Knocking About

A'ali Pottery Workshop

2012-01-22T07:18:00.000-08:00

Manama was cold this weekend. We’ve had a bitter northerly wind blowing over the island for the last week and it felt almost winterish out there. Looking at everyone decked out in heavy coats, scarves and gloves, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Poland – that is, until you saw that the outside temperature was actually a pleasant 63 degrees (17 C). Like you’d expect in a country where a “northerly“ arrives via Iraq, “cold” is a relative term.

I haven’t been here long enough that I was going to be kept in by weather that, anywhere else in the world, would be described as pleasant and springlike, so Ms. C and I set out to visit the pottery workshop in the village of A’ali. A colleague had recommended the workshop as being one of the more interesting cultural sites on the island, and I was looking forward to my visit. Pottery has a long history on the island – beginning in the Dilmun period over 4,000 years ago and continuing until, at the very least, early last week. Seven families in the village are responsible for running the workshop, where two types of local clay are mixed to make strong, lightweight vessels, which are then dried in the shade before being kiln-finished.

Except on this particular Saturday, anyway. Ms. C and I wandered through lonely alleys thick with pot shards and hungry kittens, but no potters. When we finally found a building with intact pottery for sale, there was still not a soul to purchase them from. This did give us time to look things over, however, and I have to say that a lot of the work was indeed very, very cool. I started calculating how many human-sized amphorae I could buy before I hit the shipping weight limit for my household effects.

After another fifteen minutes of examining the wares, the empty shop and the howling wind just made the place feel creepy, so we wandered through the residential part of the compound until a teenager, who was not particularly interested in selling us anything, finally agreed to take way too much of our money, for a bizarre object whose sole purpose is to reduce the lighting efficiency of a candle. I remain a very, very bad bargainer. Still, we came home with something, and we are delighted with it.

Mission Impossible

2012-01-16T07:46:00.000-08:00

"Mission Impossible" could easily be a reference to just how hard it is to find anyone who will speak Arabic with me in Bahrain, and while that is definitely a candidate for a future post, right now I’m actually talking about the Mission Impossible that will be familiar to millions of teenage boys the world over. The I-have-no-idea-which-one out of I-have-no-idea-how-manyeth installment of the Tom Cruise action series, in which he plays a secret agent working for, believe it or not, the IMF. Fostering global monetary cooperation and facilitating international trade never looked so good!

Back home, there is no chance I would have paid money to see a movie subtitled “Ghost Protocol”, even if Wes Anderson directed Bill Murray in it. Unfortunately, so long as we’re unwilling to drive further than the 20-screen mega-plex at the City Centre mall, Transformers III might be just about as art-house as we’re going to get here in Bahrain.

It’s too bad – because the theatre itself is kind of awesome. It is absolutely massive, with lovely stadium seating, and a sound system that is so powerful that you can barely hear anyone in the audience talking on their phones. If you must see an action movie, this is the place to do it. I didn’t really need the huge screen, though, because I was so excited about the Arabic subtitles at the bottom of it that I barely had time to look at anything else. It’s gratifying to know that after two years of study, I have nearly large enough a vocabulary that I could script a block-buster action film in classical Arabic. Now, if I could only learn enough of the local dialect to conduct a three-minute interview for the newlywed couple who are just trying to get a visa to go to Disneyworld for their honeymoon.

*Spoiler Alert*

The absolute highlight of the film, though, was watching the reaction of the audience when the story shifted to this part of the world. The second the camera began to pan over sand dunes and the subtitles lit up with the word “Dubai”, people started pointing at the screen and a delighted buzz rippled through the audience. I expect it must have been nice to watch a Hollywood action flick where the bad guys were Swedes and the only negative role the Arabs played was building the world’s tallest building in the middle of a real estate collapse.

Oh, and lest anyone worry that everyone in this part of the world wants to see America’s downfall – when the nuclear missile that threatened to destroy San Francisco fell harmlessly into the bay, the audience actually clapped. Can you imagine that in the US? I think American audiences across large parts of the country would have been a little disappointed to see San Francisco survive un-annihilated*

*Not me, I like San Francisco. I can’t understand why JJ Abrahms keeps trying to blow it up in his films. First the Romulans and now the Russians? Poor San Francisco, though it’s nice to see NYC getting a break from all that make-believe destruction.

Manama, Bahrain!

2012-01-07T08:22:00.000-08:00

The time has come to resume the blog. My last update had Ms. C and I on the verge of moving to Virginia (we did) to begin A-100 (finished it), where we would find out where we were going (Manama, Bahrain), and learn the language to do the job (I passed, al hamdu lillah!), before making the final journey to what would be our new home for the next two years (arrived two weeks ago - leaving in 102 more).

Without a doubt, the last nine months have been more eventful than the handful of parentheticals in the previous paragraph suggests, but, no doubt to the relief of my friends and family (and the Regional Security Officer), I’ve resolved to avoid discussing work wherever possible, and to stick to the lifestyle side of things.

Of course, I'm aware that while I post photos of sunsets, Bahrain has suffered greatly in the last year, and will continue to face difficulties for the foreseeable future. A post about the nice brunch at the Sofitel no doubt comes across a bit Marie Antionettish, but see previous paragraph: the political side of things comes under the work category, and my thoughts on the situation won’t appear here.

That said, let us eat cake. First impressions are that the life here on our 55km by 18km island should be quite nice. Traffic isn’t (quite) as terrible as we’d been warned, and that has given me the confidence to branch out a little from the daily work commute. This afternoon, for example, I drove to the south-western end of the island to visit a new hotel that had advertised a "Magnifique Eastern Orthodox Christmas Brunch". Because Ms. C and I had missed schismatic Christmas in the confusion of our arrival to Bahrain, and because I don't pass up meals that have four adjectives, we decided to take advantage of this second chance to celebrate the holiday.

Unfortunately, when I asked about the promised Christmas celebration at the hotel, nobody had any idea what I was talking about. Christmas, to the extent it was noted at all here, had happened weeks before, and I definitely wasn’t getting any support from the largely Saudi clientele. Fortunately, to me, Christmas is really about food, and that was provided in ridiculous abundance. I’d read about Bahraini brunches, and this one lived up to the absurd expectations I’d set for it. It also gave us a chance to set foor for the first time in the Gulf, and I’m looking forward to more time playing in the water. Ms. Chadha got a few minutes, but it wasn’t long before security realized we weren’t paying guests and shooed us away.

While it’s very possible that the next two years of updates will consist largely of pictures of food and stories centered on me getting kicked out of places for lack-of-membership reasons, I hope to do a lot better. Thanks to friends and family who have continued to drop by in spite of eight months of silence, your patience is admired, even if it was not rewarded.

Brooklyn Eats

2011-03-17T08:11:00.000-07:00

Among the many benefits that my new career might offer, the opportunity to travel easily ranks near the top. There's not much better than paying a couple of dollars to board a bus and, a few hours later, stepping off in some place that the younger version of me never could have imagined visiting. And one of my favorite things about going somewhere new? The chance to discover and eat new and interesting foods. In fact, if you were to look inside the matryoshka doll of my decision-making process, you'd find, sealed inside the innermost doll, a delicious sandwich.

I love eating. The fact that restaurants in New York never last any amount of time is awful if you own one, but great if you eat in them. My neighborhood constantly has new places popping up, and leaving the neighborhood has given me an excuse to try each and every one of them. Of course, finding a new place to love risks making it that much harder to leave, but I'm willing to take that chance. Some of my recent favorites include: Bark Hot Dogs, whose dogs are truly amazing and beat out my old favorites (Oscar Meyer with cheese inside) by such a wide margin that I sometimes wonder if I'd ever eaten a hot dog before; Franny's Pizza, which some say is the best pizza in New York, though my Judge, an ancient Brooklynite, holds that nothing on Flatbush Avenue can even be sanitary, let alone good; and finally, iCi, where they promise that they know how to treat eggs right and serve a decent bloody mary while they prove it.

