumballa Cave Temples

Pinnawala

On the path from Nur Eliya

Qantab Beach, Oman

By eight AM the Qantab fishermen are already pulling their green boats ashore, faces wrapped in sea crusted checkered scarves.  I watched two men leap from the bow and run a rope up the beach to a large empty spool operated by a crank. A few villagers wondered over, as if summoned, and begin to turn the spool.  The boat slowly crept further onto the beach to be cleaned and stowed until tomorrow. 

From a distance I’d been watching two young boys drop a fishing line rolled around a pack of cigarettes into the ocean below their rocky outcrop for almost an hour. As the masked men pulled their boat out of the sea the two boys, Jaffer and Hamza, appeared down on the beach to clean one sizable catch alongside the proper fishermen. Under the guise of getting a better angle from which to draw the emerging boat I started a conversation about the fish they’d caught that morning.

The two fishermen pulled their catch from a cooler and slapped them on the deck for me to see whole before being gutted. The younger of the two smiled up at me and through the tightly wrapped scarf, protecting him from relentless sun and ocean wind, I saw deep green eyes.

Oman continues to surprise me.

Cairo 2016

The future never looks like what you thought it would - but it's almost always awesome.  It's official folks, we are headed to Cairo in 2016!

Let me rewind for a minute and tell you that Egypt was the first place I visited outside of America. Unless you count a sunburned afternoon in Tijuana, which I don't. At the Cairo airport I tucked my money belt under a baggy shirt, pulled my hat down and braced myself for what I was told would be an incredible and overwhelming city.  And it was. Everything after Cairo has seemed like a breeze in comparison.

We've been trying to balance romantic expectations with the very real instability and challenges we'll face in Egypt. We can't know exactly what it will be like until we get there, but we are trying to be as clear eyed as possible.

...but it's Egypt, people. There is so much to learn that my head spins from time to time.  I've started a bit early and, as any good librarian would offer, here are a few titles if you want to dive into Egypt's rich literary and archeological history with me:

The Yacubian Building: Alaa Al Aswany
The Cairo Trilogy:  Naguib Mahfouz
The Blue Manuscript: Abiha Al Khemir 
Crocodile on the Sandbank (Amelia Peabody bk. 1): Elizabeth Peters
Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs: A Popular History of Ancient Egypt: Barbara Mertz
Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East: Scott Anderson
A Brief History of Islam: Karen Armstrong (who I love)
The Road to Tahrir Square: Lloyd C. Gardner
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit;  A Jewish Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World: Lucette Lagnado
Cairo the Victorious: Max Rodenbeck
Letters from Egypt: A Journey on the Nile, 1849-1850: Florence Nightingale
The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered The Hidden Gospels: Jane Soskice

Here's to hoping we've grown the chops to take on the city!