I don't really have any real idea what kind of food I'm going to find in D.C. All told, I've spent less than two weeks in the capitol and, while I didn't run across anything truly memorable, I've always enjoyed the area more than I thought I would. One thing that I do know is that I'm going to be relying heavily on Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide while I'm there. He explains where you can find amazing things like Bolivian food trucks and the finest gas station/tacqueria in the metropolitan D.C. area. Don't be surprised if this turns into a food blog for a few weeks.

We still have a few more days in the neighborhood yet, so this weekend I'll be visiting the Milk Truck Grilled Cheese stand at Brooklyn Flea, which I suspect is one of those places that is only remarkable for the length of the line, and Roman's on DeKalb, which is meant to have some pretty serious gelato. Other than that, it's eating whatever is left in the fridge. We've got a week to empty that thing and we have seven pounds of raw chicken to get through to do it. That's a pound of chicken a day until we pack out. I can hardly believe it!

Negotiating A-101

2011-03-02T14:55:00.000-08:00

After surviving what had promised to be an awkward discussion with the Judge, I now have nothing left to do but look forward to the start of my A-100 class later this month. I say it was a difficult discussion, but in truth, I got the sense that the news wasn’t all that hard for the Judge to take. He just wanted to make sure my replacement was all lined up, and beyond that, it was very much a “best of luck, don’t get shot” sort of attitude. Much better than expected! The worst part was figuring out my leave-date, particularly as my Judge is a shrewd negotiator with a reputation for getting his way without looking like he wanted anything in the first place.

Now, my clerkship involves participating in settlement talks and mediations, so I’ve watched a fair few negotiations over the last eight months. I like to think that during those countless hours listening to securities fraud cases and employment discrimination disputes, that I’ve learned a few things about how to negotiate. The two most important appear to be:

1) Never, ever, open the bidding anywhere near your final position. That kind of efficiency may be desirable when Mrs. Chadha and I are trying to decide where to sit in a restaurant, but it is deadly to the art of negotiation in most other contexts.

2) Talk constantly about how you “can’t bid against yourself.” Legal custom apparently requires that lawyers mention, at least once, but maybe as many as three-dozen times, “how I can’t be expected to bid against myself, your honor!” In New York, this is usually (and most effectively) done in an obnoxious, mid-Atlantic accent. It also doesn’t matter that the phrase doesn’t actually mean anything at all, or that I can’t stand hearing it. It’s just understood that it’s going to be used in every negotiation context, by every lawyer, until the end of time.

When I finally got my chance to put what I've learned to the test, I'm sorry to say that I failed to follow either rule.

My opening offer to the Judge was that I would continue to work until Friday, March 25th. Since FSO training starts on Monday, March 28th, I basically said that the only thing I wasn’t willing to do was work both jobs simultaneously. Unsurprisingly, the Judge accepted my proposal, so I now have only half-a-weekend to relocate from New York to Washington - hopefully in time to attend a Sunday afternoon welcome party with my new colleagues. What this means in practice is that poor Mrs. Chadha will probably have to shoulder more of the pack-out burden than is probably fair, but I suppose that’s just a consequence of her own cosmic negotiating blunder - agreeing to marry me. I guess law schools in New Zealand don’t prohibit bidding against oneself the same way we do - and thank God for that.

A-100 Offer!

2011-01-30T09:13:00.000-08:00

At 10:00 pm Friday night, I received an offer to join the March 28, 2011 A-100 class, which I accepted immediately. I had a confirmation of my acceptance an hour later, which is really pretty impressive. I can tell you from personal experience that the Federal Judiciary rarely works past 6:00 on a Friday night - that's obviously less true at the State Department.

Now begins a period of frantic planning. Two months from now, we'll be in D.C., which is about six months earlier than Ms. C and I had been planning. I'm not at all prepared. I have a lease that runs through June and a clerkship that was meant to run through August. I'm even holding theater tickets that run beyond what little time I have left in Brooklyn (anyone want two tickets to see King Lear at BAM this May?).

Telling the boss isn't going to be easy: he's a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, and I doubt that in his twenty years on the bench, he's ever had anyone leave before the end of their clerkship. If the way he reacted when we left him behind during a courthouse fire-drill is any indication, he's not going to be pleased at all. That said, he's committed his life to public service and I hope he'll understand why I want to do the same.

There are a few financial implications to staying on the right side of the Judge. State tries to match your starting salary (within limits) to the salary you earned before joining the service. There are conditions attached to this for federal employees, the most important for me being that there can't be a break of more than three days. If the Judge replaces me immediately, which he can (and probably should) try to do, I'm looking at a much longer break in service than three days.

I'll try to qualify for the higher salary, but right now, it hardly seems important. I've taken less pay in exchange for more rewarding work every year since I graduated from law school, and I haven't regretted it yet. I'm so excited, I hardly know what to do with myself.

الحمد لله!

2010-12-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

You can apparently say “I no love winter! I like ice in the sky nevertimes!” without ruining your chances completely on the Foreign Service Arabic Exam, because, against all expectations, I seem to have passed. I’m very, very pleased. This time last year, I had just finished the introductory Arabic course at Qalam wa Lawh, a language school in Rabat, Morocco. We used Alif-Baa, a book designed to introduce the Arabic alphabet to English speakers with no background in the language whatsoever. One year, hundreds of hours, and thousands of dollars later, everything has finally paid off and that I will received word that I’ve received my Super Critical Needs Language points.

I’m not sure where that puts me on the hiring lists, but historically, a score above 5.8 on the Econ register has been a fairly sure thing. I’m on the do-not-call list until August - or, more accurately, until I just get too impatient and walk out on the judge. It’ll be hard to sit through this job over the next eight months, which is a shame, because two weeks ago I would have described it as the best job I’ve ever had.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll describe some of the tools I used to prepare for the exam, just in case they’re of any use to anybody going through the same thing. I’ve been keeping track of what worked for me and what didn’t, but I thought it was probably a bit premature to recommend my approach before there was any evidence that it worked. Thanks to everyone, particularly the immensely patient Ms. C, who helped to prepare me for this thing, I really am grateful.

Maybe Ten Years Ago

2010-12-17T14:34:00.000-08:00

I was misinformed as to when the State Department would give me my Arabic exam results. It looks like the contractor who runs the tests only provides scores once a week - every Monday morning. Having taken my test on a Monday morning, I’ll have to wait the longest amount of time possible. Fortunately, waiting is a skill I’ve perfected during this whole process.

The wait has also given me a chance to review every piece of my performance over those ten minutes, at least to the extent that I can remember anything that happened at all. I realized that my answer to one of the questions was actually pretty good, given that I understood barely a word of it. I answered “maybe ten years ago...” and then trailed off unintelligibly. That’s actually a reasonable answer to a lot more questions than you’d think, for example:

“Do you exercise or play sports at all?”

“Are you satisfied with your work?”

“How long ago did you begin the process of becoming a foreign service officer?”

The more I think about it, the more convinced I’ve become that I might have nailed that one. Only another few days until I find out. Do you think I can handle the stress?

Maybe, around ten years ago.

Han al-waqt!

2010-12-13T09:35:00.000-08:00

I just finished my Modern Standard Arabic test with the people at BEX. What a disaster. I knew my nerves were getting the better of me when in my regular early morning lesson with the folks in Cairo, I could feel my consciousness start to sort of float away. I don’t know whether other people experience this or not: that part of an oral exam where you drift off and spend more time thinking about how you sound saying something than you do about what you’re actually saying? I’ve stress-tested this technique across a wide range of environments, and I can confirm that it’s a guaranteed way to sabotage yourself.

I called about five minutes early, only to have someone pick-up the phone and hang it back up immediately. It’s nice to see that government employees are the same in DC as we are here in the courthouse. We’ll stay late if we have to, but by God we will not start earlier than scheduled. If I’m in before 9:00, it’s because I want to read the newspaper for ten minutes, not to get a head start on serving the public.

I called back a few minutes later. This time, they answered and took down my information before passing me along to the testing team. Now, I won’t go into too much detail about the test’s subject matter - nobody mentioned anything about an NDA during my test, but the notoriously conservative folks on the A-100 Yahoo message board have me so completely terrified that I’m breaking some sort of Foreign Service code just by admitting the existence of the test (or the Yahoo message board, for that matter), that I’m going to hold back a little.

We began with a pretty simple dialogue. There was surprisingly little opportunity to go off-topic on this “interview” portion of the test. Basic questions about the weather would get cut off before I had an opportunity to expand on, say, exactly why I hate winter so much in New York, or whether or not I think the summer here is even worse than winter. I felt like I was cruising along until I hit a question that I just didn’t understand at all. The tester rephrased it three times until I finally sort of understood and I apologized and stammered out an answer. When I asked for that second repetition, I could hear the two or three testers whispering with each other and writing stuff down. It was like a scene in a courtroom drama where the prosecutor has just revealed evidence that’s going to get a man hanged.

Having failed that section, we moved on to open discussion. This is where you’re given a topic and you talk, for at least a couple of minutes, on whatever topic you’ve been given. I think “open” is intended in the same sense that the ocean or a desert are “open.” The subject they give you is your means of survival, and you have no idea what it is or how useful it will be until they toss it to you. If they asked me about, say, my job, than I’ve been given a life-raft. This is because I can happily talk at some length about what I do every day and what I think of it - I can survive the open water with this subject. Now, I wouldn’t say that the topic they gave me was an anchor, exactly, but it sure didn’t float. If this were a desert scene, it would have been a bag of salt.

My answer included an unflattering discussion of the Republican Party. I referred to them as “Hizb Republican” (wherein I say "Republican" in English, but with some bizarre accent that’s meant to convey a certain foreignness). At one point, the tester said, in English “what is 'Republican?'”

I said, in Arabic, “well, there are two principle parties in the United States, the Democrats are liberals, and the Republicans are the opposite.”

She said again in English, “no, that is an English word, what do you mean by ‘Republican?’”

I answered, again in Arabic, “It is a proper name, like my name, Chadha, it is the same in all languages, like Hezbollah.”

She didn’t agree, and really, I was just stalling because I have no idea what they call the Republicans in Arabic countries - they probably consider them left-wing radicals or something. I compromised by turning the Arabic word for “Republic” into an adjective, but I think it was too late by then, as the damage was already done. The test ended directly after this and I’m to call tomorrow to get my results. There’s probably some rule that if the tester has to switch into English, than you automatically fail. One year of studying for twelve minutes of semi-coherent dialogue, trouble with a technicality, and probable failure as a consequence of both. Next time I’ll limit my discussion to the wicked “Hizbashay.”

My greatest hope (and my worse fear) rest on the fact that scoring a two really shouldn’t be so hard. Low bars are the worst though - they don’t let you feel that great if you pass, and you feel that much worse when you fail. The way I feel right now, I’d be very surprised to hear any good news. So I probably would feel pretty fantastic about making it through. And really, let's be honest, they have yet to make a bar so low that I’m not delighted to jump over it. I get a little thrill just crossing the lines sometimes.

When I get the inevitable bad news tomorrow, I don't think I'll feel too badly about facing another six months of hard-out study. The temptation to slack on my studies and lose all of this progress would be too great if I didn’t have a terrifying test to motivate me every waking minute of my life.

Vocabulary Discrimination

2010-12-08T14:25:00.000-08:00

A major difference between language learning in a defined setting and language learning on your own, is that when you’re on your own, the size of the universe is pretty much unlimited. If I study at the Foreign Service Institute, on the other hand, I can rest fairly assured that if I simply learn and know everything that I’m presented with (I know, easier said than done), that I stand a good chance of getting to where I need to be. After all, the folks teaching the language are the folks testing the language, and I’m not sure that you can avoid teaching with the test in mind if you’re already familiar at all with its contents.

Self-directed study raises a whole host of other questions. What to focus on? What is relevant? What should I emphasize? As my phone exam draws near, I find myself running a bizarre probability calculation as to what I think is most likely to be on the test. Should I be focusing on political vocabulary? Economics? Media? Particular current events? Is there an Arabic word for “Wikileak”?

I’ve developed an elaborate system of flashcards where words move in and out of various stacks scattered around the apartment, based on my how confident I am that I know how to use them appropriately. The goal for any self-respecting card is to finally make it onto the window-ledge in the spare room, which means I can pretty much ignore it forever. The problem is that some particularly stubborn words who refuse to be learned keep resurfacing - for example, I might be working on a set of new business meeting vocab I’ve thrown together, but because of my stragglers, the set might include the words: delegate, meeting, settlement, rabbit, authority, furry, representative.

To deal with this issue, I’ve had to create a new pile of cards, which is located on the floor between the headboard of my bed and the wall. This pile is for cards with vocabulary that I once thought important enough to learn, but now clearly have no place in an increasingly crowded study regime. “Spokesman” and “salary” can stay, but “zombie-fight” and “aquarium” are out. “Criminal” has to be learned, but “frosting” can wait. “Frisbee” can stay, but only because the Arabic word for that is probably just “frisbee.”

I guess we’ll find out soon enough if I made the right choices. I’m going to be pretty disappointed if the first question is “Candidate, could you please tell me if this is just about the furriest rabbit you have ever seen in your whole life?” I guess the best thing about this test is knowing what to expect when I inevitably have to take it again.

On the Register

2010-10-08T13:54:00.000-07:00

Every time I reach the point where it seems appropriate to complain in a public forum, I get what I want just a few days later. Almost immediately after wondering out loud why I hadn't made it onto the register yet, I learned that I had.

What this means in practical terms is that there is no impediment to starting my career as a diplomat - except for all of those other candidates who earned higher scores at the oral assessment, that is. The list is rank ordered based on raw oral assessment score, plus whatever bonuses you might earn from languages skills or military service.

My score on the oral assessment wasn't anything flashy, so I'm pretty far down the list. Throughout the summer, the number of candidates waiting on the registers has been growing faster than State has been able to hire them. If this keeps up, I don't like my odds. Luckily, I saw this coming and, round about this time last year, started studying Modern Standard Arabic. The foreign service badly needs Arabic speakers, and to recruit them, offers an enormous register boost to anyone who can pass a phone exam. The effect is big enough that even someone with the lowest possible passing score on the oral exam would be assured an offer if only they pass the Arabic test.

This is essentially where I am now. It's all in my hands - learn the language, and I can rest assured that when my clerkship ends in August, I'll be on my way to Washington. Fail, and I have only myself to blame. This is why I've doubled my tutoring hours to eight hour-long speaking sessions per week. At 7:00 every morning, I'm on the phone with my tutors in Cairo. Same thing, but for two hours, on the weekends. Fridays, thank Jebus, are free. In between lessons, flashcards, podcasts, al Jazeera, halaal carts or anything else that might help. Even Ms. C has started learning the language in a show of support. First try at the test will be at the end of December and then, practically, I'll have one more shot sometime in June before I have to start looking for an alternative, post-clerkship job. I'm already feeling the pressure.

I wonder what might happened if I'd put this kind of energy into any other aspect of my life over the previous thirty years? Never too late to grow up, I guess.

Clearance Granted

2010-09-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

What a relief...ish.

After calling every other Friday for about two months, I finally convinced the customer service team at Diplomatic Security to send an email on my behalf to my adjudicator (with whom my file had spent the previous five months). Two emails, actually: the first only uncovered the fact that my adjudicator was in training and unable to process my file, but the second email found its way to his replacement. She almost immediately emailed a couple of easy follow-up questions that had apparently been pending for the better part of a year: "Is Ms. Chadha actually your wife" and "Does Ms. Chadha have a job." Two affirmative replies later, I learned that I had been granted the necessary clearances.

This all unfolded at the start of the months, and since then, I've been waiting to hear that my file has made it through final adjudications and that I've made it onto the hiring register. Unfortunately, not a word from anyone since then. Even the option of calling the customer service folks (who in most cases are only allowed to tell you that nothing has changed) is no longer available. Now that I've cleared the security hurdle, who do I call? I've tried the registrar several times, but she's been avoiding the phone and my emails. This kind of follow-up is not something I enjoy doing, but it's proven to be very necessary in this process. Good thing that chasing up litigants for every bit of paper they're meant to have filed provides the perfect skill set for this sort of thing.

Me Talk Pretty - Part I

2010-08-24T08:47:00.000-07:00

With apologies to David Sedaris, a continuing series describing things that I find difficult to talk about in Arabic:

Brunch

As far as I know, Arabic's root system doesn't really accommodate portmanteau words. There is no meal called "fatghada" (brunch) that can be eaten with a "mirhawka" (spork). So I could only describe my post-lesson brunch plans as follows: "it is a chance to eat a very big breakfast with more meat. We eat it after the usual time of lunch. My friends love this because they arise late on Saturdays and Sundays. Because we live in New York, there is a requirement to wait in a long line." I didn't mention the "bottomless Bloody Mary," a discussion which would have been sure to cause offense on many levels.

Desalination Plants

I offered the idea of solar powered desalination plants as a solution to Egypt's growing population/water issues. I described this as a system where "the government steals salt from the water of the ocean and the government is able to do this because the sun in Egypt is very hot and the desert in Egypt is very spacious. There will be a big wall for the sun that is doing these things. Doing this the government does not need very much olive oil!"

Population crisis? Solved.

The Plot of the movie "Inception"

Not easy to do in any language, but the highlight of my attempt was explaining how "a man of business puts a team of idea people into the brain of another, bigger man of business. Inside his brain, they grow a new idea. There are many problems and much quarreling. Also, there is skiing inside the head."

Stuck in Traffic

2010-08-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

I've heard the foreign service testing and clearance process described as "a long journey". It's certainly long in temporal terms, but I'm not as sure that much ground is actually covered. I prefer instead to think of it taking a cab in a crowded city with a friendly, mildly drunk driver. There's a general sense of unease, punctuated with terror, exhilaration, and, occasionally, bursts of nauseatingly frenetic activity which leads you to believe that you're getting closer... until your driver once again slams on the breaks and you wind up lying on the floor in the middle of a pile of papers.

The appropriate analogy for adjudications would probably involve a traffic cop who wants to "quickly" make sure that you've never had a serious traffic violation (like aiding and abetting terrorists or forgetting to signal) anytime in the last ten years. I've been pulled over for the last twenty weeks or so while they review my file for whatever red flags were inevitably raised.

Heaven knows that the Chadhas always signal,* so I'm confident we'll ultimately receive a favorable decision. That doesn't stop me from making my bi-weekly update call to the security clearance customer service line. I don't generally like to bother people, but the advice that I've received is that these things sometimes need a gentle nudge. In my case, the real mystery has been over who needs the nudging, since they're having trouble tracking down who my assigned adjudicator is. My calls have prompted a few emails, which I imagine to be equivalent to blowing the car horn a little, and, as everyone who has ever lived in Cairo knows: constant honking is an elegant and efficient solution to intractable traffic issues.

*This is literally true in the case of Ms. Chadha. I have never seen a more conscientious driver in my life. You could set your watch by the position of her hands on the steering wheel, provided that the time was always exactly 10 :10.

The Grand Plan

2010-08-18T08:27:00.000-07:00

If it's not obvious already, I'm trying to learn Arabic. I'm doing this in part because I have a genuine interest in learning the language - I'd love access to all of those centuries of great literature, so much of which has never made it into translation. In Egypt, everyone who asked me why I'd choose to study Arabic naturally assumed that I was some sort of spy. I'd protest that I was actually joining the State Department, but that was really too fine a distinction for people who associate the word "State" with their own massive security services.

The truth, though, is that a huge motivating factor is all of the tasty bonus points I can earn from Arabic's status as a "Super Critical Needs Language." A score of at least "2" on the Interagency Language Roundtable scale would add an additional 0.5 points to my Oral Assessment score. For people like me with a score on the lower end of the range, the language points mean the difference between hope and the security of choosing a guaranteed start date on our own terms.

I've spent most of the past year studying independently, including stints in Morocco and Egypt. Over the last few months, it's just been me and my tutors at Arab Academy, a program that has led to success on the test before. Unfortunately(ish), I've recently returned to full-time work as a federal judicial clerk (once again practicing law properly!) which has taken a shocking amount of time away from my studies. Still, it's coming along. I'm starting to think I may have some hope of passing is thing, which seems incredible given that this time last year I didn't know my alif from my baa.

Since the requirements of "adulthood" require me to take a break from traveling for a while, I'll have to turn the discussion over to the adventures of learning Arabic. And what an adventure it is. I do miss being on the road, though. I don't mind admitting that hearing the call to prayer in the background during a session with my Cairo-based tutor made me a little nostalgic. I'll find out next week whether waking up for a 7:00 AM tutoring session in any way resembles the unpleasantness of being woken up every day by a blasting sunrise call to prayer.

Signs That It's Time to Go Back to Work - A Short Dialogue

2010-08-10T20:52:00.001-07:00

Me: So how late do you have to work tonight?

Barber: 'fraid I'm here 'til 9:00.

Me: On a Friday?! Who gets their hair cut at 9:00 on a Friday night?

Barber: Not many. Lucky for me, today is Tuesday.

Me: Right. That's right. Tuesday

Back to the Future

2010-07-22T22:43:00.001-07:00

I've fallen seriously behind in my posts. My most recent post was nearly two months ago, and even that ancient update was itself narrating events that had happened over a month before. I still enjoy updating this thing, I think I just hate the idea of working through my backlog of scribbles and notes. It's difficult to write with any sort of regularity about things that happened months ago. So, I've decided to resolve the issue as elegantly (and effortlessly) as possible - by skipping the past three or four months and jumping back to the future.

So here we are, again in now.

We're back in Brooklyn. I can finally say "we" because Ms. Chadha has left London to stay with me in New York for good. The long slog to the Foreign Service continues. My security clearance is still pending. My case manager from Diplomatic Security submitted my file sometime in mid-April, and shortly after that, I entered a special hell called "adjudications," where I've burned ever since. Operating under the logic that only a difficult decision could possibly take this long, I've started to believe that this is probably a bad sign.

Oh well, nothing really to do about it. I can't imagine what fatal information Diplomatic Security could have uncovered, so I'm hoping it's just a function of checking up on my frequent globe-trekking (Ms. C has dragged me to some 35 countries over the last five years). There's also always the possibility that Ms. C's nationality is the concern - she's not American, she's a Kiwi, and my country in understandably suspicious of a nation that would field a soccer team that neither won nor lost a single game in the World Cup. How un-American is that?

Convoy to Abu Simbel

2010-05-27T23:19:00.000-07:00

Fifteen minutes before we were scheduled to leave, the hotel gave us our wake up call. We climbed into our clothes and stumbled out into the lobby where we joined a handful of equally bleary-eyed guests. We were given a boxed lunch before being led to a spacious minibus. Given the length of the ride, I was pleased to only be sharing the bus with a few other people. Besides our small group, it seemed that the only others making the trip were four Korean tourists who, coincidentally, we had actually already met around a campfire in the White Desert the week before.

Unfortunately, this was only the second of a long series of stops. The empty seats quickly disappeared as we pulled into random alleyways and sidestreets, gathering one or two more tourists each stop. Soon, every seat was filled, but that didn’t stop our imaginative driver from creating more. Our bus had foldaway seats hidden everywhere – under other seats; on the floor; behind ingeniously disguised panels in the bus' walls. If the vehicle hadn’t already been horribly crowded, it might have actually been fun to guess from where the next seat was miraculously going to appear. In the circumstances, however, what had looked like a bargain when we booked was beginning to look even more like a steal, only we had become the victims.

"Well, at LE70 each, that's only about $5.00 each, not too bad for seven hours of transport," I said optimistically.

"It's more like £10.00 sterling, which is what you'd pay for a full-size seat on a National Express bus in England," replied Ms. Chadha with better math and brutal realism.

Awkwardly folded into a seat further down my row was an enormously tall German (he was 7'2", which according to Ms. C. would have made him the tallest man in New Zealand). At the first stop, he asked the only slightly less enormous Korean passenger who sat in relative comfort by the door if he wouldn't mind trading places. Unsurprisingly, the Korean passenger wasn't interested. “But my legs are very long, it would be more comfortable," pleaded the German. The Korean guy thought for a second before defensively replying "I will stay because otherwise I have the same problem." I prepared to watch what would certainly be the tallest smackdown I had ever seen, maybe the tallest ever! I confess to being a little disappointed that nothing came of it.

We settled into our seats, some more happily than others, and waited for the rest of the convoy to gather. Fifty minutes later, it had, and one by one we pulled onto the road to Abu Simbel. I don’t often imagine convoys, but when I do, I imagine something impressive - the word evokes military supply lines, long-haul truckers, ships dodging submarines in the Atlantic. Minibus convoys, on the other hand, are absurd. A lone minibus look vaguely ridiculous, five dozen of them in a row look supremely so. The safety advantages weren’t clear either: attacking a lone bus requires a certain amount of timing and precision. Hitting a chain of buses that is scheduled to pass at a certain time, on the other hand, must be an attractive target for even the laziest, most clumsy terrorist. In any event, the convoy had broken apart within the first twenty kilometres. The only effect the convoy seemed to have was to bring down property values in the neighbourhood where it gathered. What a nasty surprise it must have been for the locals. Imagine: your first night in your new home and you’re woken up by the sounds of forty or fifty minibuses idling outside your window. What would you do when you realized that this was going to happen to you every night for the rest of your life?

Abu Simbel itself is an extraordinary site well worth the three hour drive (especially if you do it in an adult-size bus). The four collosi of Ramses II outside the temple are familiar enough – as a child one of my favorite issues of National Geographic was an article on the relocation of the monument to higher ground as the rising water behind the Aswan dam threatened to innundate it. What I hadn’t known was that the interior of the temple was so extensive. It’s incredible both for the quality of the original work and for its level of preservation. I’d recommend heading straight for the temple interior when you arrive. Most tourists will be stuck listening to their guides’ background lectures just in front of the temple, so even in the middle of such a large crowd, you can steal fifteen minutes of peace inside the temple if you hurry.

There’s plenty of time later to enjoy the exterior views of the temple, where the crowd milling around below only accentuates the size of the monument. The colossal quartet of Ramses II were built to scowl at travellers from the Nubian kingdoms to the south, impressing upon them the power and terror of Pharaonic Egypt. It’s still effective today, though now the monument is set in an artificial mountain overlooking an artificial lake, and the modern oppressors of the Nubians have reverted to more barbaric ways of demonstrating their power.

The hour-and-a-half given to see the site seems like more than enough time, but before long the roar of a thousand minibuses told us that the convoy was reforming. We settled back into our seats and tried to get comfortable as the convoy, united for now, began the long trip back to Aswan.

Down in Upper Egypt

2010-05-18T00:57:00.000-07:00

EgyptAir offered us a choice of three afternoon flights, all of which were scheduled to leave within ten minutes of each other. For several hours on either side of this small handful of departures, nothing left at all. Flying planes in a convoy might have seemed strange to me once. Fortunately, I've stopped trying to understand these things and, instead of puzzling over the logic and worrying about the waste, I now just sip my mini can of Pepsi* and enjoy the extra space in my choice of one of three available planes, none of which was even one-third full.

The only disadvantage of a near-empty plane is that it suffers more from the effects of the hoht afternoon air rising off the baking desert beneath us. The same rules of atmospheric thermodynamics that allows birds to gracefully wheel in ever-higher arcs over the desert floor also apply to 747s, but there isn't anything graceful about our flight, which lurches clumsily through the air. I would never have described myself as someone who’s afraid of flying, but I’m going to start avoiding these Saharan flights. They’re nasty.

The Aswan airport is tiny and, on a Sunday, was completely empty. This didn’t mean that I could make it to the bathroom unobserved by the staff, however. As soon as I left the stall, a newly-arrived attendant handed me a paper towel and I handed him back a one-pound note. I could see right away from the polite-but-disgusted look on his face that I had made a mistake. I realized that I’d used my left hand to pass him his baksheesh. This must have been particularly revolting given where I’d just been. I do really try to not make these mistakes, but I’ve found that there’s a difference between knowing the proper etiquette and having the presence of mind to always observe it. This is why whenever I’ve had the opportunity to eat with anyone local, I literally sit on my left hand.

The taxi cartel at Aswan International is unusually disciplined, and my price negotiations weren't impressing anyone, including Ms. Chadha. When my generous counter-offer of LE50 was refused en-masse by the rank of drivers, I was left without any other plan except to sit there until someone crumbled. Someone did, but it was no surprise when that someone was me. Unless you’re a masochist or on a very tight budget, book a hotel transfer.

I’d read that Aswan’s souq was the best outside of Cairo, and since I was still in the market for a backgammon board, we decided to give shopping a try before anything else. Aswan’s municipal government had completely refurbished the market several years ago. Gone are the narrow, twisting streets with shops and vendors of every sort all haphazardly heaped together. Now the uniformly sized shops sit in neat rows on newly paved streets. It feels like you’re in an exotic version of a suburban shopping mall, though admittedly one with a more interesting food court. The main disadvantage is that in these “improved” open streets, the shopkeepers can see you from thirty meters away, and so have time to position themselves as inconveniently as possible – usually with the aim of separating you from whomever you’re walking with. The shopkeepers recognize that it's easier for a group of people to ignore them and have adjusted their strategy accordingly. In Aswan, you have to fight to stay together.

Overall, shopping in any souq is definitely a more pleasant experience when there's actually something you want to buy. However, after seeing thirty versions of the same backgammon board, we gave up and went back to the hotel. I still have hope that I’ll find what I’m looking when we’re back in Cairo. If anyone has any suggestions, please send them my way. I'm probably going to end up getting one on eBay, which would be pretty lame after having lived all of this time in North Africa.

We stayed at the Keylany Hotel, which is a few streets off the Corniche. This means that you lose the river view, but it’s quieter, cleaner, and I’m not sure that the price can be beat. It is a shame about the view, though. When I’d thought about the Nile, the scene from the Corniche is what I’d imagined: a ribbon of blue between dun colored cliffs and mountains of sand, thick stands of palms gathered on either side. It was beautiful and the rooftop of the Keylany would have been the perfect place to take it in – it’s been tastefully decorated with wicker and hundreds of fairy lights** (which looked better than I make it sound).

We decided to have a quick drink before calling it an early night (we had a 2:50 A.M. wake-up call to look forward to), but instead managed to get caught in a conversation with a roof full of backpackers. Trying to extricate yourself from a tipsy pair of chatty South Africans isn't easy, but I felt like I was up to it after an afternoon of practice in Aswan’s markets. Instead of letting myself be suckered into listening to an evening of stories even more exaggerated than mine, I followed my fail-safe souq escape tactics: I smiled, didn’t let them get between Ms. Chadha and me, went for a quick exit while ignoring the usual mix of pleas and insults, and hoped we got away without offending anyone too much. I think I’m getting good at this.

*Pepsi is killing Coke in the Egyptian cola wars. I have no idea why. It's very disheartning.
** I've always just called them "Christmas lights", but that doesn't seem to fit here. I've adopted Ms. C's terminology.

A Little Eire in Egypt

2010-04-27T16:11:00.000-07:00

My original plan for getting to Upper Egypt involved taking the Abela Sleeper Train from Cairo to Aswan. It sounded romantic in a neo-colonial sort of way and offered the added advantage of being cheap. Exercising an abundance of caution, I visited the reservation office at Ramses Station a full month before my expected travel date, only to be told by a puzzled clerk (who had probably never planned anything a month ahead in his life) that I couldn’t reserve a seat more than two in advance. I returned two weeks later as instructed, and found that the train was completely booked. My advice for anyone interested in travelling on the sleeper train: skip trying to decipher the conflicting instructions of the confused Abela staff. Instruct a local travel agency to get the tickets for you instead.

In the end, we had to fly, but trading a twelve hour train ride for a one-and-a-half hour flight did at least give us an extra night in Cairo. We used it to have dinner with a couple of my old ILI roommates, one of whom convinced me to try Egypt’s most schizophrenic dish: a bowl of Molokheya. I wanted to write “Egypt’s most revolting dish,” but that’s not quite fair, because it actually tastes fine. What’s revolting is the texture, which botanists describe with the appropriately disgusting word “mucilaginous.” Molokheya is the Egyptian term for Jew’s Mallow, which as near as I can tell, has no more politically correct name. When cooked, the stuff turns to slime – a clear, thick slime with the consistency of saliva...after a night of heavy drinking...when you have a sinus infection.

I washed it down with half a bottle of Omar Khayam, which as noted before, has the useful property of acting as a general anaesthetic in situations like this. This time it also had the unfortunate side-effect of causing me to suggest to Ms. C. that we should go to Harry’s Pub for a couple post-dinner drinks in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. I blame the Omar Khayam, because in sober circumstances I dislike St. Patrick’s day and I hate Harry’s Pub. I can’t imagine a situation where I'd like either of them better when combined.

Harry’s is a faux Irish pub attached to the Marriot Hotel in Zamalek (or maybe it’s the Sheraton – I can never remember, which has irritated more than one cab driver). Harry’s is popular with older (mostly English) ex-pats, local alcoholics, itinerant students, and prostitutes. Unfortunately, this is more or less the exact same demographic that is attracted to St. Patrick’s day, which doubled the potential obnoxiousness of the crowd. Luckily for us, in my enthusiasm I had failed to notice that we’d already missed the holiday, which was the day before.*

St. Patrick’s day may have passed, but there was still one night left for the Irish band that the hotel had flown in from Dublin for a four-night stand. The crowd, many of whom were probably still nursing hangovers cultivated the night before, was more subdued too. Everyone’s enthusiasm had been dampened just to the point where an old crank like me could enjoy himself, and enjoy myself I did. Probably as a consequence of my father’s collection of Dubliners cassettes, I love traditional Irish music. I was delighted anytime they pulled out one of the classics. They have so much energy to them that half the time I don’t realize how ridiculously depressing the lyrics are, which reminds me of a few of my favorite lines from G. K. Chesteron:

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad

Very true, G.K., very true. We didn’t hear anything as conspicuously mournful as “Danny Boy,” but even the upbeat, sing-along numbers like “Whisky in the Jar,” and “Irish Rover,” (which are about a double-crossing lover and the annihilation of a ship’s crew, respectively) are actually quite sad. Some of the poignancy of bleak Irish songs is relieved, however, by the recognition that nobody living in whatever Irish backwater is the subject of a song like “Dirty Old Town” has it nearly as bad as the dozens of poor Sudanese and sub-Saharan prostitutes who frequent places like Harry’s. You would have to take Ireland’s gloomiest songwriter off his anti-depressants for months before he could write a song that could even come close to capturing how terrible that job must be.

We settled the bill just as the band started on to a series of Journey covers. It was definitely the right time to leave Harry's and probably also a good time to leave Cairo for a while, too. I’ve found that a good rule of thumb is that by the time a person starts frequenting fake Irish pubs (which exist everywhere on earth), either they’ve run out of ideas to explore or the town has run out of options to offer. In either case, it was a good time to take to the road for a bit, or, as the Irish appear to say: “mush-a ring dum-a do dum-a da, wack fall the daddy-o.”

*St. Patrick's Day was a month ago, which shows just how many posts behind I actually am on this thing. They're all there, they just need typing.

Cairo and the Egyptian Museum

2010-04-12T10:42:00.000-07:00

The next morning, we drove almost directly back to Cairo from the White Desert – I say almost, because we took a few off-road detours to avoid the police checkpoints scattered along the route. I asked Waleed and Hamid about this, but they just laughed and muttered something about the highway being bad for the jeep. The main road that we exited was without question the best we’d had and the stony, shattered trail we used instead was one of the worst, but I shared our guides’ distrust of the police and didn’t ask any more questions. Besides, driving across the desert to avoid the law made me feel like I was part of the Monkey Wrench Gang.

We returned to the Windsor Hotel, which for the money has the nicest hotel bar in Cairo. The quality of the rooms, on the other hand, is less predictable. Some of them (ours) were simple affairs, while others (not ours) looked amazingly comfortable. I couldn’t see any significant price differences, so I suspect that what’s required for an upgrade is a bit of baksheesh. This meant that Ms. C. had to forego a large room with a bath for one with a tiny shower and a chair that collapsed the first time I sat on it. Four months in North Africa and I still don’t have any idea how this baksheesh thing is done.

The room did at least have a nice balcony overlooking the coffee and tea shops surrounding the Windsor. This meant that we could see (without being seen) the mobs of unemployed men who frequent these places – smoking sheeshas, drinking tea, leering and now and then shouting something moderately filthy at Ms. Chadha. This was the biggest difference between wandering around Cairo alone and travelling with a partner – the unwanted attention of Egyptian men.

A surprising number of Egyptian men have the sexual maturity of teenage boys, with whom they share a great deal in common: both groups are sexually frustrated, neither have any idea what to do when confronted with a woman, and neither have any better use of their time other than demonstrating the first two of these commonalities over and over again. It is very obnoxious and is far worse than in any other North African or Middle Eastern city I have visited.

It’s the kind of thing that, if you can’t find a way to adjust to or avoid, can spoil your trip. Not Ms. Chadha, though. We were soon on the streets again and I was able to demonstrate to Ms. C’s satisfaction that kushari truly is the king of cheap street foods. It seems she and her workmates had read my earlier post on the subject and couldn’t believe that something of that description could possibly taste good. I’m happy to confirm to the employees of the Insolvency Service that she agrees that it’s great.

Our time in Cairo was limited, so we decided to spend the bulk of the day at the Egyptian Museum, which matched every expectation of it. The collection is massive and amazing, but it looks like it was collected by an eccentric English gentleman who put everything on display just as his Alzheimer’s started to set in. Most things aren’t labelled, and what labels exist are often only yellowed cards, typed up in the 19th century either in bad English or bad French. The labels usually describe something completely different from what’s in front of you. Thankfully, most of what you’re looking at is impressive even when you have no idea what it is – in particular, the Tutankhamen artefacts are incredible. Still, if you’re a learner-type, buy a book to tote along. I wish I had.

The White Desert

2010-04-04T12:44:00.000-07:00

At the border of the White Desert National Park our driver impatiently honked his horn while the police searched the vehicles in front of us. I couldn't imagine behaving like this in the U.S., and our police have smaller guns and more respect for civil rights. I also couldn't imagine lying to the police when asked a direct question, which is exacly what Waleed did when the officer requested the nationalities of his passengers. "Ithnayn New Zealandi," he replied, "two New Zealanders." Ms. Chadha was visibly delighted and continues to remind me of my two days of grace long after I'd returned to being an American again.

We learned from Waleed that no guide worth his tip will allow his clients from the U.S. or the U.K. to admit their nationality. This is because safety regulations require that the police provide American and British tourists with armed escorts while in the desert. "Not because they don't like you," Waleed reassured me, "but because they like you very, very much." I had no interest in sharing the solitude of the desert with a truck full of soldiers, so I humbly submitted to this affront to my national dignity.

Waleed, it should be mentioned, was a completely different person now that circumstances no longer compelled him to invent trivia for our amusement. When his guiding responsibilities were limited to taking us to places he knew were beautiful and letting us enjoy them, he relaxed and we appreciated him much more. He became less a guide and more just good company (good company who also did all of the cooking and cleaning and who expected a tip in return, but still, good company).

Pointing out extraordinary scenery was easy in the White Desert, where the elements had almost entirely eroded away a thick bed of chalk, leaving only scattered outcrops which the wind had worn into fantasic shapes. The desert floor is littered with ancient shells and millions upon millions of small iron nodules, left behind after the stone that had held them was reduced to sand.

That there were seashells lying in the sand hundreds of miles from the sea was only one of Waleed's "mysteries of the desert." He had forsaken "or something like this" as his stock phrase and instead described everything as being a "mystery of the desert." "See that palm tree," he would ask, "how does it grow in the desert with no water? Impossible to know! It is a mystery of the desert..."

Camp was a simple affair: a screen to block the wind, a few rugs, a low table and a campfire. It was simple, but very comfortable - other than a time we stayed at a tent camp in Kenya (where the 'tents' had polished wood floors and stone baths), this was as pampered as I've ever been out in the wild.

We shared a chicken cooked over an open fire and served with rice and a vegetable and potato stew. This was the third time we'd eaten this exact meal in two days, but it was without question the best interpretation of the theme. We were pleasantly surprised at its taste because we had seen the same chicken fermenting in its plastic shopping bag all day. I was also concerned that the meat might be dry, because during the cooking process Hamid kept savagely crushing the poor bird onto the grill with a pot lid. Maybe it was a function of the law that all food is good food when camping, maybe it was just another mystery of the desert, but it was delicious and we loved it.

Throughout dinner, we could hear dums and singing, and I was dreading the moment that we would be invited to participate in one of the staged "Bedouin parties" that the tour groups like to put on. Sure enough, shortly after dinner, Waleed marched us towards a camp about a half-kilometer away which was the source of the sound. We arrived to find a half-dozen of the guides (who soon claimed Waleed as one of their number) sitting around a campfire singing to the accompaniment of a single drum.

Maybe one of the blessings of being a good singer is that everyone is so enthralled by the singer's voice that people assume the singer must enjoy using it. The guides in this case had pleasant enough voices and the performance was a lot of fun, but what was even more remarkable was that the guides seemed to enjoy singing even more than the guests enjoyed listening to it (the possible exception among the guests being a few older German tourists, who didn't seem too pleased to find that their camp had been selected as the site for the evening's performance). Waleed in particular was an active participant - at one point overturning a storage bin to use as an additional drum. It was great.

Walking back, Waleed told us not to worry if we get lost because he is a Bedouin man and he knows how to sleep in the desert. Apparently, you dig a hole and bury yourself in the sand, leaving only your head exposed. This will keep you warm, but not perfectly safe, since "maybe a fox will come around and play and maybe sometimes he will make a baby on your face. Do not sleep with mouth open."

We made it back to camp, and disregarding the warnings about frisky foxes, chose to sleep under the stars. I've heard the night sky described as a "dome" of stars, but I've realized that I had no idea what that meant until I was in the desert on a cloudless day, 200 miles away from the nearest artificial light source. We saw stars touching the horizon in every direction. It must have been the first time I've ever seen stars without needing to raise my eyes at all. It was the most magical, mysterious thing we had seen in the desert. It was also the one thing that Waleed was content to show us without comment at all.

The Road to Farafra

2010-03-31T02:34:00.000-07:00

Our departure the next morning was later than planned because our new driver (who replaced Mohammed) hadn't returned yet from his previous trip. The drivers and guides work in short cycles - completing one trip, restocking, and heading out on another. Because of the delay, we combined the 'restocking' and the 'heading out' bits, which was actually quite a fun little shopping trip through town. Our last stop was at a butcher, where Waheed offered a man in a blood-soaked apron a few notes, which led to his extracting a chicken by its wings from its coop and disappearing with it just out of view. We never saw the chicken intact again, only freshly plucked and cleaned quarters of it as they sailed through the air from the chopping block to a bath of water near the door. Waleed returned to the truck holding the aftermath: a bloody shopping bag full of raw chicken which he put, unrefrigerated, into the back of the truck.

Our new driver, Hamid, was older, more mature and consequently lacked Mohammed's perverse leer. In fact, his only real obsession seemed to be his mobile phone, into which he was usually talking or watching videos. He did share one thing in common with Mohammed, which was that he took real pleasure in trying to terrify Ms. Chadha with unnecessarily dangerous driving. Whenever he was in the middle of doing something particularly frightening, he would let out a shrill ululation in what was meant to be an imitation of Ms. C's screams who, to her credit, has never made any noise of the sort.

As on the previous day, we broke up the drive with stops at different points of interest along the highway. For example, we spent fifteen minutes examining a moderately interesting ridge of quartz crystals. The wind had really began to blow, so it was difficult to examine the several really large pieces of quartz because of the thousands of small pieces that constantly blew in our eyes. Waleed gave Ms C. a small piece of translucent quartz as a "souvenir of the desert" that she, as a conscientious tourist, returned to the site as soon as his back was turned. You can't convince a Kiwi to despoil the environment for anything.

Shortly after crystal mountain, we turned east off the main highway onto a dirt road that led up a narrow canyon and ultimately to one of the most incredible vistas I've ever seen in my life. I'm sorry to say that I'm simply not good enough a photographer (or writer) to capture the scene, but from our perch in a saddle of sandstone, we saw the desert stretch for miles, broken only by massive pink and white pinnacles and buttes rising from the sea of red sand. It reminded me of the first time I saw Monument Valley on the Utah/Arizona border, only this had a softer, less harsh quality to it.

It also benefited from being totally unexpected, or at least unexpected by me: Waleed and Hamid simultaneously let out an exaggerated "ohhhhh my gaaaaaawd" right as we drove over the summit of the saddle and got our first glimpse of the valley, echoing what they've no doubt heard a hundred times from other customers also confronted with this scene. For Hamid, this would be his first and only complete sentence in English, and he made the most of it.

We stopped for a while to take in the view. Hamid wandered off. Waleed sat by himself and smoked. I sat and talked with Ms. C., reminding her that she would just be getting into the office were she still back in London. Suddenly, I was lying on my back in the sand. Hamid had snuck up behind me and pushed me over. I started to get up and he pushed me over again. I understand that this sort of thing is done in Egypt and that you're supposed to take it with good grace, but I have no idea how. I was reminded - not for the first time on this trip - that I have grown into a grumpy middle-aged man. I've become the kind of person whose dignity is offended by being pushed into the sand. But what do you do? My approach was to just get flustered until Hamid tired of playing with me and moved on.

I've had some time to think it over since then and just want to warn the guides of Egypt that while I know it's all in good fun, if anyone ever tries that again, I'm going to have to break his knees.

Bahariya Oasis

2010-03-29T08:37:00.000-07:00

Compared to the epic twelve hour bus ride to Siwa, the four hour drive by private mini-bus to Bahariya Oasis was very manageable. The only possible complaint was that our bus had been equipped with a warning alarm that emitted a loud, obnoxious beep at any speed over 120 kmph, so of course the driver did his best to maintain a constant speed of 123 kmph; fast enough to fill the bus with relentless noise for the duration of the trip, but not fast enough to shorten it by much.

After a quick lunch, we met our guides. Waleed wore a form-fitting, wide-collared shirt tucked into a pair of tight indigo jeans which were elaborately embroidered and embedded with sparkling rhinestones. Except for his moustache and mullet, he could have been Italian. Our driver, Mohammed, with his ratty jeans, t-shirt and flip-flops, had nothing at all in common with the Italians except for a near constant leer, which he usually directed at Ms. Chadha.

We began our tour with a visit to the Bahariya Antiquities and Archaeological Center, a crumbling cinderblock building which had the look and feel of an abandoned hospital. That the place was full of mummies (including those of children who are the worst kind of mummy) didn't improve the creepy atmosphere much.

We were informed that the Golden Mummies of Bahariya had been discovered in exactly the same way as the catacombs of Kom es-Shoqafa; by a donkey falling into a hole. I've heard this sort of "lucky archaeologist/unlucky donkey" story enough times now that I've started to doubt whether all of them could possibly be true. Whether the initial discover was an unfortunate donkey or not, the archaeologists have been quite pleased with the outcome. Subsequent exploration has revealed the largest cache of mummies ever discovered - as many as 10,000 spread over a necropolis covering ten square kilometers.

I started to grow increasingly suspicious of the information Waleed provided about them as it became more and more improbably specific. It didn't help that he had the curious habit of adding "or something like that" to the end of half of his sentences. This made even his accurate information sound completely invented. He directed our attention to a decaying mummy, which he told us was once a doctor, probably a surgeon, and that a nearby mummy was his friend and had probably helped him with the surgeries. This seemed to be more than anyone else in the world knew about these things and we began to suspect that Waleed was just playing a macabre form of house - as if these corpses were no more than life-sized, elaborately decorated dolls.

Our next stop was a visit to the tombs of Zad-Amun ef-Ankh and his son Bannentiu. Both tombs require a ten-meter descent down steep staircases before ducking through low portals into the main halls. The murals in each were painted in vivid yellow and blues that looked as bright as they must have been 2,500 years ago. Neither tomb was nearly so colorful, however, as Waleed's interpretation of the events depicted on them. In one scene showing the falcon-headed god Horus standing near the ibis-headed Thoth, Waleed explained his theory that they were probably the same god: "some people say they are different, but I think maybe they are the same style guy." This was almost exactly the same way he described his view of the differences between Japanese and Chinese tourists, which he shared with us the following day when we met a group of people who I think were most-likely Korean.

One scene depicted Bannentiu (Waleed pronounced this as "Bennington," which I will use also) flanked by rows of baboons and frogs. Waleed told us that this was to show that he is happy in the afterlife, "because baboons live in trees and eat bananas and that is nice. Frogs sing like making music by the water and this is nice too. We see that Bennington is happy to be dead and not go to the fire, or something like this."

By the time we visited the Temple of Alexander, about 3km further down the road. Waleed had given up any pretense of trying to provide useful information. The temple's primary hall was lined with a procession of gods which Waleed recklessly tried to name. He made it through Anubis, Horus and Osiris, but then things begn to get a little foggy: "Isis, Amun Ra, Seti, Meti, Teti, Feti, Beti..." he was just rhyming the same word and still had half the wall yet to get through. The old Bedouin caretaker wasn't having any of it and cut him off. The caretaker than started over from the beginning, announcing every god clearly with a throaty growl which is exactly how I want my voice to develop over the next thirty years.

Whenever we'd return to the landcruiser after one of these visits, we'd find Mohammed relaxing to Arabic music on the radio. He would quickly turn it off as soon as he saw us, but having grown tired of the interruptions, Mohammed asked us if we wouldn't mind listening to something. We didn't mind at all, but Waleed whispered to him in Arabic to please make sure that it was English music, so we sped along the dirt road absolutely blasting a Toni Braxton album.

Soon we came ten-meter cliff which Mohammed pretended to want to drive over. Growing up in Utah, I've been on a lot of jeep trails over the years, but never, ever, anything so steep as this. I thought he was only teasing Ms. Chadha (the desire to tease Ms. C seems to be the only cultural constant in this world) but soon, with "Unbreak My Heart" blaring in the background, he slipped over the edge and brought the landcruiser to about an 80 degree angle to the canyon floor below. Everything loose in the truck was resting on the inside of the windshield before we finally leveled off and drove up the sandy bank of the opposite side. I was worried that Ms. C. wasn't going to take this stunt well, but after she caught her breath following a long bout of manic laughter, she managed to indicate that she had enjoyed it very much.

We ended the tour by driving through a narrow, winding canyon to the top of Jebel Ingleezi (English Mountain). The valley where we parked looked almost lunar - I didn't see a single living plant growing out of the black basalt on the short walk to the top. The view from the summit of the Oasis and the surrounding valley, however, was very good, which led the English to build several stone shelters here during one of the world wars (Waleed wasn't sure which and appeared surprised to learn that there had been as many as two). He told us only that "the English were very scared that the people come to find them and so... English Mountain!" After this explanation, he told us he was very hungry and asked us if we could get back to the landcruiser by ourselves. We told him we could and he set off for something to eat, leaving us to take photos and enjoy the view. Poor Waleed, I got the impression that he'd had a rough day, even though I don't think we could have been the most difficult clients. We didn't trust anything he was telling us, so we almost never asked him to expand on anything. I suppose in some ways, that might be more difficult for a guide.

Back at the bottom of the mountain, a few other groups had arrived and their guides had gathered around our jeep to share a pot of tea. They invited us for a cup from the second pot. The first pot tends to be stronger and more bitter, while the weakness of the second cup is compensated for by piling in the sugar and mint. I prefer the second cup - it reminds me of the sugary mint tea I got hooked on in Morocco.

Back at the hotel, Waleed informed us that he would also be our guide through the White Desert and that he would give us a wake-up call at 9:00 the next morning. We went to bed confident that the next morning we could rely on our guide to safely lead us through one of the world's great deserts while also providing useful and accurate information, or something like that.

On the Road

2010-03-21T23:06:00.001-07:00

Or more accurately, on the river. Apologies for the sporadic posting. We've been off the grid: camping in out in the desert, in Aswan and now will be heading down the river to Luxor this afternoon. I haven't had much luck with internet access, so my posts will remain confined to a notebook for now. They will eventually go up - though it may be some time before I have the technology to make it happen.